Let them Eat Cake

John Mc Cain today has stated that he is thinking of cancelling the St. Paul Republican convention is the hurricane Gustav crisis materializes. The best indications are that Gustav is headed right for New Orleans. After it left the mountains of Cuba it went from a three to a four and now some say a category five storm. Winds are at least 145 mph. Mc Cain doesn't think it would be right to hold the convention under such circumstances. There is talk that the Media will be "confused as to which story to cover" if there are two events going on at once. But as Johnny Wendell says it isn't as though we have some shortage of reporters that they can't allocate their time well and cover both. Of course three years ago George Bush was presenting John Mc Cain with a birthday cake on his then 69th. birthday. Apparently Marie Antwenette was tortured by her Jacoban captors into being forced to watc the beheading of all her clossest survants before she herself was beheaded in the Guillitine. But John Mc Cain has more pressing problems. There is talk his vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin, won't last out the week. The "vetting" process has begun and there are so many scandals in her closet it isn't surprising that Mc Cain doesn't know them, since he apparently chose her after meeting with her only once, after one phone call. Sarah Palin is the governor of Alaska and before this was the mayor of a town of only 6,700 people. She is a gun freak and likes to skin and eat wild moose. She goes to the assembly of God church, and doesn't even believe in abortion in the case of a father raping his own daughter. It would seem that Alaska is a hotbed of political corruption. Sarah Palin was for the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it. She had this "Who me?" attitude when picked, like a woman who'd just won the Irish Sweepsteaks. She told someone that she didn't even know what the dutues of Vice President were. She brought a Wal-Mart to her city, which is kind of a strike against her knowing all the people that are driven out of business. She is definitely against the little guy. Apparently she worked to bring some Sports Arena to her city but refused to offer the owners a fair price for the property but apparently began building the Arana anyhow, and now the city government is in big legal trouble and each and every tax payer is out a cost of three thousand dollars a piece. Also there was a "trooper gate" type case where a popular qualified commander was fired out of sheer spite and not even given severence pay. But the new guy she hired only lasted two weeks, and he for that two weeks was given a ten thousand dollar severance package. No doubt her views on abortion will be praised by some. She gave birth to a child with Down's sidrone despite being warned of this fact before she gave birth. Apparently she connects with John Mc Cain on some emotional level. But since this is the first "executive decision" candidate Mc Cain made, it's a shame he didn't make a better choice. In my mind I'm not sure whether Mc Cain is competetent either. There is stil those anger issues that appear unresolved. Johnny Wendell believes the media will protect Paylin from scruteny for the same reason they rig the polls so that Obama is never very far ahead. It reminds me of that Star Trek episode where Kirk revs up his phaser to full power and yet can't even make a dent in the wall he is aiming out. But Kirk says "How do I know I just didn't put a hole in that wall a mile wide but you people are preventing me from seeing it? Some would say the Democrat Convention as a whole "knocked the ball out of the park". But now matter how well they perform people like John Kovel will say "the whole thing is pointless anyhow".

All told I would rank the speeches given at the Convention in the following order. First place goes to John Kerry. Then Bill Clinton. Then Hillary Clinton. Then Joe Biden. Obama's speech was better than most speeches he's given and he "pulled a lot of things together". It was more like a Sunday sermon than a speech. He seemed to address his audience like Roosevelt used to do with his radio fireside chats. He treated the situation as some crisis for which every American would have to make sacrifices. There were things "that got left out of the biscuit recipee" as Everett Dirkson once said of a 1967 speech by LBJ. There are certain things nobody talks about such as terrifs and trade and NAFTA. This is such an important issue it can't just be ignored. Also left out of the biscuits was any reference to the impeachment of George Bush or the many misdeeds of George Bush and torture and abuse of powers and unauthorized spying on Americans or the Patriot Act. Also the Don Siegelman affair wasn't mentioned that has Karl Rove's fingerprints all over it. How can naked political abuse go unnoticed. And I haven't even gotten to the election irregularities of 2004 or Republican caging practices of potential voters.

