It's a Question of Values

Back in November of 1993 or so I bought “A Question of Character”, which was a profile on the Kennedy family and Jack Kennedy in particular. It said a lot of things about the family that weren’t very nice. My Dad saw the book in my apartment and I worried that he might know it was an anti rather than pro Kennedy book. Still there are things about our heroes we turn a blind eye to that maybe we should be just a little aware of. Everything isn’t all black and all white. Thom Hartman has probably praised the administration of Richard Nixon more than anybody in the media in the past twenty years. He points out that Nixon was happy with our progressive tax system. In fact there was talk Nixon was toying with the idea of a negative income tax to help the poor. According to Thom Hartman, Richard Nixon had a health care plan he rolled out in early 1974 but without Ted Kennedy’s support the idea was doomed. Teddy didn’t think the plan was radical enough. And we should not forget that Nixon was responsible for instituting the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon got us off the gold standard. If we had stayed on the gold standard, Ft. Know would have long ago been depleted of gold. Now we are in this Libya campaign, and suddenly my Christian brother is anti war. Well you know that it’s true. We drop a few bombs- - -there go the millions for the school lunch program. We drop a few more bombs - - there go the millions we set aside for water plant safety inspectors. Some say it’s OK if we kill brown or “olive skinned” individuals. But if a Brown person institutes the killing, suddenly it’s wrong. Hopefully it’s dawning on them that the lives of olive skinned individuals are worth something too. Hey - - I’m one of those olive skinned individuals. Now we have one group of olive skinned people possibly emigrating across the pond to Italy, and invading another bunch of olive skinned people. I’m going to say something that may unnerve some readers, particularly those of you on the left. You know Bob Dylan had a saying “You take all the dust down Oklahoma way and all the smog in Californie - - and all the soot from the Minnesota mines, and it’s all much cleaner than the New York kind. Well, I have a saying, too. You take Bill O Riley and Glen Beck and Sean Hannity, and their conservatism is still saner than the Rush Limbaugh kind. Some people think Glen Beck is insane. But a lot of stuff he said at that rally last August in DC is rather similar to the stuff I wrote in my prophecy book thirty years ago. Perhaps the most controversial thing Glen Beck has said was that the Obama administration is deliberately trying to wreck this economy by “re-inflating the bubble” causing a far worse economic crash down the line. I guess if you want to set out to Disprove this then you would look for evidence that points to the contrary. The trouble is, you can’t. You have that 916 billion dollar tax give-away, and you have three simotanious wars in the Mideast, and you have the health care plan that won’t even kick in till 2014, and you have an utter unwillingness to do anything about the trade deficit. And most important, you have this gambling casino mentality in Wall Street we owe none other than President Clinton for- - and you have nothing less than some sort of economic suicide pact. I don’t know how much time we have. I think Obama should get through the election next year OK, but just how long after that we will be able to keep this illusion going- - I can’t say.

This next paragraph is about values too. You may think you’ve heard it before but the end has a twist that will surprise you. Once upon a time there was a very rich man, who had a son. And the son decided he didn’t want to hang around his father but strike out on his own. So his father gave him a bunch of money to invest with- - and he would hire people to come up with new products. The thing is the son had absolutely no business sense and everybody kept telling him this. But his father kept pumping him more money- - so that in time the son became an object of derision. When one time it looked like he’d be on skid row or something other people said, “Don’t worry, his father will just give hum another hundred billion or so”. And now I am here to say this. The Christian church worships such a man. All of us value life. It is the most precious of all gifts from God. And yet Jesus said of his life “Nobody takes my life- - I lay it down and pick it up again”. You know, if that businessman son were to be robbed, it would be no big thing. They may get his wallet and be satisfied and stop. But he’d still have his billions in his Swiss bank account. Sometimes Jesus Christ reminds me of Bonnie Lockhart. Do you remember her on Days of our Lives. It’s not that she was a crook, but that she was such a stupid crook that galled me. If you or I had only a small fraction of the resources Jesus Christ had at his disposal, just think what we could do with it. Dana once asked me “If Jesus was so in to curing disease, why didn’t he teach the people to make penicillin, and all the other wonders of modern science”. Jesus was never his whole life subject to the temptations and worries of life that commonly beset the human race. He never wondered “Why am I here?” or “What is the meaning of Life”. To him life was as worthless as a hog trough in a town square filled to overflowing with gold coins. And the town’s people would stuff their pockets with it. I have often used the quotation of Ron Hubbard on a tape that’s so good it’s hard to repeat it too much and that is, “If you’re going to put out a fire, and there are a pack of dogs nipping at the wheels of the fire truck, you don’t stop en rout to the fire to address the yelping dogs chasing you. To do so would be quite mad”. People talk about criminals committing “Suicide by cop” and yet it seems Jesus Christ was trying to “commit suicide by Pharisee”. You know, Jesus called them all “snakes”, and every parent tells their children not to provoke the snakes in the snake house in the zoo because you know what happens. (Selah) You know, in that thing I sent Dr. Levy last week the thing hinted all around the proposition but never saying it directly that "I believe if you are going to have a worship relationship with a God, that God should share your values". The line is not entirely original with me. Dennis Prager said that your spouse, whom ideally will be your life partner (pardon me is that sounds gay) that partner should share your values.

Barry Goldwater in his book attributed to Nixon the saying, "I'm a conservative with a heart". I wish we had them today. Nixon grew up poor and knew and appreciated the value of hard work. He spent a lot of time in the Pacific Theater gambling aboard ship, but then would send the winnings back to his mother. One of the crowning highlights of the Nixon presidency was the 1973 Yom Kippur war between Israel and Egypt. Egypt attacked on a holy day and Israel found herself fighting for her life. Golda Meir called and asked President Nixon for his best jet fighter planes". When you have a good and close friend you want to help them when you can and equip them with the best tools available to you to help them to fight their battles. You know that a comon saying among many is "I have compassion on those who deserve it". In the case of the Protigal Son story in the Bible, the younger son, who had squandered money that was prematurely given him to begin with and now it was gone. But instead of turning to his new friends for help he remembers what a soft touch his father had been and muses to himself "If I say to my father that I have sinned and no longer deserved to be called his son" he will take me back in some capacity". One can note a few things here. What was the older son doing all this time? He was working in the field. Note that he was not playing "Lord of the mannor" ordering the other servents around. When the elder son finished his day's work he approached the house and was puzzled by the merryment that appeared to be going on inside. Strangely he does not go inside the house. Perhaps he already was sensing this was something that would be inappropiate to do. Instead he sees a servant outside the house and calls him over and begins asking him questions. One thing we might glean here was that the party was not for the servents. What we also know is that the father on his own did not go out to the field to call the elder son in from work to party. Eventually when the father does come out, the younger brother does not come with him. Some Christians like to "blow off" a bunch of their friends on impulse. Some people are so in love with the "Now" that they ignore Dr. Phil's admonition of "The best predictor of future performance is past performance". But let me say this. Today "sheep" are in as abondant supply as the gold coins in the earlier paragraph. If you lose ten or a hundred or more, as the saying goes "there's a lot more fish in the sea". Indeed there is a seemingly endless supply.

