Jude Juanisky Is Alive And Well

We hear that the State of the Union message is going to be about jobs, jobs, jobs. We've heard this song before. Last year he said the same thing and the unemployment rate started at 9.8% and ended at 9.4%. That's not very impressive. President Obama has a 54% approval rating and that is up from 44% or whatever it was in December. They are saying that if unemployment is not below eight percent Obama will lose next year. I think seven is a fairer figure. President Obama says he “wants to put the economy in overdrive”. That won’t happen for a long, long time. As you know the Republicans also love big government but they spend things on medicare -part D, which was a real Bush boondoggle to insure the vote of the senior citizens in the election of 2004. People are having a debate as to whether it should be jobs of the deficet that should be the most important. With the deficet people routinely ignore the most obvious things like that we just passed a 850 Billion dollar tax cut which is money we'll never see again. Of course we could always cancel the Afghanistan war. And one thing the Republicans have right is the abolition of the Health Care bill. I heard somewhere that the real TARP bail out figure was 3.2 trillion and not 700 billion. Now Obama is consorting with people from General Electric, even though they are more guilty of outsourcing than anybody. Of course putting Bill Daily in as Chief of Staff shows the President wants to maintain, if not strengthen his centrist tone, and he has done everything he can to kissy up to Wall Street. Someone said Wall Street “would not support any man they didn’t think was in their camp. So the implication is “they let him win” over a true progressive Democrat. Of course the way I see it there have been only two Democratic presidents more conservative than the current occupent to serve in the past 150 years and those were Bill Clinton - - - and Grover Cleveland. And as they go I have more respect for Grover Cleveland because he was a man of principles and stuck by them Of course the President has been bragging about all these jobs that will be produced here in the US because of these trade talks he’s had with South Korea, China, and India. I’ll believe it when I see it. Of course they asked some Republican whether he would repuliate the tea party people's claim that Obama was born in Kenya or that he is really a Moslem. The Meet the Press guest just responded that "I don't see why that's an area that has to be discussed". In other words he doesn't want to say anything that would offend his far right nut base. On the other hand Obama is constantly saying and doing things that offend his base. Now we hear Paul Ryan of Wisconsin will be giving the response to the State of the Union message, and he subscribed to a whole laundry list of extreme right wing measures. Monica of the Mc Laughlin group says that the President has peaked in the polls and is destined to rise no higher but only decline as election time approaches. Personally, I don't know.

My advice to the Republicans as to who they should pick is Tim Polente of Minnesota. He is the only candidate without negative baggage that plagues most of the others. Haley Barber is doomed because it wouldn't look good for a man from Mississippi to run against a Black Man. Of course Mitt Romney is still doomed because he's a Mormon. Huckibee still has his partisans but we haven't heard much from him. Michelle Bachman can't keep her mouth shut but says the stupidest things. Sarah Palin is worse. She placed fourth in a recent poll of republican possibilities at only 7%, which only goes to show how big the list must have been. Tim Polente got eight percent at third place. Then there is that New Jersey tea bagger governor who is a Tim Polente wanna be. Finally we have Newt Gingrich, who has been around the block so many times the city is charging him a special tax for road wear. I guess he still has followers though I don't get the sense fro Newt that he is serious about running. But it's pretty much a fact that fourteen months from now we will know who the Republican nominee will be, and most likely sooner than that. The candidates that "Wall St" doesn't want have a strange way of dropping off the radar screen, and quickly.

Could it be that the Federation is worried about their home planet being destroyed in the next year. They claim to know the future in advance, but if they do they aren't telling me. But now scientists tell us that Betelguise, the red giant, is destined to go supernova this year and that when it does it could generate a light like a "second sun" in the sky of earth which for two weeks will turn night into day. I was wondering about this when the author added, "of course it could be this year- - or any time in the next million years. I think this whole alarm is just a wee bit half baked. People are talking about the weather and now it's colder and snowier all over the US. Two other years which come to mind for extreme cold is the winter of 1976-77 (during my "Jess Ryder incarnation) and also the winter of early 1982 when one Sunday they played a football game at Riverfront stadium with a perported wind chill factor of fifty-five degrees below zero. We haven't come close to topping that this year. All the same the argument for global warming seems to be getting weaker with each passing winter.

One of the most popular Beatle "Mash-up" records is the one they are playing now which combines "Ticket to Ride" and "Here Comes the Sun". Two others that are popular are "Paperback Writer" meshed with "I'm a Believer" and also "A Day In the Life" mixed with that Radio Head song. Of course the LOVE CD has all sorts of these monstrocities, many of which you used to be able to get on the internet. People say that John Lennon has a spurt of creativity in 1980 after a five year lull. But compared to for instance Bob Dylan in 1963 or even David Bowie in 1972, Lennon's efforts in 1980 appear paultry in comparrison. Lennon's music was definitely "behind the times" in terms of its style caught in some sort of a 1974 time-warp. Some are saying that Yoco and John had friction working together in the studio in 1980. This news would make the Federation happy because they have never liked Yoco. Of course one thing about recording with a smaller record record company is that you can pretty much dictate your terms. You can give the people at the record plant and say "put it out" and they will accept it sight unseen and will not come back with countless changes they want you to make. (not to put that down or anything because sometimes record officials actually have helpful ideas)

FCC Approves Comcast Purchase of N B C

According to the Randy Rhodes show, the deal for Comcast to buy NBC – Universal has gone through. The FCC approved the deal. Unfortunately I can’t find confirmation of this story in any other news source. This means that for those with the misfortune of having Comcast cable their service on everything that isn’t NBC will be getting lousier and that NBC will have a constant preference. The opportunity for lots of price irregularities exists. But it all goes back to having a Net neutral internet. This is in grave jeopardy now. Too much power is in the hands of two few. It’s hard to say which is worse – a horizontal or vertical monopoly. When one company is involved in both the production and distribution of a product there are dangers. Some say that there is “product integration” and I don’t mean race. Since everything is handled by all one source who can coordinate their efforts, greater efficiency can be achieved. But I would not hold out any hope that such savings by the company will be passed on to the consumer. Unfortunately, this won’t be the last of merger-mania.

