The Strange Journey Through Trump World

It’s a strange world in Trump Land.  In what other world could you shame a guy for recrusing himself, which is what he or anybody is supposed to do.  Yet Jeff Sessions is the bad guy for obeying the law.  And trump says in essence “If I had known it wasn’t going to be a rigged crap game I never would have hired him”.    Trump has threatened repeatedly to fire the special prosecutor because he feels that he's only entitled to investigate things Trump wants him to investigate- like Hillary's faults and not his own.  If he fires Muller to me it will set up a constitutional crisis.  Trump is also saying that nobody in his administration has committed any indictable offenses but the only offenses were committed by William Coney for leaking material last year.  Nobody in the Trump administration will rule out Trump’s pardoning himself and they all line up to say that pardoning yourself is OK as President and that the power to pardon is absolute in the constitution.  This is not true.  It also says in the constitution that the President after his impeached and removed for office can be indicted just like any other criminal and barred from running for any high office in the land.  Trump lives in his own world.   Now you have Susan Sanders as White House Press secretary as of Friday and Andrew Scarimuchi (?) as the new commun-ication director.   I wish I could say these first six months of the Trump administration would be the worst we’ll see but the thing is they won’t be.  It will get worse.  What seems bizarre now will definitely seem a lot less bizarre in six months.

I had Breakfast with the Beatles on at nine.  They played Ringo’s new song of “What we need is more love” or something.  Jackie De Shannon revisited.  I went for snacks and got two pink lemonades and a graham cracker from Rico.   Before lunch they played “Live Abbey Road”.  They played live “Here Comes the Sun” by Harrison and live “You Never Give Me Your Money” by Paul, and live “Come Together” by John.  I went down for lunch, and I ended up needing not to get down so quickly.   We had teriyaki chicken for lunch, which I mixed with the rice.  I don’t know if there were seconds but I really should have stayed to find out.  We had yellow cake with whipped cream on it for dessert.  KLOS was having problems with their radio engineering at their hang-out in Seal Beach.  They concluded the show by playing “Beatle studio outtakes”.  

Rhapsody in Black had “Da Doo Run Run” by the Ronettes, they claim but I’ve always thought the song was by the Crystals.  They played “The Boy I’m Going to Marry” by Darlene Love and “Push – Over” by Etta James.  They played “Another Saturday Night” by Sam Cooke and “Just One Look” by Doris Troy.  They played "Ruby Baby" not the Dion song, and also "Foolish Little Girl", which came out in March.  They played “Monkey Time” by Major Lance.  ( ? ) Of course there all sorts of songs they didn’t play.  Bill just gave me two cigarettes.  It’s unlikely I’ll get free coffee from anybody this evening.  

This month of July has seemed like a really long one this year.  Glenda left on July first and that seems ages ago.  It seems like ages since we've celebrated the Fourth.  There is way too much month at the end of the money.  This month figures to be among the worse months in this regard.   Congress has been in session and perhaps I've been derelect in not following the more closely on C-Span.  But it doesn't look like they're going to pass any bills.  There were rumors that Mitch Mc Connell wanted to hold them over August recess so that they could finish their work.  That would be a first.   Today has about been the coolest or least hot day of the month, except for the first two days of July.  Who would have guessed?   Ask me ten days from now how I feel.  

Trump Loses Big Vote on Health Care Bill Yesterday

The big news yesterday was that suddenly the revised Health Care bill is dead.  They took a straw vote yesterday or something and realized they could never get the thing passed.  Donald Trump didn’t take the news at all well but blames the democrats.   Trump keeps saying “Obama Care” will fail of its own weight.  They were planning on waiting for John Mc Cain to recover from his blood clot surgery and wheel him into the Senate chamber if they had to.   Then they were going to ram the bill through the House with NO changes or amendments to the Senate bill but that the House members would voluntary disregard their own House bill and vote for the Senate bill as it was passed.  That’s how desperate they were to get this law enacted.  But now that won’t occur.  

OJ Simpson’s parole hearing is today and it looks like he will get out of prison in October after having been in prison since 2008 after that failed Las Vegas heist.  This is where OJ tried to steal back some of his own sports memorabilia.  But now the victim of the crime is saying that OJ should be released.  The original sentence was 33 years.  But now a female prison guard caught him masturbating, which violates some revised prison rule book, as comical as that sounds.  Otherwise he’s been a model prisoner. 

There is a five year old boy who was murdered by his father in April.  The last anyone saw of the boy alive he was leaving Disneyland with his father.  His father murdered the boy to get back at his wife due to a messy divorce.  That sounds horrible inhumane and cold blooded.  The family funeral for the boy was held yesterday.  Everyone was saying what a sweet and bright, intuitive and curious child he was.  

I became concerned how much money I’d get for money draw.  The money draw line wasn’t moving when I got in it.  Earlier I got an iced tea and a graham cracker from Rico.  The line to see Dr Saran wasn’t long but it moved slowly.  Roxanne took a lot of time.  I told Dr Saran I needed diaria medication and he agreed.  He says there was some anti fungal medication on the list that causes diaria.  I was perplexed as to what he was referring and I still don’t know.  I was offered a chance to have a colonoscopy and turned it down for the multiple time.   I signed something.   I should have read it.  The line for money draw was shorter now.  I’ve been pretty well supplied with cigarettes today.  I went out of my way to get a quarter selling Ron Flowers a cigarette so that I could pay Tao a quarter because he lent me a cigarette at noon.  I got in the office.  I was hoping for eight dollars but feared I might only get six or even less.  As it turns out after accounting that Jennifer said I could have eight.  It was eight ones and I was counting them and ran right into the screen door.  My glasses were filthy and I was a little distracted.  

Evidence For Impeachment Continues to Trickle In

Donald Trump Junior was approached by Russians about getting the goods on Hillary and apparently Donald Trump Jr. said “That sounds like a great idea”.  When I first heard about this deal I assumed the deal had not been accepted because clearly accepting a deal, even an offer like this would put a whole different slant on things.  It would be an arrestable offense.  Today Thom Hartman spoke of “weaponizing the data” by releasing it after it had already been gathered by the Russians.  If you can show a nexis of cause and effect here you’ve got a real case.  This of course is yesterday's news and someone needs to put all the loose pieces together into a cohesive evidence time-line.  If we're ever going to have impeachment happen we need more than a miandering stream of evidence, we need the equivelant of the dam bursting of evidence.  

The other news of yesterday was that this big ice sheet the size of Deleware or something broke off of Antarctica.    This was the third biggest break off if massive ice of all time.  They say such break offs are common but it seems we've been hearing about them with increasing regularity.  Also the temperature in the arctic is dozens of degrees above what normal is and they've been having a type of rain storm they commonly don't see that far north.  But they still aren't saying it's global warming.  