The world is falling apart. Gas prices are making record highs. Now they are selling padded bikinis to seven year old girls, and dolls who breast feed. There was a twelve year old boy with Aspurger's sidrone who think he's come up with revised math that says light is not the fastest thing in the Universe, but the limit is higher by a factor of 1.9. Just between you and me his theories should be pretty easy to blow out of the water by people who know. Judy was mentioning there are still small kids who's parents say have autism because they were given a vaccine with primarisol in it that has mercury. But I don't think they have put primarisol in vaccines in ten years. Now they are worried about red, orange, yellow, green, and blue dyes in foods that little kids eat that gives them attention deficet hyperactivity disorder. This is far from being a new proposition but it's being trotted around the block again. Maybe they'll be like cigarette packages and start off with a mild warning "This dye might cause adverse symptums in sensitive children". But then they'll update that to "This dye is dangerous and will give your child hyperactivity". And that won't be enough so they'll get more graphic and say "This dye has been strongly linked to sociopathic behavior and suicide and complete mental breakdown resulting in internment for not less than one nor more than ten years".

A T & T wants to buy out T Mobil, so that the number of phone carriers will be reduced from an already low four, to three, and some are saying two, because they think Sprint will go out of business. The federal trade comission has to rule on this sale before it can go through and I strongly suggest they turn it down. Back in the day there were all these "Baby Bells" competing with each other. What ever happened to them all? I mean you know once they are convinced they have a virtual monopoly they will begin jacking up prices and reducing the quality of service, like the Airlines did when so many of those of years gone by bit the dust.

Mostly Chemistry Test Final

MOSTLY CHEMISTRY INTELLLIGENCE TEST

Name the three magnetic metallic elements

Name the most chemically reactive elemental gas

What color is “hydrous” copper sulfate

Xenon got its name because it reacted violently with just about every other element

. (true or false)

Aluminum’s closest chemical relative is what element (Aluminum used to be located in a different spot on the periodic table to be closer to it.

What color does barium nitrate burn?

A battery cam be fashioned by using copper and zinc, and the electric current is produced due to a difference in the WHAT of the two metals.

Electric generaters work most effectively when the maximum number of BLANK is transversed (I’m looking for a three word term)

Stromtium 90 and Cesium 137 are substances known to Chemists as WHAT

Ethyline gas functions as a WHAT in the process of the ripening of fruit.

Ethyline glycol is sweet to the taste (true or false)

Butane has a lower temperature of evaporation than Propane (true or false)

Methyl-Ethyl ketone is commonly known as WHAT cleaning substance?

Prophanol has the same chemical formula but different molecular arrangement, as a subatance commonly sold as WHAT

Arsenic and Thallium have in common usage as WHAT?

What color flame does magnesium have when burned?

What color flame does strontium have when burned?

Which metal is least like the others: Chromium, Titanium, Tungston, Palladium.

Sillicon, Germanium and Arsnic are known as metalloids or THIS other high tech term.

An isobar as known by meteriologists is having this definition.

Aside from metalloids, metals fall into four major categories. Name them.

Stanus Floride contain what common metal the body needs anyway (I think)

Name the only metal that is liquid at room temperature.

The dissecting of a cone by various planer lines- - helps illustrate this scientific phenomon that is very useful in a certain branch of modern science.

Name the heaviest metal, if you don’t count bismuth, which I know little about.

Name the heaviest naturally occurring chemical element going by the long standing number of elements in the late ‘fourties as 94 elements.

Eventually Uranium will continue to degrade in steps of two elements, until at last it ends up as THIS substance.

An energy (?) particle contained in cosmic rays that can change magnetic hard drives from zeros to ones and visa versa is known as a WHAT?

In a cyclotron, substances are “trans-muted” into other substance mainly by bombardment of THIS, which is also sent off in a chain reaction.

An isothermic chemical reaction is one where heat is lost in the process (true or false)

Name the lightest element on the left side of the periodic table that catches fire when exposed to water.

Hydrogen sulfate becomes a much more dangerous, volatile substance when exposed to water- - (true or false)

The axiom is “Acid into water; never water into acid” (true or false)

When salt desolves into the water the individual elements function as THESE (two different answers are acceptable here)

What metal has the highest melting point of any element?

Strontium 90 is mistaken for WHAT substance by the body?

Cesium 137 is mistaken for WHAT substance by the body?

Tri-methyl pentane is more commonly known as what substance?

A mole is a quantitative measurement that measures THIS

The reason why X rays are dangerous is because they contain photons (true or fralse)

How many hydrogen atoms make one helium atom in a thermonuclear reaction?

Cold-fusion of hydrogen is a demonstrated, certifiable fact. (true or false)

Methanol has a more volatile combustion power than does gasoline (true or false)

The element with the highest electrical conductivity is gold (true or false)

A tetrahedron is a three dimensional figure shaped like THIS.

An octahedron just might be a double one of THIS other geometric figure.

A symmetrical octahedron (as above) will touch a perfect sphere on THIS many points.

An “old star” like Betelguee will continue to produce heavier and heaver atoms within it’s thermonuclear reaction but will stop at THIS element (so I’m told)

Gasses on other stars and planets can be deduced by this time tested process. (I’m kind of looking for two words here)

Describe the process known as UV florecence. What is happening atomically?

Something becomes magnetized when all the electrons do THIS

Name the lightest metal (any hospital R N should know this)

Neon subjected to an electric current glows with WHAT colored light

Sodium subjected to an electric current glows with WHAT colored light.

What is the least efficient colored light for photosynthesis to take place in plants?

In the normal course of things people get most of their Vitamin D from sunlight ( T F)

In optics- - infinity is a fixed number with numbers above and below it (true or false)

The median current of a rectified AC electric current is .707 from the peak (T or F)

Short wave radio is possible because of this phenomenon of the atmosphere.

Atnospheric radioactive fall-out got that term because of THIS process.

The photochemical process happens because of exposure to THESE particles

Non cosmic radiation is successfully blocked by THIS substance

Name an element that evaporates at fifty-five degrees or so.

Krypton is a metal theorized to once be on earth but no longer (True or False)

Ozone is made up of atoms of this element.

Heavy water contains trintium, which is an isotope this elemental substance

Modern laboratories have been able to cool substances below absolute zero (T or F)

Acetate in its pure form is translucent (true or false)

Light received by any subatance is calculated by THIIS relation to distance

Intelligent information or “bandwidth” is calculated on a logarithmic scale (T or F)

Another word for “viscosity” is THIS

Groups of solid molecules held up by molecules in a liquid are known as THIS

Half life – as in Uranium, is calculated (or defined) by THIS

How is the root formula for circular trigonometry the opposite for hyperbolic trigonometry and in what way are the two formulas similar?

S T P are initials that stand for WHAT in chemistry

What is the formula for chloroform?

Among elements on the right side of the periodic table atoms bond by sharing electrons and this is called a WHAT?

When a photon is split in the laboratory it forms a WHAT and a WHAT that go off in opposite directions.

Rare Earths all have similar chemical properties (true or false?)

Atomic numbers are based on the number of BLANK in an element.

When light is refracted it generally increases its perpendicularity with the surface when it enters a denser medium. (true or false?)

Polyunsaturated fats are molecules with two more BLANKS missing

Dextrose is referred to as WHAT generally in hospitals?

Specific heat is a measurement of BLANK transference

Polymars are created by doing THIS to simpler compounds

An element can be said to be “inert” when THIS condition is met.