Cops are really obsessed with finding the cop shooter who is at large and presumably in the Los Angeles area. However I don’t see the point of that dragnet they set around nine schools in the Valley, with the campuses in lock-down way after school hours. They would not even allow the kids to walk home. The way cops see it anyone with the cajones to shoot a cop, would not hesitate at shooting anybody else.

Yesterday the House of Representatives voted by a wide margin to repeal the Health Care bill passed just ten months ago in its entirety. The repeal was by a bigger margin than when the original bill was passed. Even Democrats say the bill needs to be "fixed" like getting rid of some 1099 provision that business have to file when they make a purchase. On the other side even the Republicans say many of the provisions of the Health Care bill are worthy goals. But from my point of view the best thing is for the US Senate to follow suit and at least take up debate on the repeal. Starting over with a blank piece of paper doesn't seem at all a bad thing at this point. We need to enact things the Republicans want such as increasing competetion among insurance companies and "bending the cost curve" by not turning it into some contest to see how much money can blow on useless diagnostic tests ten days before the patient is set to die of something else entirely like that Sixty Minutes episode talked about. As to changing medical liability laws, I would treat softly here but even I think where might be ways of nibbling around the edges of outlandish jury awards. The only provision of the bill I really liked was the one about 80% of all insurance revenues has to go for medical care and not overhead or profit. I know there are anicdotal stories about various patients, children, with termanal diseases who are helped by this bill. I feel for those people but perhaps the media exposure they have gotten can facilitate getting private donations for their cause. There are a lot more people who will be hurt by this bill with increased costs and red tape all over the place.

They say that dementia is curable while Alsheimers is not, and only about half of the cases they used to call dementia are actually Alsheimers. Alsheimers is a disease with genetic markets. According to Laurie, people like myself who are into math would never get Alsheimers because we exercise our brain, and she says "studies have showing that a few minutes exercising your brain will keep you from getting the symptums of Alsheimers even if you have the genetic predisposition. Of course none of this helped Ronald Reagan. Now we have the case of the feuding sons, Michael and Ron. Ron just came out with a book saying Reagan had Alsheimers as early as the 1984 reelection campaign and perhaps if it had been diagnosed he wouldn't have run and we've be spared all that Iran-Contra stuff. From my own observations, I didn't think Ronald Reagan seemed as "aware" in that campaign as he had been in the past. Michael isn't taking his brother's book well at all but is lashing out at him. If your a conservative, even the recitation of facts is seen as treason.

I guess if the Jets win this weekend it will be the first time the NY Jets will have been in the superbowl since 1969. For a team that has already accomplished the impossible, the merely difficult doesn’t seem that hard. Good luck. The Orion Federation is backing the Bears.

They had one of those White House state dinners with President Hoo as the honored guest being treated to al all American surf and turf dinner with apple pie for desert. Unfortunately the rhetoric is a little harder to swallow. President Hoo out of deference to his host agreed more strides needed to be made in human rights in his country and he agreed to cooperate on such transcendent issues as Global Warming. Still I doubt that Chairman Hoo will be so deferentially treated by Nancy Palosi when she meets with him today. The trade deficit with China has exploded in just the past decade with Bush taking over and is now in excess of 250 Billion after being six million in 1981 when Ronald Reagan took office. If I were president for the sake of American price I would be more forceful in stating the American position and risk rocking the economic boat. Like I say the Chinese like things the way they are and I see little risk at all of their pulling the economic plus on us by withdrawing loans or “putting the squeeze on us”. They know we have other alternatives and national necessity would mandate these.

A Beacon In the Darkness

Yesterday was Martin Luther King day and also the seventeenth anniversary to the day of the Northridge earthquake that occurred at 4:31 in the morning. Like today that was a warm day. As congress gets back to work what Democrats have to remember is that they need to be a beacon of morality in this era of political darkness. When Sarah Palin, and perhaps the President, say that our observations on these troubled times and suggestions for remedies, are not "diversions" as Sarah Palin intones. I suggest she look up the word "diversion". Rather than divert FROM something we want to turn a laser focus on the real issues. These are the issues that Thom Hartman talked about yesterday on his radio program. They are that peace is a more noble goal than war and that solutions are to be prefered over blame casting, as even the President seemed to be engaging in last Wednesday. He not only convinced me he was attacking Democrats but also Pat Buchannon got the same impression, which is the main reason he liked the speech. President Kennedy was not one to shy away from a comitment, either to put a man on the moon, or to promote civil rights or nuclear disarmament. Both King and Kennedy were martyrs. Yesterday was a day to celebrate martyrs. Stephanie Miller was more interesting than usual yesterday. I had her on both before and after breakfast. Thom Hartman said today was the anniversary of Dwight Eisenhower giving his “Military Industrial Complex” speech, and an apt speech it was. I wish the tea party set would read and listen to it. Thomas Payne was a liberal but you'll never get the right to admit that. Hartman than played a J F K speech given on the topic of peace given in 1963 at the University of Michigan. (?) He also had speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King telling Blacks not to fight in Viet Nam. Martin Luther King also fought on behalf of economic justice, which transcends the races. The whole idea of today is that we strive for the better angels of our nature and what better way than to look upon a life that was martyred for that cause.