Some might say not to grow weary in well doing. Dr. Dean Edell today was talking about vaccinations and is it OK if one person doesn't vaccinate his kids for various "reasons"? Sometimes things are a clear if not a present danger. The doctor says vaccinations are like speed limits and stop signs. The world won't come to an end if one person speeds, or rolls through a stop sign. But if society as a whole does it, you know you're headed for problems. So it is with vaccinations and "herd immunity". There is historically shown a specific point where if you go below it as far as percent of vaccinations is concerned, all those old diseases will again get a foothold. Besides they took the mercury out of vaccinations ten years ago and this autism thing is more hysteria than anything else. Did you know giving chili peppers to a horse is illegal? It seems it makes him run faster and makes him less sensitive to pain, and we can't have that. Even though some would call it a "natural drug". One "natural drug" herb now has been hyped on a radio station I listen to to restore the brain cells in your brain and prevent memory loss. It is said that if caffein were offered as a new drug today as a white powder that the government would never approve it. It seems that marathon bikers all use caffein. They just can't give chili peppers to horses. I guess nobody wants to start the roomer that in fact caffein will be the next target of the liberals as a substance they want to ban. They've already gone after tobacco and fast food. It would seem each subsequent thing will make less sense to ban than the previous thing so that in the end you will have media hysteria rather than reason ruling the day.

I myself am still loosing weight. I've lost in excess of fifty-five pounds in the last 26 months, and that's thin enough for me, and now I have a cold, which can't help. I have cut my cigarette buying expenditures to a third or less than what they were two and a half years ago, but I'm not sure that's enough for my mother and one brother. This is in the face of raging inflation where I got a four dollar raise for the year. Rent has gone up in the face of collapsing real estate prices. And like I say I'm one of the few people that didn't benefit from George Bush's tax rebate. Of course I promised "God" I'd quite smoking if Obama was nominated. Yet Johnny Wendell said something today that got me thinking about the credibility of Christianity. There is a fact, actually a set of two parrellel facts if you know what I mean, that if focused on and thought about even a little would leave Christianity quite vulnerable and "unprotected". If this fact were generally known (or believed) Christianity in total would go up in flames faster than that paper machet Thanksgiving table decoration Lisa Simpson had on a Simpson's episode.

Do you ever have a thought that just reverberates around in your mind and you wonder if it means anything or your brain is just on overdrive? You know that line Drive radio played the other day about President Reagan doing that radio mic test where he says "We have now declared the communist empire against the law. The bombing begins in five minutes". Of course we had a President Luther thing on "Smallville" the other night where Lex is even more evil than he is in real life where he blows up the world world in World War III to start anew and build a master race or something. Some worry about whether an aging President Mc Cain wouldn't decide life was no longer living because one of those skin melenomas will eventually do him in, and why not just take the rest of the world along with him as long as he's not going to be here. The vision in my brain was of that star, Krypton blowing up. I was musing on how there was that Jewish deliveror in 135 AD who started a war for Isrial against Rome. And his name in English means "Son of a Star". Is this a comon messianic theme where a star blows up and the lone survivor goes to another planet and becomes the Messiah? I don't know. I'm just thinking. And what of that dream I had were some star went supernova or something on December 12th. of a certain year? Does that mean anything? The trouble is if we did see a star go supernova this year- - it would have occurred years ago like in 1989 or perhaps much forther back.

