Gleanings from an Abandoned Salt Mine

They say these self appointed experts on the government and the economy are a Dime a Dozen

-I’m looking for the guy that’s supplying the dimes

You know, when he was younger President Obama was employed for a while as an elevator operator

-But they had to let him go. He had trouble memorizing the rout.

You know, Negroes shouldn’t be condemned to doing servile work

-Like following George Bush around with a pooper scooper

The words of politicians are like flowers in a wallpaper pattern

-You know they’re not real and they’re utterly lacking in depth

“Hey, you know Baby Jesus is allowed to go anywhere he wants to in the house to craw around”

“That’s the trouble with Baby Jesus - - - (I don’t need to finish this line, do I?)

"Behold: He was born on third base and he thinks he hit a triple"

The Apostle Paul is said to have remarked, "Roman citizenship is hard to come by, but some manage to purchase it with a great deal of money. But I am a natural born Roman citizen". So I guess what I want to know is 'Who is he trying to impress?"

The Apostle Paul has said "Behold I am dead to the Law, and thus I am at Liberty". But I say that true moral Virtues are not of such a nature that they can be killed, or sunsetted out of Existance".

John Boehner is having trouble with his Caucus

John Boehner may have to bring out the whip to keep his colligues in line. Let's just hope he doesn't bust a rod.

As it is well known, the tea party quickly fell out of favor not that long into 2013. It's too bad Paul Mc Cartney chose to serve tea at the D A R convention at his house. Otherwise tea would not have fell into such bad repute for Americans.

"Hi, my name is Jake the Flake. What can I do?" Mick Jagger cerca June 1969: "I don't know, Brian. What CAN you do?"

"Hey all you tea baggers. What are you brewing up in your witch's caldren today" "Hey, you're Drunk - - leave this meeting" "Tomorrow I shall be sober. But You'll STILL be a mindless right wing nut case"

There may not be much difference - - between Brian Jones - and the Head of the Federal Reserve - - if we check their Math scores.

Street Criminals are "Job Creators" too, but we don't need more of them.

Bill Halliday is a spiritual abortionist

Sure I’ll start listening to Bill Halliday’s sermons again - - the minute I start getting paid the usual hundred dollar an hour Fee.

There is just one real difference between Dixie Locke and “Gypsey Lou”

-“Gypsey Lou” is funnier.

Exercising humor in front of a mental patient is like giving liquor to a recovered alcoholic.

-You can never be sure of the results - - but they could be disasterous

Neil Savedra has the hart and soul of an Actor. He’s far less concerned about the inherent goodness or badness of an act, but rather, how it will play on stage, and the reviews he will get for the performance- - two thousand years later.

Jesus of Nazareth functions as sort of a “Useful Idiot” in canonized Christian scripture.

God and Satan are two sides of the same coin. Each side may appear very different but when you go to spend the coin, you will find they are of equal value

The trials of life don't create character and courage - they reveal it.

It is said Resentment is a horrible thing. I say - "So is Failure", but there are certain things we can't legislate out of existance with the stroke of a pen.

In Communist China they apparently don't believe things like bullet train crashing don't have Causes. They're just "acts of God" or something, and can't even be talked about.

Any person who calls himself Good, but other people ignore him, so he seems to think he can bolster his self worth if only there were more Darth Vadors in the world - - isn't looking hard enough.

Marcion and his writings are like Adolph Hitler in “Mein Kamph” He lays out in the pages his plan to stick it to the Jews and then he tells everybody he knows to read his book and to vote for him to bring him into power. The Orthodox Church is like “Dog whistle speech” like the “birthers” or people who say that Obama is a Moslem or a socialist, or not born in America.

Neil Savedra is like some front man for a dangerous Cult out there entertaining the people who would pass by. He’s like that guy in that Hitchcock episode who is told “Oh, I’m not hiring you as a geek. You’re just filling in for the Real geek till he can return”. But of course the dark secret is that in the course of time Neil Savedra has BECOME the Messiah- - - because the real Jesus of Nazareth is as long dead as Norman Bates’ mother.

It can be said of many World Icons:

“The evil men do lives after then. The good is off interred with their bones”

-Mark Anthony

It was good Christian Germans who voted the Nazi Party into Power

“So they All are- - - Honorable Men”

-Same speech as previous.

Spencer Tracy once said the following:

“Yes, Mister, You can invent the power of flight - - but the birds will lose their wonder - - and the clouds will smell of gasoline”

-But I say unto you, “The sky was already tainted with ground level industrial pollutants, and the magesty of birds in flight is not contingent on what any one man thinks of it”

The trouble with Jesus Christ is – he has spent so much time among the angels that he believes that we humans here on this earth can can be expected to run the race of life- with the effortlessness of the Gods.

The trouble with a Messiah any Christian deems worthy of any worship- - - is hatched fully blown as the object of fancy of some writer- - devoid of an actual Past, in which the incidents instrumental in developing his character occurred

Christians are Born – not Made

Dixie dicks around with the Truth dictating decorum with her Dictaphone delitarious to distracted dissidents

I judge my presidents by their accomplishments – not by their degrees

“Hey, that man over there said that I was “Over Striding”. Do you have any idea what he meant by that?” Response: “Well, I think what he meant was that Blacks will never be accepted by White people regardless of what they have accomplished in their life”

Someone with the heart of a soldier or athlete or a champion, doesn’t change the rules in the middle of the game so that he can kid himself he is winning, when he is losing.

Christians have been mass murderers, Moslems have been mass murderers, but I have yet to come across a mass murderer who was an avowed disciple of Madeline Murray Ohare

Christians are like salt. We should be exposed to a certain amount of them just enough to get a sense of balance in our lives, but consuming too much time with them has been shown by experts to be deleterious to our health.

You always know the latest dance

You claim you’re into true romance

But your kisses make me wonder –

If you’re a Tom boy

It’s really not so strange

I wish that you would change

But I know you’re going to stay

Stuck up as you are

The powder’s never on your face

On you it just looks out of place

You show no real trace

-of true Emotion

It’s really not so strange

I wish that you would change

But I know you’re going to stay

Stuck up as you are

Stuck up as you are

Stuck up as you are

- - - [fade]

Evening shadows make me blue

When each weary day is through

And it’s all because of You

My Misery

The previous poem was found scrawled on the wall in Richard Bachman’s apartment just after they came and carted him off to the booby-hatch

The sun is fading away

That’s the end of the day

As the June light turns to moon light

I’ll be on my way

To where the winds don’t blow

And golden rivers flow

This way will I go- - -

This way will I go - - Hey!

They were right I was wrong

True love didn’t last long

As the June light turns to moon light

I’ll be on my way

-John Lennon (This song is a favorite of mine)

Burt Lombard and Mick Ronson have something in common

They are both mysterious and most of what you know about them had to do with music.

It's Worse than you Think

You know, I was going to write a piece on what President Obama needed to do now. And my solution was to invoke the fourteenth amendment of the US Constitution, which speaks on the idea of not questioning the validity of all debts. Clearly not extending the debt ceiling would be to dishonor our debts and obligations. President Clinton has urged President Obama to invoke the fourteenth amendment and bypass this whole congressional nonsense alltogether. That's obviously the sensible thing to do, but this President is obviously stupid or something. You know he could have saved himself this whole Tea Party problem if he'd just waited on Health Care till he got relyable poll numbers on the subject. The second thing he should have done is to have gone after the just passed Bush Administration. The third thing he should have done is to press for indictments of the bank officials responsible for the financial crisis of September of 2008. The fourth thing he should have done was to release a "clean" copy of his long form birth certificate, and done it immediately as soon as the topic was raised. The fifth thing he should have done, failing all this, was to announce that he would not run again in 2012. This would have diffused the Tea Party bomb and taken the air out of their balloon and sapped their resolved. But clearly this President is an idiot. But it might be worse than this. He might be some kind of a conservative plant in the White House have often times exceeded the offenses of his immediate predicessor, George W Bush. Below are some remarks lifted from another blog, and I hope he won't mind, but I find them interesting, even though I don't fully understand the implications of all of them. But just for a reality check, can you picture ANY previous President of the United States allowing this silly crisis going on for one second?

