The Final Disappointment

You know in that Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is” after relating all her woes and tribulations of life she goes, “Well if that’s the way she feels about it, why doesn’t she just end it all?” and she goes, “Oh no. Not for me. I’m not ready for that final disappointment.” This morning I would like to announce a death. The death of the Democratic Party. Death came in the early evening hours of last night in New Hampshire during the debate. We’re all familiar with the sense of betrayal we felt when the democratic congress legitimized all of Bush’s abuses that he deserved to be impeached for last July. Yesterday the democrats passed a War resolution giving the President permission to go to war in Iran. Sometimes a patient will display disturbing symptoms but you’re thinking “Well this isn’t major. We’ve got years and years to work out the problem”. Then last night all three democratic candidates deliver the death knell. All three of them announce there will be no reductions you can count on in Iraq and as far as they are all concerned you might as well have George Bush as Presidents because there will be lots and lots of troops still in Iraq in January of 2013. Not only this but now these democrats have advanced to a level of necrosis of “Not saying anything that could be used against them in the general election”. Apparently they are worried because Gepheart and Howard Dean took pot shots at each other in the Primary campaign of 2004. That was so long ago I don’t even remember. And of course Mr. milk toast John Kerry came out the victor. If that had happened in 1960, Stewart Symington would have been the Presidential nominee and Nixon would have won that election, because Symington being the “safe candidate” would have failed to go after Nixon with the vigor that Kennedy did. Clearly the democratic party has delivered the final betrayal and it’s now time for liberals to form a new party that will speak for their interests.

There is one thing about death in that it is a final chapter in the relationships to all the lives the decedant touched. People who knew him might say “Well, there were issues in his personality that he needs to work out”. But there comes a moment when time runs out. You go into the hospital room and are told that the decedant has passed. You go over to the bed and feel the corpse. He still feels warm. Perhaps there is hope. You try to make sense of that expression on his face, one of apprehension mixed with puzzlement. You wonder what “facial expression” the Democratic Party is frozen in. You remember Harry Truman’s words about Kennedy. “It isn’t the Pope, it’s the pop that bothers me”. In the end Joseph Kennedy had virtually no input on the new administration. Sometimes with either a loved one or a passing acquaintance there is a chemical substance abuse problem that has never successfully been dealt with. I guess with the Democrats it’s a “fear of not fitting in” or “not being patriotic enough” so you do things to get your “fox” of patriotism, so you “feel good”. The Democratic Party is addicted to Not Rocking the Boat.

They say that the decedant died of a secondary infection, caused by an attempted cure for a primary infection, that was caused directly by the hospital and had absolutely nothing to do with why the patient was brought in to begin with. I guess the question with the Democratic Party is, “Who do we sue for their death?” Would a million dollars suffice? The concencus is not to sue at all. It doesn’t even enter into people’s minds that the Democratic Party was killed by anything. I guess the party will go on in sort of a phantom existence who, in Sylvia Browne’s terms, “Doesn’t realize that they are dead”. For me, to vote for something merely because it has the label of “Democrat” on it, is henceforth, meaningless. I think the idea of having a nomination locked up for either party locked up by the September the year before the election and one primary vote has been counted is more than absurd. It’s time to take another look at Ralph Nader.

According to segments of the debate played on the Thom Hartman program, John Edwards wants to end combat missions in Iraq. Good for him. The great phantom fear is that somehow if we leave will "leave the field to the enemy" and the specter of genocide is raised, but just who against whom is unclear. We are not against supporting Sunnis who attacks Shiites if they are from Saudi Arabia, and yet we pillery Iran for "daring to get involved" in this war. Now we are going to start a war in Iran that will spread to Syria and perhaps even involve the Palestinians in some sort of an Armageddon scenario that even Chuck Smith's fanticies could not bring about, but which George Bush's machinations put us in danger of.

