Millions Welcome Back Marcus Arelius

As of Monday July 13th. 2009 a little after three in the afternoon I am back on the internet and we already have four blogs lined up for you. I guess that makes me a four-flusher. Of course we all know when Nixon played at a White House poker game he had five aces! Not me. There is a lot of news that has happened the past ten days or so that we won't touch upon till we get to the next blog, which right now looks to be "Cosmic Tides" or one of those "black" ones. There are other things happening in my personal life also that comprise a drama of their own. I await your comments, assuming I don't need to readjust any settings.

The Following was Typed the Last Full Week in June

Michael Jackson is dead. He died at about 2:26 PM this afternoon at UCLA medical center of a massive coronary. He was brought in to the center not breathing and with no pulse two hours earlier. He was said to have lapsed into a deep coma just before the end. Fans are gathering at all his homes. He was fifty. He was apparently born in August of 1958, which continues to puzzle me because I remember he was eight when I was nineteen, so the math doesn’t add up. I guess “History” out in 1995 was the last big album to make a dent in the pop charts. People are now saying that the “Thriller” release revived all of record sales in the early to mid ‘eighties. They saying that Jackson was planning a come-back tour very soon, that would include being in London.

Ed Mc Mahn died a day or two ago, who was Johnny Carson’s side-kick for all these years. Apparently he was just a little older than Dad.

Farrah Faucet died also today, so I guess what they say is true about deaths coming in three’s. Apparently “Charlie’s Angels” in 1976 was her first big commercial success. I wonder about that because I don’t think she was on the show more than that first year, and she always had the aura of vastly out-ranking her competition.

Last night I did extensive dial twereling and never really settled on anything. Dr. Phil has this sixteen year old guy who has other people punch him in the face claiming it builds up his “resistance” and will prepare him for a profession in boxing. Dr. Phil pointed out the utter absurdity of this boy’s reasoning. Brain damage. I made it an early evening and was in bed by a quarter to nine. I hope not to go to bed near that early tonight. I spent the most time watching a thing on sandwich shops throughout America, actually. I slept well and actually got a little extra sleep not getting up till twenty after six, which allowed me a whole lot less time than usual before breakfast. I went to the bakery for a large coffee. We had cream of wheat that was thick, and I used the two sugar packets in my pocket. We had a fried egg and an English muffin.

Last night out of sheer boredom I had turned the radio to KRLA and this morning I listened to a new talk show host on KRLA but he pulled a fast one playing a tape of himself last week that he admitted was pure fakery. I don’t see what’s funny. He was endeavoring to show how acute his perception was saying that Mark Sanford was really in Buenos Aries and “they should investigate that”. There is also John Enson (?) who just a week or so ago was caught in the same sort of adultery thing. Both Enson and Sanford were prospective republican presidential candidates with a bright future. Mark Sanford has not yet decided whether or not he will resign as Governor.

Now someone is blaring Michael Jackson music full blast on a small radio. We had stuffed cabbage for dinner and I and the new guy were the very last two to be served. There was also cabbage and carrots with that. I had seconds from Dora. I went to the bakery for a large coffee with no cream in it because it wasn’t that hot to begin with.

It was Elizabeth Taylor to coin the phrase “King of Pop”. This death is the biggest media circus since Princess Dianna died in late August 1997. One can’t also help but get déjà vu of Elvis Presley’s death. Like Michael, Elvis was “planning a tour” and hoping for a come-back of sorts as his album “Moody Blue” rose in the charts. Like Michael, Elvis’ carreer had long been in a slump, though not as long as Michael’s slump, which has run nearly fourteen years. Like Elvis, Michael died of a heart condition that may have been worsened by drug usage. Both Elvis and Michael had to inwardly be scared to death of facing the public knowing the horrible physical shape both were in, and also the numerous scandals that surrounded both celebrities.

Many today have commented on how many of Michael Jackson’s most devoted fans are people who weren’t even born yet when albums like “Bad” and “Thriller” were popular. Jackson remains an icon among kids of grammar school age. Black rappers have come and said that they got either inspiration or draw something of their own style from Michael. Everyone talks about the enormous energy of his performances.

When I get details of this “energy bill” that the President wants passed, I’ll let you know. In terms of the health care bills, clearly there has to be some form of “public health insurance” to compete with private insurers so that people have a choice. Of course the insurance companies are such crooks they aren’t going to like anyone cutting in on their territory. The Michael Jackson news coverage has not let up.

This is late Friday morning June 26, 2009. Thom Hartman says that right now the average American citizen is paying seven thousand and change for their health care per year, but that in Europe and other places they are paying three thousand and change for health care. No nation that has ever had single payer health care has ever rescinded it. Of course you can have your health coverage summarily dropped here for cancer for instance if they discover that you used acme medication when you were sixteen and didn’t report it. They can now call your cancer a “pre existing condition”. Of course as we said a couple days ago, the opponents of health care seem to be following two contra-dictory lines of attack. First of all they will tell you how horrible health care is in Canada for instance, and to get back the results of a pregnancy test you have to wait sixteen months or something. On the other hand they say we can’t have public health care because it will provide unfair competition and drive all the private medical insurers out of business, which wouldn’t be a bad thing as I see it if you believe in a “free market” and all. This is one of the issues where President Obama did not make himself at all clear in that news conference he had a couple days ago. The whole thing seemed to be a big punch of nothing. The President appears not to be all that upset about what’s going on in Iran now. Of course Michael Jackson and Ferrah Faucet have pushed Iran right off the front page, so I guess nobody cares about liberty over there any more. Some may say “Well maybe President Obama has a plan up his sleeve but he wants to keep it secret so as not to tip his hand”. I don’t know. Pat Buckhannon seems adamant on the whole notion that we can’t do anything to “upset” their government, and that if we roll over and play dead that they will somehow be placated and leave us and Israel alone. Another issue nobody is talking about right now is the ongoing threat of a universal tax on carbon – and the whole “cap and trade” thing, or whatever it’s called, where you can buy and sell carbon “indulgences” like the church did in the middle ages. If the “right to pollute” is a “privilege” that you earn, like cigarettes used to be in prison, then somehow it will be acceptable in this capitalist world. Anything that increases consumer taxes and therefore discourages “consumption” on the face of it seems to me bad for business. And people remain concern that this recession is going to take a renewed downward path soon.

This paragraph is inserted here a bit out of order. It’s 3:30. Let’s talk about stuff people from the Federation have been telling me. They said I jinxed myself and also jinxed Howard in his new incarnation by offending the Des Rho “demons” as they are referred to. I have denied this several times to the Federation. But of course the “offending paragraph” is in a file from about sixteen days ago, and I can’t even name the file here because that will give the whole game away. The Federation has been saying to be very careful how I criticize Obama on you-know-what subject, and I have been rather light footed on the subject. I guess the question is how to “undo the deed”. Since the material is in a blog and I can’t get to my blogs even to read what I wrote- - the Des Rho has kind of a Catch 22 situation on their hands. Even if I were to delete the offending material this would only “red flag” the material so it could be identified.