But first I'd like to address another issue. And that is those who resent referring to Christianity as a violent religion, or that "real Christians don't commit violence" as though the Church, which according to St. Paul is the "Body of Christ" has sponsored many a war. But some say that Jesus taught love and peace. The character Jesus did in the gospel. But he is not the real Jesus. St. Paul spoke of the falocy of "knowing Jesus after the flesh" meaning - trusting in that historical man who walked the earth for a few years. Jesus didn't get called sinless because everyone examined his life and found it to be perfect from birth. Rather Jesus was FIRST called God, and then it was inferred that he was perfect. Do you remember what our government said to justify dropping the Atomic Bomb on Japan. They said "It saved a lot of lives in the long run". Do you think the events Jesus is perported to have endorsed, such as the Roman wars against the Jews- - do you think these did not save but actually COST lives? Not just of those Jewish patriots, but of countless Jews who were persecuted through because of Church bigotry and hatred against the Jews and of course we have Hitler and the extermanation camps. You know, one trait that real Heroes have is that they don't like bullies. And we all know bullying when we see it. You may hold high office but you still don't earn brownie points by closing your eyes and looking the other way when you see wrongs. Don't say "well I'm above all, I'm too Christian for that regular nitty gritty stuff" Or say "My passivity will get me brownie points and help me rise in the polls". I doubt those would have died had Jesus been just a little more jucidious in his use of words. Everything that was placed in the gospels, allowed to be there, was crafted to incite maximum hatred of the Jews. No, I am not going to give the Church a free pass on this one.

PRESIDENT OBAMA - - THE ULTIMATE POLITICAL FRAUD

My philosophy is "either lead, follow, or get out of the way". President Obama has not done any of these three things. It's not in his nature. He has other ideas.

The accusations imply that Obama is on our side. Or was on our side. And that the right wing is pushing him around.

But the evidence is clear that Obama is an often-willing servant of corporate interests -- not someone reluctantly doing their bidding, or serving their interests only because Republicans forced him to.

Since coming to Washington, Obama has allied himself with Wall Street Democrats who put corporate deregulation and greed ahead of the needs of most Americans:

• In 2006, a relatively new Senator Obama was the only senator to speak at the inaugural gathering of the Alexander Hamilton Project launched by Wall Street Democrats like Robert Rubin and Roger Altman, Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary and deputy secretary. Obama praised them as “innovative, thoughtful policymakers.” (It was Rubin’s crusade to deregulate Wall Street in the late ‘90s that led directly to the economic meltdown of 2008 and our current crisis.)
  

• In early 2007, way before he was a presidential frontrunner, candidate Obama was raising more money from Wall Street interests than all other candidates, including New York presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.
  

• In June 2008, as soon as Hillary ended her campaign, Obama went on CNBC, shunned the “populist” label and announced: “Look: I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.” He packed his economic team with Wall Street friends -- choosing one of Bill Clinton’s Wall Street deregulators, Larry Summers, as his top economic advisor.
  

• A year into his presidency, in a bizarre but revealing interview with Business Week, Obama was asked about huge bonuses just received by two CEOs of Wall Street firms bailed out by taxpayers. He responded that he didn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus to J.P. Mogan’s CEO or the $9 million to Goldman Sachs’ CEO: “I know both those guys, they are very savvy businessmen,” said Obama. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”

• After any review of Obama’s corporatist ties and positions, the kneejerk response is: “Yes, but Obama was a community organizer!”

  He WAS a community organizer. . .decades before he became president. Back when Nelson Mandela was in prison and the U.S. government declared him the leader of a “terrorist organization” while our government funded and armed Bin Laden and his allies to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. That’s a long time ago.

  It’s worth remembering that decades before Reagan became president, the great communicator was a leftwing Democrat and advocate for the working class and big federal social programs.

  The sad truth, as shown by Glenn Greenwald, is that Obama had arrived at the White House looking to make cuts in benefits to the elderly. Two weeks before his inauguration, Obama echoed conservative scares about Social Security and Medicare by talking of “red ink as far as the eye can see.” He opened his doors to Social Security/Medicare cutters -- first trying to get Republican Senator Judd Gregg (“a leading voice for reining in entitlement spending,” wrote Politico) into his cabinet, and later appointing entitlement-foe Alan Simpson to co-chair his “Deficit Commission.” Obama’s top economic advisor, Larry Summers, came to the White House publicly telling Time magazine of needed Social Security cuts.

Marshall Auerback argues:

The debt ceiling dispute is not forcing a compromise on this President, but is instead is viewed by him as a golden opportunity to do what he’s always wanted to do.

***

Unlike President Hoover, who inherited the foundations of a huge credit bubble from the 1920s and found himself overwhelmed by it, this President is worse.

***

The predictable result is of his current stance is that, even as he claims to recognize the interlocking nature of the problems facing us and vows to “solve the problem” once and for all via a “grand bargain”, Obama is in fact tearing apart most of the foundations which were tentatively initiated under Hoover, but which came to full fruition under FDR. If he continues down this ruinous path, $150 billion/month in spending will be cut. Such economic thinking isn’t worthy of Mellon, let alone Herbert Hoover.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

Obama ... has done more to subvert and weaken the left's political agenda than a GOP president could have dreamed of achieving. So potent, so overarching, are tribal loyalties in American politics that partisans will support, or at least tolerate, any and all policies their party's leader endorses – even if those policies are ones they long claimed to loathe.

This dynamic has repeatedly emerged in numerous contexts. Obama has continued Bush/Cheney terrorism policies – once viciously denounced by Democrats – of indefinite detention, renditions, secret prisons by proxy, and sweeping secrecy doctrines.

He has gone further than his predecessor by waging an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, seizing the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process far from any battlefield, massively escalating drone attacks in multiple nations, and asserting the authority to unilaterally prosecute a war (in Libya) even in defiance of a Congressional vote against authorising the war.

And now he is devoting all of his presidential power to cutting the entitlement programmes that have been the defining hallmark of the Democratic party since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The silence from progressive partisans is defeaning – and depressing, though sadly predictable.

***

Obama is now on the verge of injecting what until recently was the politically toxic and unattainable dream of Wall Street and the American right – attacks on the nation's social safety net – into the heart and soul of the Democratic party's platform. Those progressives who are guided more by party loyalty than actual belief will seamlessly transform from virulent opponents of such cuts into their primary defenders.

Progressive economist Michael Hudson writes:

The most reasonable explanation for [Obama's] empty threat is that he is trying to panic the elderly into hoping that somehow the budget deal he seems to have up his sleeve can save them. The reality, of course, is that they are being led to economic slaughter. (And not a word of correction reminding the President of financial reality from Rubinomics Treasury Secretary Geithner, neoliberal Fed Chairman Bernanke or anyone else in the Wall Street Democrat administration, formerly known as the Democratic Leadership Council.)

It is a con. Mr. Obama has come to bury Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, not to save them. This was clear from the outset of his administration when he appointed his Deficit Reduction Commission, headed by avowed enemies of Social Security Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, and President Clinton’s Rubinomics chief of staff Erskine Bowles. Mr. Obama’s more recent choice of Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats be delegated by Congress to rewrite the tax code on a bipartisan manner – so that it cannot be challenged – is a ploy to pass a tax “reform” that democratically elected representatives never could be expected to do.

The devil is always in the details. And Wall Street lobbyists always have such details tucked away in their briefcases to put in the hands of their favored congressmen and dedicated senators. And in this case they have the President, who has taken their advice as to whom to appoint as his cabinet to act as factotums to capture the government on their behalf and create “socialism for the rich.”

***

Usually a crisis is needed to create a vacuum into which these toxic details are fed. Wall Street does not like real crises, of course – except to make quick computer-driven speculative gains on the usual fibrillation of today’s zigzagging markets. But when it comes to serious money, the illusion of a crisis is preferred, staged melodramatically to wring the greatest degree of emotion out of the audience much like a good film editor edits a montage sequence. Will the speeding train run over the girl strapped to the tracks? Will she escape in time?

The train is debt; the girl is supposed to be the American economy. But she turns out to be Wall Street in disguise. The exercise turns out to be a not-so-divine comedy. Mr. Obama offers a plan that looks very Republican. But the Republicans say no. There is an illusion of a real fight.

