The Machinations of Men

There is a lot of slippery, sleazy stuff going on in Virginia and other party politics these days and I’m going to cover this in a posing I intend to do later today, and perhaps later in the hour - and now I guess that time is here since I am doing it.  The shifty machinations of the Tea Party Right become more blatant every day.  Take the Virginia legeslature that has twenty democrats and twenty republicans in the State Senate.  But because one Democrat was absent going to celebrate Martin Luther King day, the Republicans decided to do a vote, and redistrict the entire state, "segregating' all the poor and minorities into one district and rigging the others from democrat to republican, which will cause massive party losses for the Democrats in the next election, with absolutely no change in votor sentament.  They further compound the insult by want to do what a lot of red states are considering.  They no longer want to rely on popular votes to award Electoral Votes in federal elections, but they want to allocate delegates alias electors- not on the popular vote but on how many Districts they win a plurality in, reckoning all districts to have an equal vote despite the democratic districts being much more heavily blue than the other ones are red.  Do you follow?  Now the tea party right is getting on the President's case about making three "recess appointments" for the office of the E E O C.  But of course Congress rigs it now so that they are NEVER technically "in recess" but always conduct some "pro forma" alias phoney sessions, and do no work, which they don't do anyway.  Of course now among the Republicans, hating Hillary is back in fashion as the nineties get recycled.  Of course other things happen suddenly besides taking stealth votes on Martin Luther King day.  It's funny how people can say "I'd never make that mistake again" and go back, Jack, and do it again.  Harry Reid was saying just days ago that the filibuster problem would be fixed in the Senate.  "We've learned our lesson.  But it's another of those problems that was ignored till it became impossible to fix.  Sometimes people ignore a problem hoping it will go away- - and then when the worst happens they exclaim "If I had only known".  I remember the Rev Ed Peacock once said at a Bible study in late February of 1972 that he thought I had serious emotional problems.  The remark puzzled me.  But I let it pass.  Just over two months later was my suicide attempt.  And at the nine thirty service Peacock "Just forgot to mention it in the announcements".  Hospitals have a very efficient cure for the number of sick people.  Let them die.  Just like Ron Paul once said.  Dad died amazingly suddenly and I guess we don’t need to go into that again.  There was so much mal practice there it would take a long time to catalog that, and fortunately Judy already has.  And the stench of death hangs over the Senate today because there will be virtually no filibuster reform, and I was apprised of the details of how that came down today, which is stuff that I didn’t know before.  It seems that now they can no longer Filibuster a bill BEFORE it's even brought up for debate - but they still don't have to do "talking filibusters".  Before it was even possible to fillibuster a bill AFTER it was Passed, don't ask me how.  Seemingly, doing that is a lot more difficult.  Mitch Mc Conell said that among other things he wants to slow the Senate action down, so that a log jam of bills piles up.  There is really no end to their mischief.

Many issues raise my moral ire.  The material in the foregoing paragraph certainly raises my moral ire.  It bothers me when I hear that Blacks once had rights right after the Civil War, but "steps were taken" to as it were re establish White bigoted hegemony in the South, and take back their Power that they had lost in the civil war, as if it had never been fought.  I'm not against politics in the Church, but clearly - - "Values" to a tea party person translates only as the right to remain ignorant and act in ignorance, and the right to keep the Black man down, and the right to divide this country into a priveleged rich class, and an ignorant poor class, many of which are duped into voting Republican. If you're a Priest - you are pretty much in a gold fish bowl for all to scrutenize - and I suspect in many ways YOU yourself are more "on trial" than the people you preach to" - - - and you have to "pretend" at least that you truly have the "mantel of God" - - but there must surely be times when you'd like to momentary remove your clerical collar to punch out the guy you are talking with.  On the soap opera Eric Brady the Priest lost his cool with Brady because he thought that it was a moral obscenity and an inconsistency that made the Church look bad for them to work together on a “Christian project’, like who are they trying to kid?  John is going to Italy to attend a conference but will “stay on in Italy for I don’t know how long”.  Meanwhile a different priest tells Nicole that showing concern about a man whom you were schooled to marry and had a sexual affair with – and even agreed go adopt your unborn child, that such concern is “none of your business”.  I don’t know where the Priest was coming from with that remark.  Sometimes people like to wall you out.  In my private files I give an illustration of a family member who literally "waits for the problem to destroy whatever needs to be fixed, and only lifts the veil of secrecy to make an official "Death announcement" of whatever it is.   At times I feel like Nicole Walker.  I feel I'm "out of place".   Sometimes I think about attending a Bible study - -  but the feeling passes.  One might liken it to a woman’s screams in a New York tenement saying “I’m being attacked.  I’m being stabbed.  I’m dying”.  And then the screaming stops entirely and you reason to yourself, “Well - - I guess the problem must have solved itself”. That’s how some people think.  You know one version of allowing a problem to go on “too long” is what happened with me because for a long time people were saying “God is putting you through all these trials to make you a better person”,  But then that magic moment occurred in July of 1991 and the Truth of the matter was made apparent.  Bill Halliday said that I was “ruint” or “damaged goods” because I had had the wrong experiences, or something.  Neil Savedra sings the same tune any time someone says they don’t believe in God.  In Neil’s mind this is an A Priori irrational decision.  No rational person could possibly come to it so it must have been due to a “traumatizing experience” this individual had with the Church.  Well, scripture says that God is not the author of “Confusion” but I’m not sure how scripture weighs in on the subject of God being the Author of some “Traumatizing Experience”.