President Obama Addresses Nation on Libya

Today President Obama scheduled his speech a half hour early before the evening prime time shows commenced in the majority of the country. It was a well written speech with lots of appropiate flowery rhetoric at the end to get the patriotic spirit going. Some may argue it's a low blow to praise the service men for an action you personally order. The only thing about the speech was that there were times where the President hesitated, as if he were not sure what he was saying was true. If I picked up on that you can bet John Mc Cain did. Our President did a pretty good job of summarizing how we got to where we are now. He spoke of the sanctions that were imposed and the UN resolution, giving Kadaffy a choice, and of the iminent danger to the city of Bengazy, a city of some 700 thousand. He spoke of how the US initially took the lead but how we plan to turn the campaign over to our allies in a few days. He spoke of how effectively we have already halted Kadaffy's progress. What he neglected to say was that in the past two days the rebels have re-taken city after city along the coast, and now are prepared to do battle in Kadaffy's home town. Of course certain nay-sayers like John Mc Cain and Newt Gingrinch will never be satisfied. Either the President waited too long, or else he acted too soon. Many accuse the President of being unclear or unfocused. I think the President made himself quite clear tonight. Many nattering nebobs of negativism in the media keep on saying how "something unforeseen might come up to spoil the mission". What these talking heads never consider is not "what if it doesn't work?" but rather, "What if it does?" The prospect of a positive outcome doesn't seem to enter the minds of these people. Were they in charge at the time of the Civil War they would have surrendered after the battle of Bull Run. I think it's important also to not compare this mission to- - for instance- - sending the military in to stop genocide on the Ivery Coast. Certain tasks are inherently more "doable" than other tasks. But after this mission is accomplished, then maybe we can think about Sudan or the Ivery Coast. The key thing to remember is that this campaign is a UN Security Council mandate, and had we failed to act, and that would have reflected badly on the United States. He also spoke of the higher ideals of the United States.

In Japan those nuclear reactors are inching closer and closer to a melt-down. All the time they are discovering increased radiation in far-flung places of the world. We can pray for those people. Thom Hartman is wrong. The reason why they call them "fall-out" shelters is because the radioactive isotopes "fall out" of the sky and land on the populace. But it is of course true that food toxins tend to concentrate in the biological food chain and the higher up the chain goes the more deadly the toxin. I told people at last Friday's residents council meeting I wish they would bring back spinach, and Marcie seconded my notion. I guess they are considering any further remediation of the reactor as a "suicide mission" and few will volunteer fore it. I don't see why they haven't developed more advanced radio controlled robotics to handle the problem. A big criticism of the second Star Trek movie was that Spock was sent in to a radioactive area tantamount to a death sentence. I'm going to research this story more thoroughly before my next posting. I'm sure you people probably already know a lot more in the way of updates than I do at this time.

I went to bed actually before nine, which was a mistake. I had this dream and it’s one of these cases where I am beginning to theorize an “other life” that I keep dreaming about, like an alternate existence. I seem to have had a lot of dreams about this alternate existence lately. One a few weeks ago was about playing an old reel to reel tape that was made in the year 2000, which was quite a long time ago for this person. It was made in November when there was a dry Santa Ana wind, and I was making observations about certain trouble points with people in my life. In a lot of segments in these dreams I go to college- - which is “somewhere to the northeast” like CSUF. And I know this- - this area is not in a completely urbanized area because there are open fields and hills and stuff between where I live in the college even though it isn’t that far away. I think I picked up the vibe that I lived in Bishop or some city on the back side of the Sierra Nevada. Or maybe it’s some place like El Paso or Tucson where it doesn’t get that cold, and the air is dry. This character is a long time member of a church fellowship group, which he doesn’t particularly like even though he goes to a lot of activities with them. At times I have lived in various houses with male housemates. But there seemed to be some key traumatic event that occurred in April of 2008 that caused me to black out for three months and have no memory of that period. After this I think I went on some "vacation" with my parents that I did not want to go on. Also this life is punctuated by large, lavish family holiday gatherings with a lot of distant relatives. As I look back on this life- - things seemed good up to about ten years ago in these dreams. This would be the first “alternate existence” that wasn’t even at least hinted about in one book or another. Anyhow when I would wake up I would be restless. Finally when I did get up it was just after six, which means I got just over nine hours sleep last night, which is way too much. The following is an extra just for blogger.com. Back when I was in Green Harbor one day we had a substitute BINGO caller and he was doing B, N, and O, and you're a winner. Well, I flashed back to a dream I'd had or a vision or something. I was arriving in a parking lot just after dinner. It was pitch dark outside and by the shape and position of the moon in the sky (just short of full) I acertained that this was probably November. There was a not too cold "Santa Ana" wind blowing softly from the east, that was dry air. We walked southward to an amusement park area that was an east to west strip like Nu-Pike is, only there were no stairs you walked down. It was flat. We arrived in the middle of the east-west strip and went westward. There were all the usual amusement park rides lights and crowds and carnival style booths like Nu-Pike has, but over the PA you could hear the BINGO caller asking who had a B, N, or O. As you may know during my hospitalization in June of 2001 I often felt "trapped in another life" like I would never get back to who I was. I remember being at the front of some white concrete building with cement pillars out front, and I would grab a hold of the pillars and muse, "these are solid, all right. I'm really here".

Let's get in a short Beatle song quiz here. Of the following list of songs, list the two that were not released in the sixties, under another title, obviously. Scrambled Eggs, That Means A Lot, If You've Got Troubles, That's A Nice Hat, Auntie Gin's Song, One Way Ticket, Won't Be There With You, This Bird Has Flown, Granny Smith, Laxton's Superb, Mark I.

I hope that Dr. Levy was able to relate to that 3 ½ page treaties on “God” I sent him. He appeared to be praising me in class but like I say never made any reference to the letter. Perhaps I should go through the letter and see what parts of it haven’t yet been posted yet to Blogger.com. Like Obama's case for war, I make many appeals to established precedent. Of course the whole concept of the deity is a very personal one for people and each person sees God in his own way. Some are “free will” deists, who believe God leaves it entirely up to man’s ingenuity to solve his own problems. Some people are pantheists, who see every animal as a god. Others see nature as a whole as “God”. Yung and other psychologists see “God” as the “collective unconscious”. At one time I believe I made the case for collective Yung-ism, which says that perhaps the whole “mind” that did create the Universe is our own collective unconscious, so that if we have a problem with His or Its will, we have only to blame ourselves. Finally we come to what might be called the Eastern view which Gnostics also incorporate into their theology. This is the belief that some higher aspect of our own souls that has up till now been suppressed, has some pipeline to the “God” nature, and in this way we can achieve a form of Divinity- or at least some form of sinlessness or cosmic harmony with Him.

Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79

Actress Elizabeth Taylor succumbed last night to congestive heart failure and passed away at Cedars Sinai hospital at age 79. She is most famous for such signature movies as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "Cleopatra" and "The Taming of the Shrew". She made fifty motion pictures but got accadamy awards only for two, "Butterfield Eight" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf". In the latter movie she had to gain a lot of weight for the part and looked many years older than she actually was. Why she didn't get an Oscar for "Cleopatra" is beyond me. She was married eight times to seven husbands. But she wasn't one of these flakes like celebreties today. She was monogamus in nature. Her first five husbands were Nicky Hilton, Michael Wilding, Mike Todd, Eddie Fisher, and Richard Burton, whom she married twice. She matured early and got her first big role in "National Velvet" in 1945 because the director wanted a young girl with breasts. She played mature roles in the 'fifties when Marylin Monroe was still playing parts of ditzy blondes even though she was years older than Taylor. I liked her in "Suddenly Last Summer" in 1960 where she played the part of a woman who threatened to reveal the truth about certain things so others wanted her to have a pre-frontal lobotomy even though she was not vaguely insane. Of course in her later years she was known for her active role in Aids research. She was a close friend to Michael Jackson. She may be one of the few friends Jackson had who wasn't either a family member or a doctor. She also worked with Elton John on Aids. Actually she was about the same age of James Dean and costarred in "Giant" with him, even though most people think of James Dean as playing roles as teenagers. She was what you might call a woman of real substance in Hollywood. Now all we have left is Kate Roberts on "Days of our Lives". Like Taylor she liked being married to powerful men, and has many of Elizabeth's personality traits. She is one actress who will be sorely missed.