Let me revise and clarify my teaching on Cause and Effect.  There IS no realm after death where the metaphysical reality is flip flopped such that you can say "This is the world of Cause" or of our realm that "This is the real of Effects".  Logically it breaks down to three realities.  Inanimate objects live in a world of pure Effect.  Inanimate objects have no will of their own to control what happens to them.  The most glairing example of this is the computer, which is devoid of Logic in and of itself except in terms that we impart our own Logic to the computer.  Let me give you a couple of amusing examples.  If you write on the blackboard X = 10 minus Y  - - and then write Y equals 3, one might form the conclusion that X equals 7.  But in the realm of a computer X still equals ten because at the time this statement was given Y equaled 0.   In like manner some say that is A equals B and B equals C then logically A would equal C.  But not necessarily in computer land.  A may be changed to the value of B, but if B is also changed to the value of C then A no longer equals C.   In the land of the living or the land of the dead where human beings or whoever are involved there is this tension between Cause and Effect.  It can be said that the power exercise more Cause than the poor and powerless do, but the poor still have Some power to affect their destiny.  The only realm that can be spoken of as pure Cause is the Calvinistic realm of "God" himself.  If you are a hard determinist then God is in his own realm of pure Cause.  Things that other living beings to have absolutely no affect on who he is or the responses he has to things, if anything God ever does can be considered a "response" and not just pure sovreign Cause.  

Paul called on the phone during Days of our Lives and Paul could hear it.  I thought it was Tim at first because the voice was muffled.  Paul had some goodies to bring over for me and I said that after three would be better (just to be on the safe side) because it was money draw day and I had no idea how long the line might be.  As it turned out Jennifer was in a conference with Aden for quote a few minutes and only one other guy was in line waiting with me.  Gabby was in the room and darted outside.  Then the snack cart arrived and I got an iced tea and a graham cracker and then got back in line.  The other guy didn’t have money coming.  I went in and at first was unsure whether the check had even been registered.  But after confirming the two dollar co pay was not held against me but the haircut charge had been recorded.  I asked for and got fifteen dollars.  There was no candy.  I went out and got a twelve ounce can of Coke and a pack of Clippers.  I drank the Coke.  I paid Larry back one cigarette and paid Bill back the seven cigarettes he asked for.  Paul showed up a little before three.  He brought towels I didn’t accept but I accepted the two white tee shirts.  Paul said there was some air coming through the AC vent.  He also believed it was cooler in the room than it was outside.  There was a huge zip-lock baggie of walnuts and also some oatmeal date raison cookies.  I have to be careful not to overeat.  They came out good.  Paul was pleased to learn that neither Bill nor I had scabies anymore.  But before Paul arrived I had on Adam Schiff and he talked about this new scandal involving some offer of the Russians to dish out the goods on Hillary Clinton.  There is no news whether the deal was ever accepted.  Then I had Norman Goldman on for an hour.

Tonight we had chicken teriyaki for dinner and rice and I mixed the two together.  There were no seconds and Paul wasn’t forthcoming like he was the last time we had this meal.  We had two sugar cookies for dessert.  The news is on.  I have no plans to post a blog today.  John Kip asked for his money and I asked if it were OK to pay him a dollar and also get coffee tonight and he agreed.  Then I went to his room and got two spoons of coffee and paid him a dollar.  But now I’m thinking I would like something else to drink.  As for the Olympics the two cities of Paris and Los Angeles are both slated for either 2028 or 2024.  The Olympic committee wants to break with tradition and make a decision on the next eight years in September.    

This is Wednesday July 12, 2017 and they just announced refreshments right now.  I just had two oatmeal cookies.  I crossed the court at 2:05 and then came back to wait and waited till 2:25 and gave up.  The Orange County Fair is starting up this Friday.  I guess I’ll be changing the wallpaper soon.  I’ve been plagued by tiredness.  I have to reconsider the possibility that I might have something like Epstein Barr or something.  This morning I had Stephanie Miller on after eight.  Bill left to see Dr Kim at a quarter to nine.  I had Thom Hartman on.  I got snacks in the morning which consisted of two cups of real orange juice and a graham cracker.  Then it was my lying down.  We had a lunch meat sandwich for lunch that was supposed to be turkey.  We had potato chips with it and watermelon for dessert.   Bill returned just after lunch and I looked just as lethargic as I did before he left.  We have air conditioning now.  Augustine knocked on the door just after lunch to announce it and I said “I thought it was a little cooler in here” and sure enough cool air is coming out the vent.  I still haven’t put all the clothes away.  Nora came in and said something puzzling.  She said Bill having his towel on the bathroom floor was no good because “”when they clean they’ll object to it”.  So who is the “they”” that will be cleaning the place.  She did not say “inspect” or “check”.  I had the Gary and Shannon show on over the noon hour.  Days of our Lives wasn’t all that interesting today.  A theory was floated that perhaps Zander had Damos murdered from his prison cell in Greece or something. 

Opinions Divided on Success of G 21 Economic Summit

In the news Donald Trump met face to face with Vladimir Putin on Friday and allegedly grilled him about sabotaging the Presidential campaign of last year.  Putin flat out denied it and Trump immediately accepted that answer.  I find something to be phony bologna about the whole reporting of the incident.  It strikes me as fictional like Hillary’s accounting of the Monica Luinsky affair.  I just don’t think it happened anything like that.  But also Putin and Trump struck some deal, an accord, on Syria and getting Assad to town down the gassing and killing of his own people.  The strange thing is that Rachael Maddow claims that Putin manipulated the entire 2:16 meeting to his own whims.  I don’t see it that way.  From all the reporting of the encounter Trump comes out smelling like a rose.  In other news all the protests at the G 20 economic summit in Hamburg are continuing for a third night.  I’m not sure what the cause is except that it’s anarchists and environmental extremists.   I need more background.

HAMBURG — President Trump and other world leaders on Saturday emerged from two days of talks unable to resolve key differences on core issues such as climate change and globalization, slapping an exclamation point on a divisive summit that left other nations fearing for the future of global alliances in the Trump era.  The scale of disharmony was remarkable for the annual Group of 20 meeting of world economic powers, a venue better known for sleepy bromides about easy-to-agree-on issues. Even as negotiators made a good-faith effort to bargain toward consensus, European leaders said that a chasm has opened between the United States and the rest of the world.  “Our world has never been so divided,” French President Emmanuel Macron said as the talks broke up. “Centrifugal forces have never been so powerful. Our common goods have never been so threatened.”  The divisions were most bitter on climate change, where 19 leaders formed a unified front against Trump. But even in areas of nominal compromise, such as trade, top European leaders said they have little faith that an agreement forged today could hold tomorrow.