Al Franken Gives Demos Sixty Senators

Several boxes of drugs and bio-hazards such as needles have been taken from the Jackson mansion. Apparently only Jackson’s mother, Kathryn and the three kids are left any money while Joe is out in the cold. One might question the wisdom of leaving the kids in the charge of a 79 year old woman, and a husband who was known to have regularly beaten his own kids. The correct Jackson will has been “officiated” and is pretty well established. The doctor still denies that he ever gave Jackson Demerol. Now there is a newer story about how Jackson pled for an even more powerful sleeping medication just four days before his death, but was turned down Meanwhile the general consensus is that grandmother Kathryn Jackson will be taking care of Jackson’s three kids (who now get to be seen in public without masks over their heads) at the Encino compound because this was decreed in Jackson’s will. Al Sharpton gives thumbs up But Gloria Alred has been hinting that Debbie Rho should be restored to her rights as biological mother of Jackson’s two older kids, and these two kids don’t look the least bit black, and now there are roomers the dermatologist is really the sperm doner. They are making preparations for a big public funeral at “Never Land” in Santa Barbra and are bringing in 30 porta-potties. But they suggest that the people attending bring their own water supply. The roads to it are narrow and hard for heavy traffic to traverse. So because of all this now they are 86’ing the funeral there altogether.

Al Franken has finally made it to the US Senate. The Minnesota supreme court at long last declared him the winner of last Novembers election after two hundred and some odd days. The only election that took longer was an Illinois senate race back in the twenties and one can only imagine that one. Better late than never. You can count on his having the support of comedians everywhere, and all of us who are fans. Now the Democrats will have a filibuster proof sixty democrats in the US Senate if they want to use it, and if the democrats can all get united. This is easier said than done.

The consumer spending index took a down-turn in the month of June. This can’t be good news for the economy, and the stock markets didn’t like it. They have leaked tomorrow’s job loss figures of 485,000 or something not good. You can’t have any lasting recovery without job creation. Meanwhile over in China they spent about as much money on stimulus as we have but have a lot more to show for it, such as a seven percent growth. Of course they have a “buy China” policy that helps immensely. Now Obama is talking about a second stimulus economic package, which would be just fine with me. I’m still in the process of spending my first stimulus check

Governor Sanford held another press conference and admitted that he has “crossed the line” with numerous women. But he says that only with Maria from Argentina has he found his true soul mate. The senator keeps intermingling talk of his “faith” with his obsession for Maria, and even asked his wife permission to visit his Argentina lover. Satan is more than happy to make propaganda use of a phony like this. If you’ve read the E mail exchanges, he seems more obsessed with her than she is with him. She keeps reminding him of her other boyfriend, and also brings up his wife and kids and the upcoming China trip the senator’s family is taking. This transcript covers a two or so week period in July of 2008. Meanwhile in South Carolina there are increasing calls for investigation of Sanford’s having broken the law, and desires for his resignation. Last week Sanford promised full financial disclosure proving that he didn’t misuse state funds for his scandalous travels. But now the governor is stonewalling. Others just want the senator to “Shut the Hell Up”. Even the cleric who swore him in has become disgusted with the governor’s excuses and ramblings.

Now they are going to detonate a two megaton bomb on the moon to create a crater five miles in diameter. They are going this because when the pieces of the moon “blow up in the air’ (?) they will be able to retrieve the particles and analyze them. Of course this detonation violates multiple world space treaties with multiple nations signing. Others are reporting that Buz Aldren reported spacecraft of aliens located at the edge of a crater. Others have said there is a whole alien civilization on the dark side of the moon- - - and the machinations of these theories takes on even weirder aspects.

Sean Hannity interviewed a government scientist on FOX TV today and made some challenging accusations. According to Randy Rhodes, who aired it, there was a planned release of a “Global Warming” report but at the last minute they pulled the report because it didn’t support the liberal Obama platform. They are saying now we have been in a general cooling trend since a peak in 1998. Today the government released another of their famous surveys on obesity, and Mississippi leads the pack with a 44% childhood obesity. 23 states showed increases in obesity and no state showed a decline. Here in California new laws went into effect regulating the distribution of trans-fat foods and sodas to school kids. All these alarmists say that “these people” are increasing the insurance costs of all of us. I don’t buy that. Because who’s to say “those people” see a doctor as regularly as the rest of us hypochondriacs anyhow? On this July first, 48 of the fifty states are having or have had a budget crisis, except for North Dakota and Montana.

This paragraph is being written by an author who does not want his identity revealed. Some of you who don’t want to walk down memory lane one more time into a 24 year time-warp may wish to skip this paragraph and get on to other stuff, but “Enquiring Minds want to Know”. Have you noticed that certain hit songs actually “pre-figure” rock groups that haven’t come into existence yet? The most famous case of this is “Earache, My Eye” by Chich and Chong, which comes off as a parody of Van Halen. Then we have “Tobacco Road” by the Nashville Teens sounding like the Yardbirds, and “All I Got to Do” by the Beatles sounding like the Zombies. Elvis on the album “Elvis is Back” has a song “Reconsider Baby” that sounds amazingly like Roy Orbeson even though he didn’t have his first big hit out for another several months. One other piece on that same album is “Make Me Know It” and I want to know what sort of cosmic causes caused me to not be on the internet the past two & a half weeks, and counting. I wondered whether it was somehow astrological, like the sun passing through the Pliades, or perhaps the sun passing Aldeberan, which means “The Follower” and Alcion is said to have blown up one of Aldeberan’s planets in June 1967 though the Federation and the Romulans use a different Roman numeral to designate it, because of the five inner planets of Aldeberan being unimportant, not to mention, uninhabitable. And of course I wondered about offending the “Des Rho” demons, alluded to perhaps further on in this posting, if I remember to include it. But a representative of theirs told me a few days ago “You aren’t in any trouble with us”. Stewart Sutcliffe told me a few days ago that I should not obsess on the personal karma of others but just worry about my own. The term “Des Rho” actually goes back to when I suspected my TV of being inhabited by demons in November of 1981 when the picture did a lot of screwy things- - because every time I’d take it to the shop nothing would be wrong with it but when I would take it home it would act up. One of the features was a vertical line right across the screen so you saw the top of a frame at the bottom of the screen and the bottom frame at the top. Mark and I coined the term Des Rho as a scrambling of the last name of Rhodes, which some say alludes to these demons causing the death of Ozzy Osborne guitarist Randy Rhodes. But actually the term is from the last name of another guy named Rhodes. The Romulans associate the “R” with 18 and hence “666”. Some may protest “But the Romulans don’t use the letters K and W. They only have 24 letters in their alphabet”. While people on Regelus V say “Real Romulans don’t use K and W” the Sirius A Romulans do use these two letters in their “Germanic dialect”. Bones, alias Stewart told me something you people may have suspected, that the Torranto Romulans and the Romulans on Sirius A- - - this group of Romulans have been living in Hamburg (Germany) for the past several hundred years. Romulans in their semaphore signals have always learned the letters K and W, as well as the backward “T” numeric sign. As you may also know, Zachery made one of several appearances at the Bosc house when I was not there in 1982, but Mark Campbell was there, and he coined the term “Boneskat”, which caught on with Sirius A people. I’ve heard Jim Cooper use the term. It is said that Mark Campbell “assumed my karma” and lived the life I might have had, had I not chosen to get married when I did. Of course the “Crusader insignia” of Chi Rho has raised questions. (X P in Greek) I pronounce it Chi- - with a long I, when this letter appears, for instance, in my name. The Chinese have a word called “Chee” referred to as energy. Fraternities pronounce the letter “KI” with a long I. But on Alcion, they pronounce it “Shy” and it has a similar meaning apparently to “fung chue” or “energy” in the Chinese. The following material was typed approximately a week ago- - .