On the subject of Libya, the no fly zone imposed by the UN Security Council appears to be working. After just a few days of bombing RADAR instelations and other key sites, it seems that Kadafy has abandoned his air attack plans. There are none of his plains in the air, and his RADAR doesn't seem to be opperative. US, French, and British planes took part in this campaign, which began only last Friday but now they have gotten to the point where they can expand the No Fly Zone from the rebel stronghold in the east all the way to Tripoli, over six hundred miles away. There are people on the left and the right who are for this campaign, and there are people on the left and the right who are against this campaign. Hal Sparks and Randy Rhodes appear to be for this campaign and Thom Hartman appears to be against it. Many dislike the idea of "Starting a third war against a Moslem country in the middle east". Many on the other side speak of "Mission Creep" where the initial mission of just pressuring Kadafy to behave will be expanded to actively giving aid to the Rebels or even introducing ground troops to fight on Libyan soil. President Obama has already stated that he wants Kadafy gone, even though this mission is more of one of "leveling the playing field" so that the rebels have a decent shot at winning. Some of the people on the other side will complain either that this no fly campaign was adopted prematurely, or else that if we were going to do it we should have done it two weeks ago, when the Rebels were still winning and had not yet lost momentum. I don't see how both assesments can be simotaniously true. It might be as simple as the statement "We are all in favor of the killing of brown people; we just don't want a brown person doing it".

In terms of the Republican field of Presidential candidates, as far as I know, not one of them has openly declared for the Presidency. There is something wrong with almost every one. Ron Paul, who is led consistently in all the republican polls, is too libertarian, with a stance on foreign wars arguably "to the left of the President" as Hal Sparks says. Tim Pollente of Minnisota is "too green". In this case not inexperiance, but rather that he is too ecology minded and concerned about the environment. Newt Gingrinch has all this moral baggage from two failed marriage that might be an impediment to support from the Christian Right. Haley Barber is regarded as "coming off as racially insensive". I don't know anything about this Huntsman fellow, but somebody said he used to work for Obama. Then we have the governor of New Jersey. I haven't come up with anything wrong with him, yet. Mitt Romney is suspect because he's a Mormon and the Christian Right will never go for him. He's also vulnerable for being "too liberal" both on the Health Care issue, but also because John Mc Cain nailed him in a republican debate on the timetable withdrawal issue from the Iraq theater. That leaves Mike Huckibee, who off hand seems the nuttiest of the lot, and with some of the statements he's made lately, I think his own people would write him off as unelectable. I don't think Michelle Bachman really wants the job. Some have said that this could be the first "brokered national convention" since 1952 in this country. That might just worth be watching for its own sake. Clearly there are so many candidates and they all appear to be evenly matched, with no front runners, that the notion of having a candidate clearly leading the pack by next March appears very unlikely.

I would like to talk about former president Jimmy Carter a little. Hal Sparks was playing that July 1979 tape of Jimmy Carter talking about our impending energy crisis. He said that we had to phase out foreign oil now and adopt things like Solar power because for the rest of the century the energy crisis will only get worse. Some may say his observations were "premature". He was just a man who was ahead of his time. I didn't vote for him - - either time, and yet I have come to believe that Carter was one of our most moral, under-rated Presidents. Ted Kennedy actively undermined the President both on Health Care, and also on dealing with Moscow. Carter wanted to boycott the Moscow Olympics whereas according to the Heritage Foundation, Kennedy wanted to get really cozy with Brezhnev, and perhaps adopt some of Moscow's socialist policies here. Of course we hit "peak oil" in this country back around 1970. There was a chart on this on the internet. In early March of 1972 I wrote a fictional piece going into the future exactly two years to March of 1974 where I predicted we would have an energy crisis. Back in March of 1972 one thing that people were noticing was that stations were no longer having all these gas price wars like they used to. I picked up on this. Also ion the same writing I predicted my brother's divorce, who was not even married at the time. But had I actually been convinced to an intellectual certainty that the Divorce was coming- - - I would have actively done everything in my power to avert and prevent it. For a whole host of reasons. Jimmy Carter is a highly moral conscientious man. I think his book on Palestinian relations with Israel needs to be read by everybody. It's a real eye opener. Unfortunately Jimmy Carter remains the one living democratic president whom everyone on the right agrees was a bad president. Even Dr. Levy thinks Clinton was a good President. But everyone hates Jimmy Carter. You have to ask yourself- - - Why?

When the Turnaround Comes

How will we know when “the worm has turned”, to quote Montgomery Burnes? Wayne Dyer says we should think positive thought and we will “attract” other positive events into our lives. President Obama is obviously not doing this. But as you know I am a believer in omens and signs and jinxes. The reason for me is simple. They work too often to just be coincidental. You see cases of it in the Bible where someone says “If they say so & so to me I’ll know luck is with us”. Jesus had the woman who reasoned “If I can just touch the hem of his garment”. Some people call these “points of contact” with Faith. Unlike Wayne Dyre I believe that these omens or perhaps just idle thoughts are if anything predictors of the future but they don’t make it, and there is a world of difference. If Dyre could make the future merely by thinking about what he wants, he’d be God, and in his saner moments I’m sure he knows this. Some people appear to live charmed lives. Other people appear to lead jinxed lives. Some people believe if you have either a very lucky or very unlucky person in your midst it will “rub off” on the others in the group. And I don’t believe they are wholly wrong. To me the search has been for the original “incantation” that set the events in motion in the first place. But since I’m also a determinist, I believe the incantation itself was predestined, as are all events that happen- - - by the Big Bang itself. In talking about “The Devil” on our last posting I was referring to none other than Reality itself. If Gandhi says “God is Truth” and changes it to “Truth is God” then I say “Reality is God, or the Devil or whatever name you choose to call it”. So given what a slave master Destiny ie. Reality is - - the question is “when is the worm going to turn for the Democrats?” Has the worm turned and will we start seeing first signs, then positive proof of the changes? I don’t know. I keep saying that in elections, six months is an eternity. We have three months till the November election, and so I guess that’s half of an eternity. We can all hope and pray that the forces of the right are divided and splintered. I’ve seen no evidence of it, but we can hope. I guess Barbra Boxer is doing a little better in the polls for Senator now.

As you know one of the icons of our country is the pyramid with the all seeing eye at the top of it. Some may call it an “occult” symbol, but it is a metaphysical symbol and not occult. Occult means “hidden” but this imagery is there on the dollar bill for all to see. It’s just a question of how Aware we are. I would like to talk about awareness or what Buddha describes as “being Awake”. We all have sensual stimulation from the ear and the eye and other sources. But we aren’t always aware. When a person thinks a good thought and it comes true- - - or when a parson has a negative thought and it comes true- - - this individual should not be penalized for being Aware, as Wayne Dyre would do. One of these days Dyre will understand the difference between cause and effect. If Dyre really had the power he claimed to you or I could walk up to him and say “Make X happen” and Dyre could make X happen. But he can’t do that because Dyre is not God.