The following is a different news item.  HAMBURG, Germany — Wrapping up his second European tour, President Donald Trump and Asian allies searched for consensus Saturday on how to counter what the president called the “menace” of North Korea after its test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile.  “Something has to be done about it,” Trump said as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. In a separate meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump said the two were tackling “the problem and menace of North Korea.”  The White House said after the meeting with Abe that the U.S. was “prepared to use the full range of capabilities” in defense of Japan. Trump and Abe committed, the White House said, “to redoubling their efforts to bring all nations together to show North Korea that there are consequences for its threatening and unlawful actions.”  The Trump administration has tried to pressure Beijing to rein in North Korea, a major trading partner, to halt Kim Jong Un’s development of nuclear weapons before they have the ability to threaten the U.S. homeland. Trump has voiced his frustration in recent days that China hasn’t done more, suggesting he may be moving on.  The buzz is that China is “japing out on us” as far as China is concerned.  

I had the Chris Matthews show on about a quarter after eight this morning.  The air conditioning these days works in the evening for a while in a weak stream.  But it’s enough to cool down the room briefly.  Then after breakfast you come in and the room has cooled down, but it doesn’t stay that way.  Needless to say Augustine has not worked on the air conditioner today.  Then I had the Rachael Maddow program on and both had hesitations with the sound with buffering or something.  She talked a lot about Russian dissidents one of which died from mistreatment in prison, to which Putin says, “People die in American prisons all the time”.  But they aren’t major political dissenters and the whole government isn’t conspiring to kill them.  Then another individual was poisoned, which goes on all the time.  Rachael believes that Putin clearly manipulated the conversation with Trump.  I would have typed this entry in the morning except that I was too sleepy.  They had voting for Resident of the Month from ten to twelve this morning.  I passed by in front of the med room and they had fancy punch in under-filled big cups and also a little popcorn all for voting.  I voted for John Kip as the man and Kathy, my table-mate for the woman.  After this I hung out back for a while.  Then from ten thirty to eleven I had Handel on the Law on.

 [Monday morning] I listened to Thom Hartman and deliberately missed the snack period.  I wasn’t hungry and I was too tired.  I turned the computer off at a quarter to eleven, went out and had a final smoke and then just lay down.  I went down to the front room where Bill was just before eleven fifteen.  Terry showed up at a quarter after and I flagged him down because he was looking in the dining room.  Bill sat in the back seat both ways.  The conversation was pretty rational and I asked him about his writing and he talked about a couple of his stories.  Bill tripped on a step to the Claim Jumer and Terry was strong enough to pull hjm to his feet.  I wouldn’t have been.   The place had a lot of empty chairs.  There was no waiting. We sat at a roomy booth.  Bill seemed at ease with Terry relating personal events from his life.  I ordered a large Coke and was given a whole second Coke, which I also drank entirely.  It gave me a caffeine sugar buzz.  Bill had the Widow Maker Hamburger and I had this chicken cob sandwich thing I wasn’t real pleased with.  For the first thing it was huge- - bigger than anything at Marie Calendar.  But then it has all of this concentrated blue cheese in it. I only ate one half of it and I was stuffed.  I ate all of the onion rings.  I asked for onion rings instead of fries.  Bill also had onion rings but he saved his.  We left paying largely with two $25.00 gift cards and we arrived back here just before one.  Days of our Lives was on and I watched it.  I don’t know what happened to Wimbelton unless they don’t have it anymore.  I deliberately skipped the two o clock snacks.  I had the Steve Hardy Show on and I watched that for the entire hour. 

I went to bed last night and I fell into the crack

I woke up this morning and I had an aching back

But Sit n Sleep has saved us from our old dust mite filled bed

That we’ve been sleeping on

Glory, glory Hallaluyah

Other stores will try to fool you

Glory, glory Hallalyah

Our sleepless nights are gone.

It Looks Like Time-Warner and AT&T are Merging

The lead story has to be this proposed merger  between A T & T and Time-Warner, which sounds completely insane because they are each other's chief rivals in this area.  Then there would be no competition at all.  But there is a little twist on the thing.  The Trump administration I guess is the one who proposed the merger but he's also saying there are strings on the merger.  It depends on how CNN treats President Trump in the news and I guess CNN will be a part of this merger.  I didn't know CNN was also owned by Time Warner but maybe they are.  Trump definitely wants to shut down competition in the news media.

The big news around here is this heat wave.  For the past week and a half weather forecasters have been understating the high of the day by about five degrees.   One day when they said it was only 77 in the news it definitely was in the eighties.   Monday was a warmer day than Sunday and every successive day this week has been warmer than the previous day.  Yesterday they said it was ninety and I say it was 95.  Humidity is up and will increase along with the temperature today to a predicted 98 in Anaheim as monsoonal action comes into play when the High pressure off to the east moves in closer and sucks in moist air from the Gulf of California.  Personally we haven't had air conditioning in here for two weeks except maybe briefly during the evenings.  Strangely it feels cool in here right now returning from breakfast.  So maybe something is working.  My appetite is down.  But after all it is summer time so expect heat.

As to Vladimir Putin, it's still an open question whether President Trump has met him face to face before.  Apparently several years ago Trump said he had met him and now he says he's never met him until today.  The President has given indications that he's not going to be confrontational about whether Putin has sabotaged the Presidential campaign of last year, except perhaps to say "Good job; well done".  There will be a lot more news on the whole Europe trip to announce after today.

Stocks today are down in response to a lack-luster unemployment report where fewer jobs were added last month than expected.  The president is at this economic summit in Germany and the event has been punctuated by widespread protests and police intervention.  Yesterday the President spoke with the leader in Poland and apparently Trump criticized US media to foreigners.  He also touted the values of conservatism which aren’t necessarily universal American values.  This is what the left wing media is claiming anyhow.  The only thing I heard personally is that he spoke a lot about ISIS terrorism.  Apparently Poland installed the “Law and Justice” party in 2015, two years ago.  If they were advancing Black civil rights ‘Law and Justice’ wouldn’t be a bad thing but somehow I get the feeling they mean something different by it.   Trump also repeated his claim that maybe Russia contributed the last year’s democratic campaign woes but he insists on saying that “Others were involved” without the slightest glimmer who these “others” are. 

Governor Christie made the news on Sunday when he and his family occupied a deserted beach with his family.  It so happens the Governor himself had closed all of the State beaches because there was no state budget.  But then Monday night the day was saved when Christie signed the new state budget into law so that people in NJ can start going to the beach again.  The optics were horrible on this one and Christie’s brash attitude only made things worse. 

North Korea launched off an ICBM, intercontinental ballistic missile on the Fourth of July.  It sent seventeen hundred feet up into the air but only traveled five hundred miles laterally and landed in the Sea of Japan.  North Korea said they didn’t want to over-fly Japan.  That was nice of them.  Clearly is the missile had been aimed more horizontally it could have reached Alaska, so they have a missile now with almost the capacity to hit the American mainland.  The President can’t be very happy about this considering even minor things upset him.  

