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.

Marcus Arelius' Seventeen Injunctions of Life

Before taking an action, always put yourself in your neighbor’s shoes for he is a creation of God too, unless you know that the other person is a sociopath. Then don’t weary yourself in an attempt to regard his feelings, for to empathize with a sociopath in such a case is to begin to become like him.

Always ask yourself when taking an action you believe to be prudent, “What would the world be like if everybody else did what I am doing now?”

You will always prevail against your opponent in the long, and sometimes short run in a conflict if God has given you more time than God has given your opponent.

Revenge should be ended when it stops being punitive and becomes obsessive.

Consistency will cause your enemy never to doubt you.

The same repeated effort tword a goal should end the minute you know you’ve learned everything possible from the last attempt. Impornatunity leads to obsession.

Never operate outside your experience and “comfort zone” when combating your opponent, but you should always seek to make your enemy oppperate outside his experience and comfort zone.

Cowards die many deaths before their time; the valiant tastes of death but once. Valor is redeeming. Therefore the truly evil cannot partake of it.

Victory has a hundred fathers. Defeat is an orphan.

Never let your enemy see you express self doubt. Your own thoughts are for you alone and never for your enemy to know.

Take your neighbor at his word, even if he is a conservative or a Christian, but verify it in a way he knows nothing of. If your enemy’s words proves to be false, nothing he says need ever trouble you again.

Make your enemy live by his own words. Point out for all to see your enemy’s flaws of character. Make his own foolishness come back upon him.

Pleasure is its own reward. Rewards bring self confidence, and self confidence brings about the ability to expand one's horizons. Desire is the one sure sign you're really alive.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Always have at least one Ace in the hole, and preferably several.

Crisis means "opportunity" in Chinese, but whether it's an opportunity for you or your opponent all depends on the way God has written the script in advance.

Everyone has his price, and that includes God, or so called.

OK this is radio free Muskogee, on the air. Earlier today I had on channel 40 and they were bemoaning the fact that the Wall Street reform bill was passed and how it’s going to strangle the economy with new regulation and it’s going to make it harder for consumers and business to get credit. I had Rush Limbaugh on for an hour this morning because I got tired of hearing about Shirley Sherad (?), the former Black secretary of Agriculture. I know just from the blurbs of Rush they play on progressive stations that Rush has really slidden off the track, but listening to a whole hour of him is really trippy, let me tell you. He said that that Black secretary of agriculture was still a racist and if you heard the whole forty minute speech you’d realize this. She had no “conversion moment”. Rush took a call the last five minutes of the hour or so and it was from some woman who wanted to expand her business because “she was digging out from the ravages of 9 – 11. But she couldn’t get anybody to front her a loan and she blamed Obama for it, and Rush agreed with her. There was another speaker saying that the people of the gulf don’t want government checks; they want jobs. Rush explained that the biggest problem with the Gulf spill was the 33 operating wells that were shut down temporarily. Apparently the devastation of the fishing profession was and is of no concern to Rush. Rush referred to General Motors as “government motors” Rush Limbaugh calls the “NAALCP” racist, and yet I remember a remark he made about Collin Powell where he said the problem with is that he’s Black. “It’s all about race!” You hear Rush froth and sputter aimlessly for the whole hour venturing into more and more areas. Rush was mad at veterans for asking the government for back benefits. He called unemployment insurance that you pay for out of your payroll check as “welfare”. He again said that President Obama “Is always the least qualified man in any room that he occupies”. Rush said that the Gulf oil spill wasn’t any problem and that “all of these clean-up boats go out there and can’t find the oil”. I’d like to drown Rush in it. Rush said that the oil spill was something “the earth” could take care of on its own, and further said that the magnitude of the spill was like spilling a 24 oz can of beer in the Dallas football dome stadium. There were times Rush became so hyper I thought he was going to have a coronary right there on the air. It just might happen one of these days. They should put all of Rush’s quotes in a book and title the book “Rush – the Most Depraved Man on Earth”. I don’t think I need to hear any more. He is clearly “Out to Lunch”. You’ll get more lucid conversation from the inmates in “Ward Twelve” of “The Snake Pit”. There are some conservatives you might be able to sit down with and tell them to make an itemized list of all their specific complaints about the government’s action, and what they believe should be done. I know it’s a free country but the thought of anybody listening to him and actually believing him would give anybody pause.