    

You know certain people may get on well with other people’s kids, if they could just bypass the thing about having sex with a woman.  My beef with Calvary Anaheim is not that they discourage homosexuality, but they seem to regard heterosexuality as some sort of “original sin” or something. And Pastor X-Ray refused to perform the ceremony marry Bobby Haden and his wife in March of 1973 because of the mixed race factor.  Bill Gundersonl feels quite comfortable there.  Will Horton does well with other people’s kids.  But as Nick so aptly put it the other day, “What child wants to be identified as someone who has one mommy and three daddies, and two of them are gay lovers.  I cringe every time I see Will and Sonny in a passionate “suck face” embrace.  The producers of the series ignore the “inconvenient truth’ that Marlena as much as pushed Will into a gay life style in a conversation she had with him a year or so ago, and I commented on it at the time.  I tagged it as therapeutic mal practice, by Marlena.  Then you have the Mac Martin case they just brought up now as some supposed example of “hysteria”.  All I can remember is that Wally George heard some of the child victims talking about the case before some program.  And the kids were talking about “secret tunnels” they were forbidden to talk about with others.  There were those “naked movie star” games.  Ray Buffie, is known to wear these really loose shorts with no underwear and sit spread eagled in a chair for the kids to see everything.  And now you’re going to tell me this whole massive scandle was just some kind of “made up hysteria”???  Just to be pragmatic- - what kind of a master planner would it take to organize all of those kid’s purgered testimonies?

There was a Race Relations seminar on, and some of the things they brought up were old news.  Other things were things that it would pay to just take pause to think about.   If you are afraid of oral cancer, drink four cups of coffee a day.  That’s what they are telling you now.  We are on page four already.  It will be six thirty before you know it.  It’s ten to five now.  We’re still getting rain drops.  They kept saying they were going to have the official White House briefing that was scheduled to occur at a quarter to eleven, but it never seemed to be on C-Span.  I did watch that Republican Party winter convention or whatever where I guess Reinz Previs was the star speaker.  I listened to Louisiana Governor Jindell speak and the points he made were of note.  He said Republicans shouldn’t even want to control government but just work on building up their private business.  Amen to that.   I wish they would stop sticking their nose in ”my business” if you know what I mean.  So that would mean don’t draft my children into any new wars, either my sons or my daughters.  And we can repeal the Patriot Act, and stop these gigantic subsedies to oil companies.  And while you’re at it end all these crop price subsedies driving up the price of my food, and don’t “simplify” my tax code any more taking away deductions I depend on to make ends meet.  But the trouble with most people is they just don’t think.  Jendell spoke against “austerity” imposed by government.  I take it from his words he would not be a Romney supporter, were Mitt Romney in the White House now.

We have some medical news for you.  The Noral virus lives in the gut.  It’s not something you breathe in.  But apparently you can get it from for instance pressing elevator buttons or going through revolving doors or using a calculator someone with the virus has touched.  Unlike the regular flu where you have to breathe in a thousand viruses to get sick, just eighteen of those little buggers will do it.  Noral virus causes you to get violently ill with the worst form of vomiting and other symptums- - such as dehydration.  Many die from it.  And you get sick within hours of exposure – not days.   There is now a new diabetes drug where you can have aggravated symptums of depression – and suicidal thoughts.  And I heard they are actually prescribing thelimide – that analgesic in early 1964 that caused those horrible birth defects in Germany, now they are prescribing it for alzheimers.  Just don’t forget you had sex.  And the truth behind those new glasses Hillary has been sporting is that she has to wear them because they are a special kind of prisom lens that shifts light beams, because Hillary’s concussion has caused her to have persistent double vision.  This double vision often lasts for weeks, and it can last for months.  Paul was remarking that twenty years ago watching old VCR tapes that there were a lot more Wrigley’s chewing gum ads, and a lot fewer drug ads.  Maybe we had all bett3er go back to chewing gum.  It’s cheaper.  Janet told me she estimated that our breakfast this morning of eggs, French toast and oatmeal this morning- runs a thousand calories.  I suspect we have suffered “calorie measurement inflation” lately.  They seem to want to jack up the figures for their own propaganda value.  Don’t leave your dog out in this arctic cold being experienced in most of the country.  And there is a steam cloud around a Nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania which causes it’s own weather.  It has spawned a local snow storm.  But don’t worry;  the snow is not in any way radioactive.  Meanwhile North Korea wants to threaten the health of all of us because they are pressing forward to develop a nuclear bomb that’s small enough to be used as a warhead atop a missile, and underground testing has begin.  On the David Cruise show with all that sick stuff about defication being an element in Fraternity hazing now- - that it could be a lot of our children are mentally ill and when they all get together it kind of turns into a Lord of the Flies type situation.  And there is talk of pulling Vicadan off the market – or at least making it a whole lot harder to get.  I hear that name all the time around here of people asking for their Vicadan.  It’s appearently Tylenol mixed with an opiate derivative.  And they want to alter the prescription refill policy on the drug.  Dr. Wong would not allow so much as one refill for my Serax when I was taking that.  And it’s a whole lot less dangerous.  Ten days and that’s it.

