Russians Admit Meddling in US Elections

News we’ve heard vague rumors of recently seem to be turning out to be true.  The FBI and all of the US intelligence agencies say Russia has admitted meddling in the 2016 elections and they have just as cinnister plans to meddle in the 2018 congressional races.  They have plans to influence social media and otherwise campaign interference in 21 states.  A caller on the Norman Goldman show says he saw a map of affected states in last September’s Washington Post and that one of the states was California, though they wouldn’t have a chance here.  I am assuming the Russians want to help the Republicans because they have such a high regard for President Trump.  Trump never says anything against Putin.  They changed the Republican Convention platform two years ago on the matter of aggression in Ukraine so as to not offend the Soviets.  I can call them Soviets if I want to.  Trump of course no matter the overwhelming evidence keeps talking about “fake news”.   I would assume the CIA and our other intelligence agencies have a plan to thwart these sympathizers of Putin.  We can’t allow another election to be sabotaged.  We just need to watch the social media very closely for signs of involvement.

Today is Valentine’s Day and it’s also the first day of Lent.  This is the first time this has occurred they tell us since 1945.  However Easter fell on April Fool’s Day in 1956.  I remember because when I was a little kid at the Westchester house me and Nana were looking out the back window watching it just pouring down rain all day and Nana sings “It Ain’t Gona Rain No More, No More”.   We should pray for some of that rain this year.  Some would say the rock compilation issued today is kind of sleazy for Valentine’s Day and definitely too sleazy for Lent.  It is hoped that “giving up something for Lent” doesn’t interfere with Valentine’s Day festivities.  Some give up alcohol, others give up meat.  Just as long as you don’t give up sex.  It struck me that the economic cycle of 2007 and 2008 is starting to repeat itself.  We are falling into the mental trap of people telling us we can pull cash equity out of our houses.  We are also being told that interest rates are on their way up and if you’re going to buy a house you better buy one now before the rates get any higher.  This is the exact same thing that happened ten years ago.  Now we are told prices are so high that more people are just renting.  As to the matter of Joel Olsteen’s statement the other day about “If you don’t look for opportunities, opportunity will come looking for you” we have tomorrow’s appointment for a dental cleaning, which appeared out of the blue.  Most normal people have to wait two weeks for a dental appointment.  Not me.  The thing cleared with Federico and whoever else is driving me to the appointment.

SPRING TRAINING

Kid Charlemeign  (Steely Dan)

The Hunter Gets Captured by the Prey (Blondie)

Everybody Wants Some (Van Halen)

Dun Ringal (Live Jethro Tull)

Heroes (David Bowie)

Witchhunt (Rush)

Les Boys (Dire Straits)

Hey Bulldog (Beatles)

Freeform Guitar (Chicago Transit Authority)

Cagey Cretins (Blue Oyster Cult)

Living After Midnight (Judas Priest)

Police Truck (Dead Kennedy’s)

Ride the Lightning (Metallica)

The Severed Garden (Jim Morrison)

The front title photo is the start of a drag race at twilight.  There are six cars in a row with their headlights on.  The one closest to the camera is a Ford Galaxy.  These are cars from the late fifties and early sixties, many with fins.  There’s a guy on a platform who is lit up waving a green flag.   On the back are title listings and commentary about Russian hacking of US elections, which seems more widespread than any of us imagined.  The open out photo is of Rob Porter dragging his second wife dripping wet out of the shower grabbing her by the neck.  For you directional people she is being dragged from right to left.  Brian Jones is said to have substantially contributed input to this compilation.  It’s definitely a longer album than our last one.  Of course this represents soul-growth over the last 45 years of her life when she was a “walk-in” at age thirteen.  We end on kind of a downer-death note.  But isn’t that what ash Wednesday is all about.  According to Catholic tradition Jesus spent forty days in the desert in preparation for his death in Jerusalem.  Jim Morrison did not contribute to this album.

I prepared the room for Nora’s arrival around nine and I did have another cup of instant coffee then put the jar in the drawer.  Briefly I had Bill Handel on till Nora’s arrival.  I smoked a few cigarettes and then walked on down to the front to look at the lunch and dinner menus.  I didn’t change either of them.  They were just starting up the Catholic service around nine thirty.  There were people asking whether people wanted to get ashes for Ash Wednesday.  I didn’t feel holy enough to do that.  I went to the back again and then returned here.  Nora kept the thick red bedspread on, which I’m glad about.  Melody came in and of course Bill’s bed hasn’t been slept in in a week.  If you ask me why his bed is different, I really have no idea at this point.  It used to have something to do with scabies.  Melody asked how long I expect Bill to be gone and I said “It could be weeks at Harbor Villa”.   Bill needs a lot of medical tests in preparation for three different operations, the most important of which is his cateract surgery, which has been post-poned for months.  Of course Mom is faring even worse.  I didn’t mention the stage four metastatic breast cancer she has, which is responsible for a lot of her symptons.  