Under nerd science we have two stories. First of all there is some alliel on the dopamine gene where if you have seven of these genes, then you lose self control and have to conform to any group you’re in, be it heavy drinking or whatever else they are involved in. I’m wondering whether evangelical Christians have this excess in genes. Maybe this is what causes their minds to shut off. They just go on feelings.

They have now perfected a new solar photoelectric cell that is a hundred times smaller and more efficient than the old cells. They are the size of “lint” and you can wear a swath of it on your clothes and it’ll be enough to power your I Pad. I would like to see our energy needs become a thing of the past. T Boone Pickens’ ideas are a good start with wind power and natural gas. But after that we need to go to the next step.

President Obama won’t be signing the new unemployment extension bill for several days due to legal technicalities. New unemployment claims are up this past week. Thom Hartman says “when employment goes down, corporate profits go up”.

The beauro of land management is undertaking a program to massively slaughter wild mustangs in Wyoming. This is because British Petroleum wants to build a pipeline from Wyoming to Oregon and the mustangs are in the way. Apparently the beauro of land management has been "taken over". (by whom?) I thought "The Misfits" movie was the last word on the senseless slaughter of horses, but 49 years later, here we are. At least we were spared Andy Williams singing “Born Free” with guns and bombs going off.

One thing the President needs to do next is to get an immigration reform bill passed by Congress. Too many illegals are living in a state of limbo. They want to "do right by their karma" or whatever they have to do to become American citizens. This hostility the right bears tword them has become obsessive. America has always assimilated minorities to that they too may taste the blessings of liberty. It is written, "to whom much is given, much is required". Slamming the doors of opportunity on others will adversely affect the karma of those who do so.

What Makes for Personal Happiness?

We still have another light blog to go before we get to the dark "Cosmic Tides". Not that I'm saying that the Cosmic Tides are dark or anything. I still don't know what "dark matter" is. I would presume it's just masses of asteroids that somehow haven't yet clustered together, which one would suppose, because of gravitational attraction. To say that is "some kind of matter that's never been seen before" would seem to me to be a premature assesment. While I'm on the topic I'd like to mention these Crop Circles that broke out in the summer of 1990. I just went to a site that "reveals secrets" and they said that two guys confessed to doing all the crop circles themselves in 1991. I have reason to doubt this. First of all the crop circles didn't stop. They polifferated all over Europe and America and there are hundreds of them, each in increasingly complex geometric patterns. I would like to revert to an argument the Creationists use. How come nobody has seen these people who opperate stealthfully by night in open fields without trees. More importantly how is it some Yahoo who goes to an instructional internet site, can pull off such elaborate geometric patterns and do so Perfectly. I know Mozart wrote music like "taking dictation", but this isn't how unusual things normally happen. For every crop circle you see there should be ten times as many botched attempts and abandoned efforts. Where are They? I know that they say Christ rose from the dead because "Nobody SAW any disciples stealing his body out of the tomb by night, but how far can you take a negative? Yeah, they may get away with it once or twice, but not hundreds of incidents over years. People from the Federation tell me that those two people who confessed in 1991 are full of bunk, and that they were obviously Told by somebody to confess and take the heat off. To my way of thinking it takes more Faith to believe rank amateurs did it rather than Space Aliens.