Last night (?) I did get on Mike Meloy’s program web site and did several of his vocal “sanity” blurbs, that were entertaining.  At nine it was “Beauty and the Beast” and I don’t think I’ll make that show a part of my regular line-up.  I get the gist of it.  I retired at ten and woke at five thirty and then caught forty winks and got up a few minutes to six and turned on Stephanie Miller at the appointed time.  We had oatmeal for breakfast and I used a pink sugar from my pocket.  We are definitely starting later now.  We finally got served our scrambled eggs and French toast at about a minute to eight.  I had Mike Meloy on again in the morning briefly.  He was doing this hysterical parody about Devout Catholics having a heart attack over this idea that I have the control as to what I put on my penis when I have sex, or whether the woman has anything up her cervix.  While Mike won the “shame” contest- - he kind of lost the issue, because most people agree that Churches ought to have control over the institutions they own and run, and we don’t need the long finger of government.

Another Look at Fredrick Douglas

We learned recently that the portrait of President Lincoln in the recent movie is not exactly complete, at least as to how slavery was abolished goes- - because apparently nowhere anywhere in the Movie does it make mention of Fredrick Douglas, one of the premier anti slavery figures of the era, a Black man, and a former slave.  According to what Randi said he was a runaway slaved who went to England because his Abolitionist stance got a much better reception over there than it would have in his own Country.  It would seem that Douglas was none too happy about Christianity or Christian preachers, either.  While some say that it was fundamentalist Christians who speerheaded the abolitionist movement, Douglas takes strong exception to this.  He said the only thing worse than being a slave was being the slave of a Christian master, because they were more cruel and more vindictive than his non-christian counterpart.  And Douglas speculates that it's their Christian hypocracy that made them so mean and unrelenting.  Of course any Slave Master with a real contience who was thinking of "strraying from the faith", so to speak, of Slavery- - needed only to attend his local Church every Sunday to hear the Southern itenerate preacher fire up the congragation with pro slavery rhetoric and claim that Slavery was art of God's plan for Black people as taught in the Bible.  Black people themselves were taught that to chafe against slavery was to go up against not just his Slavemaster, but God himself.  This has been the cry of fundamentalist preachers for years that to go against their teaching is to rebel against God Himself, and even people like Neil Savedra of KFI take refuge in this teqaching, chiding people for their "sin of Rebellion".  Slavery is just God's plan for the Black man or woman and if they ever hope to see those Pearly Gates they had better not complain in this life.  But they carry this travesty further to staging mock marriages between slaves, just to show that "we aren't all bad" but they inevitably leave out the line about "What God has joined together - let not man put assunder"  (Selah)

How interesting it is indeed that people like Pat Buchannon do not regard Latino Catholics as "real Catholics" in the same way that he regards the Polish and Irish Catholics.  May I remind Pat that the Irish were once seen as a lawless, renegade bunch, known for their womanizing and drunken brawling and adandoning their wife and kids "more than any other race".  Personally I'm not hot on this designation one bit, but I've heard it said.  So in statistics about Catholics voting for Romney, "Latinos don't count".  And then we have the so called scourge of Liberation Theology that is "Dangerous" and spreading throughout Latin America.  Far from embracing the Rev Martin Luther King as "a fellow evangelist", southern clergymen one and all condemned him as some kind of a carpetbagger, or worse yet, a Communist.  It was Ghandi and not Christ that inspired Rosa Parks to refuse to sit in the back of the bus that December 1955 day in Montgomery, Alabama.  People like Larry Elder love to cite the fact that a higher percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights bill than democrats.  Would they be as willing to take a second survey to see which of these voting groups is more "devoutly Christian" and would pass a theological test from Dallas semenary?

Of course Randi Rhodes also reminded us today that in the employment market in many parts of the Country (though I'm not sure it's true here) that often a Black man without a criminal record will be denied a job whereas a White man WITH a criminal record, who just got out of Prison, will be more likely to get one and get more call-backs from employers.  And in this "War on Drugs" itself, it's really a war on Black people because of course 95% of the drug cases are plea bargained before they ever come to trial.  The Black man has a thirty-three percent higher chance of being denied bail than a white man, despite most likely being a LOWER flight risk than the White man.  But even innocent Black men will cop a guilty plea because- apparently this fact is true- - they don't LET black people on Juries that decide drug cases where the defendant is a Black man.  So apparently the Black defendant reasons, "I would rather get Three years for a crime I didn't do than 25 years for a crime I didn't do.  I know there have been a number of men, and a number of Black men convicted of Capital crimes awaiting execution and often languish on Death Row for decades till modern DNA technology exhonorates them.  What's odd therefore, is that Larry Elder should be Against the war on drugs, because we all know how he has an abiding disdain for his own Race, and basically he's just an Oreo on the radio, and just another token Black, or a political freak, if you will, that the Right likes to put out as a front man as a representetion for a group which, in fact, they do not at all represent.