HIGH COURT OVERTURNS SOTOMAYOR

This posting was typed around June 30th 2009

This whole cap and trade bill is becoming a bad joke. Of course if you didn’t think jobs were going to China fast enough this bill will only accelerate that out flow of jobs overseas. Some Republican pointed out that for this thing to work at all, China and India have to be in on it, since they are the major polluters. I’ve said all along I thought this was premature given the delicate state of our economy now, and that a broad round of regressive tax hikes would kill the recovery off completely. I had Rush Limbaugh on a while- -and he and Thom Hartman both agree that the cap and trade bill is bogus saying it’s a give-away and sell-out to Wall Street. For two such diverse minds to come to this same conclusion ought to give anyone pause. It seems that polluters are given just as many if not more carbon credits than an outfit using windmill energy. So it would seem that the primary purpose of the measure has been completely abandoned, and it’s just amounts to more money for the big boys to play with that isn’t their own. The Republicans watered down and watered down this bill till it ended up useless. They had to do this to appease the growing “blue dog” democratic constituency, who nowdays outnumber true progressives in congress. Even with the gutting of the bill it only narrowly passed the House, and experts say that it has even less of a chance in the senate.

The Supreme Court has struck down that Justice Sotomayer ruling today on those white firemen who claim they were discriminated against in Connecticut. It was a 5 to 4 decision, which I approve of. But it may adversely affect Justice Sotomayer’s chances at confirmation. The Ruling stated that chapter 7 of the Civil Rights bill of 1964 had been misapplied. The justices “tried to keep this ruling as narrow as possible”. Both Hartman and Rush would have liked more generalized constitutional issues to be addressed, such as the fourteenth amendment. Justice Ginsburg in her dissent sounded like she was almost agreeing with the majority saying the case for the City was really screwey.

Thom Hartman says there are only about four banks that rule the roost in this area. First of all the banks are just sitting on all the low intrest money they’ve received. They are not lending it out (at a handsome profit, I might add) but just hording it. In this say inflation fears are now out the window but Judy’s prediction of a renewed downward direction in the economy may be a reality. It’s all in the power of the banks but for some reason they are just choosing to hord all the money they’ve been given, and not using it for its intended purpose. These four banks if I’m right are Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Chase-Manhatton.and let us not forget Goldman Sachs, who will benefit most from cap & trade. Certainly this is a time to bring in the Shermon Anti-Trust Act into play, which was originally passed in 1881. (I thought it was 1890) Thom Hartman says he is more optimistic than ever. Geoblesr said that on Hitler’s birthday in 1945 right before the end came. For Hartman’s words to have any validation at all the democrats have to win big in the election of 2012. Because the revolution is still incomplete because the republicans still feel way too secure about being able to call the shots. We need another repeat of 1934. And hopefully President Obama will get on the stump himself and attack these Goliath corporate interests the way Roosevelt did. He needs to really go after them and put them on the defensive. I’ve said all this before in my blogs. This time I hope it sinks in.

As you know a second autopsy of Michael Jackson’s body was conducted by a private firm hired by the family last Saturday. (there is no news two weeks later) They are hoping for both “a second oppinion” and also to get quicker toxicology results than were promised by the County. But there have already been leaks. There are needle marks all over Jackson’s body. There are also pin pricks near the heart indicating that adrenaline has been injected to jump start Jackson’s heart on previous occasions. They said the scalp only had peach fuzz growing on it, and that Jackson has been wearing wigs. Of course you know about the oxy-conten and the Demerol and whatever other drugs these mixed with. The family does not trust this attending physician. I don’t want to make allegations of mal-practice, but it seems that the facts are pointing in that direction. By the time I ever get this into a blog it will probably be all over the media, plus a bunch of new leaks I haven’t yet heard.

Bernie Madoff today was sentenced to 150 years in prison for running the world’s biggest Ponzie scheme. The only unhappiness the victims would have about this is that the man is already 71 and will die and “get off paying the rest of his sentence”. Of course if they ever perfected reincarnated soul tracing you could nab him and place him behind bars for another whole life-time, and a good part of another. If only- - .

Getting back to that Sixty Minutes thing about computers reading your mind. There would be limitation. First of course is the fact that a simple term like “screwdriver” is stored in scattered sections of the brain. There is the word, there is the visual image, and the tactile information, and then there is the associative aspect of what a screwdriver does. If you are a fuzz-brain to begin with all of those “artist renderings” of various rooms might confuse you and one may start to look like another so that you could not be sure whether you’d seen this exact room or not. Still the software would be good at finding out what mischief your teenager was up to while you were gone. And it would also work for terrorists in deciding whether to “cut a deal” with them or their intent was to break it at first chance. Instead of climbing into one of those big magnetic resonance tubes (a major hassle) what if they could just shine a red laser dot on your frontal lobe and find out the same information? They said that it’s an open question whether the fifth amendment right against self intimidation would apply. The logic would be used that if you were in the South and raped a young girl you could come back and tell the Sheriff “You specifically told me that all voluntary sex with an under-aged girl was rape. Well this sex wasn’t colentary”. So if being tortured to get oral information is a violation of rights, what would a wholesale “raping of the mind” amount to?

They say that most pedophilias are actually heterosexual. Some people have said that Michael Jackson was gay and yet there is no flood of men coming forth to say “I have had sex with Michael” as one would expect of a gay man. Certainly if Michael is gay he has certainly never “come out” and nobody around him (in the family) has alluded to anything but his being a perfectly “normal” heterosexual.

Leo Le Port has the same problem I do with stereo-scopic vision that I do. The condition is called ambliopia- - and I remember when I was around six still living in LA the eye doctor tried having me wear an eye patch on my better eye to correct the situation, but it didn’t work. The funny thing is that HD TV actually heightens the “flat look” of a TV image. The only thing where 3 D actually “worked” for me was that Michael Jackson thing at Disneyland. With everything else the effect has been lost on me. They have three methods of 3 D. There is the red green bit. There is polarized lenses along different planes, and there is actually some plug in device that lights up the screen for you before your eyes. This last technique seems needlessly cumbersome. It would seem many people have the same condition I do and 3 D never did catch on. Sometimes wearing glasses, for instance in gym class when playing baseball actually messes up what depth perception I had not wearing glasses, when you’re used to doing that.

The US has apparently completed a long anticipated phase of the Iraq War by withdrawing combat troops from the cities of Iraq. So the Obama administration was able to keep at least one campaign promise completing this phase of the withdrawal.