Today President Obama signed the Wall Street reform bill into law. Republicans say this is a horrible thing because "one way or another consumers will live to regret this day". I am not insensitive to the arguments from the right. Sean Hannity was saying "People know my heart. They know I'm not as I'm depicted by all the pundets". I don't pick on Sean Hannity because I don't pick on most people of the Right but let them go their way. Some of the things Glen Beck says are pretty far out. For instance that we will develop runaway hyper inflation like the Vymar republic and this is being done deliberately to "Crash" the economy so that some dictator can take over this country. People have the right to be stupid. But I only get on someone's case if they are saying some really asshole, uninformed remark about some issue that I have a personal interest in. Then I'll get on their case, as you know. I don't like Dr. Levy saying the people accused of crimes in Guantanamo Bay should be left to rot in prison and Never given a trial. Nobody likes to be accused of something they had nothing to do with and have a cloud of doubt hanging over them and following them around. Sometimes I do resort as Hannidy claims, to saying certain people on the Right are "Evil". This is certainly true of "The Asshole from El Paso". There was a republican congressman on C-Span a few days ago giving a speech on the economy at length and he said some stuff worth thinking about. He spoke of "stealing" Chrysler and GM by the US Government and "wrenching the securities out of the creditors hands". OK, maybe next time when I'm President, we'll let them go under. I don't have a problem with that. But he says that true wealth comes "from the Land". It reminded me of the English and Spanish explorers plundering the land and wiping out New World civilizations all in the name of their Christian god. So Thom Hartman says we should coin a new word, "Christianists". After all, everything with an -IST ending is supposed to be bad, isn't it. How about a Pure-ist? He says that everything we value most like food, and the crops we make our clothes out of, as well as the timber and stone we build with and the minerals we mine to produce all other things- - all starts with the land. And I'm not insensitive to the idea that Kaynes may be wrong about a thing or two. For instance his statement about hiring twenty men to dig ditches and the next day hiring twenty more to fill them. This guy from Iowa spoke of a mine where the Government has secreted cash away and he's hiring people to mine it. But first the government fills up the mine with garbage. So first you have to dig through the garbage and get their wheel barrels and rail cars and whatever. But then people get sick from handeling the garbage and so you have to hire health care workers. Robert Kennedy alledgedly gave a speech during his 1968 Presidential Campaign where he said "The gross national product isn't everything. It doesn't measure the vast air and water pollution, or the ravages of war, or all the construction of new prisons. Prisons raise the GNP. He said that the GNP doesn't measure the smile of a happy child, or the joy of a wedding celebration, or the pride that a parent feels upon the graduation or their son or daughter from a college. Wealth isn't everything. But Randy Rhodes pointed out by way of ballance that economic strife can take it's toll. Mel Gibson flies into tyrades against women, but Randy asks how often is this very scene played out in homes all over America where the provider has lost his job. I've heard that the greatest number of divorces come not from Adultry or sexual incompatability or all this psychological "growing apart" stuff. (I'm not saying this is how I feel, it's what THEY say) No. The greatest number of divorces comes from pocket book issues. Economic strife and various pressures to make ends meet. To not extend unemployment benefits is to be against family values. Dr. Levy can say money isn't of value, but the rest of us have other ideas. If there ARE any lazy ones out there not looking for a job, this will only provide more jobs for those of us who ARE looking earnestly for a job.

On the personal front I got an almost new TV last night, so I am a happy camper today. Last night I had a dream where I was employed by a TV writing team writing a soap opera script or something. These people were from Eastern colleges, but I think it was New Jersey rather than New England. And most of this team was gay and they supposed everybody was. But some of us had our eye on this cute blonde working there. And in the script there was a character who resembled the blonde and her romantic adventures. But I was fiddling with my scanner because I had never worked officially with one before, scaning pages into my office desk top computer. And people were saying to me "Look what our heroin is up to today on the next page?"

I would like to talk just a little more about Lennon compositions. Strawberry Fields Forever could refer to the strawberry field I walked past every day on my way to school. Lennon was obviously dating in "Good Morning" because of the line "Go to a show, you hope she goes", and when the song came out I had just gotten a new girlfriend. Also you snail mail people know that "A Day in the Life" was about the death of John Sneed and Ron Diggins, who died in a car trying to outrun a train on March 5th 1967. Of course the song they say was written in January of 1967 based on some newspaper article. Also if you've listened to the lyrics of Lucy in the Sky, it can't be anything other than an LSD trip. You Ziggy fans will note there are several songs about Robin including "Simply Shady" (which now they say was NOT about Eric Claptins affair with his wife, Patty Boyd) Rather it's about the Maharishi. It could be about an affair Robin had had. (But it wasn't with Philip Kiriacus) "Cool, Calm, Collected" and "Killer Queen" are two more songs alledgedly about Robin. And of course "Ticket to Ride" isn't about Hamburg prostitutes, or a city in England called "Ride" but rather about astral projection where the "He" is just changed to "She". That's my take on the song. It was the Beatles' first single after "the transfer".