I looked up “Worlds in Collision” and got the Wickipedia article. Emanuel Villicosky is the guy who wrote that book and it’s sequel of “Earths in Upheaval”. He was pretty much a crack pot saying Venus passed by the earth in 1500 BC and then around 800 BC Mars passed really close to the earth. The physics of the matter is something Villocosky seems utterly ignorant of. For instance, that Venus has a very round orbit. Also there are indications that the Great Pyramid was aligned to the same cardinal directions we have today, which was built 2700 BC, if not considerably before that. Even more importantly, the moon would not maintain its consistent monthly orbit under such conditions. They just announced coffee break.

They sure love to trash John Edwards. They ignore all the good things he has accomplished in his life and how he strived for a more economically just America. As you know he consistently beat out both Obama and Hillary Clinton in the radio polls of early 2008. He was the true voice of the progressive wing of the party and not Obama. To say that one moral failing totally eliminates the great body of moral good that a man has accomplished to me is folly.

Since there isn't hard news to report yet here are a number of things from my personal life lately. This is Tuesday January 18, 2011 and the quandary about direct deposit is solved. Last night I called Terry. As it turns out his brother volunteered to take their Mother to the doctor today. Terry had to vacuum the sanctuary and said he’d be over when he was done. As it turns out that was about ten to eleven. Terry was talking to Larry in the hall. I said as he was at the door, “I’m not there” and Terry responded, “When do you get back?” We left and Terry had some stuff for me to write down about homosexuals. As we rarely encountered a red light if was difficult to write it down. He wanted to know what companies did the survey and what they got for gays, straight, and bi-sexual, as well as what years were the studies done? He then talked about Sun Su and the art of war, and I said I’d look that up on Google. At the bank I filled out the form remembering to bring along a fresh check for the number. I withdrew the twenty and asked about the ten dollar fee and the guy said he would be in next month’s statement. My balance now is $62.30 or so – so the ten hasn’t been taken out yet. Proactively he suggested we take care of the problem today so I went to this other teller to a booth and he called up Social Security and he arranged direct deposit. He said he’d use information on my license even though it’s expired. He also mentioned, “Even if you’re not driving now you’ll want to get this renewed and the $24.00 will be worth it.” The bank has a special hot line so they don’t have to wait. There was a brief wait of a few minutes during the call. The Social Security lady only wanted to talk to me very briefly. I heard Terry talking with someone behind the wall. Then we walked over to the Subway. He was willing to pay for a combo meal, so I didn’t get my usual twelve inch. I didn’t know whether certain sandwiches were excluded so just got the roast beef. You have a choice now of not only quite a few types of bread but also at least four types of cheeses and certain things like peppers are free now that they used to charge for. You could get refills on the drinks. I got an additional half cup and then an additional third cup. Terry talked and talked about the character Kato played by Bruce Lee saying it was rare way back when for Asians to actually play Asians. Mark is on Proverbs 10. The potato chips didn’t taste right, somehow. I don’t know if they were stale or what? Then he took me home. I smoked my last cigarette. The weather today has been quite warm.

I watched the soap opera. Nicole virtually agreed to bow out gracefully to Samantha. During that I went out and bought a cigarette from Gloria for a quarter. Jennifer began calling names for Money Draw before two. I went down and there was no line. I got right in and asked for and got twenty. Then I went out to the liquor store for a pack of John Black menthols. After smoking I went to see Dr. Saran. James was in front of me and had one of these real “bowl cuts”. My blood pressure is still a little high, like last time. It was 130 over 82. The doctor was not a bit concerned. I figure maybe either it’s the morning donuts or else the increased consumption of coffee that is causing it. Nora was in and out. The other side has linen changing day.

I called Mom. Her blood pressure is 150, which is too high. She’s trying different combinations of pills and is taking both calcium-magnesium, and fish oil, both of which tend to lower blood pressure. She has so much money she says she has more capital than she did a year ago despite the buckets of money she’s spending at the Regency. I can’t believe that. I told her when I quite smoking she’d be the first to know. I told her that Dana has relapsed badly on the smoking issue.

Last night it was ABC network news and Jeopardy and the Simpson’s, and then “House”. I didn’t take any pictures with the camera yesterday and haven’t today. Since I’ve had the camera I haven’t skipped two consecutive days in a row. In terms of the photo used, I was going to use that one of the power tower taken in dim light with a long exposure, but then I thought this photo was more inspirational, so that explains that.

Sergeant Shriver, brother in law to J F K, died today. He convinced Kennedy to reach out to King when he was jailed in Georgia. He founded the Peace Corps and under Johnson was instrumental in the War on Poverty. He was unsuccessful candidate for Vice President under Mc Govern. He was given an award from President Clinton in 1994. Sergeant Shriver died of Alzheimer’s and was survived by five children.

Two students were injured from a stray gun shot from a gun in a back pack that accidentally went off. One boy was grazed in the neck and the other, a girl, was shot in the temple, and that student is in critical condition. They agree the discharge was an accident. They did interrupt daily programming for it. A seventeen year old student was arrested for having a gun in his back-pack. The school was put in lock-down. (?)

Senator Joe Leiberman, the maverick democrat, and republican Kay Bailey Hutchenson have announced their retirement from congress in 2012. I don't know how people like Lieberman and Mc Cain got off the political tracks. Neither used to be the men they are today. At least Mc Cain still has a sane moment or two when he tries to temper the tea party.