This is Thursday July 6, 2017.   Let’s start with mid morning.  Thom Hartman cane on at nine.  I made preparation to be picked up by Tim at nine thirty.  I was smoking out back at almost nine thirty and Tim was looking for me.  Bill and I and Carol left just after nine thirty.  Carol had to go for physical therapy and she was dropped off in Westminster after Tim dropped us off.  For technical reasons he had to sign us in.  The waiting room was moderately crowded with some arrivals before and some after us.  We made good time getting there.  I didn’t know AD wasn’t a religious magazine any more but stood for Architectural Digest.   Our appointment was for 10:15 and Bill was called in at twn twenty.  I was called in not long after that.  Dr Nichols didn’t give me the purple treatment on my butt today but he did shine the UV light on me and remarked about how improved things were on my butt.  Then his son came in to give me the usual shot.  I was done by a quarter to eleven and I don’t have to see Dr Nichols again.  He said I could call him with any new skin problems.  I went outside to smoke.  The AC was working good when we first got there but the office seemed to warm up the longer we were there.  I was still smoking my cigarette when Tim showed up.  He had to go inside to do some paper work.  We didn’t make as good of time on the return trip.  We went the usual way going and coming.  We arrived here at 11:15 but I went to use the restroom and see if anyone had gone through my things while I was gone.  (That’s a different story)  We had good pizza for lunch with cheese and pepperoni and we had two big slices.  We had a green salad with that and peaches for dessert.  I missed the first round of Augustine and the coffee but my first cup was everybody else’s second.  People seemed to clear out early and I actually felt rushed.  I had the Shannon and Neil Savedra show on.  Ncil is tricky when defending Donald Trump values.  He suggested that “All you socialists wouldn’t be a problem if you lived among yourselves in your own community, but don’t sponge off the rest of us.”   Somehow this is a remark I couldn’t picture Jesus Christ making.  But we haven’t read the gospel of Savedra.  He employs this trick of calling all left of center people “socialists”, which is the farthest thing from the truth.  He also said something about “It’s only the socialists who complain about the government”.  After this was Days of our Lives.  Today Dr Marlena Evans is doing hypno therapy on everybody.

It was a real sweat box in here and basically still is.  So I went and bought a two liter bottle of Coke for $2.25 and also a pack of cigarettes.  I had a little and then went down to the courtyard for a graham cracker and a lemonade.  Then I went and talked to Augustine, who was talking with Tess by her car.  The first thing Tess said when she saw me was to remark about how much weight I’d lost.  She asked me if I”d seen a doctor about it.  I then mentioned that the air conditioning hasn’t worked in this room for over two weeks.  Augustine said it was the first time I or anybody has told him about it.  He said he’d look right into it.  So far nothing has happened.  Then I returned here.  Then I called Mom.  I mentioned that my cough has been getting worse and that  I intended to talk to Dr Saran about it as well as my strange weight loss.  I mentioned Judy’s letter about how Mom is sleeping a lot more than she thinks she is at night.  Mom says she’s had stomach flu for the past week.  That’s a long time.  She and a bunch of the other residents have been quarantined.  Mom asked me about Tim’s trip and I told her everything I could remember from two conversations a week apart in early June.  I told her that Paul finds it hard to truly mentally unwind because Judy’s health is taking a toll on him, we well as work.  I covered a lot of stuff.  After this I went out to smoke and then had the Norman Goldman program on from three to four.  For dinner we had a good pork roast and we were even given butter for our mashed potatoes.  The green beans already had butter on them.  We had orange sherbet for dessert, or at least three of us did.  Marcia’s sherbet was mostly line.  Ricardo announced that he was supposed to have worked last night but the med trainee showed up and wanted to work and so he obliged her.  I have been dousing my head in cold water as a way of cooling off.  Eye Witness news is on now.  We are on page six and we’ll go to page seven.  

America Is Hopelessly Divided

It's been a week since I last did a posting.  Basically I'm just "checking in".  Normally there is a lot of substantive news on Donald Trump.  But all we have are these juvenile E mails of his directed at innocent people who don't deserve his scathing remarks.  People seem to want their leader because according to one Meet the Press analyst, the average media outlet is left of center and the average American is to the right of center so therefor things that attack the media are welcomed.  "The Week" magazine points out that the divide of really great and as I noted in a recent blog,  the American people are almost more irrationally divided then is congress.  Now Mitch Mc Connell is getting a little sense.  Maybe it's sheer desperation but he is against just eliminating Obama Care as the President wants to do.  Instead he wants to cut a deal with the democrats and work something out.  As I noted in that other blog, the American people are like trained seals in that they will repeat anything FOX news says, as if they were in some suggestable hypnotic trance.  

As you know (later paragraph) Glenda moved to Corona yesterday and moved in with her daughter and her two kids.  Bill wanted to call Glenda at ten but we had problems accomplishing that.  She gave Bill a 714 number and the phone would ring but then it would stop ringing and there were some re-verb sound effects and then silence.  This scenario played itself out several times.  Then Bonnie called me and her line was good.  Later on Glenda herself gog on the line but it was a toll call and she couldn’t talk for very long.  I talked to her briefly and handed it off to Bill.  Just after ten Joe and Jeff were over here but they didn’t get to talk to her.  I was tired and didn’t go out for refreshments.

Bill Handel says that if you are having your right hand scanned for identification purposes you can refuse to undergo the procedure if you say that it’s “taking the mark of the beast” even though such a religion notion has no link to the real world or even the book of Revelation.  Neither the rapture nor the Antichrist has come.  There was also the statement that if you are rear ended in a car crash the police don’t have to take your police report.  The police take police statements on anything and often hold these reports against people later.  The idea of their turning her down is absurd.  Also Bill claimed that if you are “Incorporated” this absolves you from all law suits.  This is the farthese thing from the truth.  Sure you can hide your funds and set up a secret personal bank account by another name and stash your real assets there and left the “Corporation” as a bankrupt empty shell.  But tobacco companies get sued every day as well as auto companies makine exploding air bags shooting out shraptnel and killing or injuring people.  I don’t know what Bill has been smoking but he seems out to lunch. 

(Saturday) Glenda is gone now.  She and Shiela took off in one car and Bonnie and Victor were securing the things in the blue truck and then they took off.  Bill has Glenda’s number and so does Joe.  After two years Glenda is really gone.  It remained overcast till after noon.  We never made it out to the Claim Jumper with Terry.  I went to the store for a jar of Nestcafe paying a five dollar bill for it rather than using my debit card as I had planned.  I had Leo on till basically two.  Nothing was on TV. 