President Orders "Surge" of US Martials

President Obama today ordered a significant step up of US Martial presence on International flights as of February first. US Marshals's jobs are to observe passengers and if the underwear bandit Abdul Metalah had been scrutenized they would have seen how nervous his behavior was in his staring and constantly wiping his forehead. Abdul Matalsh will be tried in Civilian court, much to the disdain of Republicans. And yet shoe bomber Richard Reed and over two others have been successfully prosecuted under civilian courts. The observation is made that the government will lose valuable intelligence oppertunities if we don't water board this guy while we have the chance. And yet others like the Press Secretary point out that we've already gained a lot of intelligence from Abdul Matalah, if we can believe him. We haven't heard the last of new security measures; you can count on that. These nude scanners put out only a fraction of the X Rays that Medical X Rays put out, and most of the rays bounce off of the skin. No doubt this will be taken into consideration when their wide spread use is contemplated.

Four democratic senators have declared that they will not run again for Senate in 2010 today. These include Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, whom Randy Rhodes personally vouches for as a progressive. Dodd is the son of Thomas Dodd, who was considered for Vice Presidential pick by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. However it's pointed out that even more Republicans are expected not to run again. Many on the radio are not optimistic about democratic changes in 2010 however keep in mind that this batch of Senators last stood for election in 2004 when the Republicans were still winning. Hence there are more Republicans ripe to knock off. Some have suggested that Ed Schultz run for the empty North Dakota slot being opened up by Byron Dorgan's departure. He's a popular progressive talk show host so why not. I see absolutely no reason for the democrats to feel disspirited at this time.

Rush Limbaugh is carrying on about how great medical care is in this country yet Hawaii has the most government care of any of the fifty states, so he picked a bad example. Randy Rhodes points out that when the bill comes, most people can't pay it, but with Rush's 400 million, he's not in any position to compare what the rest of us have to deal with. Some have speculated that Rush's chest pains are from eating a too highly spiced hoagie.

Governor Swartzenegger gave an encouraging State of the State message today. For once he wasn't blaming poor people for the State's problems, but the Federal Government. He says that California only gets back $74.00 for every hundred dollars we sent to the Federal Government in tax revenue. The governor also said that Alaska, perhaps thanks to Sarah Palin gets 173% of the revenue that they send to the federal government. The governor in fact expressed sympathy for both poor people and school children. He said that it was a crime to spend fifty percent more on State Prisons than on Education. I would agree if that's true. The governor expressed optimism about the economic recovery in general, and that's a good thing to hear. Certainly in industrial production and in other ways, signs of growth are sprouting up all over. The governor said that tax revenue drop off in the state was eight times the slump in the state economy. I find that a little hard to swallow. People say that the governor is a termed out "Lame Duck" but I'm glad that at least he wants to go out on a positive note.

In the Sudoko puzzles the idea is to fill in the right numbers based on certain pre-set rules and precepts. A lot of it involves the process of elimination. Also like police action boards, once you think you have isolated one key clue to a meta-physical certain, that clue itself becomes a tip-off to other clues out there. If a police detective wants to find where the truth lays, he knows to talk to people who are known to tell the truth even when it would be in their interest to slant the truth and lie a little. Sometimes like the Sudoku puzzle, you get stuck and can't go on the direction you are going, and there are blanks still left to be filled in. If you have an Action Board for one crime scenario, you may need to construct other action boards for other entirely different scenarios as to how the crime took place. Sometimes it all depends on the defendant drawing a sympathetic judge. In today's soap opera Nicole appears to have drawn a sympathetic judge who had an axe to grind against at least two of her many accusers, Elvis Di Mira and Samantha Brady. Seldom has one lie hurt more lives than this lie about her baby. She lied to her husband and was caught in one lie, but then she was still lying even then. As a result many lives were traumatically affected. Were I the judge I would not just dismiss this reality. Even people with reputations as utter jerks can have a truly just legal cause.

Ping Pong Expediancy

Now we are learning a new phrase, among so many new idiums we are learning these days thanks to the media such as "proactive" and "prostate health". We've learned about something that's going to be done that apparently the Republicans have been doing for a long time, but it doesn't make the news until the democrats do it. They are bypassing the usual conference committee in the legeslative process for the Health Bill. All that's missing is the green light on your dashboard. What people have feared all along is becoming a reality. The Senate version of the Health bill is going to be accepted whole, without any changes lest they lose some of their precious sixty votes needed for passage. To do this house members will have to be talked out of otherwise constructive measures such as the millionaire's tax and the dreaded Public Option. The bill is pinged and ponged and amendments are added in mass to the House bill untill it can be manipulated to look just like the senate bill. Then President Obama can have his little victory. The insurance and drug companies can rest easy knowing all their campaign donations to Obama will be paying off. But as I said the Republicans already made use of this ping - pong procedure for such infamous bills as the Patriot Act, where nobody seemed to object. The republicans did a lot of things and threatened to do a whole lot more if they didn't get their way, that they now have suddenly developed a conscience and don't want the Democrats doing.