Beam Me Up, Scotty

THE SPEECH PRESIDENT OBAMA SHOULD HAVE GIVEN

My fellow Americans. We are here to night to discuss a very serious topic. But before we get started I would like to address myself to the TV networks and their practice of putting on a rebuttal to address delivered from the Office. As President of all the land I would like to believe I speak for the entire country and not leave myself open to be sniped at by some right fringe upstart malcontent who like all the rest of this phoney tea party movement are what Vice President Spiro Agnew would call "negative nabobs of negativism". Ladies and gentleman, there IS a serious crisis now but it's NOT the one that Republicans would have you believe it is- - not in the least. They would lead you to believe that we have a deficet crisis and justify their numerous below the belt political tacticts to justify the unjustifyable. There IS no "deficet crisis". Our government bonds and T bills and other money instruments are quite sound and AAA rated, as are those of many other nations like Japan who have a sizable budget deficet. However the Republicans' motives are not what they claim to be. Not by a long shot. Their actual goal is to crash this economy prior to next year's election and thus hope to gain the office of President next year. It's pointless for them to try and deny this, because were it not true, their actions would not have been what they are. Ye shall know them by their fruits. These fringe Republicans who took over in this election past have stated this goal often, and in many ways. My fellow Americans, good Americans do not do this. What they are doing is tantamount to economic treason. They say they are worried about the deficet. But is they really were, John Boehner would have agrees with me on a bill last week when we came close. I have been more than patient with my Republican colligues. But he said he would not compromize the pledge many of his coolgues surrupticiously and illegally made not to raise taxes no matter what the circumstance. This is the height of irresponsability. But Mr. Boehner is under pressure from those to the far right. He imagines these fringe tea party candidates will not win a primary if they do not stick to their no new taxes pledge. But I don't believe when people know the actual facts they will want to vote for a policy that will cause them to lose their jobs or for grandma to not get needed medical treatment, or for money to get tighter and economic uncertainty to increase. But these things will indeed occur if we do not come to an agreement in the next week. This deadline has no extensions. Were they all that concerned about the deficet they would have grabbed my offer with both hands to cut four trillion dollars from the federal deficet. But they didn't. Even now as you talk to many of them, their apathy about the approaching August 2nd deadline only grows with each passing day as the situation becomes increasingly out of reach. On August 2nd of next week, the nation will default and be unable to pay it's bills. My fellow Americans, when you in your own household decide you can't afford things in the future you do not unilaterally decide not to pay your outstanding bills and obligations. President Ronald Ronald Reagan spoke at length on this topic in a similar crisis in the 1980's. In that speech me made the identical points I am making today. If this default is allowed to come to pass, interests rates will go up and money will be tight and loans needed for economic expansion will be impossible to get. Prices of bonds will fall, and our credit standing around the world will fall. The Republicans will have at long last achieved the goal they were dreaming of ever since I took office. People such as Glen Beck have been predicting for years we'd have runaway inflation and skyrocketing interest rates because of my policies. Some two and a half years later this never happened. But now these republican fringe elements in the House are going to on their own endeavor to MAKE it happen. Ladies and Gentlemen, this should be a routine thing to raise the national debt ceiling. To use this event as a partisan political football is the worst kind of hitting below the belt. And I believe the American people have an inherent sense of knowing what's fair, and what is not. Eisenhaur, Nixon, and Reagan must all be turning over in their graves at the prospect of what is happening now. The Republicans just passed a cut, cap and ballance bill that not only makes massive cuts in vital government services, but also institutes a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget. In the 1972 Republican Convention they voted down such a provision as unworkable. If President Nixon found it unacceptable, why should it be any more acceptable today considering we have not had a balanced budget since 1969. Indeed Republicans through the ages have cited the proverb, "Deficets don't matter". These rises in the national debt ceiling for the past hundred years and up to this year have always been completely routine. Ronald Reagan had 17 such rises during his political tenure. Also, interest rates under Ronald Reagan were much higher than today meaning he subjected the American people to a perportionately much higher financial burden than is the case today. It's our patriotic duty to insure that America is economically respected around the world, and they are putting this as risk. These republicans have absolutely no pride in America, and they also lack any shame at what they are doing to this country by their petty and ill conceived actions. At this time I would like to remind you that George Bush, my predicessor is far from blameless in the problems we are having today with the deficet, and I think he'd be the first to admit it. It was George Bush who did the giveway to the drug and insurance companies with Medicare Part D, that guarenteed the drug companies top price for everything and stripped our government from any power to negotiate the price down. It was George Bush who put so many items "off budget" and thus did not show up in the official deficet tallies. It was George Bush who promoted the real estate crisis we are still suffering from. And it was George Bush who manufactured our war in Iraq and sent our young men there on completely fraudelent grounds. And evidence has clearly come to light that George Bush KNEW they were fraudelent reasons at the time, saying that Saddam Hussein has "weapons of mass destructions". First of all it cannot be overstated the connection between the Bush family and the Saudi families - - and by the way fifteen of the nineteen 9 - 11 hijackers were Saudis. Bush has maintained a close relation with the Saudis and it was most likely they who wanted Saddam Hussein gone because his brand of moderate Islam was not to their liking, and they preferred the more radical Wahabbiest variety. President Bush thought if he could trump up a phoney war he could gain "political capital" and rise in the polls in time for the election of 2004. And he was right, if you don't count the voters in Ohio. But wars cost money. They kill people and our soldiers come back a shadow of the men they were and need extensive medical therapy to be rehabilitated into society. All of this costs money. But these Republicans don't care about our Veterans any more than they care about medical care for older Americans which they have come to depend on. The goal of these tea party republicans is nothing short of the dismanteling of the American Government as we know it. One of their own has stated that their goal is to "shrink the size of the American government down to where it can be drowned in the bathtub". This is their avowed goal. Not to trim waste in programs, and not even to cut the deficet. Were this true they would be much more open to revenue enhancement and closing gaping tax loopholes for giant international corporations. Indeed there is indeed waste in government, and I have stressed my concern about this time and time again. But the House voted down a tax law that would end our government's actually subsedizing corporations from moving over seas, and with them all those jobs, because they refused to eliminate the tax write off that enable this. Indeed I myself was accused of wanting to cut grandma's medicare by my Health Care reforms. Many good programs will have to be put on hold during this crisis. Yet I have been accused of not wanting to cut anything and I imagine Senator Boehner will again repeat this false assumption when he speaks. What they are about instead can be summarized in the words "starve the beast". But, my fellow Americans, YOU are the Government. You, the American People hold 65% of all American bonds which fund the government. So to say that the government should default is to default against yourselves. Do not let the Republicans get away with this. Get on the phone right now and call them, and keep calling them and tell them you will not stand for another minute of this needless delay, but to come to an agreement immediately. In doing this maybe we can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, for all of us. I wish you God's speed. Thank you and good night.