Many people talk about swings of the political pendulum. There really haven’t been that many. In the twenties we were conservative. Then after 1929 the pendulum began swinging back to the left. There was a swing to the right during the Joseph Mc Carthy era around 1950 but it was more of a hick-up. The swing to the left didn’t peak out until the 1968 election of Richard Nixon, and not even totally then because Nixon sponsored more progressive measures than any other Republican president, before or since. Indeed Nixon would be tagged as a liberal by many, such as that Curtess guy from the Guardian Angels, who called Nixon a liberal. We all know that in 1978 when the Howard Jarvis tax revolt and the moral majority got started that the coffin nails were being labeled on the lid of liberalism. And for an excess of thirty years the political pendulum has swung almost relentlessly to the right. Even with the election of a Negro to the presidency, the pendulum has continued to swing to the right. This is an eventuality never counted on by me and others, who voted for Obama in 2008.

OK readers of this file will note we are going to go back out into the stratosphere again so hold on to your saddles, mates! Some may ask what is the psychic or sixth dimension? I’ll answer that right now- - awareness. We have three dimensions of space and two of time but only one of “time as we know it”. There is a parrellel universe, or as some purists would note “a highly oblique universe” that in that world the Tea Party movement of fifteen months ago never happened. In their universe of course as they contemplate things we never happened. We don’t exist! We are just someone’s imagination! Many would like to go to such a place. If John Lennon has the key to the fifth dimension, we’d be all set. Unfortunately imagination is not sufficient to make certain things real for us. We thus know that two dimensions express themselves in a medium of time. Awareness as I see it is one dimensional. You either have more of it or less of it. It differs not in quality but only in quantity in a pure abstract sense. I would like now to return to the green “golf course” grid to describe the Universe. You may remember that when we were doing that illustration, we included in the usual model some fog above the surface of the grid, which symbolizes hyper light speed. We know with hyper light speed “you can’t get there from here”. We can’t refer to space when we speak of hyper light speed because there is no room for it in the mathematical model. (We have discussed this before also) Therefore the medium or mode of the sixth dimension is not space, but awareness. Let that concept sink in. You know an insect or a fish or a reptile has eyes and can see. But he brings virtually no awareness to what he sees, as we humans know it. For lower forms of life existence is the rule of the day. A lizard may think in terms of catching bugs, and that’s about as far as it goes.

How then do we graphically portray the sixth dimension if we aren’t allowed to use the medium of space? The answer is a circle that spirals up. In this case "up" denotes improved karma, and maybe you want to count karma as a dimension, too. In Sketch dimensions are denoted of course by straight lines. But psychicly it's more like going through 360 degrees of awareness multiple times. It's that cosmic funnel thing we've talked about. The most important thing to remember is that space is not a factor. But time can be. Things in the sixth dimension Do happen in "real time". It might even be "real time" 900 light years away from home. Time is not prohobited - as we proved (many times) the whole Einstein relativity thing with special relativity- - all involves shrinking space- - and the other things are what you might call derived deductions. They are derivatives. [Just like hyperbolic tangents use the same formula for adding velocities are derivatives. As such I see no necessity to devise a special formula to add them, but if we didn’t have the formula- - - well the same formula is used for adding velocities. ] “Hey you lost me, there!” Never mind. Let’s get back to how we are going to portray the sixth dimension. We’ve already tried the green golf course grid model. There is another word I’d like to spring on you right here used in a different context than the conservatives use the word, Incrimentalism. Do you remember the illustration of the spiral staircase? And each spiral increment is actually a pie shaped piece and each step of the stairs is 22.61986 - - degrees to the right of the previous step, and if you are doing the calculation yourself the next digit is “four”. This is if true- to state that there are a series of “psychic planes” much as the psychics talk about. Now in this model the stair step is a 2 D representation of a single dimension. You might say that each “level of psychic awareness” is 13/12^th more enlightened than the previous stair step. Like a chess piece is controls more space and hence is more powerful. Karma could thusly be the verticality in this stair case. More Karma gives you more of this dimension. As we have portrayed before these steps become ever larger so that the horizontal increases as an ever faster pace. People with high awareness control more psychic space because they are a more powerful piece on the chessboard. People move chess pieces but don’t become the pieces.

VG PNAG TRG AB JBEFR

The Beatles

One persistent “Myth” of ours, as you know from our writings- - is the historic fact that Alcyon blew up Aldeberan IX on or about June 1^st 1967. And it is believed that some psychic spirits escaped and among these are the spirits behind “Procol Herem”, “Traffic”, “Pink Floyd” and “The Moody Blues”. So that political pendulum we were talking about was swinging to the political left until about June 1^st 1967. One guide said “the main portion of the destruction of Aldeberan IX took place a few days later”. I happened to wonder if there was any connection with the Six Day War in the Mideast. I hadn’t made that connection before. Some say the Beatle line “Never can see any other way” was referencing Alcyonne’s reasoning process as a way to “teach the enlightened ones a lesson” and this was the only way to do it. Thus we have this Myth is some massive destruction that impacted the political left. But not right away but over the process of weeks and months- their lack of new power became manifest, and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King sealed the left’s doom. What before was to assumed to be political eventuality was now taken off the table.

Giving the Devil His Due

They say the Devil is in the details. There are a few other things you can know about Satan. Satan doesn’t give a damn what you think of him or whether he is being “fair” or not. He doesn’t care whether you believe in him. Your only choice in the matter is how aware you want to be of “Reality”. People who hold ideas at odd with those of Satan will encounter untold resistance from Satan. Satan is not moved by threats. Satan has unlimited patience paired with unlimited persistence, and those two are a dangerous combination. And Satan always had another Ace up his sleeve. If Satan decides that he wants something, you know he is going to get it. If Satan wants you to believe one thing over another, Satan has enormous persuasive powers at his disposal.

They say that the Devil is in the details. While others are trying to wish their worries away, the Devil plans out everything carefully. The Devil is one who actualizes his goals. People always hope their friends are 110% behind them, but that their enemies are divided. Adolph Hitler kept out hope to the end that England would come to its senses and split with France, seeing that they and Germany had so much in common. People say Mark Bove’s Christian ministry “spontaneously” happened, even though he’d been planning and hoping for it for years. Political candidacies aren’t “spontaneous” any more. If fads were as “spontaneous” as people would believe, advertising agencies would have gone out of business long ago. You know even some liberals don’t fully grasp the menace of the tea party crowd. Thom Hartman keeps saying that we liberals can find common ground with them on some issues. But Hartman knows well that these “astro turf” backed groups are the tools of the corporatocracy. It’s become apparent who is pulling all the strings. So in this spirit one could say that the Simpson’s image of Ned Flanders is hopelessly out of date. That is the portrayal of the kind and basically harmless Christian. Today’s Born Agains are quite politically active. Things are changing so rapidly that some space alien visiting this country in 2006 and then just coming back today would be amazed at the marked changes in just these four years. For one thing the turn-around in John Mc Cain has occurred largely in these past four years. George Bush tried to pass a “reasonable” immigration bill back then and John Mc Cain was all for it. Now Mc Cain is staunchly against any form of “amnesty” or “making it all right” with illegals now here. There doesn’t seem to exist a tea bagger who isn’t a world class liar and a hypocrite. They all have bought into the same laundry list of corporate agenda items. Rush Limbaugh’s show of twenty years ago seems almost quaint by today’s standards with all of these “updates”. You had the gay update and the condom update and the feminazi update and the environmentalist whacko update and the animal rights update- - usually covering some really off the beat humerous topic. Today you would by contrast have a “starve the poor” update, the “torture the prisoner” update, the “corporate greed is good” update and “the President is a Nigger” update. What was funny back then is suddenly very un funny now. These people appear to march in lock step and- as I say- work off the same political check list sheet. And it all may well get worse before it gets any better. The liberal tide is still ebbing dangerously.