Well today a defensive President Obama crouched and bared his teeth and groweled in his toughest possible macho stance. But you know such behavior still won't impress Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck. I'm just waiting for these two to name all the things our President did wrong. They no doubt will cite the civil court trial of the 9 - 11 master-mind or the closing of Guantanamo Bay. What the President did, besides the interrupting of my soap opera at a key plot moment, was to take all the blame for things that went wrong. The President promaces quick and decisive action to remedy all the security problems we have with our airports. One could scarcely envision President Bush making a more resolute speech, and had a President Mc Cain given that same speech word for word, Praises would be heaped on him by the Right. But that won't happen. The President cited a "failure to connect up the dots". He characterized it as not an information gathering failure but an information processing and coalating failure. It all comes down to agencies of the government sharing collaborating with the information they have. Now where have we heard of such a failure before? Oh yes, President Bush and his failure to dissern that 9 - 11 was about to take place. Like I say, with each passing day the distinction between Presidents Bush and Obama becomes more slight. Personally I agree with Ron Reagan, who said today that "You can't prevent all accidents; Things happen". It's a cliche expression, 'shit happens". Rush Limbaugh would be quick were it a private vendor of a product to say "There is no way you can prevent mishaps from happening". Rush reminds us, rightly, that life sometimes throws you a curve ball. But somehow when it comes to Al Qaeda, our government owes it to us to insure that nothing EVER will happen to an American citizen, and that ANY price is worth paying. But certain security procedures, be it wide spread drug testing for who knows what, or else "total security" on an airline, isn't a reality. These airliners are in business to make money after all, and they can't go frightening off customers through excessive security procedures. Personally I'd prefer the sniffing dogs to either the "super thorough pat down" involving the genitals, or these nude X ray scanners. Why are people no longer concerned about radiation to the genitals. What happened to that heavy shield the dentist puts over you to protect your vital organs. Frequent business flyers would have to find these procedures a pain in the ass- - perhaps literally (!) after a while, and in time all this security would slow commerce and reduce corporate profits. Let's appeal to Obama's business side.

3 D TV is coming. Well, I don't know what entertainment will be like in the future but my eyes don't work well for 3 D and people like myself and Leo Le Port think the whole business is largely a waste of time. But I suppose some people thought when they began making movies in color, so perhaps I'm dating myself. If you want monsters leaping off your TV screen into your living room, then have at it. Of course Google and the Android Opperating system- - among so many "new systems" are coming out now, promacing to revolutionize the computer experience. They have been saying that E mails are becoming a thing of the past. CD's may be becoming a thing a thing of the past and not only the desk top but the notebook computer will become a thing of the past as we move to tablet computers with their touch screen capabilities, as well as the Smart Phones taking over the Phone market, which they have yet to do.

In a Bob Dylan song about New York, Bob Dylan says, "They said it was the coldest winter in seventeen years. I didn't feel so cold then". Well for about two thirds of the country this is the coldest winter in 25 years. I remember the winter of 1977 as being cold in one of my astro projection lives. I don't remember 1985 as being especially cold but I'll take their word for it. People are saying that "The Gulf Stream conveyer belt is shutting down" and so England is seeing cold like they've never had before. But people are saying that the watch word now is not global warming but "Climate Change". I guess that could cover just about anything. My heart goes out to all those people shivering in the rest of the country and hope fuel oil and natural gas prices aren't so high that they are unable to properly heat their homes.