On the ABC and other news recently we’ve heard that the FBI has contradicted President Trump’s chronology of events leading to Rob Porter’s firing.  You suspect that Shawn Hannity likes to reverse the order of a lot of events when he’s not making up lies entirely.  Some chronologies are a little hard to swallow like stories about how people got rich starting an instant success business.  “Did it really happen that way?” you wonder.  On Days of our Lives you now can call it murder incorporated.  There’s an unsolved murder from a few months ago.  They are investigating a murder from a couple of weeks ago and still have half a dozen suspects in that one.  And you have John Black on a triple murder spree the past few days.  I guess if that’s the way they want to tell it, that’s the way it is.  Nobody but me seriously questions the chronology of the start-up of the Christian Church.  I guess I’m outvoted.  But I would remind you that even if every word in the New Testament is true, that doesn’t in any way affect left wing Churches who support democrats verses right wing Trumpsters who are willing to sacrifice morality in the interest of political expediency.  I don’t know for sure just how the Koch Brothers or whoever were able to convince the Republican Party to except Trump whole, flaws and all without contesting any of it.  I just hope that Special Prosecutor Muller hands down indictments soon.  

Trump Sticks It to the Poor Again

Over the past two days information about Trump’s new federal budget have been trickling out.  What we know is that he is boosting the military but cutting budgets for the State Department and foreign aid.  On the domestic front, now you have to wait 600 days to get approved if you are an applicant for Social Security disability.  Medicare and Medic-aid have been slashed.  This whole infrastructure talk is bogus.  Trump has talked about a 1.7 trillion allocation for infrastructure over the next several years but that means only 300 Billion are out of federal money and the other four fifths or more of the money has to be provided by the states, most of which appear to be broke despite a roaring economy.  I don’t know how that happens.  And also other services are being slashed such as energy assistance for heating and such in the cold weather back east, and also public housing and also food stamps.  Apparently they want to choke food stamps to death with countless new restrictions.  Norman Goldman and Bill Press were both talking about this on their programs.  Some say that when the general population is aware of these vast cuts in domestic spending they’ll vote democratic in the fall.  We can only hope but it hasn’t worked so far.  Basically all of these sacrifices of the poor go to the tax cuts we got in December for the millionaires and billionaires.  It doesn’t matter what promises Trump made to the voters in 2016, we all know the truth.  As I have said before, the only promises President Trump has actually kept are the ones he made personally to Shawn Hannity. 

Yesterday it dawned on me that we don't have "Johnny Can't Read" by Don Hendley on any of our rock compilations.  This situation may change soon.  It all depends on Management.  

My mom is fading fast as the following paragraph illustrates. 

Paul called at five to twelve saying he’d be over in ten minutes.  He arrived at twenty after.  The place is off Brookhurst just past the railroad track.  Once again Mom was sleeping and it took time to wake her.  But she seemed unable to say very much and it was disconcerting.  We learn that she has general weakness on her left side perhaps due to a stroke.  Perhaps this is why she fell in the first place.  Her left eye was droopy and a care giver remarked that the whole side of her face was droopy and she had little use in her left arm and hand.  The place was in the eighties when we arrived and the TV was on.  Paul opened the patio door.  We turned the TV off.  I asked Mom whether she watched much TV and she shook her head no.  She complained of pain in her stomach.  Paul did her nails remarking on how dirty they were.  There were two aids in the room and one of them had really big eyes.  Both were fairly young.  UTI stands for urinary tract infection, which they feared Mom might develop.  One of them explained that sometimes it makes more sense to put patients in diapers rather than risk their falling being taken to the bathroom.  The two aids stressed that they are the caring type and will not leave a dying patient to vegetate in isolation.  I hope it hasn’t come to that yet.  The first thing I noticed when I entered the room was that there was an oxygen tank in the room and it was on and making a noise.  The aids believed Mom should be on oxygen all the time and not just when her number dipped really low.  But prior to this day Mom never needed oxygen at all.  Her blood pressure was high at 148 over 110, which is definitely high. The bathroom had a shower but no step so it seems the water would just run all over the floor.  I sometimes sensed I wasn’t phrasing things quite tactfully enough.  We were there a little less than two hours and left at twenty after two.  They took Mom to breakfast but she wasn’t eating but only slumped over her chair.  Paul worries that there is a risk of giving her too much pain medication.  Tim and Wendy had lunch with Mom yesterday and she was doing a lot better then.  The only thing is that Tim said she wasn’t talking much.  Paul called Judy twice while we were there.  The second time was out on the patio just before we left.  Paul asked me about the Time magazines but I didn’t want them because they were a month old and I have my own magazines.  There was an empty bed in the room.  Sometimes you’d hear cries of “Help!” down the hall.  We arrived back here just before two thirty.  (The place isn’t far)  I borrowed a cigarette from Larry and five minutes later I borrowed another cigarette from Ron.  I guess I was having a nicotine shortage.  