Rhapsody in Black had July of 1965.   The big hits were few and far between and they stick out like a sore thumb.  There was “In the Midnight Hour”, “Papa’s God a Brand New Bag” “Baby, I’m Yours” by Barbra Lewis and “Sugar Pie Honey Bunch” by the Four Tops.  There were two lower level hits, “Agent Double O Soul” and “It’s Gona Take a Miracle”.   Everything else I’d never heard before or else it was so obscure it sounded like another song and I thought I’d heard it.   I went out and smoked at a quarter to four.  We had a bean burrito for dinner and an apple and carrot salad.  Then they came around with a second burrito.  We had cantaloupe for dessert.  Right now Eye Witness News is on.  

I had two cups of instant coffee in the evening.  One was around five thirty and the other was just after medication.  At six thirty they had a half hour Time-Life retrospective on “Laugh In”.  It was a forty episode retrospective on “Laugh In” for the six years it was on the air but they are charging you a hundred dollars for those forty episodes.  Then it was Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  I got my medication from that trainee.  I was running really low on cigarettes but I felt suddenly tired and didn’t want to go out to the store and buy a pack.  At eight o clock there was dial twirling and then we settled on this court trial thing on CBS till nine o clock.  Then I went to bed.    I had a dream where I spent a lot of time at the library looking up Greek and Egyptian myths and came to the conclusion that these Egyptian myths were real and held the secrets to the universe but that Jesus was a myth and not to be trusted.  I would write to this evangelist that Paul listened to and the evangelist would get in contact with Paul and confront me on the letters I had written. 

Trump Screws Tax Payers In Blue States

Donald Trump really is a bit of an asshole.   There is recent news in the past couple of days that there are new details released about our spying on Russia last summer indicating Putin had a personal hand in sabotaging our campaign last year and was out to hurt Hillary and help Donald Trump.  Now Trump is saying “Well, It’s President Obama’s fault for not being on top of the situation and getting control of the situation before the campaign.  Trump didn’t say anything about all of this sabotage stuff before the election so it’s all on Obama.  But if Obama has been really proactive and gotten the juicy stuff out about our best spying information on Russia, Trump wouldn’t be President today.  On the news shows there is talk about the extreme polarization of the people.  Right now the American people are divided even worse than Congress and that’s an unusual situation.  Little old ladies and truck drivers alike say that the Democrats are all corrupt and despicable and how Trump is persecuted by the media and all.  They are like trained seals taught to bark on command spouting whatever line FOX news tells them to. 

 The Trump administration has found an ingenious way to screw the blue states and people who choose to live in those states and actually feed the economies of those states.  Moderately well off people in wealthy blue states who finance much of the rest of the nation, are being penalized by the Trump administration in not getting a deduction on their federal income taxes.  This is a factoid that had not gone unnoticed by me.  It’s a cleaver trick by Republicans to coax well to do people in blue states to move to red states.  I think it sucks because basically it amounts to wealthy people paying money on taxes they never see.  This was on KNBC at nine.  I’ve been looking for cigarettes but haven’t found any.  Glenda knocked on the door as I was getting dressed this morning asking Bill for cigarettes but Bill was asleep.  Glenda hinted she may be getting a visit from her brother today, which means she’s have coffee.

(Events of Wednesday June 21st are below)

I went to the store just after seven and bought a dollar coffee.   I came into the dining room.  I got one bowl of Rice Krispies with a full bowl.  The milk seemed to be going sour.  We had scrambled eggs and a big crescent and tater tots.  Kathy gave me her crescent and tater tots so I got filled up.  Then it was more Stephanie.  Paul called sometime in the morning and asked about my butt and said he’d call Mary Jane again if I wanted him to and I said that would be a pretty good idea.  I brought up the issue about my weight, which Mary Jane had also raised herself.   Paul didn’t say anything about his own life.  The conversation wasn’t that long.  Early in the morning I added the two lead paragraphs to last evening’s blog, which at the time consisted only of stuff about my personal life.  I guess Thom Hartman was on.  Nora seemed to be ahead of schedule being right in the next room.  I made ready the room for her.  It turned out I was correct because when I checked on something just after nine thirty Nora was already in the room.  For snacks we had an iced tea and a graham cracker.  Gabby was out and about looking for food favors.  Nora was done with the room and changed the linens and left me the nice bedspread still.  Then I decided to play yesterday’s episode of “Days of our Lives”.  They announced Dr Messina but I continued the episode till a little before eleven.  Then I went out and about.  The soup for lunch was lousy and I didn’t finish it.  We had two quesedas and salsa and sour cream.  We also had Spanish rice.  We had orange slices for dessert.  The coffee was good for both breakfast and lunch.  Sarah again announced Dr Messina wanted to see me so I got in line.  Judy had already gone to see him.  I was behind Roxanne.  I complained about needing coffee and cigarettes and being chronically short of money.  I complained about the three outlets that didn’t work.  Dr Messina said something like, “Things are going to get better”.   Then I resumed play of “Days of our Lives”.  In the final scene Clowie knocked on the Kiriacus mansion door with Holly.  This came as a surprise because Nicole thought she was seeing them for the last time earlier in the day.  It could be Clowie has had a change of heart but we don’t know yet.  Then it was Gary and Shannon.  We have just started page two.  We still don’t have air conditioning in here.  I think the last time it was on and working during the way was a week ago today.  Suddenly it wasn’t working.  This is the same day the outlets went on the fritz. 

This is Thursday June 22, 2017 and tomorrow is the day of the phone bill withdrawal.  We have another reason to call this file “normal” now.  Last night I was watching Eye Witness news on computer but I had to turn it off at five thirty because Augustine announced that the power would be turned off in ten minutes.  I went outside and then Augustine said the current would be off for an hour.  I hung outside till a few minutes past six and came in and lay down and then Bill came up a few minutes later after his pain pill kicked in.  On one of my trips to see Glen I came across this guy in a wheel chair stuck in the elevator door, wedged in and I’m not sure how he got that way.  But the elevator was making this loud buzzing sound and I didn’t know what to do to turn that off.  But I went down to try to get help and Ricardo was slow to come up but he eventually did and the situation was alleviated.  Then at six thirty I happened to notice that the radio screen was in game mode and I knew the power was back and that those outlets were working again.  But all of the radio stations were out and need to be reset.  Then I plugged in the TV and we watched the ABC network news on the TV.

I kept trying to track down Glen knocking on his door a couple of times when Kathy or someone said Glen had gone out.  Later on Ron said he was back but that he had gone downstairs and so I went with my cup all around the building.  Eventually Glen was back in his room and I came in and got a weaker cup of Nestcafe.  It’s the stronger brand but Glen gave me less this night.  Later during Wheel of Fortune I shaved and the bathroom outlet works, so that makes all three of them that were fixed.  I went for medication from Ricardo last night and got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Jeopardy was on.  Then Bill turned it to “Arrow” and we watched that till nine and there was a little of “Legends of Tomorrow” and I went to bed.  