Last night’s Law and Order is a glairing case in point as to what is wrong with certain “anti terrorism” laws passed right after 9 – 11. There is a case where a man was killed in an organized fighting contest. The other guy kept pummeling him after he had officially “tapped out” to end it. Later a plea to a lesser charge involving no jail time was accepted by the DA on the misguided belief that the guy was not a professional fighter, which violated the rules of these “matches”. In revenge for this miscarriage of justice there was a spontaneous “gang rumble” which was a free-for-all of violence and some killing. They tried to prosecute for this incident using a video but once again the prosecution failed because they could not identify the video to be used in evidence, and without it it was impossible to know which individual committed which act of violence to pin a specific charge on them. They “solved” the problem by invoking this “anti terrorism” act, which was never intended for street brawls. In this act you could indict and convict a whole group giving them all life sentences without connecting one individual to a specific act. Such is the rather sick state of “Bush justice” in the U S A today.

I would like to just say in conclusion of this entry that I hope tonight is the night I am back on the internet. This and the last two paragraphs is being typed Tuesday June 30, 2009. Each time I think my internet problem has been solved, some new previously unknown wrinkle inserts itself. If so I plan to make three new postings of the current blog and then switch to “Cosmic Tides” or the next “black” blog that’s due up now.

President Obama Struggles to Find Himself

AS JACK NICKELSON WOULD SAY - - "I'M BACK !
Typed June 19, 2009

I might as well put something here down on paper so to speak on the subjects I would be blogging about were I not cut off from the internet now. President Obama is basically “trying to find himself” these days. He seems reluctant to want to overturn the “Defense of Marriage” act, and had his people at justice file a suit in court to defend this provision. This to me seems odd for a man who had loudly and often proclaimed his desire to advance gay rights. This is because this law itself is probably unconstitutional because it denies the “Full Faith and Credit” clause in the Constitution. This is the provision that says acts done in one state have to be recognized as legal in the other 49 states and why people can legally fly to Las Vegas to get married or get a divorce. As such I’m a little surprised the bill has not been challenged before now. Obama says he wants to advance the rights of gay people on matters of health coverage, but seems miserly in actually doing it. Also, and most importantly, this President promised to overturn the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” law in the military. Both President’s Clinton and Obama campaigned and were elected on this issue, and yet both backed away from their commitment. For President Obama a simple executive order would be all that is necessary to overturn the regulation and keep long standing gays from being booted out of the military after years of fruitful and loyal service. This is really a case where this writer has changed his position over the years. Gays have proven time and again that they are able to keep their “impulses” under control and that they are more than capable of carrying out their duties without being injurious to the entire group.

Also this President has trouble “finding himself” when it comes to figuring out who voted for him in the past election on economic issues. It wasn’t the corporatists who voted for him. Larry Summers and Timothy Geitner would never have been put into their posts were the choice put up before his constituency. These two believe in Big Money and are in that spirit holders from policies of the Bush Administration. And now Obama is slipping in the public opinion polls and people are wondering why. They are worried about these big Bush-Obama deficits. They don’t think GM and Chrysler should have been rescued, but believe more in the sink or swim mentality. Were this economy left to the market balancing mechanism Adam Smith talked about, things would in time come to reach a new state of equilibrium where the economy would be again functioning and in balance. But when the government steps in and throws the delicate Adam Smith model out of kilter and suddenly rich people are outright encouraged to make bad investments, then obviously you’re going to have big problems. People like Thom Hartman want new sweeping laws in all sorts of areas such as campaign finance. My philosophy is that full disclosure is all that is needed as a remedy here. “Sunshine is the best disinfectant” as they say, and people should be encouraged to read up. Now President Obama wants some whole new department of Finance or something with new powers given to the Federal Reserve they don’t even have now. The solution in my opinion is not the imposition of new regulations but a restoration of the old regulations that were done away with by Presidents Reagan and Clinton, many bills being passed in the waning years while Clinton was still in office that overturned long-standing regulations about Banks being gambling institutions given to investment speculation. In your grand dad’s day, banking was a rather dull, if not stifling occupation carried out by drab old men in gray suits, whereas today banking affairs are more in the style of Gordon Gecko, from the “Wall Street” movie, with lots of spine tingling roller coaster action. There are laws meant to curb the abuses exposed in the crash of 1907 that the neo cons of today have seen the abolition of. The worst thing President Obama could do is let the financial community write the new regulations. Almost anybody else- -would do a better job.

In the case of the election in Iran it’s a case of “I told you so”. Now the highest ruler in Iran has decreed that the election was fair and the results won’t be overturned. They will not hold a second election. The Republicans and others today passed a bill supporting the spirit of protest of the Iranian people in saying the election was not fair and that they should not cut off communication to the outside world. As you know since the internet has been cut off in that country, it’s hard to get images out to the outside world, even though that is being done. Some may hope that like thirty years ago that there will be a revolution and unlike in 1979, a better and not worse government will then be instituted. I told you in previous postings I did not think this would happen because the lock on government was too secure. Eastern Europe suffered for several decades under Communist rule despite glimmers of hope in Hungary in 1956 and the “Prague Spring” of 1968, only to have the iron lid of security come clamping down harder.

In this area of southern California we are finally getting some warmer, sunnier weather. But we aren’t the only people to have below average temperatures this spring. I hear that in places such as Boston and New York and Chicago they have had below average temperatures this past month, as we have. I know they released that global warming report a week or so ago but I haven’t seen that become a reality yet. Illinois doesn’t have the climate of Texas, New Hampshire doesn’t have the climate of the Carolinas, and Florida and Louisiana are not underwater. However I sill agree that the West has been abnormally low in rainfall, and it’s been that way for quite a number of years leaving forests open to diseases by agents such as pine beetles. We have to believe the experts who tell us that often symptoms of “global warming” is actually cooler weather in some places. But only hindsight is twenty / twenty.

Meanwhile the climate in Washington DC and in Congress has become downright stiffeling and unhealthful. President Obama wants “clean coal” and others say that this is a nonsensical term. I don’t know who is right. I do believe we need to proceed full throttle with sequestration of carbon technology. I wish I knew to what extend that “new technology” of all kinds is or isn’t being bought up by big corporations, only to take the technology off the market and insure that the public never knows about it. To me this might just be an area where we could have new legislation passed specifically to deal with this current ongoing reality. If you watched Days of our Lives today you know how the Di Mira family has the Courts in its back pocket, and they will issue any ruling that you choose. I don’t know if this is true for corporations. We hear that Thom Dashel’s wife is on the boards of various health insurance companies, and this is why Dashel came out against Obama’s health plan. People should read up on their congressmen and find out which team their man is pitching for. It’s rather strange to think of the sort of bills that would be getting passed now if George Bush were still in office and he had 59 going on 60 members of his party in the US Senate. But somehow the rules seemed different for them. Which raises the question as to exactly why is Al Franken not Minisota’s junior senator yet? I don’t know. I’ve never heard of an election recount taking this long. Democrats have been waiting nearly six months for their “New Day” but somehow things just haven’t played out the way everybody envisioned. (Selah)

My Return will be Soon

Dear blogging world. I am typing this from a computer in Laguna Hills because my computer still is not hooked up to the internet as it hasn't been for the past week. There are a lot of comments I would like to make about President Obama and his poor performance at today's press conference today. There is also a page typed last Friday that will show up soon, hopefully this Thursday, and then I will be putting out new material perhaps later that same day.