You know – one in these troubled times tempted to say “Beam me up, Scotty”. Of course you know our scheduled Rapture is scheduled for September 28^th or just two months away. The time will be fast upon us. Of course I was thinking of announcing a delay of that event for another three years to September 24^th 2014, same time and place. But I don’t know if this chaos we are in can go on that long. We have no idea of knowing what sort of President a Rick Perry or a Mitt Romney or Michelle Bachman would make. Of course to ask Bachman about her frequent and disabeling migranes would be sexist or something, so as Nancy Pelosi would say, that topic is “Off the table”. The American people have gone insane, without a brain in their head. Of course the majority of these people claim to be Christian. But they couldn’t put together a coherent story of the resurrection of Jesus to save their lives that would survive even the most innocent of questions from one who might be genuinely curious. They say Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. How did they learn that? Judas was dead. He couldn’t tell them. And law enforcement usually doesn’t publicise the identity of informants. As to what was done with the money- - some say it was to buy a potters field to bury the poor. Others said Judas bought a piece of land with it and fell to his death and his insides burst out. I’m wondering. Doing business on the Sabbath was prohibited. So Judas had to wait till Sunday. According to the way all the movies portray it Judas hung himself over a cliff several hundred feet high and the rope broke. Then somehow his disfigured corps now rotting in the desert sun, the portion of it that hadn’t been eaten by scavengers- - and somehow a disciple was just passing by and identified it. But Jesus appeared to his disciples that very evening, so that poses very little time for Judas to have done all that. And I’m wondering if Judas knew Jesus was alive he surely would have met with him. We are told the three women on the way to the tomb mused on how they would roll the stone away. But Mary Magdolane came to the tomb even earlier while it was still dark- - and met the gardener who she took to be Jesus. So why didn’t SHE tell the other two women the SECOND time she went to the tomb the stone had already been rolled away? Why were Jesus’ disciples still in town anyhow when according to the Zachariah prophecy they were “sheep to be scattered”. They say soldiers gambled for Jesus’ robe. Yet the Roman soldiers GAVE him a purple robe to wear, which they draped on his bloody body, and then he appeared on stage with Pilate in front of the crowd that way wearing the purple robe. And those two men in a city twenty miles away. They had a talk with a stranger they later came to believe was Jesus after he had gone. But they didn’t talk about the fact that Pilate had pardoned a hardened zealot who had committed a murder. Surely that’s a topic for gossip. And they didn’t talk about the curtain in the temple being rent in two. They didn’t talk about either of the two massive earthquakes that hit the City, nor the fact that graves were opened and dead people were arising and walking through the city. As Gene Scott says, “Try pudding a little flesh and blood on these characters”. And of course not too many people in those days slowly ascended into the sky like a UFO, in an era that didn’t even have balloons. But somehow the people didn’t know about this. Of course if money exchanged hands (on a Sabbath, which was illegal) when the priests told the Roman Authorities to place a quatrane of troops to guard the tomb of a convicted criminal because there were roomers he would rise again- - - well, it just gets curiouser and curiouser. But me I’m like “Mr Potter” and I say “I see you are troubled- - and you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to help you out. I’m going to cite instances from the Bible - - - “. Did you know that a man who sacrificed his own daughter as a burnt offering is hailed as a “Hero of Faith” in the book of Hebrews in the N T. People say that Cain married a distant relative like a 2^nd cousin or something- - in some remote city, where he had fled because “He didn’t want people finding out he had murdered his brother” and God agreed to protect him- - - because you never when some desert caravan might be traveling from Adam’s farm to some city which- - - now we have a problem. There were no people so how could they build a city. Cain HAD no other older siblings who had “left the farm and moved to the big city”. Walter Martin’s been watching too many old movies. All Cain and Abel’s siblings would be YOUNGER than they were, and probably needed as workers around the place doing the usual farm chores- - - and they in the context of the story were probably but teenagers themselves. So we are left with the option of a bunch of “Children of the Corn” types- - maybe ten brothers and sisters probably with an average age of ten or eleven- - all going across the desert to build a city and then have sex with each other and begin having kids. People’s explanations for things are laughable.

This is the next morning, Wednesday July 27th. and I'd like to throw in a "prequel" at this time. For some of you who thought the "Children of the Corn" analogy was over the top, I say "not one bit". The oldest child, presumably the leader may be fifteen or sixteen, like Malachai was in the movie. Picture being raised by parents who talked about a land of talking serpents in a garden Paradise to the west, the east gate of which was guarded by two angels, with flaming swords that moved every which way. To say this story is not an "essential" element in Christianity is again to miss the target. Jesus spoke of Adam and Eve as literal beings. However in other areas Jesus liked to cherry pick scripture. For instance, Jesus regarded the making of any vows to either the LORD or a human being as a snare of the devil. Jesus said "Do not swear". Jesus said if you married a divorced woman YOU were guilty of Adultery. Jesus obviously never read the scripture where the prophet Hoseah was ordered to take a prostitute for a wife. Jesus also said that the Old Testament law was some sort of degraded or compromised version, despite incessent references elsewhere in the Old Testament to the law of god being perfect, and to meditate on it day and night. Jesus also taught that blood atonement was not absolute. If you did not forgive your brother, neither would God forgive you, regardless of whether you were "covered by the blood". And now here are some other worthwhile coments fro yesterday.

We are now in concrete. This is Tuesday after three on July 26, 2011 and Bill is out of the room. The soap opera demonstrated that Victor is both a bully and a queer lover and in my opinion only diminished what little credibility he had by his behavior today. You know, homosexuals are not immune from being assholes or causing embarrassing social situations for others. And they won’t acknowledge that.

Money draw call came near two. It was a short line. I guess Loretta Hill has already been. I went in and received fifteen from [name withheld]. I wanted sixteen. I took three pieces of candy. I was going to buy a snack at the store but now I’ll have to spend that money on coffee. Janet’s little request actually cost me a dollar and a quarter of this week’s money. I’ve got enough coffee for one more cup. They music class met today. I went out and got two cups of coffee from Dora. I also got coffee from Dora in the morning. I had Randy Rhodes on at noon and after two. Oscar is hosing down the patio so I went out front to smoke. Nora was by at about 10:30 to change the linens. I’m going to save that coffee lid because the normal one with those cans doesn’t seal tight.

Yesterday just before noon Dr. Levy’s class convened. Of course Dr. Levy fancies himself an expert on economics and between the two of us he is the one presumed to have the more knowledge although I spend all day listening to the stuff and information compiled by people more industrious than I. Whereas he brags that he only watches ten minutes of news a day and that’s it. Someone said Marie Calendar pies are definitely closing down, all of them. The company is going into bankruptsy. I mentioned this on a blog in passing weeks ago as a roomer. We had our check-in. Joe read four favorite poems from Dr. Levy’s book, and they were good ones. Then Dr. Levy wanted to talk yet more about creative aging, as though we hadn’t more than beaten that horse to death. Dr. Levy grilled us with a few test questions. The corrected version of our poem was passed out. At one I went up here briefly and then met Dr. Levy and we went to his car to go to the bank. I went in alone. My account was $58.50 or something, but I forget to get a receipt. He said he knew of no “secret question” that people who called an 800 number were supposed to answer. On the way home I mentioned the ontological delema about knowing something may be true but not being able to prove it. Would that still be called objectivism if it was an “objective” truth? I them nentioned the perils of utilitarianism and capitalism and how both are fine within moral boundaries.

When a "Terrorist" is not a Terrorist

Thom Hartman opened his show with this topic this morning. That guy who set off the car bomb in Norway and then killed 68 children at a "labor party supper camp" was constantly referred to as a "terrorist" while they thought he was an Islamic working for Al Qaeda or whatever. But when it was found out he was just your garden variety right wing Born Again redneck, the word "Terrorist" was suddenly dropped from all news accounts. This shooter is pure evil. We know that. He was dressed as a police officer to gain admittence to the island. From then on it was like shooting fish in a barrel since nobody at the camp was armed. The furtelizer bomb had the same chemical compound as the bomb in the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy Mc Vey and Terry Nichols. He is of the identical political stripe. He wrote out a Ted Kazinsky style "Manifesto" which had some anti technology stuff in it but mostly he just raged against the immigration policy of his country and how they allowed Moslems there. Some of the right wing and not so right wing sources made pure jackasses of themselves in their editorials over the weekend. "The Wall Street Journal" was running stuff like "This only goes to show that President Obama is wrong in wanting to wind down the war in Afghanistan, and why we shouldn't cut our defense budget because we never know there the next attack from Al Qaeda is coming from". Others went so far however as to declare this "labor party summer camp" is a "Hitler youth" training facility by liberals. However if you actually check the FBI.gov web site and look at the statistics on terrorism you find that a full 42% of US terrorist attacks are Latino in origen, such as various Puerto Rican liberation fronts. There are a number of left leaning groups on the list. But there are only six percent of the attacks tracable to Islamic groups and they trail attacks by the Jewish Defense League at 7%. And yet we are told how much a threat "Islamo-fasciests" are. This term is an oxy-moronism, of course. People will say or write anything if they think it will sell newspapers, or raise them up a few notches in the polls. But years ago there was some major terrorism report done by the Bush administration that stressed that the political right of this country was a major threat as far as future terrorist attacks in this country are concerned.