Donald Trump Gives Resolute Inaugural Message

This is Friday January 20, 2017.   To the people who predicted that Obama would not survive his term in office, they were proven wrong today.  Things went off without a hitch.  The world didn’t come to an end.  I didn’t start watching inauguration coverage till ten after eight because breakfast runs so late.  Then I found that my camera said to change the batteries so it wasn’t working, and the other two batteries were probably shot anyhow.  These in there now were freshly charged the last time I used the camera.  Then the TV picture went all gray and streaked after having initially come in all right.  I think the TV was pro democrat because when Chuck Schummer and democrats were being announced the picture was working fine.  Only when they announced Donald Trump did the picture go out for maybe ten minutes or something.  Things got under way perhaps eight thirty.  Actually I was expecting the choir to sing more songs.   Vice President Pence was sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas, who is showing his age these days.  Then Trump was sworn in by Chief Justice Roberts.  As to Trump’s speech I guess it was kind of a pep talk for America and the sovereignty of the voters.  “This is the day we turn over government from the Washington beaurocrats who have bled you dry,  to you the people.  This is your day.   There were a lot of absolutes in the speech like eliminating ISIS.  There was talk of putting America First and defending our own borders for a change rather than the borders of other nations.   Some commentators claimed the speech was too combative, like another campaign speech.  Bernie Sanders could have given large portions of it.  I don’t know if this was by design.  There was talking about reaching out to the inner ghetto and farmers on a Nebraska plain.   There was a lot of talk about bringing former jobs back to America and getting back respect for America and making America great again, and a lot of other things “again”.   I didn’t have the TV on during the lunch period.  Apparently Trump spent a lot of time talking with Chuck Schummer.   I had Thom Hartman on and he collected feedback on the speech.   Thom Hartman said there was a lack of humility or philosophical uplift or something.  For a while I had KTLA on and I switched to ABC and Stephanopolis and then switched to KNBC.   The parade has never been so late.  The previous lateness record was with Clinton and it was at ten to four or something.  This parade didn’t get going till after five and it was getting dark and they had artificial lighting.  The trek to the White House was endless.  Donald Trump got out of the car twice briefly but Pence walked more of the distance.  Trump did a lot of saluting.  In terms of trivia,  Jimmy Carter started the tradition of walking part of the inaugural rout.  Dolly Madison started the tradition of the inaugural balls.  Only Woodrow Wilson didn’t follow it.  U S Grant started the tradition of the parade reviewing stand.  They used to have floats in the parade but they became too expensive.   Everyone and everything is getting cheaper these days. 

 Norman says he doesn’t want to hear any bitterness about how the democratic campaign was run.  I must strongly disagree.  Those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, and the past campaign is exhibit A.   Why couldn’t Hillary come up with “Buy American” and “Hire American”.  That’s what Thom Hartman has been talking about so much.   Just now at the bottom of the hour I went outside and it’s started sprinkling again and it’s still cold and windy with rain clouds everywhere. 

Last night I got coffee from Glenda in her room.   It was ABC news and Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  I got medication from Ida in a long line.  Bill got coffee from Glenda after this and had a surplus and gave me coffee so I had a second cup.  Then it was that “Legends of Tomorrow” program and I dozed off.  I slept well.  It had started raining in the night and was pouring down rain by six.  The medication line with April was short but slow moving.  Stephanie Miller was in Thom Hartman’s studio with his bookcase.  I went to the front room and waited there briefly.  It was raining some but not as heavily when I went to the store.  I got a $1.25 coffee for the last time till February barring a financial miracle.  It was kind of a rerun from yesterday.  We got our Cheerios with the bowl less full today.  It was a longer wait for our main plate.  But we finally got our scrambled eggs and a waffle but today we also got a sausage patty.   Augustine was in charge of the coffee and I got seconds on coffee for both breakfast and lunch.  My system needed all that coffee.   I felt in need of a strong mental lift.  

Washington’s blog states that ninety percent of the US Senate qualifies as “neo conservative”.  This of course would be a hawkish internationalist, who believes in the famous “New World Order” Bush 41 talked about.  The piece goes on to say that the Senate and House both are “to the right of the incoming President”, Donald Trump.  This is a lot to swallow.   Earlier I read Rude Pundit because I wanted his take on things now and I hadn’t looked at the blog in a while.  I was so impressed with the posting that I re-posted it.  This is the first time I have ever pasted over a Rude Pundit blog post, obscenities and all.  I think he’s tapped into the disgust I personally feel about Obama and he tapped into my fear and all Obama thinks he’s accomplish will soon get swept away as Trump does a massive cancelation of the Presidents executive orders.   My fear was that we had our chance and blew it and now the tide has turned and the Republicans are calling the shots and are not above re-writing history.  This whole bit about the “meek and mild black man” isn’t flying.  We don’t need Clark Kent; we need Superman.  The Rude Pundit says, “We live in a world of messaging and Trump is a lot better at messaging”.  We live in a world of heroes and villains, not “right” and “wrong”.  

Obama's Presidency Is A Future Failure

I've had a practice of NOT replaying Rude Pundit postings.  However this post of today is so right on the mark I couldn't help myself, obscenities and all.  It gets the message accross.

On this, the last good day this country will see for a long time, I don't want to write a tribute to the accomplishments of President Barack Obama. I don't want to list all the shit that he got done, much of it despite unrelenting and unprecedented fuckery by the Republicans. I don't even want to complain about the things I disagreed with, like the drone war and mass surveillance. Because almost all of it will be wiped away by the Trump administration, as a good many of those accomplishments are going to be undone or cut to nothing. It's not that Obama failed now. It's that his presidency will be a failure in the future because it's going to be tossed in the trashbin by the same motherfuckers and nutzoids who tried to stop him in the first place. They are waiting like slavering dogs for tomorrow to come because then they will savage everything in their path.

You can point to lots of reasons for the future failure of Obama's presidency. The laughably bad messaging of the White House and the cowardice of the Democrats in not proudly proclaiming success in things like health care are big ass contributors. Indeed, you could say that Donald Trump is the diametric opposite of Obama: all message and no policy. At the end of the day, though, the American people are fucking idiots who want to be told what to think. Obama seemed to believe that, say, a Kentucky resident who got health insurance through the Affordable Care Act would be able to connect two and two and see that Democrats enabled her to get those moles checked and for her to the melanoma taken care of before it spread. But fucking idiots don't make those connections because they're fucking idiots.

Americans like their world Manichean. They like to pick heroes and villains. They want to know which team to root for. They don't like gray areas. They don't want to point out that both teams played a good game. Obama believed that Americans were smarter and better than they actually are, even as every election except his in 2012 proved that they aren't. This was Obama's fatal flaw: the belief in the better angels of our nature, a phrase he used several times throughout his presidency. We don't have better angels, Mr. President. There are no angels. There are only humans, and, god, we are fucked up.