TV Stations Go All Digital

As we look out over the dreary overcast one also sees a murky horizon when it comes to Digital TV Stations because ones that came in fine a couple of days ago aren't coming in now, such as channels two, eleven, thirteen, forty, and fifty-eight. Of course this move to digital television might have taken place twenty years ago because in 1988 there was a demonstration of Japanese digital technology, but that was done in analog, so the US thought they'd just leap-frog analog alltogether and go to digital. But now if it's raining you can't get a TV signal or that tree outside your window is suddenly blocking your reception. Of course they can "degrade" the picture by putting up to eight digital stations on one carrier. Hopefully other people haven't had my negative experiences of the past couple of days. The frequencies these new TV signals transmit at are inherently less stable and given to black-outs. Some analog stations still haven't gone off the air yet but run repeats of instructions for hooking up your station converter, half the time in Spanish.

As this writer suspected President Akmadenijab of Iran won re-election with 62% of the vote. Knowing the government in Iran over the previous twenty years, it's impossible to envision it happening any other way. Other people were holding out hopes that "the will of the people" and "dissident unrest" and "opposition parties" would surely win the day and at last we would have a sane ruler of Iran, who would work for peace rather than war. No, those of you who doubt my grim astrological projections won't be getting off that easy. The probability of nuclear war or something close to it, is just as high, if not now higher than it ever was.

THE FOLLOWING WAS TYPED JUNE 12, 2009

Well, like they said in the Alcatraz movie, “When the weather starts getting colder you know summer is on its way”. This June gloom rather than attenuating, actually appears to be becoming more pronounced with hints of drizzle in the air this morning. As you may remember it rained on the last day of school in June of 1967 but then ten days later the weather was really hot. There were a lot of trips to the beach during this period, as you know. I went to the bakery before breakfast for a large coffee. It seems that the analog TV stations won’t be going off until midnight rather than twelve noon. When they do I’m going to check 9, 13, and 40. Of course commentary on the TV changeover has dominated the news cycle this past day or so.

We had corn flakes for breakfast with a fried egg and cinnamon toast and just one coffee. Drive radio featured 1983. C-Span 2 featured auto dealers being driven out of business by the Obama policies and all this bankruptcy stuff. The closure of thest Auto Dealerships violates laws in several states but they’re doing it anyhow. Meanwhile on another C-Span station we are subjected to once again these anti tobacco bills where the FDA now will obtain control of tobacco production. This to me is an utterly absurd and unwarranted intrusion of the Federal Government into the affairs of a private corporation where it lacks jourisdiction. Philip Morris, the largest of the tobacco companies likes the bill because they are the largest company and are equipped to deal with the restrictions, and if its competitors are driven out of business it’s no skin off their nose.

David Carradine did not commit suicide but was murdered. The coroner has released his findings. Of course as you know he was found tied up and nude in Thailand. This is a horrible ending to the life of a legend. We hope his memory will be vindicated.

The LA Lakers won last night. The Magic led at the half 49 to 37 so I was surprised the next time I checked that station it was 57 to 55 Lakers or something. It was a close, hard fought game from then on. Last night I had dreams about getting in arguments and shouting matches with various people, but I can’t remember the details.

Wolfram will respond if you ask for a State Capital. It’s track record isn’t real good on “unsolicited questions”. Right now it’s almost time for Bernie Sanders.

They may stop adding ammonia to cigarettes if this bill passes because Thom has used the term “free basing” to describe making the blood more alkaline to speed the nicotine to the brain faster, and they have been doing this with cigarettes since the sixties to in Hartman’s words, “to increase the addictive nature of tobacco products”.

Whispers and Imuendos

People with their feet firmly planted on the ground believe firmly in the Conspiracy theory when it comes to the assenations of John and Robert Kennedy. These people don't have a screw loose or something. There is a book out called "Legacy of Secrecy" that is one of the more recent books on the Assasenation of John Kennedy. Two people, San Giancana and Johnny Roselli were killed either before or during their Senate testimony of the Frank Church committee. Roselli testified lin late April of 1976 and was scheduled to testify again in August of 1976. But he disappeared in late July and in early August his dismembered body was found decomposing in a drum cannister in Miami. According to one source, Roselli either fired the fatal shot that killed Kennedy or was with two others who did. This was done from a storm drain on Elm Street in Dallas. Now it's mentioned that the Kennedy adminestration was planning a new planned overthrow of the Castro government in Cuba in December of 1963 but that the Mafia still didn't want this coup to occur, for whatever reason, perhaps because it would give the president new political power to go after them. Also they had to kill Robert Kennedy because there are measures that needed to be taken to clear away all the secrets and shine in a little sunlight on the Mafia's dark, murky past and present- - that only a President could order. So they say that Sirhan Sirhan's family was scared to death of the mafia. Johnson, according to the author, was so afraid of what the Mafia might do that he ordered the whole Warren commision report as a vehical for coverint up the truth. There is also false evidence that the Mafia planted against Castro to make him look guilty of things he wasn't. The Book appears to imply that the Mafia was a lot more powerful forty or fifty years ago than it is today. Certain things are beyond doubt. Such as the fact that the first place the Dallas Police department ran after the shots were fired was to the grassn noll, and a lot of ordenary people saw and heard things in that direction too. But there are also a lot of eye witness reports about things that happened on 9 - 11 at Ground Zero, that the government would not like to become general knowledge. Two names worth noting among you Federation fans are Jimmy Hoffa and Johnny Roselli. Roselli has been a very fruitful source for information, Federation people tell me, with a lot of stories to relate. As to Hoffa, we have heard from his guardian angels that it was Hoffa's wish to join the Federation. This whole guardian angel thing is interesting in that at least three times in my life I have experianced the presence of guardian angels of dead people, without any contact with the dead person himself. These three cases are Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, and Marlon Brando. Being "flush" with guardian angels causes one to shall we say, opperate at a higher energy level than normal, saying, thinking, and doing things that one had formerly either lacked the initiative to do, or was prevented from doing before.

Our second of four topics covers that phone call I got from my Mom late yesterday afternoon. Unlike the Beatles with the "Let It Be" album, I'm going to completely redo this report today because yesterday I was perhaps too upset going into a hysterical rant about things. It seems that our esteemed Governor wants to gut programs such as child care and walfare and other services to the poor including whack two hundred dollars off monthly S S I checks, as well as completely eliminate Dental care from medi-cal. Governor Swartzenegger has repeatedly stated that "raising taxes is not an option". Rather than impeach the governor, I'd like to haul off and impeach the entire voting public of California. It's ironic that it takes a slim majority vote to as the proponets say "deny a fundamental right to the citizens" and alter the state constitution, and yet to raise taxes on ANYTHING it takes a two thirds majority vote, which as you might guess, is almost impossible to achieve. There is something systemically wrong with California State government and there has been since Proposition 13 was passed in 1978. There are now rising up some prudent people who want to overturn proposition 13. The sooner the better in my oppinion, and I don't care how they do it, I'd just like to see it done. My only hope is that the cuts I've heard about are so draconian and will throw countless people, and perhaps this writer, into the streets- - that somehow saner minds will pervail. Let's hope so.