I looked up “The Art of War” in the Wickipedia, and it told of the thirteen chapters and how the text may have been tinkered with but by the Han dynasty, the text appears as it does today. I think the six major dynasties are the Sung, the Chow, the Chin, the Han, the Tang, and the Ming dynasties, but there are surely others. I also looked at the latest chapter of “Wall Mart Is Not a Person” but haven’t downloaded the chapter yet. It continues warm in here now. Today may be the hottest day.

Hats off to that three year old kid conducting the orchestral recording of Beethoven’s fifth. He knew his Beethoven- - a lot better than Sarah Palin known governmental operation. He wasn’t just faking it; he was anticipating the music – (and indeed appeared to be orchestrating it). This was a You Tube video from Judy. We need people in politics and in every other profession who "know their shit", as they say. For this kid to start out so young is truely an inspiration.

Waiting For Congress

This has been a slow news week with just the one story from last Saturday dominating the entire week. Otherwise realigning the zodiac signs wouldn’t make the news cycle. Congress has spent about one day in session this entire year and indications were even that session was brief. Since Monday the seventeenth is a holiday we look to Tuesday as the first day of any hope of political news. We are all curious what this congress is going to initiate. Some have suggested that John Boehner initiate research as to whether laws on assault rifles should be tightened. No Democrat even during the first two years of the Clinton administration dared to even raise this issue. The Republicans could all pleasantly surprise us if they started something. Pat Buchannon has praised the President’s speech in Tucson calling it “Splendid”. Glen Beck has said it’s the best speech he’s heard Obama give. Meanwhile Rush Limbaugh is having none of it. He's doing a big "up yours!" to the President mocking the whole idea of the memorial service in Tucson. He is continuing to deliver his incendiary remarks, throwing gasoline on the smoldering embers of contraversy. He's pulling these odd ball remarks out of his ass like "if they bring a knife to a fight, we'll bring a gun". What liberal ever said this. Nine year old Christine Taylor Green is an inspiration to all of us perhaps wanting to get into politics herself one day and serve the people. But Rush Limbaugh has mocked children ever since mocking some boy in a balloon for peace twenty years ago. Rush Limbaugh is truly a man without a heart and without feelings. If Democrats applaud something, then Rush believes it has to be something bad. Some have speculated that there is a new speech form called “socastic violence” mentioned by Thom Hartman yesterday. It’s funny how these words suddenly appear in our vocabulary like “blood libel, which means blaming the Jews for bloody rituals involving children. Now we hear that socastic violence has to do with praying and hoping there is some lone nut with a gun out there and that something you say will trigger that because secretly Republicans welcome these lone nuts. That’s what Hartman says. This goes beyond the usual “dog whistle speech” we’ve heard about where “your people” are signaled that you’re “one of them” by certain key words that you use. Some have said that Rush Limbaugh is actually doing a service by exposing and marginalizing the deeds of the far right. The tea party crowd is having a moral meltdown’ there is no doubt about that. The sooner they are completely out of the way the sooner we can get back to the real nuts and bolts business of governing. But when Glen Beck says that God has decreed for this nation to be “bathed in blood” you know all of this explosive rhetoric is not dead and buried yet but that somebody is listening to it.

Talk Radio - - A Strange Brew

Talk radio has become a strange brew of half cocked conclusions and unsubstantiated roomer. Gabriel Gifford is struggling for life in a hospital room. The doctors are optimistic as to her prognosis. Most people shot in the head don't survive, and many that do are vegetables for life because swelling of the brain, infections, and nerve damage does them in. She was lucky she wasn't shot in the most vital canters of the brain. Her bloody head was wrapped and prevented the loss of too much blood. She's a regular E J Di Mira. People on the right have reacted oddly to this whole incident. Today they just announced that gun sales in Arizona were up, perhaps in anticipation of stricter gun laws. People particularly want to buy the Glock 19, the gun the killer used. In California semiautomics are legal with only ten rounds of ammunition and not thirty like the killer used. That should warm the cockles of Rush Limbaugh's heart, erroniously assuming he had one. You'd think they would first suck in a breath and compose their thoughts before spouting off but the same people who provide "talking points" at other times are providing those same talking points here. According to Rush Limbaugh, the liberals are using this incident to turn an electoral victory into a defeat and that the people will turn against the tea baggers. Liberals don't even think in those terms because they view people as human beings and not events to be manipulated. The conservatives are denying the whole scope of the human tradgity of this incident ans it's implications of what is wrong with the current political culture. Sarah Palin took down her cross hairs gun site symbol but now she's saying "Oh this is a survayors' symbol. That's silly. These gun sites are drawn on all the tightly fought congressional districts and as it happens Gabriel Gifford just got elected in a tightly fought race. Bricks were thrown at her office. She only wanted to do what was best for the people. But all Rush Limbaugh sees is some tit for tat one upsman ship contest. Rush is so utterly devoid of sensitivity now if he'd started out this way twenty years ago he'd be off the radio in a few months, and I think he knows that. But I will say that O Riley talking about Dr. Tiller the baby killer is not in the same league. O Riley didn't engage in "hate speech"; he was just reciting facts. And I'll go further than that. I think Dr. Tiller should have been brought up on charges for the murders of those thousands, apparently, of babies. And hopefully he would be lawfully executed for his crimes. That's just my oppinion. I don't care squat whether he went to church every week. A lot of evil people go to church. I just conclude one thing. Either he is a fake or Jesus Christ is a fake, and frankly, I don't care which it turns out to be. But I don't believe in taking the law into your own hands and that's the difference between me and the right. When Sarah Palin and others say "Don't retreat; reload" and talk about "the necessity of resorting to second amendment remedies" then they have stepped over the line.