Obama's Nomination is Official

This country has done nominated it's first Black man from a major political party for the highest office in the land. This most certainly is a momentus day. Last night was much better than the previous day all told. I tuned in CNN as the seconding speeches were being given for Hillary Clinton and then there were the nominating and seconding speeches for Obama. Then you had that real scripted circus thing going where they started the rowcall vote and the speeches from each state got longer and longer, till they arranged that bit of theatrics to have New York and Hillary was there to stop the voting and have the vote done by acclamation, which means states like Ohio and others in that end of the alphabet didn't get their moment in the sun. Now we all have a deeper appreciation of the Joe Biden family and what sort of dedicated man Joe Biden is. He gave an excellent speech. John Kerry gave an excellent speech. Bill Clinton's speech was meaty and well structured, some would say "like a legal argument". Joe Biden's speech was also quite logical and systematic showing and contrasting all the areas where John Mc Cain has just plain been wrong. It would seem that the Republicans really have their work cut out for them trying to top those speeches of last night. I guess for tonight we need to just pray that none of those predicted (?) thunder storms will happen at Invesco Field. One would hope the Republicans would listen to Clinton's, Biden's, and Kerry's speeches from last night ti size them up and figure out whether it's possible to do better than that. I really think the Republicans should look for a different man at the top of the ticket, because I bet a lot of people attending the convention already regret that they're stuck with Mc Cain. Mc. Cain has so completely sold himself out in the past few years - -not long at all- - that one would be hard pressed to talk about Mc Cain's past without reminding the deligates that he used to be a liberal.

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This is an overcast Thursday morning August 28, 2008. It’s funny the things that pop into your brain when you first awake. I was thinking of that time when Tom Leykis was talking about he was mad at his father for having so many kids that they had to move into a bigger house. When Tom was eleven in the summer of 1967 he lived in the Bronx and went to all the Yankee’s games. But when he was twelve his family moved to a big house out on Long Island and Tom was so lonely. And he would hitchhike back into town to spend time over at his cousin’s whom he was good friends with. I think some significant planet has moved into a new house today. I feel different. I was thinking on how I’d have to quite smoking to honor that fleece to God last May that is Obama actually won the nomination I’d quit smoking and do something else the very nature of prevents me from even bringing it up now. Of course this time of year you always get that “summer is almost over” feeling because the days are so much shorter both on the evening side and the morning side. We had oatmeal for breakfast along with toast and scrambled eggs and coffee. Alma remarked about the below average temperatures.

I caught hurricane Gustav on the Today show before breakfast and Rush Limbaugh is right. God is a democrat. They are already making plans to evacuate the city of New Orleans days in advance of the storm. Of course August 29^th. is the anniversary of the storm- - and I’d like to confirm in my own writings. This is the date that Mc Cain has chosen to make his Vice Presidential pick. Talk about lasts, August 29^th. 1966 was the last time the Beatles played a live concert, and that was in San Francisco, of course. It was seven years to the day that the Beatles were officially launched as a band. A tidbit I didn’t share yet was it was August 29^th. that Mona Best opened up the Casbah Club and George Harrison and bass played Ken Brown had just quit their band Les Stewart Quartet, and they ran up John and Paul and they formed the Beatles. And of course, they have been a hit ever since.

I guess the question is do I have to say everything about last night twice, or can I use this material on my blog. We’ll see. It’s kind of funny how people are always talking about the South sides of town. To listen to the media you wouldn’t even think towns had a northern half. You hear of south Chicago, south Boston, and south Philadelphia, and south central LA. Of course you know that Mom moved a lot when she was a child. People seemed to move around a lot during the great depression looking for work or whatever. She lived in south Illinois, south Indiana (there’s that word again) and she lived in Florida. She also lived in Modesto, San Luis Obispo, and Julian, but that was back before NBC renamed the town as Allester. One time she mentioned she moved back from Florida to Indiana and people remarked how she talked funny. She had picked up an accent from living there. And of course as you all know Marlon and Denise would make these trips to New Hampshire in the summer and come back with their accents “reinforced” sounding like Bobby Kennedy. But I never saw them much after the end of summer 1962. Of course there was that time in 1964 when me and Tim saw Denise and Susan, and Roger of course. That was when the joke was going around “How is a girl like a frying pan”. And my answer was “Well, if they’re like Susan it’s because they’re both flat”. We’re missing Drive radio now. The other day Drive had 1976 music but the trouble with that year is that 1976 is a year that’s pretty much been beaten to death on Classic Radio. I guess we’re about heard all of the songs.