Last night I watched a thing on Thomas Jefferson on KCOE. He was very devoted to his wife, Patsy, and she bore six children and three of them died. When she died Jefferson vowed never to marry again, and apparently he didn’t. They said he wrote only one book covering a vast array of topics. One of these was on the Negro in America. Jefferson regarded Negroes as inferior lacking the mental capacities of Whites. He said that Roman slaves like Spartacus did amazing things, but that's because they were white. Apparently Jefferson didn't know about the slew of Black inventors such as George Washington Carver. I'd like to ask Jefferson what he meant when he wrote "All men are created equal". Jefferson described their dark skin and different physical characteristics from White people, and pointed to the distinctly disagreeable odor they emitted, and their sweat glands were more active. And yet Jefferson is not above having sex with them, even while his wife was in ill health and to whom he professed undying love. Jefferson wanted to bring up the topic of abolishing slavery in the Declaration of Independence but he was talked out of it.. Jefferson and John Adams were supposed to write the Declaration of Independence together but Adams said, "You do it; you're a better writer" Of course there was a guy on the internet last week being interviewed by Ralph Nader. And he wrote a book “The Dark Side of American History” and we learn things like Woodrow Wilson, whom formerly I had regarded as a highly moral man, deliberately wanted Americans killed on the Lucitania so that the United States would enter the War. England didn’t want Americans boarding the ship citing the danger. We know Roosevelt turned back a boatload of fleeing Jews from Germany seeking refuge in this country. We learn that the Maine probably wasn’t attacked by the Spanish but rather- - it was an accidental boiler explosion, that got us into the Spanish American war. Abraham Lincoln led military forces into committing atrocities that would not exactly be kosher by today’s standards. I believe he wanted to burn down Baltimore if Maryland ever sided with the confederacy. Abraham Lincoln was a psychologically depressed person for most of his life and this war gave him kind of a real purpose. George Washington physical abused and even mutilated his slaves by cutting off their toes to keep them in line and also played footsy with Pennsylvania law so that he could keep slaves within the borders of a free state. We know that states had their own Churches in those days and last night I learned that in Jefferson’s time, Virginia still had the death penalty for heresy. So many of these dark facts would play right into the hands of conservatives as a shield for their own advocation of misconduct today. We know about these Neo Cons. Suddenly Red China is our best buddy and we should turn a blind eye to abuses of power. I honistly don't know how this "New Word Order" where everyone in the world is reduced to subsistance wages somehow became fashionable among the Right. I didn’t stay up terribly late last night. I slept well.

In the morning I got up and went to the bakery for a large coffee as usual. Then I switched on the TV and it was still channel 50 and who did I see but our old friend Wayne Dyer. They were fund-raising of course. You could buy the entire multi-hour lecture unabridged if you wanted to pay the money. Dyre talked about beauty and love and “intensions” today. He said that if you resist any thing or any idea – notably one of his- - you are only draining energy from yourself and denying the creative force within you. These people are obviously entitled to their opinions but in the case of Dr. Levy they tend to become highly dogmatic where each and every person in the room is compelled to agree with everything the speaker says. Personally I am willing to live with the idea that I don’t know everything and the world won’t come to an end if tomorrow or next week or next month I discover perhaps I was wrong about this or that idea. We had oatmeal this morning and I had Andrew’s orange juice. We had a fried egg and toast with butter and jelly. I poured myself seconds on coffee from the back counter. I came back intending to turn on Stephanie Miller but instead I hit the TV and there was Dyre on the tube, still talking. But he was just about done. His ideas are nice sentiments but as the pragmatist asked “What does it have to do with the price of tea in China?” People are a product of their experiences for the most part. Trying to talk a person down from a political stance he has taken is like Lyndon John believing he can woe Ho Chi Min into making peace by promising him money for hydroelectric projects and other things in the North. People with weak arguments resort to labels. Most religious demagogues regard open dialog as the Devil’s tool. To not be mindful of what the world thinks is folly, both politically and karmicly. To expend psychic energy “trying to deny the elephant in the room” is not only tiresome, but it won’t get the elephant out of the room. How are his beliefs going to affect one politically? It could well be that Dyre may be politically useful to the left, although with most religion, these people tend to keep their beliefs to among themselves, almost as if they were ashamed of them, or that holding them up to public scrutiny might somehow “magically” take away their power.

Campaign Disclosure Bill Fails in Senate

Last night the US Senate voted on the campaign disclosure bill that democrats (and me personally) reguarded as essential to pass before the November elections. The measure went down by a vote of 57 for and 41 against, which in this upside down world we live in means failure of the measure. The Republicans are continuing to filibuster every major bill. This bill was essential because after the corporate donor floodgates were opened by the Supreme Court last spring, it means you can "money bomb" virtually every progressive candidate into oblivian. This is a situation that can't be allowed to stand. And yet the Republicans are calling it "styfeling first amendment rights". This of course is untrue. They can say whatever they want. It's just that with the measure you would have to disclose what group is funding the particular TV or radio ad. How can people object to this? Lord help us if this measure does not eventually pass sometime between now and November. We have to keep trying because this measure is just too important to our political health to ignore.

The house voted another 33 billion to fund the Afghan war. The timing is a bit odd because it's after those 92,000 files (?) were disclosed on wikileaks.org. Personally I didn't do the 75 megabyte download or whatever it was. I just read the summary in the Times. Basically the biggest issue that seems to be disclosed is that the Karsai election was fraudulent and also that Pakistan has supported the Talliban in the past. As the President stated, we pretty much knew both of these factoids already. They have become part of the "dialog". Still it strikes me as a little funny that the House would pick yesterday of all days to snub the liberals of their own party and vote out the war funding. One hundred house Democrats voted against this funding measure. Only in the post Watergate era did congress finally find the gonads to stop funding of the Viet Nam war. I am not convinced the republicans will gain in November. When you are in a war you should plan as though you intend to win, because if you plan to lose you'd done half the enemy's job already. I saw that one web site with the luxury apartment built out in the middle of a bunch of rubble where the roads wern't even paved. They say that the only thing the "trickle down" theory leads to is a nation of peons. I have often employed the image of the evangelist standing under a torriential waterfall but the funny part is that no matter yow close you get to him, not a drop falls on you. So it is with these rich people who appropiate all the government money and build these luxury places to live in. And yet they are such skin flints just yards away, poverty abounds. Essentially I think the government is lying to us if they say "we're doing it for the people of Afghanistan". There are only a hundred or so Al Qaeda there on the Afghan border and now they have fanned out into various nations of the world including Yemen and Germany, and right here in the old U S of A. As Thom Hartman says "We aren't abolishing the enemy; we are creating it". We are the best recruitment poster for prospect Youth to join Al Qaeda. Maybe that guy on "Sixty Minutes" has disowned what he refers to as "The Narritive". But the narritive isn't far wrong. Maybe they'll stop calling Americans Satan when we stop acting like it.