Because of that belief, Obama couldn't see that his 2008 election wasn't just about hope and change. It was about destroying an old order. I've said this many times in the last eight years, and I'll say it again: Obama's greatest failure was in not taking out our domestic enemies right after he was elected. The Justice Department should have gone after the torture-approving members of the Bush administration and the bankers and financial con men who dicked over the economy. The message would have been loud and clear: there is some shit we won't eat. Instead, Obama let Republicans know that working together was his priority, and those sons and daughters of bitches exploited that every chance they could, constantly saying that because Obama wouldn't give in to their every whim, he was the one refusing compromise, undermining and outright lying about what he was doing.

Now, you might say that it would have "set the wrong tone" or some such bullshit if Obama's DOJ had gone after the criminals of the Bush years. But you are forgetting what the country was like in 2008. We were fuckin' done with the GOP. The election showed that, just as it had in 2006. And we wanted them punished for what they had done to the nation, to our sense of ourselves, to our economy, to our American soul. In one sense, electing the first black president with a filibuster-proof Congress was that revenge, but it wasn't enough. We wanted those bastards to suffer. However, like Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon, Obama gave them a pass so he could move on with hoping and changing. But you can't rebuild your house if you leave the termites alone. Those little dicks will gnaw it to its foundation no matter how nicely you decorate the rooms.

By not punishing Republicans, by not making their message toxic, Obama left the door open for them, and they bulldozed their way through almost immediately, with the rise of the Tea Party and the disastrous 2010 midterms.

And that gets to the last thing I want to say on this last good day: We fucked it up. We, the American voters. No, not you, in particular, you who went out and voted Democratic in 2010 and 2014, you who pay attention to who is running and what it means. But, in general, we all have to own the future failure of the Obama presidency. The voter turnout in 2010 was disastrously low in some groups who supported Obama, especially young voters.

Yes, turnout was on a par with other midterms, as was 2014. But that's the goddamned problem. It's one of those things that is so fucking frustrating about these last 8 years. It was as if most of the country acted like a plumber who replaced one giant pipe and decided, "Fuck it. The job's done" without replacing any of the pipes that go in and out of that giant one. This shit takes effort. And we got so pissy about things that we didn't make the effort. You can argue that you weren't inspired, that Obama fucked up by not getting his election volunteers to become an activist army of sorts, you can say that Obama dropped the ball on a few things. But, ultimately, voters have no one but themselves to blame.

That imaginary Kentucky Obamacare recipient? She's responsible for her own stupid. As we all are.

There are lots of things this didn't get into: The racism that was an intrinsic part of Obama's opposition. The media's complicity with the GOP. The standards that Democrats are held to that don't seem to matter when a Republican is in power. The genuinely good things that will be sustained as we head into Trump's America, like marriage equality. The dignity and humanity that Obama and his family imparted in their relationships with each other. The genuinely surprising lack of scandals.

Christ, I'm gonna miss having a cool, competent, smart president who actually gave a shit about the country.

But nearly everything else we can celebrate about Obama's terms in office is about to go out the window. That is on him and that is on us.

It’s Thursday January 19, 2017 and welcome to the last day of Freedom before the fascist dictatorship takes over.  Stephanie was just playing an old “I’m For Nixon” campaign song.   I would like to put in a plug for my posting of “Meeting God” from last December 30^th where I talk about having the ability to be the one to program only responsible thoughts into Donald Trump’s brain.  I was successful finding it looking for the key word “chessboard”, in Psychic Balance.   This morning I got up just past five thirty.  It had begun raining last night before eight o clock.  Last night it was ABC news and Jeopardy and at the end of the final question I went and got into the now shorter medication line and got a turkey sandwich from Ida.  It was Wheel of Fortune and then I decided to go and check out the rain at eight.  Then it was “Blind Spot”.  I used up the final serving of coffee in the Nestcafe jar.  Perhaps I should have saved the last serving till this morning.  I’m going to be without coffee and cigarettes for a long time before February first.  Glenda charges Mario four white cigarettes for a cup of coffee.  I hope she’ll charge a lower rate with me when I need it.  It was pouring down at six.  In the med line with April it was Bill and then Linda taking time.  I turned on Stephanie Miller.  The rain let up and I went to the store after sitting briefly in the front room because I felt tired.  I got a $1.25 coffee and they are back to their old large coffee cups.  (The lids fit better as Ben noted)  Let’s face it; I’m a coffee addict.  We lucked out because we got a full bowl of Cheerios starting on our side.  Our table was also the first to receive our main plate of scrambled eggs, a sausage link, and a waffle.  Ironically service for the rest of the room was slower because they were short handed till Augustine got back.  I got more scrambled eggs from Judy and I took Marcia’s waffle after she left.  Finally I got a cup of black coffee from Augustine.  After breakfast around eight the sun had come out and it was clearing up.  I have WCPT on because Free Speech wasn’t doing live broadcasts. 

There is a smoking gun in the FBI Chief Comey case.  Comey knew in early October about the E mails on Weiner’s computer and it would have taken less than 24 hours to figure out that all of them were duplicates.  But they stalled and what should have been the final report on October 26^th of last year turned out to be the opening salvo of the FBI’s attack in Clinton.  I was drowsy over the nine o clock hour and roused at ten after nine.   Then the guy who made the original of “The Beat Elections Money Can Buy” was on after nine thirty.   His hash tag is “Trump Stole It”.   It was all of the voter suppression and cross check and ID checks and few polling places and long lines.  I sat out the snack break at ten.  Jesse Jackson was Thom’s guest after ten.  This Minunchin guy who’s up for Secretary of the Treasury has had stormy confrontations with democrats.  He’s a Goldman Sachs guy.  He’s apparently pegged as “The Foreclosure King” and had been asked probing questions on this topic but there doesn’t appear to be much to report.  Yes there were a lot of foreclosures of veterans and others but nothing that isn’t “normal”.

 

  

Conflicts of Interest with Health Sec Tom Price

Donald Trump has so many crooks up for cabinet or other high offices it’s hard to keep track of them.  Health Secretary is another such case.  Democrats grilled Tom Price on his trades of healthcare stocks while a member of Congress, raising questions about conflicts of interest.  Under questioning from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Price acknowledged that he had bought stock in a biotech company called Innate Immunotherapeutics after discussing the company with Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.).  Democrats have warned that Price could have violated the STOCK Act, which bans stock trading by lawmakers based on their inside congressional information.   Price argued that while Collins told him about the company, there was no inside information shared.  "I had no access to nonpublic information," Price said.   “I studied the company for a period of time and felt that it had some significant merit and promise,” he added.  Democrats noted that Price bought the stock as part of a private offering to a small group of people.   “These sound like sweetheart deals,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.).   Collins, for his part, has faced questions after Politico reported that he was overheard talking on his cell phone in the Capitol about giving stock tips to people and how many "millionaires I've made in Buffalo."  Clearly like so many others, Price IS profiting from insider information.  Yet only the small peons ever get prosecuted for this crime.   Meanwhile Sanders and Elizabeth Warren grilled Price about the meat of his policies.  These cabinet people never will come out and say "Yes I am out to slash funding.  I am out to privatize".   Price says he's compassionate but in the end gives you the equivelant of a Paul Ryan style $2.50 discount on a Dominoes pizza.  So let's not kid anyone.  