Of course the beating of that Giants fan at Dodger Stadium after the game on opening night is in the news again. They had the wrong suspect for months. But now it's determined that though he was guilty of parole violations and other offences, he was shacking up in a motel room with his girlfriend and wasn't at Dodger Stadium that night. The two new suspects they do have now, and a third girlfriend of one of them, are bad dudes. Apparently they cut out the guy's tongue and gauged out one of his eyes in one of the attacks. The police had never released that information before and it sheds rather a new light on the thing- - as being something of a whole different order than your garden variety beating. They do have things called "enhanced" charges - - such mayhem- - which I imagine could get the suspects 25 years to life.

This is a period of firsts and last. Yesterday the Tour De France came to a conclusion with a winner. Last Friday they officially did away with "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" but the edict does not go into effect for another sixty days, or till about the first day of autumn. So I guess you could still get kicked out during this period. Of course over the weekend they had their first gay weddings in New York. So what is the in thing now- - - a gay ceremony at the foot of the Status of Liberty with doves and flowers and everything. So I guess it's all "Best Men" and so it's a whole line of men up front, like a glee club, probably dressed in white tuxes to symbolize purity or something, and no bride's maids. The whole thing is a little much for me. I see little difference in this than a ceremony where a man marries his car. I don't see a good future for the institution of marriage. And on Friday the last space shuttle craft landed in pre dawn darkness officially ending the thirty year long space shuttle program. Now we'll only have private groups in space funded by corporations. And of course Amy Weinhaus' carrier came to an end on Saturday when the British singer showed up dead of a drug overdose. It is one of those cases where a lot of people saw it coming. She now joins the "27 Club" along with Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain. Brian Jones only made it to 26 before he died, as you know from the poem on "Through the Past Darkly", a vague Corinthians allusion.

I'm trying to read my notes "Buddy Ruemey" (?) anyhow there is another Republican running for President who is probably "too old" or at least that's how they'll attack him. He wants to restore the economic terriff policy we had in this country from Alexander Hamilton through to Jimmy Carter where the average terriff on foreign goods was 22% (or was it higher?) At any rate it was a primary means of raising taxes for a big part of this country's history. And I thought we were looking for new revenues, but apparently not, because nobody is upset about the August 2nd deadline any more. Anyhow our policy now is the subsedize the transfer of a corporation's factory and headquarters to another country. Moving is expensive, you know. People like Judy and Dr. Levy act like it's as simple as pie and anybody would do it. No, our governments HELPS them move by allowing them gigantic tax write-offs. Apparently the House passed a bill to get rid of this anti job provision of the law when the House was ruled by Democrats, but a minority of Senate republicans killed it. Keep in mind the forty percent of republicans in that body at the time probably represented only ten or twelve percent of the entire US population. Otherwise the President would have signed the bill into law.

I have had various Deja Vu experiances involving the Beatles at the BBC. For one thing the song "Young Blood" when I first heard it by the Coasters, probably in the LATE sixties- - seemed to me to be way too slow and just "wrong". It turns out I was right. The Beatles did it completely differently. I experianced Deja Vu listening to the BBC tape with "I Forgot to Remember to Forget" on it, because before that song even came up I KNEW it was coming, even though I had never heard this tape before. I also had never heard the Brian Matthews introduction to this song, which, knowing his kind of humor, was predictable. Of course the chronology is a little different from the CD package because one of the early sessions had "I'm Gona Find My Baby", "A Shot of Rhythm and Blues" and "Young Blood" all recorded for the same program. Brian Matthews introduced the middle song - by Arthur Alexander by saying "Wel'll feel better or we will, after a shot of rhythm and blues". The segment opens with a rather contentious John Lennon. Of course "Lonesome Tears in my Heart" spawned Deja Vu thoughts, partially because I think maybe I heard the song before but more because the guitar riff sounds like the guitar riff in "The Balad of John and Yoco". As to the song "I Just Don't Understand" I sure thought April Stevens and Nino Temple did this song, but nobody else remembers that. You know, I was going to make this a whole lot longer paragraph but we'll save it for later.

This is Monday July 25, 2011 and Augustine was just in to check for toilet paper. Nora was in here and unhappy about my moving the chair out of place and having the spread on the floor and the bed unmade. I just called Mom at three using the number of the new card, which I had to fish for because it’s been some weeks since I even got that one. The problem has been too few calls and too long a period of clasped time. Judge Pirro is on right now. The floor buffer still smells of mildew. There seems to have been other commotion in the hall but so far I have not seen the green cart. Me and Mom had a nice conversation. Her weight is holding steady, but not going down. She lost the ‘House and Garden” station on her cable, and perhaps others. I confirmed that her cable still isn’t HD. She still gets visits from [name deleted] who checks out her computer. They exchange magazines. [name deleted] recommended the grape juice. I told Mom that they have stopped serving milk around here for lunch. The weather isn’t as hot today.

Last night it was ABC network news and at twelve after six I went down to the living room despite my generally feeling a little sick and definitely tired and not operating on all eight cylinders. I sat on the couch and waited there 25 minutes for Seid and Nicky to arrive, and listened to Wally talk about his experiences as a fork lift operator. Finally I left and had a smoke. Then I went back down at ten to seven and now the size of the crowd seemed to have more than doubled. Seid a Nicky are nothing is not erratic. They brought vanilla ice cream with them and I had one standard “large” serving and a second small serving. We were also served a Russian “hot dog” that Seid says is made out of lamb. I don’t know – but whatever it was it was going bad. We talked about the Temple ceremony yesterday for four people here that were officially confirmed into the church, Manfred, Wally, Elizabeth, and Marcia. Lorrie had told me that Marcia felt she was being socially shunned, and puzzled I asked why, and she said “Because she is Black”. This is the God’s truth but her race didn’t even register to me - - I never thought about it – till that very moment. It’s kind of a sober eye opener. When I arrived Seid greeted me and shook my hand. I was looking for a chair and brought one over and set it down and this guy in a wheel chair ordered me to “move it” because I was blocking his view. The room had so many walkers and things scattered about and I said “Where shall I put it?” and he said “Take it out to the street for all I care”. He later gave another late arrival a hard time and Laurie told him to “Knock it off”. Good for her. I didn’t stay but about twenty or twenty-five minutes. Then I went out for a cigarette.

Sixty Minutes had this thing on the corruption of cops in New Orleans I had never seen before. They said the murder rate in “The Big Easy” is now the highest in the nation and rattled off troubling statistics. One person said “A lot of cities have temporary spikes in their murder rate. We just seem to have more of them than most. In that class poem there was a line about “If you go to New Orleans you’ll find that the food is greasy”. Dr. Levy set the bar real low on this poem. How about “If you go to New Orleans you’ll find that getting away with murder is easy”. Or if you want to be not so nice you could say “If you go to New Orleans you’ll find that the Niggers are greasy”. At any rate I wasn’t real sure what sort of “corruption” the P D was experiencing. Then they had that thing on sharks and how “sharks are people too”. The thing is to find a shark who is “a player” and one you think you can swim with. Kind of like Nicole picking out her next husband, hoping she doesn’t get devoured. You want a shark who is curious about man, but not angry or aggressive. He went on to say that the death statistics on sharks is really low and how “in fact many people at the beach have actually had positive encounters with sharks and didn’t know it”. Kinda like space aliens, huh? The trick of course is to never show fear and of course, don’t splash or do anything else to make them think you’re a seal, because they love seal blubber for its high fat content. And sharks don’t like contact with metal so the camera is kind of your protect device that says “Don’t come close”.

After this it was a strange Simpson’s episode. (They’re ALL pretty strange, these days) Last week’s Cleveland Show was so awful I’m never watching it again, so switched to some unknown show on KCOP. I went to bed at nine, and managed to sleep well. But I wasn’t 100% in the morning and had diaria. My innards have some sort of bug. We are on page seven. I brewed coffee. We had corn flakes for breakfast and then scrambled eggs and butter and jelly. Andrew gave me his orange juice. The rest of the morning was pretty non eventful. I had Stephanie Miller on before and after breakfast and had Thom Hartman on. I did make a lot of notes I intend to use but not here. We had ham sandwiches for lunch and red tomatoish soup. Laurie gave me another half sandwich and also her Fritos. We had bananas for desert. Coffee is a less important factor now that I have my own coffee maker and can have it any time I want.