Nobody likes an Uncle Tom. You've heard that one, but you know a lot of those old generalizations turn out to be true. There are a couple of "Tom's" I'd like to discuss here. One is Clarence Thomas. Here is a man who in my oppinion is not intellectually qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. He lacks "judicial temperment" and a lot of other essential qualities, too. He almost never asks questions but is content to let others do the talking, and one suspects, the thinking for him, too, like Justice Scallia. Personally I can't get over how hauty Thomas acted at his senate confirmation. In the first place he's a hypocrite benefiting from affirmative action programs when he was younger, and yet turning against them now. One of my pet peves about people in general is those who think they were dropped off by the Mother Space Ship yesterday and somehow have no past. The fact is that everybody who passes judgement on You has their own Past and they "Got Here" somehow. They've lived a life and made their mistakes. But these hypocrits seem to want to step outside their own body and now somehow claim that they are perfect and they have no "past" of their own. The other Tom I'd like to discuss is Tom Bradley. This is the quintessential Uncle Tom. One would wonder how LA could have a Black mayer and at virtually for the same period, have one of the most racist Police Chiefs, at least within my memory, that Los Angeles has ever had. Both Chief Daryl Gates and Tom Bradley left office within months of each other. Tom Bradley was a protogee of Police Chief Parker, whose racism is apparently legondary. Bradley must have done some world class Uncle-Tom-ming to get on Chief Parker's good side. You know that during the tenure of Chief Dayl Gates, there was one racial incident after another and there was all sorts of debates about choke holds and "Blacks don't have veins like Normal People" and all that, and stuff about Latinos also. All of this stuff was going on during the Bradley adminestration and he wasn't inclined to want to do a thing about it. I don't know about you but to me, a person who hates his own race has mental problems or something. Of course the Apostle Paul was an "Uncle Tom" in his day. The only worldly factoid that he was really Prowd of- - -was the fact that he was a "Natural born Roman citizen" whereas others had to obtain their citizenship with a great deal of money. You certainly see him only passing contempt and scorn on his own race. People who allow themselves to be used in Pawns in someone else's game- - are dangerous, just like the Dylan song says. They love to swell with pride but it isn't pride in their own merits but rather a false pride that's foisted on them by their Overlords to Manipulate them, like the morally spineless puppets they are.

There are four fundamental ways in which I agree with Mormonism over "My Own Faith" so to speak. The Federation has as you know, always had a soft spot for Mormons. None of these polygamy cult stories gets air play up there. The first area of agreement is something I saw in a film while visiting Salt Lake City, that after you die, the memory of your heavenly pre existance will be restored to you. One reason why most fundamentalist protestents cringe at this doctrine is that they want you worshipping the DATE that you decided to "accept Jesus". They would dearly love to see you only as a blank, and hence, programmable slate. But the Bible supports me and the Mormons in that it state "When you die, your soul returns to God, who gave it". The same scripture also says "As a dog dies so dies a man". To me that would mean that if you have to accept Christ to die, than so does your dog" (!) Of course when you die you are no longer in the realm, so far as we know in the Time-Space continuoum. It logically can be inferred that since Time after all is "temperal" that when you escape it, you revert back to whatever state you were in when you entered "Through the Wall". (Selah) My second area of agreement with the Mormons is in their doctrine of who Jesus was and who he was not. Jesus was not the second person of the Trinity because the Trinity Doctrine is tracable to a guy named Athenasius of Egypt who lived at the beginning of the Fourth Century AD. Before this the doctrine of the trinity was unknown and no previous theologian even suggested it. The third fundamental area of agreement is in baptismal regeneration. This is in reference to the often repeated scripture that "Whoever believes in Jesus and is baptized in water, the same shall we saved". Jesus spoke of one being "born of water and of the spirit" to emphasize baptismal regeneration. This seems like a slam dunk that everybody could agree with and nobody could dispute. But the Neo-Protestents don't like it. Because I think their argument is that baptisum puts the focus on the act- - rather than you "in your heart" if you will "submitting to the pastor". Neo-protestents are very pastoral-centric, as you know, and anything which takes attention off of them, even stained glass windows- - is a "No no" to their way of thinking. The fourth area of agreement is in the possability of baptism for the dead. The apostle Paul at one argues that baptisum for the dead is at least possible. Those who argue strenuously against it are basically saying "after death there is nothing so obviously the person can't be baptized". These Neo-Protestents when you analyze their theology believe that basically that Death IS the end. They see death as Nirvana and like the Moslems believe that a sudden, violent death is the most glorius and "honorable" way to go out. ("Die" for you people in Rio Linda) These people don't believe in soul sleep. They don't see the dead as "awaiting judgement" as the Book of Revelation clearly states. These people seem to want heaven to be an exclusive club. They say "Don't bring up the story of what if the missionary's jeep ran out of gas on the way to the village". They say "It's in God's hands" when really they would just rather not have certain people saved. The idea also of loving or caring what happens to an unsaved loved one is something they don't want to think about, being as self centered as they are. (Selah)