Last night I had CNN on the computer. There were a lot of short speech. Tom Dashell spoke and Jack Reed (?) from Rhode Island, and Evan Bygh from Indiana and one other quickie. Bill Clinton spoke earlier than expected and I hadn’t yet gone out to get coffee. Then I got coffee and when I returned John Kerry was speaking. Both of them gave excellent speeches. Then KCET cut out and we were into that media black-out period again so I switched the computer on again to CNN and they had some lady Iraqi veteran speaking. Another key thing that they included hurredly was the actual nomination and voting for Joe Biden by the concention. This was done very quickly with alcclamation votes. Then there was that big build up to Joe Biden film, and then Joe Biden’s son spoke and then Joe Biden himself spoke. He finished up at about five to eight and then Obama himself appeared at the convention. Then I watched the “Bones” rerun. I saw Venus for the second time this year. The key is to get out there early before it gets completely dark, or it’s already gone. I don’t mind commentary is there is still stuff you can watch on camera and they still have the music going so that you feel you are a part of it. It’s when they cut away entirely that bothers me.

The Rotten Media Convention Coverage

The coverage all of the media including KCET has done of the Democratic Convention can only get a failing grade as far as I'm concerned. There were complaints after Monday night's coverage because they say the camera panned away to bored white people when Michelle Obama was speaking and they implied only black people were into the speech. Others said some networks trashed and over analyzed her speech after she was through minimizing the "glow" we all felt about it. Well, last night's coverage was worse. In the first place the whole evening was less productive. I caught some of the early speakers on CNN. There was this one guy who'd gotten fired from an auto assembly line or something. His speech was so dead pan it could be used as the "bad" example in some Better Speech class commercial. But as a whole the media seems incapable of distinguishing the good from the bad. The first major speech of the evening was Governor John Warner of Virginia, who is running for the senate or something. His speech was "adequate". Not a real world beater. But then the media throws us all into a 45 minute or more "black hole" where there was no coverage at all at what was being said in the convention hall. I guess the governor of Massachusetts spoke, and the crowd seemed to be into that one a little. Then apparently the governor of Montana spoke. And according to the meager reports he gave "a real stem winder" and the crowd was Really into that speech with a lot of boos and cheers at the appropiate point. But we never got to hear that one either. NBC said they were going to commercial and would be "back for the duration". As I recall them came back and flapped their corporate gums a little more- - and then went into another commercial. At this point I switched back to KCET. They were already doing the film presentation on Hillary, which means the people on NBC were missing it. When Hillary began her speech it was a quarter to eleven on the east coast. Keep in mind the public had been in this media black hole where the public saw nothing- - since before ten o clock east time, and it would be logical to suppose that a lot of people were switching channels to another program. When Hillary did give her speech she spent the first ten or fifteen minutes thanking all the people she'd met in the campaign and regailing us with yet more of the interminable "hard luck stories" we've been drowning in with this convention. When she finally got going she said some good things. One was the line about the Twin Cities and how George Bush and John Mc Cain are like Twins. The other was the line "Did you do it for Me or did you do it for all the Issues we both care about?" But the speech was all too short ending about eight after the hour, as I recall and immediately like THAT the cameras cut away from the celebrations to more media Jaw flapping, which no doubt went on longer than the entire speech took. Hillary should have played it smart. She should have done like Ronald Reagan did and given a really inspired speech where she didn't even mention the nominee's name. Never in any convention has the "Product Name" been more prominent. In a three word sentense there's a noun, a verb, and "Obama". All this stuff with the down and out people and their hard luck stories is fine for years like 2004 when you have nothing else to campaign on. But it's starting to remind me of Church. They drown you in all of these stories. It reminds me of Church in another way. Just as with there- - you hear perhaps out of the book of revelation talk of the pearly gates and people thrown down their golden crowns before the Lord Jesus and all acclaiming "Worthy and rightious of thy judgement". Worthy art the Lamb to open the seven seals" and the whole nine yards. But does anybody ask "Just exactly what is day to day life in Heaven going to be like?" No. Nobody asks that. This how it is with Obama. We know well WHO we are fighting for. Just WHAT are we fighting for is a little more vague. We hear the term "energy" but never any specifics. We haven't heard squat about what the democrats would have done different from Bush in the past eight years or the bills that came before congress or the way the democrats have handled themselves in congress these past two years. We haven't heard squat on anything involving United States' respect around the world, or what we will do about our many foreign problems. We haven't really heard any actual "plan" about anything. All we have heard is "We feel your pain". Tomorrow I'll be back with commentary about tonight's doings and we'll see what has developed.