Some people have raised the question as to whether "Evil" exists in the abstract or whether evil is just contingent on the situation. I'll go with the latter view. And I'll say this: I believe evil is a product of our own choices. Some may say to me "But you don't believe in free will; how can you believe morality is the product of choices?" There is an answer. You have all these "loose threads" of the "if only"s to pull on. And once you start pulling on these threads of actual reality trying to restage it to your own liking, you pull on another and another, until the faboric is undone. I'll say this: People have the right to make choices. But they don't have free will. A conditioned rat makes a series of "choices" every minute of his life. People with a sex addition who are married but see a prostitute two or three times a week are constantly making choices. They make a choice to get in their car and drive, and to carry money with them and to bring their condoms. They prepare. Some people speak of evil as some kind of a "thing". They speak in terms of "my arthritis" or "my O C T" or whatever as though the ailment is some "thing" they can't get away from. Fred Price has said never to speak of a weakness as "MY - - whatever" as though it belongs to you and you can't escape it. Evil is just the product of decisions that human beings make. It isn't "original sin" or something genetic you are born with. People can rise above it any time they want, if they only have the will.

They are now saying that the United States intends to hang around Afghanistan to control events there even after our troops have completely departed in 2014. To me this is foolishness. We'll never leave. Wikki-leaks now says they aren't going to let current legal problems stop them for releasing another batch of damaging documents. Well, you know what they say. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Jesus Christ said "What you do in the closet in secret will be shouted from the roof tops". (Selah)

On the Randy Rhodes show today I thought I heard the host say that liberals are Objectivists. Which is just what I am. In other words I believe reality rests in the thing being examined and not in your own mind. Therefore I strenuously disagree with those who say "Well we all have distortions. Liberals distort and conservatives distort". I doubt that most of the people who say this even believe it per se but somehow think they're better. It's conservitives who say things like "Well, everybody lies" or "everybody does it" (usually referring to divorce and breaking up of families) No, everyone Doesn't do it. And if a liberal does "do things he shouldn't" he owns up to it and admits it and resolves to do better. He doesn't rationalize it away like Neil Savedra does when he says "Of course churches are hypocritical because we're all hypocrites, so join the club". I reject this line of reasoning. But I would like to pick up on a line Rush Limbaugh used to use that I agree with. He says, "actions have consequences". Bill Clinton has said this in regard to hate speech. In the movie "Talk Radio" there was a line how Barry Champaign (?) put out so many negative vibes into the air it came back on him". I don't know what Mel Gibson would think of the assertion that "The Passion of the Christ" is homo erotic. I haven't seen the whole movie. Just because it contains a flooging scene doesn't make it homo erotic unless there's other stuff in there. Of course there was one gay spoof of Christianity, and the host said "OK people and how we're going to talk about the reserection. - - Are you ready, Rez". (I'll give time for that to sink in) I'd like to get back to objectivism a bit. When I was taking a computer class in the fall of 1968 the teacher had a saying "Garbage In; Garbage Out". A computer program doesn't care if you misspell words as long as they aren't reserved words. Liberals research things before they report on them. A conservative will instead make his own mind as to the conclusion out of some ill founded, pre conceived, and often religious notions. A liberal will study the facts and form tenative conclusions, and these in turn will be modified with further study, like a scientist would do. It's a whole different temperment. Radio Stations used to have to let people go through their files and analyze their program content once every three years or something to see if they were in the public interest. Now they say they send in a postcard- - every eight years- - and renewal is virtually automatic. It's just another case in which modern society has lowered its standards, and that's just my opinion.

Dr. Levy has returned from a three week to India and had very little good to say about the trip. There were no grand spiritual insights or inspiration about the soul of man. What there was was trash in the street - and a stench in the air caused by the stagnate pools of water, and people urinating in rivers feet away where someone else was washing his face. There is no government welfare. The government doesn't seem to care. It would seem that the whole society lives like pigs. They let the cows roam free and graze from the vegetable stands and later people buy the vegetables. But there are no traffic lights. People won't stop for each other, unless you have the fortune of being a cow. Then they'll stop. You can't cant count on resturants having clean utensils, if they even have them. Often bathrooms are a hole in the ground. Businessmen in suits walk over the bodies of people in the sidewalk not even checking to see if they are dead or alive. Apparently the majority of the population is in the fifth "untouchable" class. Disease is of course rampent and no wonder you need shots. I'm surprised the Beatles lasted as long as they did in India. Lots of Hindus worship the statue Ganitia, referred to in Simpson's episodes. Apparently the weather was good. But the friend of his invited him to come back soon and this time to bring his wife. She was smart enough to pass up going on this trip. His dreary report has definitely impacted my decision about perhaps going to India one day. This is one vacation that I'll choose not to take.