Apparently they are NOT going to change the long standing rule on Senate Filibusters.  It was speculated today that some deal was made that in exchange for not pressing forward on the debt ceiling thing, that they would agree to keep the status quo in the Senate- - and not require the "talking filibuster' but all a Senator has to do is say "I filibustrer", and it is so.  If course they also have this doctrine of the US Senate called the Anonamus Hold, where one Senater, who never has to make his name public, gets to put the kabosh on any candidate for any cabinet or judicial office that the President should appoint.  The secrecy of it all almost sounds unconstitutional since I thought there was some Rule about how all procedings have to be made official and public, at least to some degree.  At least as to who said what and who voted which way on a key issue.  The Republicans do have one good point, however.  They say "The US Senate has not passed a budget in four years".  This situation cannot stand.  No matter what it takes or who gets bloodied up, they need to get on the stick - and pass the darned thing, and prove that they are worthy of their pay.

According to Randi Rhode's website it's the Presidential Administration itself that is "stirring up the conspiracy pot" and putting out these bogus stories about how Sandy Hook was a fraud perpitrated by hired Hollywood actors, or all of this "birther" nonesence.  I can assure you many on the fringe right ardently believe that the President was born in Kenya and that he is a Moslem at the present time.  Polls of southern states demonstrate it time and time again with alarmingly high numbers.  There are also really high numbers on Creationism, a belief that all of Mankind and Nature was created in Seven Days like it says in the Bible.  Polls have also revealed shocking deficets in the knowledge of the  young of historic events that are well known to we in the older generation.  So in reality this is a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories.  Glen Beck claims that while the right wing nuts are debating such nonsensical issues- - that President Obama is quietly putting his Agenda through.

The Winter of our discontent

I am not a happy camper.  My blogger numbers sick.  The best numbers I got all week were from last Sunday's blog where I incorrectly predicted a Patriots blow-out victory over the Ravens.  I thought at the time "Maybe I should just delete that" but then thought, "Hell, leave it in; it will help to boost ratings.  If you're looking for "the good stuff" in this blog read on a little further to the big blue stuff in Italics.  Mike Meloy has been canceled by the local talk ratio station to make room for one of these mundane nothing guys.  I looked for Mike over the computer but never Googled his name, which would have been smart.  While nodding off to sleep I had paranoid fears I may be overdrawn at the Bank.  I called and I still have four dollars and something in my account.  Actually I am not shaving it as close this month as I often do.  Right after getting up at eight after six after having a good night's sleep anyhow - - I had a stealth diaria attack.  I was standing there at the toilet and I felt this twinge in my butt so I sit down on the toilet- - and a major valcanic eruption comes out.  Nora was saying some confusing stuff yesterday about where I'm "supposed to" keep my stuff.  It would be better if she actually learned to speak good English after all these years.  You know, my money situation tightened up pretty soon after Christmas.  I haven't really gained the weight I wanted.  I weighed in at 153 which I am not at all happy with.  I'd like to get to around 172, where I plateaued for years around 2008 through early 2011.  Not Bill Gunderson,s cranberry muffins, or Dr. Levy's pizza and lazagna, or Judy's fruitcake, or Janet's chocolates, have been able to fatten me up.  I am still harboring a fear that I have some yet to be revealed medical condition that might be symptomatic of a worse disease, like some kind of cancer.  I have been enemic for years, and that isn't good.

The night before last I was in good spirits.  But still I had this vague fear that something negative would happen while I sorted the laundry but I had no idea what.  In the morning as I was going out the door to the courtyard for coffee at ten - - the premonition hit that “something bad will happen today- perhaps before you get your money”.  As it turns out when I began with the laundry list- - - I was almost immediately aware that the white T shirt was missing.  I remember before I left the room I looked it over repeatedly and looked at the clumped covers on my bed and was thinking, “I’ve picked up and straightened everything I need to” in here.  There was a guess another NCIS show on at ten and another CBS drama beginning at ten o clock.  After a while I went to bed but I woke up at twenty to twelve and could not get back to sleep so I went out and smoked one of Mike Deletore’s white cigarette.  Mike finally came through and kicked in with six cigarettes I was grateful for.  Denise came in soon afterward and collected the laundry.  I got decent sleep after this.  But first I was aware that my heart rate was somewhere in the eighties, which is way faster than it should have been.  You will remember my EKG of two years ago at Dr. Satan’s clocked it at 58, which Dr. Saran said was slow, so he took me off the beta blocker.  Now it seems a slowing of the heart beat would reduce my blood pressure- and I imagine that will be the next step.

BURT LOMBARD'S BOOK OF QUOTATIONS

´- - - but you can’t pull strings, if your hands are tied”

-John Lennon

“He who writes in blood – don’t want to be read”

-Adam Ant

“Now it’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to push people around”

-Roger Waters

I know you can’t lose your Christian Salvation using simple grid iron logic that “The ground can’t cause a fumble”.  Selah

-Yours Truly

“The man said he just loved my sound - - a dollar a day’s worth”

- Bob Dylan

"Out here on the perimeter there are no stars.  Wee is Stoned, Imaculate"
-Jim Morrison

"Behold a man had two sons.  He told both to go out and work in the field.  The elder one said "I will go" and then didn't.  The younger one said, "I refuse to go" but then and repented and went out to work in the field.  Which son did the word of his Father?"