Convention Time Is Here Again

This segment is brought to you by
Walnut Retirement village
where we have nuts, and ad have walls
We have walls to keep the nuts from escaping
especially that rare Mc Cain nut, that
grows wild in the Arixona desert

What the political parties put on now is really not a convention but an extravaganza for public consumption. It used to be at a convention they'd do certain things on Mondays like settle deligate seating disputes by the credentials committee and they'd have fights and votes on this. Then there would be a wrangle about the rules committee. Lastly they would have a keynote speech where the party out of power would take apart the current adminestration and catalogue all the weakness of the past four or eight years. What we see now in this "family" ephasis and human needs is something different. I guess the time is here where as Dylan says "You better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone" because the tide of change is coming whether we want it or not. The powers that Be are intent on turning this country into another Sweeden or something with cradle to grave care and welfare, education through graduate school paid for and all health care is paid for. This is a vision of America they are right in saying that many on the left have been clammoring for for a long time. I guess we'd better haul out Ted Kennedy's 1980 speech at the Democratic convention because it would seem that the Dreams in that speech- - some would say- nightmares- are fast upon us where there is no distinction between gay and straight any more and children are placed in day care ag six months and left there.

Of course growing up Republican is no picnic. I'll grant you that. Randi Rhodes likes to talk about the "fettid womb of Barbra Bush". She is such a cold and intimidating individual, I can't imagine growing up with a woman like her as a mother. Of course her kids had psychological problems. And if Randi is right they didn't even attend the funeral of their daughter who died in 1953. I often wonder what this does to a sibling seeing parents who don't care about the loss of one of their own. If I were the democrats I would have taken on the personality of George W Bush and done a full psychological analysis. Tom Hartman and others have done an excellent job about cataloging what is wrong with the mind set of our current President. Rather than talk about the Hillary fans who are voting for Mc Cain now, perhaps we should do a psychological profile of the registered republicans who are leaning tword Obama this time around.

What's supposed to happen on Tuesday in a "Classic convention" is a fight over the Party platform and votes on whether to include or omit various planks. Then on Wednesdays traditionally they'd put a lot of candidates in nomination. And that would be the time for any personal acolades on various candidates. It seems to me a bit premature for them to so idolize Obama ahead of time before ANY candidate's name has yet been placed in nomination. Were this parliamentry procedure I'd rule them out of order. Hillary is certainly as entitled as any other candidate, and perhaps more so, to have her moment in the sun. Depending on how you tally the figures she won the popular vote. It would to my way of thinking to say "You people should have chosen me" would not at all be out of order. She should say what she feels. Now is the time for it. Of course it used to be they had the plodium in the center of the hall, and you would be very conscious that there were deligations there. And in the old days people from the floor would be giving speeches. Also in the old days if you were pledged to a candidate because of a primary vote, you would be breaking the law if you voted for someone else on the first ballot. I think perhaps we should bring back that rule and let us see what happens.