A federal court had stricken out certain portions of the Arizona immigration bill the day before it takes effect, which I believe is tomorrow. You can't racially profile any more. And you can't take people into custody without a warrent. I didn't even know that was in the bill. Left intact was the prohibition against smugglers of illegal aliens. As you know I don't have real strong feelings on this issue one way or the other. I can see merit on both sides. It would seem that Las Enforcement generally does not like this bill because it generates a lot of paper work taking away valuable time from tracking the real bad guys comitting other crimes.

I would like to do a Mia Copa of sorts. Rush Limbaugh can say "I told you so". Remember how outraged I was when Rush Limbaugh said "The people in the boats out in the Gulf can't find any oil to skim". It appears as if this situation is in fact a reality. Not only this but clean up measures have paid off and many Gulf beaches are again clean and pristine. They say you can eat the fish that's caught, and even more you can eat the oysters that are caught. But they aren't reopening their establishments yet because they are deferring to the scientists who advise caution. Still I would like to know what happened to all the oil. We were told of the spreading slick, first the size of Rhode Island, then Maryland, then West Virginia, and then Kansas. And now the oil is gone. How did that happen? Did God eat the oil? I expect next Rush is going to say there was never a problem and those under water photographs of oil bellowing out are all just a media conspiracy. I don't see how the presence of that dispursant can explain this sudden disappearence.

WAYNE DYRE IS AT IT AGAIN

You know I can't listen to a spiritual person a few minutes without taking issue with virtually everything that comes out of his mouth. On the Bonnie Hunt show today, Wayne Dyre was on and making his various proclamations. He said "You are what you think about". This isn't true because when I was a kid nine or ten I fantacized about running away a lot - -either to a friend's house who lived miles away- - or else off to some undiscovered island- - - or my own version of the Bat Cave or some secret hideaway I would construct myself that required secret passwords and stuff. But I didn't grow up to be either a ditch digger or a sailor. "Yo no soy maninero, soy capitan!" is my motto. You know when I was drinking I prayed every morning that this would be the day I'd stop drinking. I didn't think "If you continue drinking you'll end up in here". If I had perhaps things would be different. I think I don't have money. But first money had to be a problem. My lack of money wasn't CAUSED by thinking about it. Next Dyre said not to be Against things but to be FOR things. Again I take issue. Mother Teresa once said she would not participate in a march against the Viet Nam war but she would march FOR peace. I'm sure that even Adolph Hitler made speeches touting peace- - a thousand years of it. But it's the peace of the graveyard- - with all your enemies dead. No, the issue is the War. The issue is getting rid of IT. You need to focus on the problem and eliminate THAT from your life rather than engage in pie in the sky platitudes. Wayne Dyer said "It isn't what you Have or Do that defines you but rather that essential spark of Divinity we all have". Dyre says we are all a part of God. Again this fits in with the metaphysics of "Monism, which the Gnostics believe. All I can say "If this is true, how come loved ones and Christians don't treat me better? It "sounds" nice. Again I take issue. What Dyre is describing is Gnosticism. You come to the "knowledge" of redemption. And you are thence transformed into something "New". And Christianity is an offspring of Gnosticism. Even Dr. Levy when I asked him, said that Buddhism was a religion of "enlightenment". Hindus on the contrary, have their heads screwed on right on this issue believing that change is an ongoing struggle for growth and evolution. I have my own scripture called Mark Lindsey 3:16 that goes "You'll never run away from You". People are looking to be transformed where everything they were and believed about the world up to that moment is suddenly wiped away. - - - But the human soul, as far as can be determined, is something you are born with. James Dobson says "environmentalism goes only so far. It's a fact that different babies are born with entirely different personalities". When you think about it, it's a lot more interesting for parents that way. You wouldn't want all your kids to grow up as Commander Data's. You wouldn't want an automoton for a child, who believed every word you said. Where Gnosticism and Christianity and Buddhism all get off the track is in their essential denial of the nature of the human soul. Sure you can brainwash a man or drug a man or put him in a sensory deprevation tank to drive him crazy. But it's still the same essential soul you are dealing with. The soul is NOT somehow a part of God or the "Creation energy". There are any number of fundamentalist theologians who will line up to agree with me on this issue. The human soul is unique to itself. It is not part of God. There is no "undiscovered divine spark that will transform your whole being" as the Gnostics and Christians teach. Sure they use different termonology but they are describing essentially the same thing. They speak of some "Knowledge" of a Higher Power that they themselves contain the spark of". In terms of not being what you DO, I believe you indeed ARE what you DO. What you DO defines you in a way nothing else can. Being doesn't define you - - DOING defines you. Inanimate objects can BE but only the living can DO.

You know, Rush Limbaugh made another of his endless parade of absurd statements this morning. He said that poor people are responsible for the economic collapse and the corporate bail out, and all the economic problems we are having. He said that people like Jesse Jackson took over the economic decision in the Bush administration and "demanded" that the worthless poor be "entitled" to own a home, and of course the Bush Administration was powerless in the face of these left wing demands. There is a grain of truth in this absurdity in that nobody held a gun to these people's head to make them sign a real estate deed to a home they could not afford, and probably KNEW it at the time. But the statement none the less offended me greatly. But if I'm going to give myself the Michael Benner test and ask "Just what about this statement really enrages you by Pushing your Buttons?" I would have to say it's this basic contempt the Rush Limbaugh has for those who Don't Have, ie. the Poor. Rush shows his sheer contempt for the poor every day. He despizes anybody who isn't Rich, like himself. Of course the Calvary Chapels do the same thing with people who visit their church. They judge you not by what you DO but by what you HAVE, in this case, Salvation, and after that they want to know how many Blessings of God you've received. The more blessings, the more you earn Praise from them. So what you HAVE assumes importance, not in defining your Essential nature but rather how you are judged by the world. A college degree will come in handy for instance in getting a high paying job. And for some positions you already have to BE employed with another company- - before they will hire you. Jesus never judged people on what they HAD, but Calvary Christians do, and they do so to the exclusion of your character, your karmic deeds, or your essential nature.