Arizona Congresswoman Shot Through Brain

Gabriel Gifford, a congresswoman from Tuscon, Arizona was the victim of an attempted assasenation by Jered Laughner, a 22 year old mentally disturbed college drop out. The bullet entered the temporal lobe of her brain and exited through the front. The signs are now hopeful that she hasn't suffered permanent damage in these regions. Nineteen people were targeted and six are now dead but that toll may rise. Laughner is one of those people who started off "caring" and "politically involved" but nobody can say exactly what he believed. In my prophecy book I discuss people like Jim Jones who start off as caring crusaders but the Devil gets a hold of them or something and turns their good intentions into dangerous obsessions. You may have heard me refer to my ex housemate Henry as remind me a little of Norman Bates. There is something a little creepy about him, particularly in his relations with women. People remind us that violent attacks can happen anywhere in the world. In 1995 President Clinton in response to the Oklahoma City bombing suggested that we dial down the hate rhetoric because while most of us are stable our words may land in the ears of certain types who don't know how to handle it, and start getting ideas. Violent ideas. I'm not saying we should drug everybody into being a passive zombie or anything, but perhaps some sort of mental screening is in order. We know Charles Manson was violent before but he got freakier in response to the hippy movement and came up with this whole crazy Helter Skelter thing. These people are somewhere in the twilight zone between your garden variety sociopath and scitzophrenia. Perhaps they should coin a new disease for the symptums they exhibit. So many of these "lone nuts" managed to elude detection of their social pathology for years, and then suddenly they just snap.

I think these over-medicated quality certain people in public exhibit, like President Obama may be responsible for our not hearing the truely classic "passionate" speech. If Shakesphere were alive today he'd have to do a massive rewrite on all his plays, if he wrote new ones. Of course Mark Twain would have to take the word "nigger" out of all his books. You know I was listening to Walter Mandale's 1976 acceptence speech at the Democratic Convention for Vice President. Mondale was really good at enumerating the woes people didn't like about the Republicans such as high prices and high unemployment. He says "We democrats got some stuff passed but we could have accomplished a lot more were it not for the President's veto pen". Watergate was a convienient target. But we jump to the 1988 Democratic Convention and Anne Richards delivering the keynote speech. Now there was one expressive broad! She was passionate, and we could use that kind of passion today. She was skilled in the art of rhetoric. She spoke at length of the usual overheard conversations of the grown men about World War II and the government, when she was a child. She she spoke of the divisiveness of the Reagan administration pitting this group against that one. They used to call them "special interests" and they used to call the Democratic Party "a grand coalition of diverse interests". But they don't call Democrats that any more. Why? Because they have all given up in their quests. Certainly the labor unions have. Today if you admit to being pro union you hide your head in shame and speak in apologetic tones. It did not use to be like this. There is alltogether a wholesale lack of passion about everything this President does. When it comes to replacing cabinet members who have left he is careful to make sure that the new appointees are just as unqualified to serve as the ones who departed. They still have to be big bankers and pro international trade and loss of domestic economic productive pride. Now we hear that the unemployment rate has dropped a whole .4%. This is actrually big news, but not for us. It's something I predicted several months ago would happen if the Republicans took over the government. They would be in power but a short time and better economic statistics would be reported out, and the republicans would take credit for it. This is much as Bill Clinton, according to Rush Limbaugh, took credit for the recovery of late 1992 and that had been a result of wheels and processes that had already been set in motion that he had nothing to do with. There was the line "This incoming party is so great just Thinking about them being in power is enough to change the economic reality" - - or whatever. Republicans are passionate. They said on a TV program that when the economy gets better that the tea party crowd will go away and lose their appeal. One can only hope. I don't think it's quite that simple. With the enormous debt we are incurring, the tea party will have a lot to carp about for a long time to come. But perhaps it can get Berock Obama through the next election cycle successfully.

Nancy Palosi Hands off the Gavel

Yesterday was the kick off of the 112th congress. John Boehner may be too unstable for the job. Now he is second in line to the presidency. Of course there are things people don't know about John Boehner such as he used to pass out checks from the tobacco on the floor of the house, during a debate of a tobacco bill. How blatent can you get? Of course to prove how patriotic they are they ordered the entire US Constitution to be read on the house floor. I hope they noticed that certain things are not in it. The word filibuster does not appear in the Constitution. Apparently the word derives from "piracy" or stealing the floor. I've heard two different accounts on how that got started. I heard one story that a certain senator was in another town miles from Washington when a key vote was cast and the filibuster was for him to have time to ride in on horseback to cast his vote. I heard another story that the senate used to have NO rules about cutting off debate but that they would literally go on forever. Then President Woodrow Wilson got disgusted with this and got the two-thirds requirement passed. In 1975 this was changed to the sixty percent that we know today. Of course you know they don't swear them in individually placing their hand on the Bible like all the photographs, but they are sworn in as a group merely raising their right hand taking the same oath all federal employees have to take from FBI agents to congressmen, to men joining the Service. Of course the first item on the agenda is to repeal the Health Care bill. This has taken on more of a symbolic gesture more than anything else, akin to the impeachment of President Clinton. Of course they should bear certain facts in mind. One good thing about this health care bill is that it requires insurance companies to spend 80% of their revenues on actual health care. Before the bill they would often skim off forty percent or even more as pure profit. Also people talk about these videos perporting to show unhappy Canadians who can't get needed procedures like an M R I but have to wait 120 days. In actuality, you can get an M R I immediately - if you really need one. If the doctor believes it doesn't matter when you get it you'll wait 120 days. They say Canadians are unhappy with their health care but survays seem to show that Canadians are more happy with their health care than we are, and wouldn't think of giving it up, any more than those in Europe would. But what these Republicans may not realize is that repeal of the bill will itself cost money. If they are interested in saving a buck they'll leave things as they are. Of course the same thing could be said about canceling these military contracts after billions have already been spent. Apparently they are going to make it harder to raise taxes procedurally, and are going to make it easier to cut funding, procedurally. I guess they want to turn us all into California, and you know how we love our chaos. Thom Hartman was talking about Daryl Eisa. He was singled out for note on the NBC news last night. He is the guy who will be doing a lot of investigating. Eisa and Ken Lay of ENRON fame, conspired to get rid of Governor Gray David in 2003. Daryl thought he would be the next governor but then Arnold Swartzenegger ran and the Republicans knew that he was electable and Eisa wasn’t, so that spawned the very first crying jag by a Republican. Last night I was snapping photos of the passing of the gavel and the new Republican congress and John Boehner was seen crying twice. Boehner says “This is the people’s house” and he wants to be worthy of the position and all. Daryl was on the Rush Limbaugh show and got a friendly reception. He is the man to watch.