One thing in the news lately is Donald Trump’s approval numbers and I can’t find any previous references to them.   One poll had him at 44% approval and another had him at 37% approval.  The latest poll has him at forty percent approval just before he takes office.  This is the lowest reading for any incoming president in the past forty years.  I guess Nixon breaks this trend.   Normally presidents come in on a popular high figure and that is the best they can expect and they only go down from there.  Clearly there is no “honeymoon period” but Obama didn’t have one of those either.  The Republicans made it clear from day one they were going to give Obama “No Quarter”.   There are now 53 democratic congressmen who have pledged not to attend the inauguration ceremony in two days.  Now we hear Trump has plans to trademark the phrase “Make America Great Again”.  Copyright laws are getting out of hand.   We all know the real saying is “Make America Hate Again” anyhow.  I think we continued to be shocked and bewildered as Trump continues to break with tradition.   They say “unlike the conventions of last year, we can’t put a fence around the whole thing.”   Clearly though bumping off Donald Trump would be counter-productive because we’d only be left with Mike Pence and Paul Ryan and there would not even be a glimmer of hope that the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement would be defeated or any other trade deals.   For this reason it would be suicide to even think about impeaching Donald Trump legally for even a moment. 

Sometimes I think Thom Hartman gives the so called “Radical Republicans” of the post Civil War era more credit than they deserve.   To me, it’s not that that they loved Black people all that much but that they hated certain southern Confederate leaders more.  What they did and said was more geared to getting back at these confederate leaders rather than to “give every Black person a job at a living wage”, As Thom Hartman proposes.  We are reminded that Philip Randolph was the head of the Civil Rights march on Washington in 1963 and not Martin Luther King.  And the phrase was “jobs and freedom”.  Jobs came before freedom.   I wish they would play Martin Luther King’s ENTIRE speech more often.   I would say the same thing of the Rev Jeremiah Wright.  Rather than just hear a few “hateful sentences” of his – I’d like the whole enchilada.  I’d like to hear a whole sermon or better yet multiple sermons of his, and also know of his other pastoral activities before I throw mud around in judgement like Rush Limbaugh does routinely.   Rush Limbaugh lies about everything anyhow.   Just about every sweeping generalization he made on his show this morning was a lie.

Apparently, Jerry Brown and the State of California plan to launch their own satellites into space to get weather and other information if the threat I heard today was valid, that the Trump administration plans to shut off NASA satellites because Donald Trump doesn’t want to hear any more news about global warming.  This would truly be cutting off your nose to spite your face.   But apparently this sort of shit does on in government all the time.  You know how the gun lobby got government information on gun violence squelched by a ruling from- - somebody.   Now there is the case of Gov Brownback of Kansas.  Brownback has run his state into the ground economicly with his disastrous trickle down policies.  So Gov Brownback just closed down the office of management and budget or whatever so that Brownback no longer heard this distressing information.   Meanwhile someone must have hacked FOX news because on this morning’s news on FOX a story ran that NASA satellites reported that earth temperatures were record high in 2016..  Now there is a 27 mile long fissure on an ice block in Antarctica and a government outpost has to close down because if they don’t close, the whole place may be set adrift on the ice.   (Is that a bad thing?)

Chelsea Manning the noted transsexual has been pardoned out of an impressive number of leaving office pardons by President Obama.  Chelsea Manning used to be Bradley Manning and he was notable to giving Wikkileaks a whole lot of damaging information about this country.   He was given a 35 year sentence but now the term is shortened to seven years and he’ll be freed in May.  But still Don Siegleman languishes in a prison cell though he did nothing wrong besides of course getting in Karl Rove’s way. 

Here’s an interesting question.  We know that all causes have effects and that all effects have causes.  But can we therefore say that there is not a First Cause that has no prior effects?   If you look on God as a computer programmer you don’t think in term of an endless chicken and egg regression but rather in terms of a straight line, with a definite beginning and usually a definite end.  That would be the control Z function if you’re in DOS doing an EOF character.  In other words- - God is like the programmer.  He is the first cause as well as the sole cause of the effects to follow.  But then the question arises as to whether God has his own self imposed “Sunset clause” by which there will come a time when all of God’s many “effects” will run their course and come to an end.  In terms of today’s soap opera, we can safely say that Eric, the onetime Priest did the right thing in talking that suicidal young woman off of the ledge.  He was rewarded for his efforts but now is engaging in the sort of self flagulating behavior Eric is famous for saying “Everything I told her about the sustaining love of God was all lies and bullshit.  That makes me a hypocrite”.  But in truth Eric really didn’t have any choice.  He had no moral choice but “teologically” God really was “the decider” in this issue and Eric was just a tool used for good by a sovereign act of God.  In the other event on “Days” it seems there is a three way peace summit of Dario, Sonny, and Chad concern who owns that computer chip that was stolen and restolen.  I think the only solution that will work here is that if all three agree to share what ever information is gleaned from these computer chips gets shared by all three.  That way no one party will have the advantage.

Rush Limbaugh was all in a twist about this one North Carolina republican senator who says that “We in congress need to end gridlock by learning to compromise with the Democrats to get things passed and not have a repeat of the past eight years”.  I agree with that statement, but Rush just went hysterical over it.   Apparently Bill Handle is concerned about the number of porta-potties at the inauguration.  Gary and Shannon were saying that yes there is being constructed an eight to ten foot high security fence all around a huge perimeter.  The question now is how are they going to smuggle all of those marijuana joints in the security area?  We had a filet of chicken breast for lunch.  Glenda thought it was dry but it had sauce on it.  People have forgotten that good white meat is supposed to be firm.  It’s better than the water logged mushy stuff we’ve gotten so much of before.   I would have had seconds but they didn’t have them.  We had cauloflour with that and we had fruit cocktail with cream in it that was supposed to be amberosia, I guess.  Then I had to get in the line to see Dr Messina.  I was behind that shy East European lady.  (Not Eugenia but the newer one)  It was a fast moving line.  We were only in line because Federico said we were on his list.  I asked Dr Messina about Abilify and how come he wanted me to take it that one time.  He said “Weren’t you hearing voices or something back then?”  I said No.  I complained about how I need coffee to get up.  What I didn’t tell him was that often I am plagued with anxious, restless thoughts in the early morning.  I wondered if Abilify might somehow help grapple with these symptoms some might call “depression”.   Then I listened to Gary and Shannon for the hour on KFI.  I had instant coffee at 1:30.  Oh yeah, the President had another press conference.  I wonder if they covered it on TV.