This is after dinner. We had pepper steak with unflavored white rice. We don’t seem to get the good stuff any more, and also coloflour and broccoli. We had peaches in lemon pudding for desert, which was different. Eye Witness news is on now. Janet wants her coffee. Joe wants his coffee. Everybody is eager today. Well, coffee is not cheap. It gets used up, too. It doesn't last forever. Dr. Levy said maybe I should take donations when I buy the coffee - - along the same vein is chipping in to buy a pizza.

Today the NFL announced that the players voted and ratified a ten year NFL contract so we are all set for football in the fall. “Captain America” actually beat out “Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows Part II” in the box office, which slipped to number two. The smurfs are starring in their first 3 D adventure. I saw a preview of that movie yesterday and the idea of using that cartoon series for a movie is idiotic. Jerry Brown wants to give illegal aliens student financial aid while putting the screws to the rest of us.

America Dodges A Bullet

The threatened government shut-down we all feared to occur at nine o clock tonight has been averted. KTLA interrupted the boy Lex Luther running in terror through a corn field to bring us an address from the President of the United State. Democrats and Republicans came to an agreement tonight to compromize. The President had to make sacrifices, but now government workers and our troops in uniform in particular, will get paid. Details of the agreement are still not forthcoming but apparently the budget is scheduled for long enough for congress to take one of its many, many vacations - this one two weeks - to return to this budget problem upon their return. The President generally seems happy about this compromise. This breakthrough constitutes a major defeat for the Tea Party, who was counting a shut down to cause general chaos in government and to sabotage this already weak economy. We can now all rest knowing metaphorically that we will live to fight another day.

The following news dispatch hot off the Google press flagged my attention because of it’s assenine nature, so in Rush Limbaugh fashion I am now going to repeat each line point by point. Later on we are going to have some plum remarks by an actual Tea Party afficianado. I decided to go with the alias of "Minister X" because people on the Right are forever quoting "Minister Faracon" on his various statements. (I believe the term is a veiled allusion to the old Black Panther Party that used to address its appointed officers as "Minister") Anyhow, I got to thinking how unfair it was and decided that people on the right deserved also to have the "honor" of being elevated to the status as "Minister". I almost didn't run this tonight but due to a glitch in my computer shutting down, when I came back from buying cigarettes the screen was still up and so I canceled and got to work. The following is vis Fox News.

As the deadline for a government slowdown approaches, liberals are leading the charge to blame the budget impasse on the Tea Party movement. This is because the Democrats last night agreed to a seventy billion dollar budget cut but the tea party crowd said no, and thus quite rightly the tea party is responsible for the shut-down. They after all are the ones with the signs “Shut It Down” and the like.

This progressive political strategy serves a two-fold objective. First, by assigning responsibility for the failing budget negotiations on the Tea Party, liberals hope to avoid any culpability in the morass. But “Hope” has nothing to do with it. The liberals and Obama tried to avert it with every manner of compromise. Second, if there is a government slowdown, they want any public hardships blamed on anyone but themselves. Not just “anyone” but the Tea Party themselves.

After years of trying to label the Tea Party movement as extremist, liberals now hope that shuttered museums, national park closures and concerns about grandma not getting her Social Security check next month, will turn public opinion against the social movement responsible for ending liberals’ virtual monopoly on political power in Washington. That’s true. A government shut down will cause chaos, and the tea party will do anything to sabotage this faltering economy to improve Republican chances next year.

With the potential loss of the Senate and executive branch next year, liberals are looking for the political equivalent of kryptonite to weaken the relative superpower of the Tea Party movement. The tea party controls one half or one half of one half of one third of governmental power. It’s truly a case of the tail wagging the dog. Republicans themselves are divided about the Tea Party. And Republicans comprise only one half the house, which comprises only one half of the legislature, etcetra, etcetra.

Given the high stakes of a government slowdown and an opportunity to exploit the crisis for political gain, it was not shocking to hear about the liberal’s strategy to blame the Tea Party coming straight from the mouth of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. If car dealer A rips you off and you now turn to car dealer B, I suppose it can be said that “B” profited from how badly car dealer A screwed up.

In a recent conference call with Senate colleagues in which he unknowingly laid out the strategy to reporters who were also on the call, Schumer instructed that the spin was to blame the Tea Party movement for conservative Sen.s sticking to legislation already passed in the House of Representatives that cut a mere $61 billion in spending. “I always use the word ‘extreme,’” he said. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.” “Extreme” seems to me to be the best word for it.

Schumer followed his marching orders as dutifully as Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. Durbin, commenting about House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, “And he has to tell his Tea Party ‘roughriders’ to put their horses in the barn. Save this argument for another day.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., can’t open his mouth these days without slamming the Tea Party movement. The irony, of course, is that it’s not the Tea Party’s fault that in April 2011 Congress is sill haggling over the budget due in September 2010. The accountability for not having a budget resides fully with President Obama and his allies on Capitol Hill, who controlled the legislative agenda with a vast majority until this past January. I don’t understand that myself. Only that congress last year was very productive with a lot of other vital legislation. Like Obamacare, liberals could have used their political advantage to ram a budget through Congress and Obama could have signed it.

But the budget was not a priority. Instead, Obama and his progressive congressional allies spent their political capital and time having the government take over our nation’s health care system and trying to legislate fossil fuels out of existence through a “cap-and-trade” scheme. A budget just didn’t fit into this busy progressive agenda. “Cap and trade” sucks. Taxes on energy are the last thing we need in this recession.

Liberals’ failure to act left it up to the new congressional leadership. The conservative House passed a budget in February, but the Senate — still controlled by liberals — has yet to pass anything similar. The senate is controlled by Democrats. I would not call them all liberals.

Words can lie, but numbers don’t. In context, cutting $61 billion — or the $100 billion wanted by the Tea Party — from a federal budget expected to spend $3.8 trillion is far from extreme. They aren’t cutting waste in medicare or the military or funding for any of our three wars. They aren’t closing tax loopholes. They are cutting the small percentage of discressionary federal spending that helps the least fortunate among us. The sheer fact that liberals are threatening a government slowdown over a mere 1.6 percent cut in the total budget just reeks of political shenanigans. No liberals are “threatening” a government shut down. Again it is the tea party that is clamoring for that.

As opposed to the last government slowdown, liberals are misplaying their hand. Clinton-era slowdowns hurt conservatives, and that’s what the liberals expect this time. Or in the words of Dr. Phil, “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior”. What they are not considering is that debt was not a concern back then. This bit of detail is immitareal to the general belief it will hurt the tea party. Fear of the exploding national deficit — a key Tea Party rallying point — is on virtually everyone’s mind these days. Moreover, progressive demonization of the Tea Party movement is not working. It didn’t work when they tried to marginalize and discredit the movement by calling its members racists and it’s not working now as they try to blame the Tea Party movement for the lack of a budget deal. The racism of the tea party is there on the public record for all to hear, and this debacle will also be evident for all to see.

More problematic for Obama and company is that more Americans are siding with the Tea Party, and this rise seems to correlate with increasing frustration over Congress.

According to polling conducted by Rasmussen Reports:

• 49 percent of voters believe the Tea Party movement is having a positive effect on the nation; I don’t believe that number for a second. • 48 percent of likely U.S. voters say that their opinions on major issues match the average Tea Party member more than average member of Congress; and • 45 percent think Tea Party members understand the problems facing America better than the average member of Congress. The media covers any rally of the tea party no matter how small but when massive demonstrations occur in support of labor unions or against the Wars we are in, the media ignores that.

Tea Party activism is the driving force demanding accountability from the government that serves the people. Liberal efforts to play political word games and smear tactics is not a substitute for an effective political strategy to meet the challenges facing Americans. The clock is indeed ticking, and time is running out for politicians playing the same old games. Dylan once said, “Don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin and there’s no telling who that it’s naming”. I predict that a year from now the Tea Party will be just a bad memory as Republicans scamper to nominate someone like Mitt Romney who is not universally known as a political extremist. The whole political strategy, formulated by the Koch brothers, is based on sound bites and talking points to be repeated endlessly without question. One tea party afficianado made the following remarks about President Obama just this morning, as follows.