Emotions Frozen in Time

People like to look at photographs. The reason is because they can live in that same moment a while that was captures by the camera. There is another reason why people like photographs is that these moments normally don't come in the hustle and bustle of every day life. Life is a movie, not a photograph. When you see your TV freeze up on a digital picture, you know something is mal functioning. It's having trouble with the signal. But it seems a lot of conservatives have "trouble with their signals". There was someone who when we were studying Buddhism a couple weeks ago said that man should "let his thoughts be in the realm of thought and let his senses be in the realm of the sensual. In other words, man should be "in the moment". Somehow this idea seems more Taoist than Buddhist. Our friend on the radio Neil Savedra broached a rarely talked about subject today- - - Heaven. He said that heaven existed in the pure realm of feeling "in the moment" like making that first kiss last forever. Heaven wasn't about "doing" but rather about "being". Perhaps it's how my mind works but later I heard John Lennon talk about how he came to write "Happiness is a Warm Gun" and he said "A warm gun is one that's just been fired. It's a gun that's just killed something or some-one". I happened to think- - what if a person's fondest fantasy they would want frozen in time is the feeling they got right after committing a murder? It's probably not what Neil had in mind. But the thing is that life is about DOING and not about BEING. If what I said that "Desire" is one of the more important things in life "Doing" is perhaps Thee essential thing that demarcates life. We are what we do. This is karma. I always wondered what we DO in heaven. Well Neil has answered that question- - we DO nothing. Obviously because we are out of the realm of mormal time. Neil says "You humans get just the slightest taste of what heaven is like". Jesus, on the other hand has spent almost his entire existance in this apparent state of bliss. You know, one evangelist said "I can forgive a man much who says to me "I never knew my parents". Well, we are orphans who never knew God. I don't think I have known him. I'd like to go back now to July 15th. 1990. This was kind of a key day for me. Linda Hammer, whom I had known for about thirteen years, invited me to a gathering over at her place with her new husband and some friends. At first I felt good about going. But as the conversation continued- - the more and more convinced I became that I shouldn't go. When the day came, I stayed home. I reasoned "I have a swimming pool here is I decide to go swimming". As it happened it was a warm sunny day. I listened to a special on Jimmy Page on the radio, which I was glad to have heard. Then I went out and talked to a couple Mexican girls in the Jacuzzi. What I didn't know then was that seven months later my thirteen plus relation with Linda Hammer would come to a grinding end after one phone call that went really badly. There was nothing I had DONE. Like with other Christians I could name it never seems it's what I've DONE but how the other person suddenly FEELS about me. It's not what you DO but what you ARE that seems to impress God. Personally, as in the case of the Linda pool party, I don't think hanging out with God is such a good idea for me. I have a good feeling about avoiding the subject alltogether. But Thom Hartman reminds us that liberals and conservatives have the same problem. For a liberal like me they value what you DO. A conservative is fixated on what you ARE, and if you happen to be Black or one of the other ten categories that they despise, you're kind of out of luck.

I’d like to follow up this thought by saying that certain facts don’t need to be ignored. In George Washington’s blog they were talking a lot about Ben Vernanke and how he is “reinflating the financial bubble”. It isn’t just the far right, apparently, that is worried about printing press money. But the logic of these people seems screwy and “George Washington” appears to be playing right into the hands of the fanatical right wingers. If you watched the Mc Laughlin report last night they had a whole slew of economic statistics saying that bank failures were up, and there are too many foreclosures and how sales figures on a broad hose of indexes is down for the 2^nd quarter. In short, people believe there is a very real possibility of a double dip recession. People believe that the economy will be worse six months from now than it is today. It really provides no solice that Ronald Reagan was still looking at really bad economic statistics more than two years into his administration. And all of this time he was speaking of “morning in America”. People bought into Reagan’s pep talks, but they aren’t buying into Obama’s. All the republicans have to do is say the word “Jobs” and the center and right go into some sort of pavlovian reaction. Dr. Levy has said “What’s wrong with this President is that he isn’t making jobs his first priority”. What they mean by this of course is that they want the Rush tax cuts to not expire at the end of the year. Because no matter what the reality is, people buy into this crock about being in the top one percent that will be affected by an income tax hike from 35% to 39%. And corporations will also have their rates hiked from 35% to 39%, which only means this is the new amount that they won’t pay anyway, because corporations never do. Mag Whitman is still spreading these outright lies about Jerry Brown. Now words like “old style government” and “state workers unions” are used as buz words to evoke the proper pavlovian reactions. Some people say “I don’t watch TV because I don’t want to hear all the bad news”. At times I almost wish this were true for people on the right, because that means they wouldn’t have heard these commercials. They may not watch the news but you can bet they’ve had their daily dose of Rush Limbaugh. “Living is easy with eyes closed - - misunderstand all you see”, as Lennon says. But we need to be made aware of something like 2010 being a record hot year world wide. The heat continues in extremes all over the nation today. The Great Lakes are the only area where it’s even vaguely cool, like eighty or so. Of course it’s cool right here on the west coast because our ocean water hasn’t heated up this year. But if you don’t like the news do something about it like write your local congressman and urge him or her to vote for some energy will that reduces carbon consumption. And if you don’t like the losses in Afghanistan, tell your congressmen to pass some resolution against the war and maybe the President will listen. A lot of conservatives don’t trust secretary of treasury Timothy Geitner. Some say “He cheated on his own income taxes and they shoved it under the rug”. Dr. Levy says he doesn’t trust Geitner for this reason. But according to Thom Hartman, having one of those Wall Street people in a sensitive job is good because they know where all the bodies are buried. For this reason Franklin Roosevelt appointed Joseph Kennedy to a financial position even though he really didn’t trust him. But one way in which Roosevelt was different in a way that Obama just doesn’t “get” is that Roosevelt’s philosophy is “I welcome hatred of my enemies. I believe a man should be known by which people hate him”. John Kennedy when running for President said “I do not shrink from this responsibility; I welcome it. I wish that President Obama weren’t so timid in the face of this right wing criticism. People like San Donaldson on ABC state their minds and are not timid. If you’re going to go down, at least go down swinging. President Obama appears more than willing to give up on so many issues like immigration reform and the carbon tax problem, without even putting up a fight. I don’t get it. Why should the President do his enemy’s job for him? For a man who seems to be as scholarly as our President is- - he isn’t exercising very much pragmatic common sense.

I would like to, from first hand experience, heartily refute something I heard Scott Wilkinson said today on the Leo Le Port show. He said that when it comes to overloading a speaker or blowing it out, it’s much more dangerous to have a weak amplifier turned up too loud so as to distort the signal, than have a real powerful amplifier turned up only moderately. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact he has it exactly backwards. When I had my electric guitar I played it through a not so powerful, but efficient amp, and an efficient speaker. As it was I was taking a risk because as with CD’s you are getting those transient peaks that blow out speakers when you play a live electric guitar, that you don’t get from records that have had all the life processed out of them. Thus I was able to blast out a lot of sound and never once did I damage this speaker because electrically it was in the safe zone and the wattage was below what the speaker could handle. I remember John Karchinski bragging to Larry about my amp saying “This sound system is definitely better than yours”. If your wattage of the amp is below what the speaker is rated at, you are safe. I know impedence plays a role, too. But when a weak amp is played too loudly it merely “clips” the wave formations. And this clipping is the safety measure that protects the speaker. As to harmonic distortion, I had very little of that and scarcely how it could be a factor since no harmonic is weaker than the prime, so I don’t know what Scott Wilkinson was referring to. I just went down for afternoon coffee break.

There was this guy on TV on one of these morning educational shows that Mom watched and he was describing the various approaches a politician might take to buying a house in a depressed neighborhood and fixing it up. Glen Beck seemed hung up on this “house” idea last week. The guy said that a conservative for instance might just slap a coat of paint on the house and trim the yard. If the sliding back door didn’t work he’d fix that, and nail down any loose steps on the porch or elsewhere so he didn’t get sued. Now a conservative moderate would go further. He would for instance replace the plumbing fixtures and probably the sinks in the kitchen and bathroom. He’d change the locks, and put on a new roof to the house so it didn’t leak. A progressive moderate would go further. He would totally remodel the kitchen and all the bathrooms and re-do all the cabinets and put in all new light fixtures, and put in new flooring and new carpeting. A straight up liberal would look at this house and say “well the foundation seems sound”. But then he would tear out all the walls and have them reinforced to earthquake codes. He would knock out walls and add rooms- - and when he got done the house would be “re-built” to use Glen Beck’s words. Restored - - rebuilt - - what’s the difference? Now the thing is Glen beck is not a conservative. He doesn’t want to “do nothing”. Instead he is a reactionary who would put a match to the house and burn it down, and then go back to living in a cave. A radical would do something similar, only he would liven in an all plastic modular house, preferably built by space aliens and be in the 21^st Century.