You've seen these national debt clock web sites. I guess they have a "cost of war" web site with the numbers spinning around faster than a gas tank. Apparently there is some congressman named Allan West who wants the President to visit the troops in the theater of war right on the front, if they even have fronts any more. He's calling the president chicken. If I were God I would put his professed courage to the test to see if he's qualified to raise the issue. Republicans would love it is we had governmental chaos during war time with John Boehner one step closser to the presidency.

We don't know who will win next weeks NFL playoff games next week, but we do know who four of the survivors will be to play the following week, Atlanta, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New England. I know this because these four teams don't even play this weekend. I can confidently say that at least one of the two teams in the Superbowl will be Pittsburgh or New England. I am less confident on the National league side. Hell, Green Bay could always get lucky, and Red Forman would be right there in the sands and routing for them. But I think there is still a longing for New Orleans to get the brass ring again. You know, they all want us to know that "New Orleans is back".

In case you are wondering this photograph was not taken with my new camera, though it was modified on my software that I received Christmas of 2009. If I'm careful I can I can get a lot clearer picture than you get on a lot of web sites. Now if I want to send anything to the media I can do it with pride. It's a Cannon and I don't know if I got the $99.00 camera or whether they opted to get me one more expensive. When you have a four gigabyte memory chip in it you don't have to worry about running out of shots - at least for a really long time.

91 New Republicans To Take Oath In Congress

Congress convenes tomorrow for another two year session where both Senate and House have that rare but now highly watched coveted opportunity to make the rules, which must be done at the beginning of each session and that is tomorrow. The first item on the agenda for them will be to repeal the health care bill right off. Can you believe that? Apparently the thinking goes that they don’t want the American people to get too “used” to having all the nice new benefits. Or it could be they “don’t have anything else to do but tear things down since they can’t build anything”. On Randy Rhodes a called questioned why the Bush administration was never investigated. Randy said “Well if they did that they couldn’t pass health care”. In the first place that would be fine with me. But in the second place it isn’t impossible for them to walk and chew gum at the same time. The caller suggested that if the republicans had a noble side they themselves would investigate the war crimes of the Bush administration. That would be patriotic, wouldn’t it? Maybe some tea party people, like Thom Hartman before them might get religion and turn into libertine liberals and turn all their ardor to champion THOSE causes now.

John Boehner says he wants transparency. Well, I’m for that. I am against these Christmas tree legislative packages that aren’t even subject to amendments on the house floor. But I just hope he doesn’t pass some gimmick to give the Republicans an unfair advantage in passing bills. We know the Democrats never exercised the rights they could as a minority under Bush and now I wonder if they’re going to bring back “the nuclear option”. I’m paranoid they’ll come up with something dirty nobody has thought of.

I was intending to look at a consumer electronics show C E S video, and I eventually watched two of them. But first I got sidetracked to “V” promos because the long expected (and wondered whether it would ever come) season of “V” is premiering tonight. Of course for a while in Sirius they worried about Romulans doing the “V” thing for returning to Regelus V. Of course if you saw the original movie the “V” spoke of how benevolent they were. How are they going to now contradict everything they said. Now you’re going to see human emotions such as rage at being found out.

I am planning to talk about my new idea for a function key in Calculator called "additive exponents". What this would do is enable you to add figures like x squared plus x cubed. We know if you were timsing it the answer would be x to the fifth, but I'm talking about addition and not multiplication. For instance x to the 3rd plus x to the 4th would be x to the new 7/4 power and x square plus x to the fourth would be x to the 1.5 power. So you just make the larger the denominator and the total number of x's as the numerator. I have a way of "almost" getting the answer short of using wolframalpha.com. Or you can always see it as an x and y equation with two unknowns where x equals y. That way you can use the President Obama way of solving the problem on computer. You know, Incrementalism. You just do a sweep of all possible values for x till you get the right one that solves x = y. (where y is actually another x, and so I guess you would call this a lesbian equation.)

This is January fourth and the sun is staying up noticeably longer now. I still have not E mailed Mom. Weather wise they are predicting a new round of cold weather for the midsection of the United States that could see temperatures of ten deg in Texas. Of course cold, frigid weather may be the normal state of affairs in Europe because melting arctic ice is melting and cooling the north Atlantic thus shutting down the Gulf Stream. But people like Rush Limbaugh think Europe is an alien world anyhow.

You know, I would hope people like Rush Limbaugh realize the seriousness of these gay bashing videos in the military. I’m not sure what the motives of these staged scenes are other than to disgust everyone that would watch. OK I guess there is that lingering question of what do you do about gays oogeling other men in the showers. Well I heard that the military has individual shower stalls. I guess it's only high schools and prisons which still have corporate showering. This incident hopefully transcends left verses right wing, but in today’s world, you never know.

They say that your normal walking speed, on the sidewalk on the way to a distant destination, determines how long you will live. I guess that’s a good thing for me, if it turns out to be true. Some people exercise like crazy and still get heart attacks. Like I say I hope to live at least another thirty years and after that we'll see.

