Keeping a Level Head

Sometimes social consciousness takes quantom leaps forward.  For instance in the 1850's you had the Dread Scott supreme court decision that people at the time I guess thought was good solid "property" law or something.  Ten years later nobody wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole.  Apparently there was talk of an "oil crisis' in the 1850's because there was worry that the whaling business might go under if they ran out of whales to kill.  But in 1859 John Rockefeller discovered olil in Pennsylvania and that put a prompt end to that crisis.  There seemed to be a lot of incidents with psychics in the 1950's perhaps spawned by the idea that you could actually communacate with Morse Code over a wire over long distances.  Also in the 1850's Charles Darwin published his "Origen of Species' forever changing mankind's view on how life got here in the first place, at least for most of us. Back then of course "The West" was a largely unexplored area.  With all the territory won in the recent Mexican war they created a "Department of the Interior" to deal with all the Abberiginal Indian tribes, which we viewed as a "natural resource' or something.  But hopefully the day will come, and hopefully is already here, when the idea of any sane American voting for Mitt Romney would seem absolutely absurd.  This will be the great Curiosity of the History books in years to come, how a freak like Mitt Romney ever came to be a major party nominee for President.  People on the left are now half confident that the Tea Party will become a thing of the past.  But it hasn't happened yet.  Congress gets more extreme every year as the number of philibusters goes up on a near logarithmic basis.  You see, we have gone the other way.  Now it's as though we were back to living BEFORE the civil war where whacked out social ideas were still considered acceptable.  There are so few people in the National Rifle Association compared to how many congressmen are genuinely afraid of the power of that organization.  But Randy pointed out if something were actually defective about your gun, like it exploded in your hands or something, the NRA would go on and side with the Gun Manufactures in the court case.  Liberals are apallingly under-represented.  Of course there were over a million more votes cast for Democratic Congressmen as opposed to Republicans.  But these people if they know nothing else know how to obtain and hang on to power, even if they have the popular support of very few Americans.  How long can such a situation be allowed to go on?

I had Stephanie Miller on a little but turned on the Today show in hopes of hearing more and seeing video about this attempted rescue of hostages in Algeria where the army attacked the compound and killed a number of the terrorists but a few hostages were lost in the process too.  Apparently there are twenty more hostages whose lives hang in the balance.  I was rather drowsy - - but listened to Moe Kelly.  First he talked about Lance Armstrong.  The thing a trained ear notices about his remarks that causes a red flag is that any time a person goes into this rehearsed monotone as if they’re reading a speech, you know they are not being entirely honest.  But also the key concern Armstrong should have is not shoring up his legal defense.  Can you believe this guy?  He sued a lot of people for making allegations against him that turned out to be completely true.  Yet Armstrong had the gall to sue them for slander.  Now these same people are understndibly turning around and suing him, and he has to guard his words with Oprah to make sure his legal position is not further compromised.  But if he were truly a comtrite man, he would be seeking to make these people whole, and recompence and settle up with these people without being prompted but on his own volition.  And he would not go on some show where he can garner the women’s sympathy vote.  The idea that an individual has to “pay” to hear someone else’s confession is inherently insulting.  Then Moe Kelly talked about the Highway Patrol incident.  This was involving a woman talking on a cell phone.  Rather than just cite her, they ordered her out of the car and claim this pregment woman made some “menacing gesture” to the cops where they felt “threatened”.  Cops need to go to a dictionary and look up the word “threat” sometime, and perhaps consult a legal thesorus, too.  This pregnant woman was in no position to “threaten” two well trained burly officers adept in “take down techniques”.  They threw her to the pavement, stomach first, and one officer jabbed a knee in her back.  She sued and was awarded $250,000.  Then Moe Kelly said something that violated my sensabilities.  He said that in addition to the legal fees, the woman has to pay taxes on the award she was given.  If I remember my law correctly- - you never have to pay taxes on legal judgements, be they civil or whatever.  This is not “income” this is imposed punishment on the offending party and that money is as it were “to make you whole” for the “injuries” you have suffered.  I don’t care if the settlement is a million dollars, you don’t pay a penny in taxes.  It’s not like you’re going out o get “income” by somehow staging an incident like this.

I listened to David Cruise and among the things he discussed was the Oxnard Police department and apparently there are still problems between them and the community.  One guy was told to move because the sidewalk he was standing on was a crime scene.  The guy disputed the officer’s words, and the officer said, “Well we could play it your way and I’ll bring along some of my buddies down here and we’ll jack you up”.  Perhaps the officer didn’t know he was on video, and in fact lied saying it wasn’t on video.   But Cruise says many other Oxnard citizens have been complaining about the attitude of the police there.  I guess you have to regard the police in such a case as not protectors but as menacing gang members who will cut you with a knife if you look at them cross-eyed.

John Black claims to be morally outraged that Marlena doesn’t trust him, or ever since Christine has returned John has seen her as walking on water.  It is beyond me why John Black appears to be a whole lot more upset with Marlena than he ever was with Christine.  I do not even recall one conversation where John criticized Christine’s actions to her face.  But now John tells Marlena that he “has to leave Salem for a while to clear his head”.  He should know from being married to a psychiatrist that you don’t cure a serious and growing problem by running away from it.  I listened to Randy Rhodes in the two o clock hour.  I wish all these talk show hosts who talk about the Oprah inverview with Armstrong – would just roll the darned tape and let us viewers decide for ourselves.  Interrupting the thing after only seconds and repeating segments over and over, accomplishes nothing.

We had beef stew and rice for dinner and we got seconds starting on our side.  We had vanilla pudding for desert.  I was headed out of the dining room when I see Jim to my right in the “three o clock” position headed tword me in an intercept course.  Is he now going to aledge that I ‘cut off his path” because I arrived at the intersect point first.  Jim has always given me the creeps and I’m not at all happy about the idea that Leshia and Silva fawn all over him.  I am debating whether to bring up my relation with Mike Deletore now should Mike show up at Dr. Levy’s class.  By Dr. Levy’s own words “sometimes it seems like an inopportune time to deal with a problem, but if you don’t do it them, you may end up never doing it at all”.  It’s my belief that if a problem is getting progressively worse, ignoring it is the worst thing you can do.