"Do you know we live within an all White malestrom?"
-Jim Morrison

"Who's that man moving accross the stage?  He looks a lot like the man used by Jimmy Page.  He's like a relic from a diffrent age"
-Paul Mc Cartney

“Nobody first robs a house unless he first binds the strong man.  Then he can plunder his house”-

-Jesus Christ

"There must have been a Door there- when I came in"

-Roger Waters

“You hurt me then – you’re back again – no, no, no – Not a Second Time”

-John Lennon

“Little by little I’m losing my love for you, because little by little, I found that you was untrue”

-The Rolling Stones

“We need to prepare the field for battle”

Gen Norman Swartzkoff

“I can do nothing on my own, but only as the Father leads me”

-Jesus Christ

"Lost in a wilderness of pain - and all the children are insane - - - - waiting for the summer rain"
-Jim Morrison

"Newspaper taxis appear on the shore - waiting to take you away - climb in the back with your head in the clouds and you're gone"
-John Lennon

"You'll be dead and in Hell before I'm born"
-Jim Morrison

"Oppertunity, oppportunity, a knocking on your door.  Oppertunity knocks but once - and it don't come back no more"
-old blues standard

" - but what's the use of robbery when nothing there worth taking.  I don't think he'll ever see what a bit mistake he's making"
-Adam Ant

"There was a little bird - his name was Enza  - - someone opened up a window - - and in flew Enza"
-Woodrow Wilson

first guy: "You're the guy who wallows in the dung"  Second guy:  Well - - you ARE the dung"

"The clock on the wall strikes the midnight hour - - I'm feeling dirty and sour"
-early Guess Who song

"Father Mc Kinsey, writing the words to a Sermon that no one will hear"
-Lennon-Mc. Cartney

It's all just a vacuum - it's all just a scheme, dear - to con you into feeling like this
-Bob Dylan

"Your teeth are clean - but your mind is capped"
-John Lennon

"You're lost in a prison - of your own device"
-Jim Morrison

"If they offered anything you wanted - would you ask for something like - a second chance?"
-Traffic

"In the master's chamber they gather for the feast.  They stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the Beast"
-Don Hendley

" - - but I'm too much of a gentleman - to tell you where to go - Use Your Imagination!"
-early Guess Who song

“A total portrait- with no omissions”

-Deborah Harry

"In the beginning I misunderstood - but now I've got it, the Word is good"

-John Lennon

“You should have listened when you heard the Word down there”

-Bob Dylan

“We don’t want no Pig Brother scene”

-John Lennon

"I don't know about you, but I want to get my kicks before the whole shit house goes up in flames"

-Jim Morrison (uttered at some arena in Los Angeles CA)

“Though the rules have been lodged – it’s only people’s games that you’ve got to dodge”

-Bob Dylan

"Your mother left you - when you were small.  But you can't give life - - you wasn't born at all"

“If touching God were really like touching Infinity - - then to even ask if there were anything more would be a logical absurdity”

-Yours Truly

Behold how the would be Messiah states "John the Baptist must decrease - and I must increase".  To which I would say, "Just what is it that you used to Be that you now don't want to be any more?"

Too much play in one's moral steering wheel causes one to veer too often off the right wing cliff

All souls were created identically, but they weren't created identical.

The world’s most culturally biased I Q Test

“Close only counts in - - “

a.       Horseshoes

b.      Darts

c.       A police shooting target range

d.      The Price is right

e.       Slide-rule calculations

“That athlete is getting as old as – BLANK”.  Name the individual.

“So far the President has not made a Shermon announcement”.  What is this referring to?

In which of the following states - -  - if most likely to vote Republican?

a.       Illinois

b.      Indiana

c.       Michigan

d.      Ohio

“The whole [how many] yards”

“That one guy is one taco short of a BLANK”

a.      Dozen

b.      Combo plate

c.       Six pack

d.      Snack sure to fill you up

That (action) won't feed the

a.   candy machine

b.   hungry lion

c.   kitty

d.   bulldog

Two answers you might not know - the one about the aging athlete is Jack Dempsey - - and the "Shermon" statement refers to a President announcing that under no circumstance will he run again.

Sec of State Clinton Testifies Before Congress

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before congress today at long last.  She stated that there have been embassy killings over the past 35 years where 65 ambassadors have lost their lives.  Her voice broke up when she described the families of those who died.  Of course those on the right had accused her of “being stone faced as the coffins came by and would not even look at the bereaved relatives in the eye.  Of course the Right will lie about anything.  Rand Paul said “I don’t think you are malicious in what you did; you were just incompetent and if I were president I would have fired you.  There was talk about “not intercepting the proper communiqués”.  There are those stories about how the President sat for hours watching the action in Bengazi unfold on television but stopped our government from taking action.  Hillary reminded us that- - our embassies have suffered attacks all over the Mideast and that she has urged to step up security- - but Republicans put a “hold’ on the funds, just like the Republicans put a “hold’ on various cabinet appointments.  I listened to the last few minutes of Hillary live and then switched to a house debate on the debt ceiling and then they had the nine AM EST stuff cued up ready to go and I watched that till twenty to eleven, when I switched to the Ed Schultz show on that Monterey radio station listening to those critiques.  The Republicans may have wanted footage they could use in the 2016 campaign, but nothing from today will ever see the light of day because Hillary made fools of them all.  Hillary said that we STILL don’t know all of the facts and that it was WEEKS before we could even look at some tape footage.  There are few people who have been better at their job than Hillary Clinton.  She can look back on her carrier as first lady, twice, and as a New York senator, and now a stellar carrier as Obama’s secretary of state.  Hillary said her approach was not “talking points” and she had nothing to say about Susan Rice appearing before all those media press shows that weekend.