They say that the Microsoft-Intel relation is showing its age. Windows is becoming a thing of the past even if it is still used on ninety percent of the world’s computers. Computers themselves are becoming a thing of the past what with the invasion of the tablets, and their disallowance of downloading regular “files”. Like I say I think it all some government conspiracy to take away control over our own hardware. Soon we’ll be forced to get everything we need from “the cloud”.

I don’t know if it’s the Apocalypse but after all these stories of dead fish washing up we now have all these red wing tipped blackbirds dying by the thousand in Arkansas and Louisiana. Now they are saying that it wasn’t lightning or hail or insecticide poisoning but rather fireworks on Newyears. Apparently the birds have bad night vision and normally are roosting at that hour but for some reason they must have been flying and got disoriented and stunned by the fireworks and went crashing into buildings and things having apparently lost all sense of direction. That’s what they say. By the way whatever happened to that crisis we had about bees abandoning their hives that was so rampant several years ago and they even made a Simpson’s episode about it.

"It's The Vanishing Oil, Stupid!"

Yesterday that speaker on C-Span talked about peak oil. There were some major discoveries of oil in the ‘thirties and the ‘forties. But oil discoveries seemed to peak out in the late ‘fifties and early ‘sixties. In 1956 a guy said that peak oil in the US would occur at 1970 and a speaker in May of 1957 said that we were in the golden age of oil, but it would be a brief one. It took a while but in retrospect we realized that 1970 was the tipping point. New discoveries of oil dropped way off by 1980 and about 1982 consumption surpassed the oil reserves of the world. The discoveries since 1980 have been very paultry. The United States has three percent of the world’s known reserves of oil but produces 8% of the oil. This means our wells are pumping the earth dry at a faster rate than in other countries. OPEC exports about the same amount of oil as it did thirty years ago, and yet the whole world consumes a whole lot more oil now. This leads to the “mountain of consumption” on his chart. We need to find ways of reducing oil consumption.

. Let’s talk about the news hour. First Lindsey Graham was up on “Meet the Press”. I wonder if he realistically thinks Social Security will adopt means testing knowing it’s his rich supporters that will suffer from that. Lindsey also wants to raise the retirement age and other stipulations for his agreement to raise the debt ceiling. The Republican consensus seems to be to raise the debt ceiling tiny increments at the time, and to extract a promise from the Administration each time it’s raised. Good luck. Then I switched to KABC where on “This Week” they were talking about the genocide in Sudan and in other places in Africa, and how the world has turned a blind eye to it all. Then I had FOX news on a while and then turned back to “Meet the Press” where they were talking about the economy. For a minute I had it on CBS. Then I went back to FOX and to ABC and then back to FOX again, the latter two having their round tables. The whole thing is that if they are going to insist on government cutback of programs, in addition to the cutbacks states have been forced to imposed, you’re going to short change Medi Cal and Medeicare as well as these Social Security cutbacks Lindsey Graham wants, and all of this will have a continued depressive effect on the economy. Also it seems the whole notion of pensions themselves is on trial. Someone on KTLK noted that soon even getting a pension from being on the job thirty years or whatever will and is becoming a thing of the past. It’s income people today can’t rely on. Some have predicted that we are likely to be startled by the turnabout in President Obama in his next State of the Union address. It is said that the president wants to cut SOME things whereas the Republicans want to cut EVERY thing. So that a LOT of cuts will be passed in any compromised legislation. Pat Buchannon said one of the best events of 2010 was the President meeting with Bill Clinton and being sold on the idea of cutting taxes for the rich. Rotsa Ruck cutting the deficit if we continue to do things like that adding 900 billion to the deficit one year. More and more the whole “meme” is permeating society on all levels that we’re all just going to have to get by with less. This means less hiring and less impulse spending, and less forward vision of revamping the country that Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and Eisenhaur and Kennedy envisioned. This era could be knows as “the great styfeling of the American dream”.

Conservative’s brains are more lizard like where you have a lot of stress cortosal from war from their mothers. Liberals are born in peace, so goes the theory, where other higher centers of the brain develop. Hartman says there is a cycle of of four generation. First there is the warrier generation. They breed “the quiet builders”. They breed a fearless generation like the Hippies who experiment with protest and drugs and spirituality. The final generation is the Gorden Gecko generation that says “well that didn’t work for us” and so they abandon the spirituality of their fathers, much as Rehoboam abandoned the spirituality of King Solomon, and they say “greed is good” and their rash conduct gets us all into a war, and thus the whole cycle starts over again. That’s Hartman’s theory anyhow.

I decided it was a good day to read a little. I read chapters in “Why I am not a Christian”. Russel says that nature is boring and also that everything that can be known about nature will eventually be written down since it is a finite amount of knowledge. I strenuously disagree. He said that the Church stresses individual morality to the utter neglect of social morality and the public good. He said none of the Saints were urban planners or reformers. And that the only time when Saints get noted for human interaction it’s for killing people in holy wars. Russel said that Christ himself was against normal family affections and the church as a whole has looked upon these human ties with disdain. So much for the Mormons. Then I read from the Compassionate Buddha. What struck me this time was most of the material is actually from his own sermons. By the way, Russel had stated that Buddhism believes neither in God nor in the immortal soul. I found nothing in my readings today that would contradict this. Of course Russel gets bogged down in the same verbal logic pitfalls that Mr. Richi gets into talking about the brain as the center of thought and when it goes, all memories go. He goes further to state that even a drop of water is not immortal but can be converted by electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. He spoke of a river being immortal in a sense but likened it to a “river of thought” in the human brain. He notes how the channel remains and how this channel was not created all at once but over time.