The democrats and republicans, as one person put it, “Are two wings of the same political party, the War party”. Yet you’re willing to throw objectivity out the window. We’ve all heard President Bush say, “Bin Laden, I don’t know where Bin Laden is. I don’t think about that”. We learn that just last month our troops again had a chance to capture Bin Laden and once again he slipped through our fingers. It’s a complaint made by men against woman that “They won’t want to Solve their problems, they just want to roomanate about their problems and say the same things, over, and over and over”. Such is this “perpetual state of war” that Larry Elder gets so giddy over. Most people see a “State of War” as a necessary evil, and as a state they hope not to be in all that long. But for the Bush – and future Clinton administration, War is not seen as a means to an end but as an end in itself. In this state certain pet corporations cam maximize their profits, as we slash civil rights at home. I guess even the Supreme Court is behind the time. They are actually starting to strike down parts of the Patriot Act. Good for them. The trouble is, if the Patriot act were up for a vote of this democratic congress, they, unlike our Courts, would reaffirm every bit of it.

We have in a sense been at War with Iran since the 1979 hostage crisis. Today the Keil – Mc Cain amendment passed, which strengthens the sanctions against Iran and calls their whole army mere terrorists. There was also a military action provision, so we have a duplicate of the October 2002 weapons of mass destruction resolution. Now we are officially sanctioned to make war in Iran. It does not look good. The thing is that Iran is three times the size of Iraq both in terms of land mass and in population. Clearly the democrats of the Senate are acting more and like republicans with each passing day. There was a concencus that any attack on Iran by our President would be political suicide. But it’s just a question of “preparing the public” psychologically for it.

Bush vetoed some children’s aid bill because the democrats didn’t word it right. But Bush said that he wanted “No child left behind” supported, and I am inclined to agree that we should give the President what he wants in this educational area.

The judge in the Phil Specter trial was threatened, which is a felony with a three year sentence if convicted. The perpetrator tried to perhaps allude that Phil’s wife was behind this action. Meanwhile the jury is still nowhere a decision in the case, which has gone on way more than any case I can remember in my lifetime. Now they want to see a replay of some video tape evidence and will be meeting in court at one thirty.

I called [name withheld] early this morning asking about the funeral. Apparently it’s going to be at [name withheld] house because the ashes won’t be delivered till Friday or Saturday. They say we can’t meet at the cemetery because “it’s too big there”, whatever that means.

Last night it was the usual stuff on TV. I watched “Bones” at eight and had trouble following the plot. About eighty thirty I booted the computer and looked at the “Campus” file again, thinking of changing it some more, but I gave up on that idea. That file has certain fundamental flaws and has had since creation that are too problematical to remedy. I slept well last night but one time when I woke up I was thinking, “What if yesterday never happened?” I talked with Dave Praither about it before breakfast.

Some vandal attacked the Crystal Cathedral yesterday. He carved in the same cryptic inscription in glass, in metal, and even in granite and they said damage would amount to $40,000. The guy had no respect for a house of God.

Now they are saying if you eat meat you can’t be an environmentalist. If that’s the case then cross me off the list because their logic was silly. They said it does more damage to the Earth to raise animals and eat meat than the entire transportation system of the whole world contains. They kept referring to “factory farms”.

Now it’s soap time. Andre has pretty successfully been calling all the shots but now that Stephano may come out against his nephew, perhaps there’s hope. If Andre will threaten Elvis’s life I guess Stephano regards him as dangerous.

This is at six. For dinner we had chicken patties and not the scheduled “oven baked chicken” but with scalloped potatoes. I had seconds. I went to the bakery after five thirty for my coffee and was just watching TV before this. Sylvia Browne was on Montell Williams and it was a rerun. She says in twenty years we’ll be talking to dead people just like talking to anybody else. Marcus implied that he had heard some sort of roomer about me. Nobody ever came in here to clean. The weather warmed up.

The Phil Specter trial ended in a hung jury. They polled all twelve jurors and they all agreed continued debate was pointless. They had taken six votes just today. The vote each time was ten to two for conviction, as three votes got swayed. They only spent 44 hours deliberating in the two weeks and two days it took. The D A plans to re-file charges. The topic was discussed on the Johnny Wendell show.

George Bush was giving a speech at the U N before breakfast but after breakfast Bill had his TV on and I got fed up with about ten commercials in a row, and this isn’t the first time I’ve just seen him watch them. I turned on my set but Bush was no longer on. For breakfast we had Cheerios and hashed browns and fried eggs. Bush was talking about a monk protest uprising in Burma. Last night I heard about Burma on the news and apparently there’s been nineteen years of repression that people are just beginning to react to. He also talked about Zimbabwe and also Sudan and the genocide at Darfore going on there. He also talked about all the educational help we’ve given to children.