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This is after eight and they are still doing post commentary on KCET. I checked in with CNN this morning. There was no action in the hall then but Obama was giving a speech to locals on another channel. At two I had Randy Rhodes on as usual and they called snacks at 2:15 and I had two cups of coffee. I turned on CNN again, and I’m trying to straighten out the chronology. OK the first time it was that lady officiating the election of Nancy Palosi as convention chair-person and voting on the rules. . Montel Williams had this little girl who had been mauled in a car crash with her mother riding bikes. Apparently the little girl was dragged under the car. I commented about it to the housekeeper who was here, though I’m not sure how much English she understands. Then I turned on Rachael Maddau. Apparently they simocast with MSNBC or something. It was Eye Witness at four. I ran out of cigarettes smoking my last one at 3:20 or so. Gary offered to exchange a partially smoked Wave for a whole Poker. This was the time before so I got another cigarette. We had lasagna for dinner. They rang the bell early but we had to wait and wait. We had garlic bread and salad and Jell-O. I finally got a cigarette from Richard paying him ten cents and telling him I’d pay back a whole cigarette. None of the usuals who have cigarettes to lend were around.

Then I dialed up CNN again. It was Nancy Palosi speaking, answering questions from people. They would occasionally have these little story bios of people who’d gotten involved in the Obama campaign. Then they had Hurricane Katrina and then Jimmy Carter spoke. Apparently the rift between Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy has never healed, even though he and Ford are good friends. Spike Lee was spotted in the audience milling around. Then Obama’s sister spoke. Then Jesse Jackson Jr. spoke, and then they played funky soul music. Unlike most convention halls all the chairs appeared to be facing the same direction and they didn’t have the usual center pulpit.

After six I switched to KCET. I know the regular networks talk your head off and weren’t even on yet. The Ted Kennedy tribute was the heart of the six o clock hour. First Caroline Kennedy spoke talking how “Everybody loves Uncle Teddy” and then they played the film talking about sailing with the kids. And then they introduced Ted Kennedy himself. He has become the elder statesman of the party and they said 1980 was a turning point because Teddy realized after this he would never be President but instead took the rout of Southern Democratic senators of yester-year, who knew they would never be President because they were from the South, and so threw themselves into acquiring power in Congress. At seven the focus was on Michelle Obama. First her mother dictated a documentary on her. Then Michelle’s brother came out and spoke some very illuminating words. Michelle herself did not exactly give a complete biography of Obama but instead talked of his work in South Chicago with poor people. Then Berock appeared on the screen and carried on a conversation with his wife and Shasha, one of his daughters. He asked her, “How did mommy do?”

Marsha came by at seven and gave me the two cigarettes she owed me and then Bill gave me the two cigarettes he owed me, so I suddenly felt rich.

The dietician was by and they did not have drinks on the table yet, to get our attention. I complained about overcooked broccoli. What they should do is take votes with each suggestions by a show of hands, “How many others here feel the same way?” Lunch wasn’t much and concluded with cantaloupe. I had Randy Rhodes on at noon and dozed during the noon hour. In soap land Marlena is clear the effects of the poison that Stephano gave her, and John Black appears to be falling in love with her all over again. Nick has now met Melody and they went to the holding cell of Max and Stephanie. Max overlooks the faults of his newly found sister saying, “I know there is good in her”. And there was an allusion to some “secret” the father did not want them (?) to share.

And now another "Jesus Moment"

Jesus had proved himself very adept in

circumnating the major Biblical Truthes of Scripture

Joel Olsteen yesterday morning had God’s surprises as his topic, and I’d really like a surprise, if it were positive. A lady was talking to Jesus on KFI about how her life fell apart when she became a Christian. Jesus used the absurd rationalization on her that “she was on novacaine and the novacaine was “wearing off” and now she was feeling the true pain of life. Someone else talked about messages from God. Jesus like so many others seems to believe “When in doubt, assume God isn’t speaking to you”. These people love to talk about how “scripture never contradicts itself” and yet there is not one line in scripture about prophecy “coming to an end in the church” or the gifts being recinded. They speak of the cannon of scripture as something nobody in the Bible had, and so they need God. Yet at other times they will say to not quote scripture