Facing the New Year

I made a number of minor resolutions this year. One that I can keep is finding a cheaper place to buy cigarettes, and cigarettes that come in exotic flavors such as strawberry and grape. So, I hope that doesn't make me "fruity". The new photo processing software I have works great and there are a lot of things you can do with it. I'm reading through a book of quotations of famous people that my Mom gave me. She also gave me the book lying around the house "When I say No, I Feel Guilty". That's an old one. I think I'm actually going to read the Gospel of Mark through at the start of this year. As to that number puzzle where you fill in the numbers for each callendar day, there seem to be too many possabilities to insure getting it right. If you're wondering about the photograph, assuming I remember to put it in, that's my roommate Bill in the background. He has more hair than I do but he's actually ten years older. I guess I want to be more thoughtful and conscientious this new year, to heed the advice of "Deliberate often, but decide but once". There is also a quote from my name sake that says something "Whatever you enjoy doing, do it not having expectation of a reward and in this way you will follow the [proper] course of nature". But I like the one from Soren Kierkegaard better - that goes "This world has enough reflection - what we need is more Passion". Hello, Rod Stewart! Here's one I thought was from Gandhi, that goes "When two elephants fight each other - it's the grass that suffers". Some have said the biggest consumers and wasters of petroleum energy is the armlements industry. Others say our biggest carbon footprint problem is that we are all meat eaters and factory farms are world class polluters. People wonder who the smartest President we've ever had was. Let me tell you, George W Bush was not as dumb as people made him out to be, and President Obama is not as smart as people make him out to be. Not only that, but with each passing day of lost opportunity, George Bush, in retrospect appears less "dumb" every day! But I think unquestionably our smartest president was Franklin Roosevelt. People say that he was really more perceptive than Churchill even. On the subject of action, I would like to quote the proverb I've quoted before, "When all is said and done, more is said than done". Here is one more for you I'm going to doctor up a little. Jesus Christ talking: "When I am dead I would rather that mankind ask why there were no monuments to me, rather than have people continually ask why there Were monuments to a person like me". Continuing, "of course I lack the true humility to have actually uttered a statement like this". A proverb goes "When three different people call you an Ass, you better put on a bridal!"

The other night on KCET 28.4 then had a fascenating program on the human genome. Human beings only contain something like 23,000 genes, or as many as a chicken, and fewer than many plants do. Of course they are now trying to synthisize dinasaurs from the DNA of a chicken. What this tells me is that it's easier for man to have "evolved" than Creationists think because one gene can make a big impact. And it doesn't take changes in that many genes to denote an ape from a human. But there are genes, and "master genes" and switches. Yes dinasaurs resemble birds, but often many species have inactivated genes controled by "switches". I've heard that in autisum, certain mental development "switches" have not been thrown. There are birds on an island with long, skinny, pointed beaks for getting nectar from flowers, and other birds with short, stout beaks for cracking of various nuts and fruits, but otherwise the birds look the same. They both have the same controling gene but in one case the switch isn't thrown. Also there are fruit flies with spotted wings and other fruit flies without them, all because of a switch that wasn't thrown. But they say man may have been allowed to develop the size of his brain because in a gorilla, his jaw muscles take up so much space that it interfears with his skull size. It seems a key muscle gene got damaged through mutation in human beings ironically enabling his brain cavity to expand in size. Some people say you need both science and religion. Well, science is like arranging the Tetrus blocks so that they fit. Religion is the descent of more Tetrus blocks to work with. While you may need both in society, they don't have to be the same person.

This and the last two photographs are being typed on Saturday January 2, 2010. And I guess we’ll try and do that Ringo thing to complete the set. Perhaps in marketing we could combine Beatles Early Nuggets with this album rather than the Harrison one. A disk with nineteen songs like this one could have songs averaging up to four minutes.

ACT NATURALLY

The One And Only Billy Shears

Act Naturally (single B side)

Boys (from Please, Please Me)

I Want to Be Your Man (“Meet the Beatles”)

Honey Don’t (from Beatles for Sale)

If You’ve Got Troubles (from Anthology)

What Goes On? (from Rubber Soul)

Flying (from MMT)

Good Night (Anthology version)

Octopuses Garden (Abbey Road)

Back Off, Boogaloo (single)

I Don’t Treat You Like I should (from “Ringo”)

I’m the Greatest (from “Ringo”)

Choose Love (title song)

Instant Amnesia (from Ringo-rama)

Photograph (from “Ringo”)

Goodnight Vienna(GNV)

Ooh-wee! (The New Jean Harlow) (GNV)

The No No Song (GNV)

Snoockeroo (GNV)