Yesterday I had Randy Rhodes on at noon and watched the soap opera yesterday and today at one. Now Stephano has re-emerged and is talking peace. I switched to station 4.4 at two o clock and they were having President Amedinajab of Iran. This guy really has the hootzbah. He just stands there and takes insult after insult that is heaped upon him by his Columbia University host. That’s Dennis Prager’s alma-mater and perhaps they have some conservative bent. I would have walked off the state myself because I would have seen anything I said given the poisoned atmosphere as pointless. Nonetheless the Iranian President made a stab at it and got metaphysical and talked about God and Science and revealed knowledge and spiritual matters being superior to the physical. He alluded to the Mormonesque doctrine of the Priesthood of Adam and how Adam was superior to the Angels. He either reminded me of St. Thomas Aquinas or else Ron Hubbard. He also talked about the hypocricy of the United States. But they cut the thing off when it came time for questions and the same thing happened on the rerun today. Are those people capable of even asking a QUESTION that isn’t some sort of mindless diatribe? After this I went out for that Coke. Then I tuned in Montell Williams where they talked about this woman back-packer who survived a sixty foot drop and dragged her now paralyzed body in an effort to “survive”.

Mark Germain is flaky, like a crescent roll or something. I thought he wanted to discuss President Amebinajab but instead the conversation degenerated into a debate between himself and his lady producer about “Can you speak out against the President here and get away with it?” In actual fact you can’t if you’re perceived as a threat and there have been so many examples of government intimidation and hammer-downs I don’t want to go into them. It will be people like Mark Germain yapping away when the authorities come to take him away and he won’t know what hit him. We know they listen and they keep records and the IRS and other agencies monitor and harass you and make your life miserable if you go against them. The Federation has never liked “Mr. K” as he is known, and yesterday did not improve his standing with the Orion Federation.

The Two Emerging Police States

Yesterday Sixty Minutes had Amenijab or the president of Iran on. He's the one who wants to lay a wreath or something at ground zero in New York and say a few appropriate words. I don't see why we shouldn't let him. We're just kind of being snobs by making an issue out of it. Also there those who don't want the Iranian president speaking at Columbia University. That would be funny if someone insulted Amenijab and got tazed by the cops! Dream on! The bigger issue last night was this whole idea we are fostering that the President of Iran has nuclear weapons. He said over and over again that Iran didn't need nuclear weapons and that the whole idea of nuclear weapons was obsolete in this world. After all, they didn't prevent the Soviet Union from disintegrating back in the 'eighties. The Sixty Minutes reporter kept baiting the Iranian president with the notion that Bush wants to start World War III and how Bush despizes him, and all the Iranian guy wanted to do was to talk peace, and give George Bush every benefit of the doubt, even when it comes to his own personal religion. It's clear by the media hype even Sixty Minutes, as liberal as they are is getting sucked up into- - - is the notion that Iran wants to start a nuclear war and that they are developing "weapons of mass destruction". Bush is playing off the same prompt card now five years later with a different country and he's hoping we buy his act. The fact is we did do Iran a favor by getting rid of Saddam Hussein. But does that make up for eight years of war with Iraq that Iran had to fight where we backed Saddam? You tell me. The Iranian president seems correct in saying that the U S keeps backing away from a chance at peace. Bush doesn't want peace. For Bush to say he wants peace would be as alien to him as it would be for Joseph Stalin to announce that Russia only wanted peace. It's not what this type of individual is all about, and has been from before he was elected.