The Year of Jubilee

You know, I wish I could bottle Joel Olsteen's sermon this morning and play it back to myself as a subliminal tape like Homer Simpson did last night, to sort of reprogram my mind. The day of Jubilee in ancient Hebrew was a year every fiftieth year where all property would revert back to its original owner. In Jewish tradition they had a great belief in "Rightful Inheritance" and the idea of restoring one of his rightful place was paramount. If we carried this philosophy to Jehovah Himself we might infer that every human is born with an ideal divine legasy of what he would be if he lived a sinless life, just as the Jewish property owner would have his title restored after fifty years even if he was guilty of bad judgement along the way. Some scollars say that AD 35 was a Jubilee year and this was the "favorible year of the Lord" that Jesus referred to in his ministry. In Joel's sermon there was talk of people receiving their physical healing, or getting out of debt or conquering an addiction, or finding a mate, or getting that long due promotion. Joel Olsteen spoke of God "Accelerating the time table" to speed up what to mortal would seem to require a long time to accomplish. What Olsteen hit on here is indeed the central message of Christianity, in that it is a message of "loosing from one's bonds" and of liberation. In the story of the protigal son it says that he was not only forgiven for his sin, as if it had never happened, but this man was to be honored with a robe placed on him and a royal ring placed on his finger. I don't know about you but I know it's a rare day when I think such a story could be about ME. I always see someone else in that exaulted roll. And this is no wonder. Certainly with Jesus of KFI on the radio there is this "addiction" to viewing people as trapped in their roles. So the alcholic and the mental patient alike are not only seen as hopeless, but people whom you should shun and by the way they will "manipulate you" if they ever get the chance. Black people are seen "with people with a lot of excess emotional baggage". And if you think you're in love with someone of either sex, you are sadly informed "They have too much emotional baggage to investment, and you are better off spending your years alone". And these people remind us that the church itself is after all just a "business" like any other business relationship. If you attend and you don't pony up the money you are "stealing" from them. And also in terms of theology the question isn't to ask yourself "Am I free from the bonds of sin?" but rather is "What is my position on the Trinity. If my doctrine of the trinity is correct I can do all the raping and pillaging I want to in war time". And of course when of course it comes to "whitnessing" to the Islamic believers among us- - I remember as a kid our family used to drive along Slaucen and how when you passed the steel plant you could feel the heat of the hot steel. I imagine that even from here Islamists can feel the white heat of rage that Christians feel for them. Obama is trying to reach out to the Islamic culture and give them a new beginning, which is what Christianity used to be all about. (Though in practice this was seldom the case) But now the nay sayers are out against Obama telling him that speaking what he perceives to be the Truth is dangerous and shows signs of weakness. These people would say "Israel does well to have hardness of heart". And "We all know that Jesus is coming back anyhow in the last days to Nuke the Islamo-fasciests, so why even try and "Give Peace a Chance"? Many will say that if the region were meant to have Peace, it would have been reached already because there have been many leaders of Israel and many leaders of the United States, and one would suppose that some combination of leaders would have worked in the past. We need to find out what the motivation is of the Palistinians is, of course. But sometimes I get the feeling that Israel doesn't "Really" want them to have any autonomy at all. Just as with many Christians out there- - a lot of them are saying "Even if that so & so finds salvation he'll ALWAYS be way inferior to Us True Believers, and then go on to innumerate the ways that the people they witness to aren't even fully human to begin with.

And now I would like to turn to what may be unpleasent duty, in that I am forced to recant and retract a few erronious statements I have made. One of them involves two ecclipses of the sun, in December 13th. of 1974 and on March 6th. of 1989. Wolframalpha.com says these two eclipses never happened. We have shall we say a "disagreement" as to history. I remember both eclipses clearly but wolframalpha.com doesn't seem to. Another area is in the real of "Kurtosis". I see that in Excel they have a zero based Kurtosis number and not a three based number. But not only this but the means of calculation is different so that even with the correction of three points, you won't get the same number. My own Kurtosis rating is the best. In my reading of the number it should be base one, not zero or three, and it should then be the square of the ratio between the crest of a bell curve, and where the "hash marks" of standard deviation lines hit the curve. This method would simplify the whole process. In another area there is an alternate method of computing the Golden Mean. It's one half plus the square root of five divided by two. This formula doesn't sound like it would work, but it does. It's my contention that the square root of five should be the basis of wide screen movie screens. The actual number is very close to this but not the same. These are the only issues that are on my mind right now. Sometimes it can be quite a while before a Real News story hits.

I dredged up the following illustration from a mailing to help clarify a mathematical point. Here it is. If you want to appear really smart at a party, here is the whole hyperbolic trig thing in a nutshell. Picture an X and Y graph with 0,0 in the center. Now picture a freeway on ramp going from the eastbound freeway hanging a left to the northbound freeway. Now picture another on ramp going from the west bound freeway hanging a left and going south. These two on ramps just touch each other at the zero zero point. Now picture a third on-ramp from the northbound freeway just to the west hanging a U turn to the right and reaching its southern most point when it crosses the 0 and 1 axis and hanging a U turn and going north again. This is hyperbolic trig in a nutshell.

President Obama's Mideast Trip

When I heard the President speak in Cairo yesterday I had no immediate reaction. Others who heard the speech pointed out his pleasing his Arab audience by invoking Arab history and accomplishments, and quoting from the Koran. Personally, I didn't think the accents of Arab words sounded all that authentic. Part of my problem is that if what the President was doing was diplomatic posturing, then in the past Obama has shown himself to be rather shallow. For all his talk about being raised in an Islamic school in Indonesia, I really don't see the "Islamic-ness" rubbing off on him. To me he speaks as someone who in uncomfortable with the whole issue and wishes it would go away. I've seen how he has dealt with other situations like the Revrend Wright issue. First he embraces the man and alludes to "I could no more disown him than I could disown my own White grandmother". In the first place putting the word "White" in that sentense indicates a certain disconfort with race. Next, however, is that Obama did in fact disown his pastor of some twenty years, Revrend Jeremiah Wright. I think a lot of people who have strong roots in a church have trouble with this concept. It sends the message to one and all that "People are expendable".

We then move on to the other "landmark statements" in the President's speech yesterday. He for once did not dismiss "Hammas" as only a terrorist organization, but an organization we need to work with since it is such an intrinsic part of Palestinian life now, and they won that election a couple of years ago. Hammas does things besides terror. They reach out to educate and serve the poor and offer free breakfasts, and all those things the Black Panthers used to do. One US Jew yesterday observed of the Mideast situation, "It's too bad that Bill Clinton was term limited and that Yasser Arrafat's term wasn't". We might already have Peace. As much as Robert Schuller embraced Arrafat in his church, Aarafat lived and died a terrorist, and he was never anything else and in the end Peace overtures were doomed as long as he was alive. The President talked about Iraq as a "War of choice". I wish he hadn't said that. All that needed to be said on the subject of Iraq is, "The United States helped overthrow a dangerous world dictator and bring democracy to Iraq, and the people now are adjusting beautifully, and their future looks bright". It at times can be actually distracting and disruptive to your overall message to point a finger of fault at yourself, when nobody is even raising the issue. I think the President did well to choose to believe that Islam is a Peaceful religion and quote from the Koran the line "When an innocent person dies, it's as though the whole human race were murdered". I think putting "Peace" and "Islam" in the same sentence is tenuous at best. What I personally would have done is remind the Arab community that it was while Malcolm X was in the Mideast in March of 1964 that it came to him seeing disperate races worshipping in harmony, that the races were meant to get along with each other. The President then went on to discuss the respective problems and hardships of the Jews and also of the Palestinian people. I'm happy the President acknowledged that the Palestinian people have suffered- - much humiliation and degradations - - at the hands of their occupiers, the Israelis. I dare say their strggle for autonomy far exceeds sixty years. The President discussed Iran saying that all nations should be able to peacefully develop the atom. Wisely I don't think it was a good idea to dwell to long on Iran, their being Shiites and all. What I would do is stress to the Moslem world is that peace is there for the taking if you want it badly enough. The thing you have to ask yourselves is "How tired of war are you"? Racial pride is a powerful thing and I don't fault it per se. The desire to "survive" and "overcome" and "conquer your enemies" is primal among the species of man and it's part of the evolutional survival mechanism God built into mankind. The plain fact is that "survival of the fittest" works a lot of the time. But Obama now has to say that it is their Destiny now- - to live in a world of Peace. And if he can bring Allah into it without being too obvious, so much the better. One thing the Israelis need to face is that these recent west bank settlements need to go. Every time they put one of these up they are volitionally saying "I know we'll never have Peace anyhow, so take THAT you Arabs!" They are hoping that by sheer number of them they will be able to muscle the Palistinians off the land, the way the United States has broken nearly every treaty on the books with the Native Americans.