Sec of Defense Leon Penetta today gave the OK to women serving in combat in the military.  While feminists hail the move, David Cruise is opposed to it, and for a lot of good reasons.  There are physical considerations such as lack of upper body strength and men having to constantly “cover for the women” with their protective instinct.  Women might not be able to for example, drag a two hundred pound comrade from a burning building or tote a sixty pound back pack, or whatever.  They might not be able to hurl a grenade out of blast range.  Women don’t have the same aerobic endurance as men.  Besides this there is the whole sexual angle and women have suffered increased sexual assaults in the military and these would only rise now.  And what if they were fighting Moslems and the women were captured and forced to become one of someone elses’ wives in another part of the country?   There is the whole thing about women just not being “suited” to full combat, and also the fact that we see them as our mothers, our daughters, and the mother of our children.  In Israel they gave up on women in combat because it “just didn’t work out” to a large extent because casualties on the front line went up where women were involved, so that they are a bad military risk, pure and simple.  These are not sexist observations; they are just stating the obvious, and in the military it’s security and preparedness and going with the best odds of winning that counts.  Think about it.  The reason why Penetta did it is because our troops have become so depleted from all the wars we have fought in lately is that the Army needs “fresh meat”.  This term “fresh meat” means new recruits to join the infantry and be sent to the Front, where they will be the first ones to be killed.

People would hope that we are in a new era now, politically but the pure and simple fact of it is that we aren’t out of the woods yet.  There is still a large resevuar of bigotry resident in what is euphamisticly known as “America’s heartland”.  There is a lot of racial ignorance and prejudice out there- even in the Midwest, in places like Indiana.  A lot of these cities still have signs on their city limits reading “Nigger – Don’t let the sun set on you in this town”.  And there are stories about townspeople burning down black encampments on the edge of town.  In fact Negroes used to live in Midwestern cities but as the decades passed they were driven out because the White people didn’t want to be around them.  Many property deeds have clauses in them of “Sell only to White people”.  Jews have suffered similar exclusion – even in parts of the posh Palm Beach Fla.  The governments are riddled with this tea party rot, from the state legislative level down to county board members.  Republican state governors still jerrymander local districts to insure that Republicans will maintain a permanent foothold.  Of course jerrymandering is kind of a whammy boomerang because by the very nature of it it’s like buying stock on margin where should you suffer reverses, it goes twice as bad for you.  This economic truth carries on of course in the area of energy speculation, and personally I wouldn’t worry about it.  Only to the extent that people will quite a price as an isolated statistic.  And Congress must be very happy with the “snapshot’ they were able to take of the country when it came time to redistrict in 2010, denying Democrats leadership despite more democratic votes being cast.  Other obious laws have been passed and are continuing to be passed in this ongoing tea party hysteria we are in.

I want to come back to this whole idea of “Daring to tempt God” that is so big among so many evangelists now.  There are very few sayings of the Lord Jesus Christ that I overtly disagree with but this is one of them, ie when he says “Thow shalt not test the Lord thy God”.  No offense but Jesus has this quote ass-backwards.  And I’ll tell you why.  Suppose I’m walking around this place bragging to anyone who will listen that I can score in excess of 130 on any IQ test.  And finally one day somebody gets tired of hearing it and decides to call me on it.  He says that no way am I able to do such a thing and to just shut my yap.  I may then allude to other intelligence tests I have scored high on, and he’s all the more insistent I’m full of it.  Finally I get mad and say “OK then I’ll tell you what.  You go get me an IQ test and I’ll take it right now and show you”.  He may say, feeling perhaps cornered “You don’t have to do that, you know” and I will insist.  Because suddenly he’s got me mad and I feel challenged.  I wasn’t really going to, but now I’m willing to do it.  The thing is with God or any other “thing”, that “thing” is true to its own nature, it remains what it is independent of whether or not it is being “tested’ or observed by another.  It’s like you take a dog to a vet and it hops on the  examining table.  And everybody says “yeah, it looks like a dog to me’.  But one nay say sayer says “I don’t know- - I’m not sure that is really a dog you’ve got there”.  So another person in the room says, “Well, lets run a few tests and then we’ll know for sure”.  And the guy who first made the statement now says “Well we can’t do THAT because- - it would be “an affront to the dog’s sovereignty” or something.  That makes no sense.  Things are what they are.  Like if someone gets in an argument with Neil Savedra over a point of theology- - and Neil is a problem- - the caller may well decide to quite the Bible, and many callers have quoted the Bible quite adeptly to prove their respective points.  But this is a problem with the right because they have no objective standard or yardstick outside themselves.  It’s just like that guy in Romney’s campaign last summer saying “We are not going to allow ourselves to be hampered by such things as fact checkers”.  Perhaps in answer to Rush Limbaugh’s question - - perhaps the reason why there is no library section that goes “Great Moderates of American History” is because moderates rely on facts and circumstances- - and objective perception.  It’s as though there was a category of “Great Sane People in American History”.  The fact would appear axiomatic, unless there were a reason to know differently.  I would not vote for a socialist - - as the Right Wing claims.  In fact, as has been stated by many people- - these days because of the political winds- - there aren’t really any truly Liberals left.