The following are actual remarks. Then we started talking about current events. Minister X said that Obama was a socialist and hung out with Bill Ayres, Jeremiah Wright, and now a new name is added to the list. Obama is best friends with Louis Faracon and consults with him on making policy. Also Obama “Has made the economy worse than it already war”. And “The President’s policies have not added one single job”. Minister X says “There Is No Recovery”. Also the run up in gasoline prices is all Obama’s fault because the President is against drilling in Alaska. I told him we had only a year and a half’s supply in Alaska” and he said “You’re wrong, Marcus”. I also reminded him that the United States had only two percent of the world’s reserves. Minister X said that if gasoline prices were this high next year it would doom the President's re-election hopes. Minister X said to carry out his socialism he is redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor so now that rich people have no incentive to earn money or to give to charities. Minister X exhibited a complete ignorance of the forces and regulations driving Manufacturing out of this country. I said that if I were a multi millionaire I wouldn't mind paying fifteen percent of my vast accrewed interest in taxes. I said "I wouldn't let a four percent hike from 35% to 39% make me decide I no longer desired to make money". Minister X said, "It's a lot more than four percent, Marcus". "If a businessman has more money he will open up new stores and hire more people". I did not challenge this last remark because it is so demonstrably untrue as far as the big picture is concerned. He also said "People are insecure about their 401 K". There is no need to be; the market is up. Minister X's remarks were so “Beyond the Pale” that I did not even challenge them in my letter to him this afternoon. That would be pointless. Neither did I question or challenge just where he got all his ding-bat “facts” from. He trusts them as if they were handed down on stone tablets. I did not embarrass him by asking just how much news on the economy Minister X listens to on TV each day. This after all is a man who openly brags he only watches ten minutes of news a day because his time is so valuable he can’t “waste his time” on unimportant things.

Government Shut Down More Likely Every Day

It's just two days till Friday. Nobody wanted it but it looks pretty certain at this point that there will be a government shut down. The last one we had was the one brought to you by Newt Gingrich in late 1995 that apparently lasted several weeks. You may not be able to visit our National Parks over Easter break. Of course now the Republicans have rolled out a plan to end medi-care as we know it. They call it a "bold" move and they say their plan will "put us on the path to prosperity". Oh yeah, brought to you by the same people as Camp Krusty complete with all the pitfalls and death traps. They say they wand to give Governors of states more power to facilitate "flexability" but in reality these officials can just pocket the money themselves. This plan will save 6.2 trillion over the next decade or some such thing. Of course from what I hear, no defense spending is even under consideration to be cut. Right now democrats and republicans are dickering over a piddeling thirty billion. They want to keep National Public Radio funding and Planned Parenthood funding. My advice is that they drop these two things if they are the only sticking points. John Boehner says he controls "one half of one third of the government" but he only controls one half of the Republican party. The rest of the Republicans think the Tea Party crowd are nuts. It will only be the second anniversary in a few days when the Tea Party was organized- - on the anniversary of Paul Revere's ride or whatever. Just two years. Apparently the recall efforts in the Wisconsin election yesterday are breaking in favor of the liberals. That's good news. You know on the soap opera I watch there is a lot of talk about impostors. Old time "real" conservatives may think the whole movement has been hijacked by corporate internationalists. You know they don't mind regulation for some people. If regulation will drive small business out of the market and no allow them to be competetive, the internationalists are all for that. Somebody has to draw them all a picture. Liberals have been wondering aloud for three years why this President hasn't used the bully pulpet the way Kennedy and John and Truman and Roosevelt did to make their points. When I was in school we were taught that it was the responsability of a man of principled conviction to lead and convince his fellow man of the moral superiority of his beliefs. But we don't have that today. The same way we don't have news reporters that actually investigate news stories.

They aren't telling us much about the Libyan's campaign today except to say that on the right they are becomming increasingly anti war- - as they seem to now see Kadaffy as a good guy, no doubt because we need his oil. We know America has basically lost her moral compass. We embrace trade with China as though it were our path to salvation, and not our eventual path to economic ruin. People on the right don't even care that much about getting rid of dictators or furthering democracy and freedom. The big reason why they have been behind the previous two Bush wars is because of the profits they have been able to make with under the table military contracts. War really is a racket. I suggest you all read the book "War is a racket" because it really is. Today money is no longer a by-product of a war but indeed is the reason for fighting it in the first place. Nobody seems to care how much they are lied to, and the media won't tell us anything. At least half of the network news is just fluff pieces.

Donald Trump may "trump" all of the other republican candidates if he is the first to get into the race and steal the limelight from all the other candidates. Apparently in years past, by this time we've had a lot of candidates declaring for the office by now, like the President did yesterday. I never knew that Donald Trump went for all this tea party shit. Now he has become a birther saying that the President was not born here. But clearly Donald Trump is the most visually appealing and verbally articulate of the field of ten or more republicans, who are too lilly-livered to throw their hat in the ring. Many of these other two bit wanna-bes are such media whores they don't want to give up their radio talk shows or whatever else they would have to forgo to become an actual candidate. They know the minute they declare their lives would be scrutenized in ways they prefer not be done. Maybe that's it.

GALLERY OF DIRTY ROTTEN STINKING RE-MAKES

Listed in order of severity of infraction

Hooked On A Feeling (1974 remake) "Ooh-ga-cha-ka"

Please Mr. Postman (Carpenters)

Maggie's Farm ("Live Rain" live version)

Panic In Detroit (Live Version from Rare Bowie)

Tomorrow Is A Long Time (Rod Stewart)

Talk Talk (Alice Cooper)

Stand By Me (Rock and Roll by John Lennon)

Summertime Blues ("Live at Leeds")

The Loco-motion (Grand Funk Railroad)

Hand Jive (1974 Eric Claptin album)

Baby, It's You ("Smith" (?))

Eight Days a Week (Procol Herem)

I"m So Glad (almost ANY version attempt done Live)

Gloria (The Shadows of Night)

Only You ("Goodnight Vienna" Ringo)

Not Guilty ("George Harrison" album version)

Dancing in the Street (Van Halen)

You Really Got Me (Van Halen)

You're No Good (Linda Ronstat)

When Will I Be Loved (Linda Ronstat)

Out of Time (Stones orchestra version)

Lucille (Beatles at the BBC)

Lovers Concerto (The Toys)

All Things Must Pass (official Album version)

Let It Be (Album version)

Sincerely (Mc Guire sisters)

Good Night, Sweet Heart, Good Night (artist?)

Hearts of Stone (Fontane Sisters)

Hang On, Sloopy (Mc Coys)

Tracks of my Tears (Johnny Rivers)

Hi Heel Sneakers (Jose Feliciano)

Accross the Universe ("Let it Be" album version)

I Me Mine ("Let It Be" album version)

Teddy Boy ("Mc Cartney" album)

Heat Wave (The Who from "A Quick One")

Shout! (The Who from "Who's Missing?")

Peter Gunn (Jimi Hendrix from "War Heroes")

"OK they were just screwing around in the studio here"

Koran Burning Sparks International Incident

Well some people are just plain stupid jackasses. This Florida pastor couldn't leave well enough alone but had to burn a copy of the Koran twelve days ago and word got out to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and our people at the Embassy there were violently attacked. To this the Florida pastor says that none of it was his fault because if he didn't burn the Koran, the Moslems would just find some other excuse for their violence. The Federation has practically called the Moslems sainted martyrs in their editorials lately coming down on the desecration of a Holy Book. I think the US troops are spread too thin around the world. It's some incident like this that just could give the enemy new found strength to rally his troops. It's too bad the US can't say to the Afghan insergents, "Remember when we were on the same side of a conflict allied against the Soviets?" I just don't see why we don't engage in better "diplomacy". And by the way I think Wikkileaks.com was wrong to publish diplomatic communaques. Confidence here is important to national security. Mc. Laughlin is on now with their suddenly anti war mantra.