I respect people who can solve puzzles. I used to be able to beat the computer nearly half of the time in the "Four in a Row" game. But last night I had a bad run of luck. Either I am not as smart as I used to be or somebody reprogrammed the game to make it smarter. There are games involving pieces of metal of hooking and unhooking them they sell at Knott's Berry Farm. I never had much patience with these. But solving puzzles shows not only a sign of patience but also native intelligence. There is one math game where you are supposed to turn all the white dots black, and it's fairly easy to get all but one dot with the rules you play under. But life often faces people with puzzles with more variables than you can program for. Certainly bringing about peace in the mideast is one of these puzzles. You first have to believe it's possible. In wolframalpha.com sometimes when you write an equation you thought was easy, it turns out to be very difficult to solve showing a lot of math work. Some equations aren't just difficult but intrinsically impossible to solve for X and Y. A prudent person should soon realize which contingencies are intrinsically impossible. A world dictator, if there is to be one in the last days will have to have tremendous "people skills". People needn't be "good" to have phenominal "people skills". Many people, likewise, can be basically "good people" in themselves, but really suck at being able to figure out what a client is saying or get into his mind so that you can reach him and help him. We don't live in a pure world of programmable abstracts regardless. So whether any leader or would be world dictator is successful depends on such things as astrological allignment and things beyond his control. I'm sure Alexander the Great had a brilliant mind, but had he been born under different stars, his life might be a different story.

The Lakers looked great last night, didn't they? - - against the Orlando Magic. I believe this is the year of the Lakers. They set the bar pretty high for themselves this year. If they don't win it all they will have considered it a disappointing season. We should all "raise the bar" on our own expectations so to encourage personal growth. If all of us raised the bar on what we expect of ourselves, others would be inspired by that new positive "something in the air - that wasn't there yesterday" and they in turn will be inspired to reach new heights. (Selah)

Allowing the American Dream to Slip Away

You know, Joel Olsteen is always talking about reviving your dreams and not losing your hope in their fulfillment. Joel, like many preachers, reminds that most things we are going through we think are "bad" really aren't as bad as we think and they don't last as long as we think. But I have to say that in my life this has not proved true. That one "fall on a sidewalk" one Friday morning in June 1st. 2001 ended up in my being here, and the last I checked I'm still here. The first time I threatened suicide was August 2nd. of 1967 because I basically "just didn't like the way my life was going". I can look back at things I did and say "But I don't blame myself". If you try and Monday morning quarterback yourself, you are engaging in self delusion. I remember when I was in fifth grade just thinking about the future and how I'd be a teenager with a car dating a lot in high school and getting married in my early twenties and having kids. The scenario didn't exactly work out that way. Some people as Christians get married because they think "It's the thing to do". And when the marriage goes bad they say "thank God there wern't any children". But it isn't the fault of the people who get married. After all you have to consider what the alternatives are. One of course could be to walk away from the Church. Another would be to lie to yourself and say "the conflict doesn't bother me". Of course continuing to lead a double life is always an option, but that has its drawbacks. Sometimes bad things can be forseen. I forsaw this downturn back in 2006. There was some book out that tackled the twin topics of excess religiosity in the United State, and the other topic was the mounting of all forms of economic debt. I predicted the Shaw of Iran would fall in the summer of 1976. Perhaps it was a lucky guess. I did not forsee the current economic problems in my own life because of not getting the three hundred dollar renters rebate. The family at the same time decided I shouldn't get money at Christmas or any other time. And I didn't qualify for the Bush rebate of last spring. But unlike as Joel Olsteen might think, these adverse developments had nothing to do with "negative thoughts". Indeed these developments blind-sided me, coming out of the blue. Our economic problems now in this country seem to be worstening with each passing day. Now Citibank will be bailed out because we should have bailed out Lehman Brothers but didn't. Banks are thumbs up; Auto makers get thumbs down. We get it. Bush is selective in that only the most massive squanders and misappropiaters of funds get bailed out. If a bail out means helping out the comon people Bush says "Forget it".

We were all waitning for Obama's Big Revitalization Plan today. If he had actually given us a plan for anything I'd have made these words the blog heading. But it didn't happen. We just have to trust him. Obama has a press conference but isn't answering any questions people actually want to know. He announced four appointments this morning. Timothy Geitner is secretary of Treasury. Also coming on board are Larry Summers, Christine Rictor or Roper or something and Melanie- - ? Anyhow people are just tickled pink by the appointments. The stock market likes the names. I am thinking right now if you want to be optimistic you would say that perhaps this bear market will bottom out about the first of February, but I shudder to think where that will be. I'd be planning the stocks I'd buy right now. But we should actually see us rounding the corner economically about June of 2009. That's my optimistic scenario. I am famous for being too optimistic about family vacations and "when we will get there" because my Dad ended up driving a lot slower than I imagined. But basically the "light at the end of the tunnel" is nowhere in sight and the future only looks continuously bleaker than the present and bleaker than the future looked a few weeks back. Welcome to reality. Just remember when it comes to owning stocks- - you still own just what you owned a year ago. If you learned that your CD collection was worth only half of what it was worth a year ago would you run out and sell it? That would be rediculas. It's your property. You paid for it. it's yours. You haven't lost anything because the price someone else wants to pay for it had dropped.

If some of you wonder about Romulan football let me just say that it's a little narrower, but just one yard shorter, 99 yards or 90 Romulan meters of 39.6 inches. They really don't have that many flag violations involving "unnecessary roughness". Things like pass interference, offencive or defencive are unheard of with Romulans. Also things like holding of grabbing face masks, blatent or otherwise - are perfectly legal. The only thing they call a violation is going for the private parts. That's still illegal. The Romulans have a "no feet inbounds" rule for passes where you don't have to have any feet touching the ground, only that you are in control of the ball. Also in Romulan rules is you don't "down it" after you score it really doesn't count till you do- - none of this crap about crossing the plane of the goal line. If you lose the ball and another player gets it even crossing the goal line- - a fumble is a fumble and the other team can down it and get it on the twenty. They never had an "in the grasp" rule. Intentional grounding to stop the clock is NOT allowed in Romulan rules. There are no two point conversions and no overtime.

In soap land Nicole is in the process of losing her baby that she's having with Elvis Dimira. You see Elvis never did place either Nicole or her baby that high on his list of priorities. It's much more important to cancle a romantic weekend getaway with Nicole at the last minute- - to go off with Stephano to South America so he can get involved in criminal obstruction of justice. Elvis regards that as a much better use of his time. Meanwhile the other girl who is having Elvis's baby, Samantha, is still waiting in the wings. She had the good sense not to tell Elvis she was pregnent, and if Elvis knew she were pregnent he'd drop Nicole in a second and run to Samantha. Now we can pretty well surmize that Elvis' relation with Nicole is over. There are times where you just have to put your wife first and forget the multitude of excuses. Elvis is more afraid of displeasing his father than he is of losing everything with Nicole.