The IQ Score and Politics Connection

IT'S A FOOL WHO DENIES THE OBVIOUS

There can be no doubt at all about it.  There is a statistically Very Strong link between IQ scores and one's polotical perswasion.  First of all what you notice in the profile of red states verses blue states is that it's almost entirely all blue at the top of the list and solid red at the bottom.  It seems now as is the "Solid South" is taking on new meaning indeed.  Virginia is about the ONLY red state where the median IQ is in excess of one hundred.  What struck me was the enormous extent, such that I was frankly shocked, of whole States of the union with a median IQ score of its population of ninety, or ten points below normal.  But as someone pointed out to me 45 years ago "If you're up and walking around and not some institutionalized vegetable- your IQ averages 109.  Keep in mind that the state of Mississippi as a whole averages an IQ of only 85 and that's the entire state.  This is a mere ten points above the famed "Forest Gump" character who had a 75 IQ but still made it into the military.  Kansas has an IQ of 96 and Nebraska has an IQ of 95 and there are fully twenty states with a median IQ below 95 - and they are all red states.  In fact what struck me was the scarcity of really high ranking states.  The highest any state could muster was a median of 113.  I hear all these people telling me they have an IQ of 130 or something - and I'm thinking "There are sure an awful lot of those people turning up".  They are saying that President Obama has an IQ of around 140.  So aside from the demographics what accounts for this phenominon?  I explain a lot of this in the following paragraph but right now let us just call it a basic fear of Objectivism.  Dr. Levy has this same fear.  He will not believe me when I say either that "My future looks bleaker than you're willing to admit" or else "The health of the US economy is much better than you're willing to admit".  It's fear of being forced to change.  It's fear of anything new.  It's if you will "hanging onto mama's apron strings" and an inability as President Obama once put it - "Letting go of your guns, your Bibles, and your prejudices".  It's deriving emotional sustenance from such things.  I once knew a guy named Frank who knew that sixties popular music was brilliant but he concluded "It's so brilliant it had to be Satanically inspired".  I inherently had to much intelligence to fall for this bat-crap line. It was too stupid even for my lowered bar of credibity of Christians.  There is the fear of the Different.  It's my belief that the afterlife- - IF it exists at all, will be so Different from anything we'll expect we'll learn more about it ten minutes after we're dead than we ever did through religious instruction OR intuitive speculation - - while we were alive.  There is an abiding lack of curiosity among the tea party set- - an overall aversion to Exploring- - knowledge.  They reserve the word Frontier for Frontier land at Disneyland, and for them Frontier Land IS "Tomorrow land".  We have become so Orwellian that we have actually set aside a day to pay tribute to the Gun.  How much worse can that scene be in Beneathe the Planet of the Apes where they all gather to worship the Atom Bomb warhead.  I mentioned in a recent posting the utter absurdity of actually "Selling" their current beliefs to anybody who was alive forty plus years ago during the Jesus Movement.  Personally I don't want to throw any mud unjustly at anybody.  I'm just saying that anybody looking at this chart must realize that the sheer mathematical ODDS of this political distribution ocurring by mere Chance is - - not even infinitessible.  Think about how we draw statistic significance from a ten or twenty percent risk elevation in some medication and because of that we take it off the market.  Here it's staring you straight in the face - yet they deny it.  But as I've said one of the biggest hurdles you have to overcome to be a successful Christian is "Your ability to Deny The Obvious", the elephant in the tent.  Here's more stuff from earlier.

THE THING THAT SHOULD NOT BE

It’s five o clock and Accronis full backup has started.  David Cruise and on EWN just now they were talking about dozens of cases of child molesting priests were made public today and the DA is going over the files to see which can be prosecuted.  But he warns that the statute of limitations may have expired.  The problem here is the statute of limitations doesn’t “expire” with the victims.  People like David Cruise like to get personally involved in these sex abuse cases and in police abuse cases.  Some may say it’s grandstanding or making an issue out of “something that goes on all the time, so what’s the big deal” kind of thing.  The point however should be that such things shouldn’t be going on at all, and the fact that they are, either in areas of abuse by law enforcement or molestation by a priest or a school teacher or camp leader, these situations should not occur.  I just reran the grounds through with an added spoonful, and to my surprise the coffee was even strong enough when I unintentionally put in just over five cups of water rather than the intended four.   You know it was stated on the Randy Rhodes program that political position on the spectrum is a function of performance on IQ tests as a child.  I don’t know why “as a child” is significant, but it seems to be.  It points to a basic fear of new knowledge or experience or a phobia about ever having to “reassess one’s opinion” on a matter.  Of course some on the right such as Joe Scarborough have reassessed their political stances and warn that the right wing of the Party is in tighter and tighter political straits and is in danger of falling off the cliff entirely.  I know there are people who at least seem to be really intelligent, expousing right-wing fundamentalist Christianity.  But others have made a point of stating that those at the top in a policy making position “know better” but that they pander to the poor and ignorant southern white boys appealing to their inate fears of racial minorities and those who are economically worse off than they are.  If there are three thing Rush Limbaugh hates with an abiding passion it is racial minorities of all stripes, the economically disadvantaged, and children.  I think he’d give up on some of his other proclamations if he could hold onto these.  I’m not ready yet to totally buy into this intelligence argument.  I want to Google the topic and see what various web sites have to say.  That I haven’t done this before now is only an indication how up to this point- - how little importance or weight I have placed on this strident claim.   Personally I would feel very vindicated should the assertion turn out to be true.  Here’s a quick intelligence test.  You have two people before you.  One is a believer of God and “the faith” and the other is a doubter who walks away from it.  Which one is “testing God” more.  If you take seriously the notion not to “test God” then it’s the Believer rather than the Doubter who is sinning.  It’s like if you have a job opening and the employer has to decide which of two people he’s going to hire.  Which person will be “tested” the more by the employer?  The guy he rejects, or the guy he hires?  The guy he hires, naturally.  It’s the same thing with God.  I have “tested” God extensively and mercilessly- - by my mere track record in the past of being to believe any sort of Crap that came down the pike.  The trouble is- - it’s God rather than me who keeps failing the tests.  I don’t need to test myself.  I have a pretty fair idea of where I am at and what I am capable of.  Sometimes I do better than I had expected - - sometimes - - not so much.