Trump Wants Nation-wide Conceal Carry Laws

The item number one on Stephanie Miller’s agenda this morning was that on Saturday President Trump refused to allow the democrat memo on the FBI Russian investigation to be released.  This is the ten page memo that clearly refutes the false conclusions and missing facts in the Republican memo that Trump had no problem with releasing last week.  The FBI didn’t WANT the Republican memo released last week.  Trump didn’t care about classified information or national security them.  But Adam Shiff checked with the FBI first before he released the democratic memo, and he wanted to release all ten pages.  Some have said that “Ten pages is far too long for President Trump to even read”.  Some have said that President Trump doesn’t read anything at all because he has dyslexia or something.  I don’t think he could have gotten through college without being able to read.  Nonetheless it is strange behavior that his aids report that the President prefers the spoken word to reading a document.  And the President wants everything simplified to death with easy to read bullet points.  And they say the President will only read things that put him in a good light.  On Saturday the President said that “The democrats WANTED me to reject the memo so they deliberately put classified information in it”.  But I repeat that the FBI has NOT criticized the democratic memo like they did the Republican one released last week.  Trump doesn’t respect the FBI.  Rob Porter never got his permanent security status because the FBI was concerned about these wife beating charges against Porter.   You have the photo of one wife and the other wife complained he grabbed her around the neck and dragged her still wet out of the shower and other stuff like that.  Of course Trump is an autocrat who hates women among other things.  And he basically insists that everyone around him agree with him.  Therefore he isn’t firing Chief of Staff John Kelly because basically they are kindred spirits.  Trump doesn’t want the democrats to get an even shot at getting the Truth before the public on anything.  After all here is a president who accuses people who don’t applaud at his speeches as “guilty of Treason”.   That’s dictatorial reasoning.

Sixty Minutes heralded a story that the media has ignored, but it shouldn’t because it makes a fundamental change in the “rule of law” or in this case- state sovereignty to make their own laws.  They don’t want a national gun registration.  They want national licensing of conceal carry laws for carrying a loaded gun into an urban situation like New York.  They say when they experimented with that in Wisconsin it was a disaster and the crime rate went up.  Of course for years the States have trodden over the rights of localities for things like pollution and gun laws.  This too is a violation of the “federalism” system the Constitution sets up.  This is a fundamental grab for power by Donald Trump who is behind this move of the Republican congress.  The Republican House has already passed this gun bill.  But it seems unlikely they will get the sixty votes needed in the senate to pass the thing.  But it is a threat to public safety.  They covered both sides of the argument on Sixty Minutes.  Law Enforcement officials in big cities are definitely against this bill.   This is an ironic example of an extreme Republican convention promise being kept by giving the second amendment untold fire power. 

There was a thing on Russian doping of Olympic athletes both in the London 2012 Olympics and in the 2014 winter Olympics in Soche, or however you spell that Russian city on the Black Sea where the winter Olympics were held that year.  They took away thirteen medals of athletes that year but then some court gave nine of them back.  This year what few Russian Olympic athletes there are had to compete under a neutral flag.   Of course knowing Putin is involved means this guy named Gregory was a defector from Russia.  He was in charge of the Russian doping.  There was this “secure” and “non secure” zone where in this Russian lab they kept urine samples in locked containers.  But someone put a rat hole in the wall between the secure and insecure zones where the vials of urine could be passed in-between and then dumped and substituted with clean urine examples.  This Gregory guy fears for his life nature because if you dissent against Putin you have a habit of ending up dead.  

I had Bill Press on in the morning just before five thirty.  Bill spent most of the remainder of the time discussing the Olympics.  Everybody agrees that it was just “too cold” with temperatures below zero, which is too cold for even winter Olympians.   They seem to prefer temperatures either in the twenties or perhaps low thirties.  Others have said that South Koreans are more “into” the summer Olympics anyhow.  But I guess they don’t want the crowd to freeze so give them blankets and things to keep warm.  And the wind has been horrific and many women skiers didn’t want to do their event because they were afraid that the wind would interfere with their performance.  (So, are these women just being whooses?)  We also heard from Bill that the snowboarding competition was really messed up.  And Bill says that these Olympics are really just venues to sell more bottles of Pepsi.  And that they are an environmental disaster.  South Korea built a whole stadium to hold the opening ceremonies in, but after the Olympics are over, they are going to just tear down this stadium because they don’t need it.  Also there was something about chopping down their sacred forest or something. 

The Strange Journey Through Trump World

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

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

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

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

Trump Loses Big Vote on Health Care Bill Yesterday

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

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

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

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

Evidence For Impeachment Continues to Trickle In

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

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

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

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

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

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

Opinions Divided on Success of G 21 Economic Summit

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

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

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

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

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

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

I woke up this morning and I had an aching back

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

That we’ve been sleeping on

Glory, glory Hallaluyah

Other stores will try to fool you

Glory, glory Hallalyah

Our sleepless nights are gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

America Is Hopelessly Divided

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump Screws Tax Payers In Blue States

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

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

(Events of Wednesday June 21st are below)

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

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

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

Donald Trump Gives Resolute Inaugural Message

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

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

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

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