The media is making much of the "drop" in national unemployment to 8.8%. They point to all the places over the USA that are hiring now. However I heard unemployment among Blacks is up. The Mc Laughlin group sees a double dip recession, which by then will be a full scale depression. Many say a new mortgage is inching closser. Home sales are down and home prices are down 13% or whatever in February. Also consumer confidence is down 9%. As is pointed out this is all the more troubling because this economy is already the most enemic recovery in the face of such massive stinulus. You know, there is a logical possability that it may already be too late to salvage this economy, even if we were to have 20 / 20 foreknowledge of the future. It could be that all possabilities for salvaging this economy have passed. (Selah)

It seems as if the NATO crowd crapped out on the Libyan rebels. Last week beginning on Monday the rebels were halted and then retreated a hundred miles in a few days. Monica and others on Mc Laughlin say that these rebels are a mixed bag and we could well end up with some radical Islamic group in power like the Moslem Brotherhood. Pat Buchannon points out that the President may already have his feet in hardening cement because if we try to get out now, Kadaffy will seek vengeance on all those who opposed him with stern reprisals. We already know the President's poll numbers are down. This campaign hasn't played well in Peoria. Now there is talk of "doubling down" to insure that Kadaffy leaves office. People like Pat are saying there will be foreign "boots on the ground" and let's just hope and pray they aren't ours.

Well the LA Lakers have won 17 out of 18 games since the NBA Allstars. It gets to be monotanus covering the LA Lakers. The thought just occurred to me that once the play-offs arrive the Lakers will be able to slack off a bit since in the play-offs in this sport they have unusual latitude, and lose almost half their games from then on and still emerge as World Champions. As such perhaps maybe we can just dispense with the next two & a half month play-off schedule and declare the Lakers winners now. I guess since the team as a whole is getting a little long in the tooth, a lot of people will be retiring at the end of the season so next year's Lakers team won't be half the team this year's was.

MY BACK PAGES

(If your preference isn't the Dylan version -

then chirp, like the birds in the cage this morning .

This is an overcast Saturday April 2^nd. Right now on KTLK is this Purity product guy pitching “Astazantan” that name I couldn’t think of in my letter to Tim. If you give it to animals on an otherwise high fat diet, they won’t get fat. It works wonders on the complexion, and if given to race horses in Europe it helps them run faster and if you give it to Rex and Rover they will have energy like they never had before.

John Boehner was doing the same old song and dance about how government spending prevents jobs from being created because it “creates uncertainty”. All these tea party people get their talking points from the Koch brothers. One of these days the American people are going to figure this out, if they haven’t already.

The big news of the day is that Dana will again be selling coffee in a week or so as soon as he gets to Wall-Mart to buy supplies. Last evening just before six when it was baking out on the patio, Janet mentioned off hand, “Well, I guess I won’t be needing my heater tonight” and there was a pause and then she added “They were supposed to have taken all our appliances yesterday but they didn’t”. Now we hear people can keep their coffee makers and stuff but they can’t sell the coffee. So Dana says he’s going to “give it away” and the people will leave a “tip”. I see nothing wrong with that. Dana said he would like to recoup his losses from having to sell everything and make the coffee extra strong the last week or two. Morally, we his customers owe him that and should at least for a while pay him 75 cents for a sixteen ounce cup, which is up from fifty. That will still save us all kinds of money. Right now I have six dollars left and I can buy a pack of cigarettes and not get coffee till after I get to the bank on Monday, at least not much - - or I could borrow cigarettes when I run out and have coffee twice a day till then.

Last night was Bob Geyer’s memorial service. It was just about to start when I got there at a couple minutes to seven. They were very prompt. I was given a program and all the officiators were in suits. The service ran almost an hour. It contained both a Eulogy of his life- - centering on a hit and run auto accident that changed Bob’s life adversely - - causing long term kidney damage. I’ve heard conflicting reports about Bob’s being in Viet Nam. Now they are saying he was a sniper. Loretta Hill, Marcia Merideth, Wally and Manfred spoke, and Richard Powers gave the benediction. There was also a mini sermon discussing Mormon beliefs about the after-life. Afterwards they served ice cream and Oreos. You had your choice of vanilla, chocolate, and chocolate ripple. Dr. Levy was there but I looked for him afterward and couldn’t find him.

The Superman episode was a rerun but I hadn’t seen the end of it before. Judy called a little before 8:30 to talk about adding a new Accronis program to my computer to monitor my hard drive that runs all the time. My worry is that it would tax my limited RAM and slow my computer down more than the stuff already on it. And I know that stuff isn’t free and I sure don’t want to pay for it. She kept going on and on about it and I wanted to get back to the program because there was stuff now on the screen I hadn’t seen before. Judy said something about my giving them her credit card number over the internet or something. Judy still suggests I get a new terabyte hard drive, which is just way more than I would ever use. My feeling is “Yes I’ll have to replace my computer in a few years but up till then I’m good”. If you do the math - 29 Gigabytes is still quite a few 4 Gig camera chips, each holding over two thousand pictures. Then I got back to the TV programs. I went out to the patio and talked with Dana and Steve and others and Dana says he just saw a bunch of colored blue and red lights sweep across the sky really fast. We were a little puzzled. My back, for one, was to the sky. But then he said “I haven’t had any sleep for several days so that just might be it”. The conclusion of that Superman episode was that Lionell Luther is a genetic impostor who was artificially created and has the exact mirror image DNA of the real Lionell Luther. After this “Supernatural” was on where they talked about the archangel Gabrael. I sstayed up this night later than I have been for a while, and once in bet it took me a while to fall asleep.

In the morning I got up at 6:07 and got coffee from the bakery. I turned on KNX radio as usual for a Saturday. We had oatmeal for breakfast and a fried egg and toast and butter and jelly. Sarah filled the coffee cups half way decently. It was after breakfast that Dana told us the good news. I was worried that if I withdrew a lot of cash at the beginning of the month he’d be gone by the end. Now I don’t have that worry.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE LATE IN ARRIVAL

TO THE ROCK AND ROLL SCENE - IF (an amusing bit of self deprecation)

-If most of what you know about James Dean comes from books and encyclopedias

-If you hear the title “Mary Lou” and think of the Ricky Nelson song

-If you think “being square” has something to do with a well balanced diet

-If you think the letters D A stand for District Attorney

-If you associate “jive” with a well coordinated fashion ensambo

-If you never heard “Stranded ion the Jungle” as a new song on the radio

-If you never knew Clyde Mc Phatter was lead singer for the Drifters

-If you can not name the first four of Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands- in order.

-If you can’t remember the 1952 Earthquake

-If you can’t remember Columbus Day ever being a school holiday

-If you hear the title “True Love Ways” and think of Peter and Gordon

-If you hear the name Bobby Freeman and think of “The Swim”

-If you thought “Bo Didley” was a new song by the Animals

-If the first song you heard from Fats Domino was “Lady Madona”

-If you think Estes Keefofer was a Johnson croney who went to jail

-If you think Nixon’s “Checkers Speech” was something to do with Kruschev

-If you think “The Twist” first came out in January of 1962

-If you never watched “Milton Berle”, Edward R Murrow, or “I’ve Got a Secret”

-If you can’t remember Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Cecil B Di Mille and Arturo Toscanini all still being alive.

If the first time you heard “Maybeline” you thought it was a Canned Heat re-make of a Johnny Rivers song.

-If the whole concept of an “open campus” is alien to you

If you think the term “nerd” originated on the show “Happy Days”

-If you CAN name all five songs with the words “Little Bit” in the title. (Don’t count “Shout”, “A Quarter to Three” or any song by Donnie Osmond)

-If your school didn’t allow motorcycle gang jackets on campus

-If you never knew that Ronald Reagan used to be a democrat

-If you don’t associate Moroborugh cigarettes with being a “woman’s cigarette”

-If you DO know that few jets are supersonic

-If you never heard the Larry Williams originals to “Slow Down”, “Bad Boy” and “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”.

-If you think “There’s A Riot Going on” (Beach Boys) “Ruby Ruby” by Dion Dimucci, and “Such A Night” by Elvis Presley – are new, original songs.

-If you don’t remember a time when there were no liquor stores open on Sundays

-If making an office memo doesn’t consist of putting a new cylinder in the Dictaphone

-If the whole idea of prayer in the public schools is completely alien to you

-If you think Lonnie Donnigan only had one hit

-If half your high school football team doesn’t consist of nineteen year olds

-If you associate “colored laundry” with clothes that shouldn’t have bleach.

-If your local shoe store doesn’t have X ray things so you can see your foot bones

-If you didn’t have an older brother who fought in the Korean War

-If you don’t know on what “Day the Music Died”.