"THEORIES" ARE SELDOM "HOLY WRIT"

People on the right like to manipulate words and fog issues.  For one thing they don't understand linear logic.  Like an electric circuit - - you can't have something that goes around in a perpetual motion circle.  Not even electric "circuits" deo this.  They have a beginning and a termanus.  Logic can branch and fork, (and knowing the difference between the words "branch" and "fork" is significant, too) but they can't cross, and there can't be breaks in them.  Capish?  Words are blocks of both the English Language and of Computer Programs.  Like fractions - comparrisons need a "common denominator" or yardstick of measurement, to be really relevent.  If you don't understand the basic structure of Words you are at a severe intellectual disadvantage.  For instance suppose I said that my cigarette smoking was 25% less, would you know what I meant?  That means if I was smoking twelve and then began averaging nine per day, this would be 25 percent less just as if I were now smoking 15 a day that would be 25 more.  But now what if I say I am cutting my cigarette consumption to but four a day.  Could I then state that "I now smoke three times less than before"?  Not really.  I see how people arrive at that figure.  They say break-ins of homes are three times less if you have an alarm system.  What they mean is that they are 67% less.  Nothing can be more than a hundred percent less.  Just as it's impossible to give a hundred and ten percent effort.  Here is a note for Christian evangelists.  If you want your admonitions to be obeyed- - stop demanding what is intrinsiacly and mathematically impossible.  It's like if you're in a race and for the first half of the race you average thirty miles per hour and you have to average sixty miles per hour in order to even qualify how fast do you NOW have to go to make up the difference.  The answer is YOU CAN'T.  There are times when the word CANT is not an excuse but the fact.  By the way the use of the word "Excuse" in our culture is used in an ass-backwards manner.  You hear some irate adult saying to a kid "That isn't a Reason- - that's just an Excuse".  NO  The truth is that it IS a reason and NOT an "Excuse" as you so snidely put it.  Do you know how I know.  Because if what the kid said were in truth "Just an excuse" then it would be sufficient for you to Excuse his behavior.  Bet you never saw that one coming, did you?  Here is another one I just thought of today because of a recent dining room incident, so we are going all caps.  WELL, IT'S A GOOD IDEA IN THEORY BUT IN REALITY IT DOESN'T PAN OUT How many laments have you heard in your life like this?  You see Christianity is a good idea "in Theory
, it's a lovely - - Theory.  But as they say the Devil is in the details.  Ah but then you go "Who's Theory" and the answer has to come back "Why the one who instituted Christianity in the first place", and you go "who is that?" and they are forced to say "The Lord Jesus Christ" of course.  So now you've just admitted that Jesus Christ's "theory" failed.  How about that.  You follow a Theory and it fails and some how you can't bring yourself to abandon the Theory - - because it, like the Republican Platform last year is seen as inherently flawless.  Keep in mind the Political Mindset of right wingers.  They - - instead will say "The theory is sound but somehow (and they'll never say) it was "improperly exicuted".  Yeah.  Right wing madness would succeed "if only if it were properly executed".  Dream on,k dream on!  Can you see now why many Democrats say that the tea party credibility is already shot?  Stick a fork in them.  They're Done!

MACRO - MORE TELLING THAN MICRO

Many people think New Orleans has suffered the greatest population loss of any major city for all time.  But that’s not true.  Take the case of St. Louis.  This city tallied over 800,000 people in the decade of the ‘thirties.  It shrank to around 700,000 in the early sixties and was in the lower six hundreds in 1970.  Then the city suffered it’s biggest lost.  It went from over eight hundred thousand down to the high 400,000 range in the early 1980’s.  What sort of cataclysm could possibly cause a major US City to lose 27% of its population in a single decade?  I haven’t the vaguest.  So I thought losing 27%, if not more of my body weight in six years was horrendous.  But what of the populations of major denominational churches?  We keep hearing how these populations have been decimated but I really don’t have a statistical profile in my mind.  But it can’t be healthy at all for a major denominational branch like the Protestents to lose most of its major denominations only to be replaced by this non descript “non denominational” stuff we have now.  Of course if you really want to see decimation in action just look at the funding for the Space Program.  This has all been eliminated at this present time.