Then we have that Russian chess champion. He took on twenty opponents and beat each and every one in the space of an hour and a half. Now he has turned his energies to the dangerous world of Russian politics. In this realm people don't play by the rules, and a lot of victims have been killed in the process. There are two emerging police states in the world now. One of them is Russia, and the other is the United States. In everything that Russian chess champion said there was an odd sense of deja vu. He says "Well I don't think Vlatamir Putin is going to candle the election next March. The polls right now say eighty percent of the people will vote for him, but if Bush has as much control over this country as Putin has over Russia, eighty percent of the people would favor Bush now. In his words were the same sentaments of how the Russian people are happy with their jobs getting wasted on vodka every night but managing, just as people in this country turn to their prescription drugs to help get them through their day of over work and under-paid jobs. The people in neither country want to rock the boat. The fact that the elections of 2008 in either this country or Russia haven't been suspended yet is more a function of "they haven't gotten around to THAT yet" more than it is any natural adhorance to the idea. I'm sure both Bush and Putin must have thought about it. We are an emerging police state and so is Russia. We've killed people and they've killed people. The Giuliani crowd in this country doesn't care about Civil liberties and neither do the Russian people. They have no appitite for anything with the word "dissent" in it. When that chess guy talked about all those "fringe" party candidates, I thought of Barry Goldwater's words, "Extremism in derfence of liberty is no Vice; moderation in pursuit of justice is no Virtue". I guess the "fringe" parties as people on CBS called them, over in Russia are kind of like Ron Paul's campaign here. They are people who, in Thom Hartman's words, "aren't afraid to speak the truth". These people are getting fewer and fewer. The idea of any party running on a libertine platform seems equally alien to both people in the Soviet Union, excuse me "Russia", as it does in this country.

Of course among the forces that "sell out" to foster a police state in this country is Religion. Who would have guessed that Giuliani would be the darling of the Religious Right in this country, or that Giuliani would be most popular in South Carolina. It seems that Christians don't care about all that "other stuff" they've been talking about like a person's personal life or his divorces, or his position on gays or immigration or gun control or abortion. The overriding position now is how do they feel about starting World War III? That's the big issue. Do they favor "Security" alias the Police State? When Gene Scott first became the pastor of Faith Center he did this "woe is me" routine, "Oh I'm divorced; I'm not sure whether the people down here will accept me as their leader". Of course that's before he began fooling around with his future third wife while touting his second wife as the perfect marriage. Oh I was talking about Gene Scott- not Giuliani, I see where the confusion came from! And now there is a whole new threat to religion from the government. It's something that emerged just after the 2004 election. There is a church in this area where the pastor gave an anti war sermon just before the November 2004 election. Now the I R S is after them for expressing a political oppinion from the pulpet. Something I've always found adhorant and a fundamental violation of the first amendment is that government would in Any Way dictate what is said from the Sunday morning pulpet by a pastor. And yet people like Thom Hartman speak of some "deal that was made during the Johnson Adminestration". I never heard about it and if Hartman's words are true there would have surely been an explosion of contraversey back in the 'sixties were such an idea to be proposed that "You muzzle what your pastor says and the IRS will go easy on you". If "separation of church and state" doesn't allow a pastor to speak his contience before God to his people- - that is speaking what God has impressed upon his heart to tell his congragation on any given Sunday- - I'd like to know what the hell the first amendment is all about if not this. This is the Bush Adminestration using the IRS the way Nixon did, to terrorize an individual and religious freedom. God and government machinations don't mix!

Then we have the marijuana laws in California. In the segment, California was portrayed as a "wierd" state for allowing marijuana "dealers" to poliferate. The point is we passed a law, and it was a law brought about through lawful processes by a vote of the people as provided for by the State of California, proposition 215, that says that you can use marijuana if you have a note from your doctor. I don't see how anything could be clearer. The federal government has no business being involved in this issue any more than they do in the abortion issue. It's an area of States Rights they need to stay out of. If the Supreme Court wont affirm this basic truth, we need to get justices on the court who will. The only problem I see with marijuana distribution is certain zoning factors like too much traffic obstructing parking, and late hours in a residential neighborhood. These problems can be dealt with in the normal manner. I think all these abortion people need to come out and demonstrate saying "We need to respect the relation between a patient and his doctor". The point of fact is that marijuana is useful for a lot of medical ailments, as well as for various textile and oil purposes. Obviously it's a drug that can be abused, but then so can Vallium. I don't know for sure but I think Vallium is in fact more addictive than marijuana, yet there are no mass protests against Vallium. Where is Larry Elder on this issue? He keeps saying he's a libertarian but he never seems to step up to the plate. As you know from that 'sixties Beatles program, marijuana also fosters musical creativity, the whole "flower power" movement in both art and music is marijuana influenced. Of course at the end of that program they had to say "This program in no way sponsors drug usage". Or as they say in Rock & Roll doctor, "We merely prescribe drugs, we don't advocate them".