Betrayal is an Ugly Thing

The song Buick 59 was recorded in 1954 and Paul is 59 today.  Today is his birthday and I haven’t called him.  We are in lavender (for all you blogees out there)   The weather is still clear, sunny and warmish.  This is Wednesday October 1, 2013.  This of course is the first day the Health Care exchanges are open for business and they were so jammed with business that the sites jammed up and they couldn’t handle everybody.  President Obama says “More people came to this site than ever came to our old site”.   The idea of  restaurant or something having "too many customers to handle" on opening day, is a problem that a lot of business owners would love to have!   Rush Limbaugh, ever the pessimist, pointed to one called who had a problem registering with the site.  He’s not the only person who has ever been caught in one of these auto regurtitation loops.   Judy once directed me to a site where someone from the right was “Applying for Canadian health care” just to see how hard it was, and apparently had all sorts of problems.  The problem is that the vast majority of people are perfectly happy with Canadian health care.  It’s a long standing trick of Born Again Christians to point to the one exception - - and label it as the norm.  They do this on both the positive and the negative side.   And women for instance will get exams for all their feminine problems in the way of prudent maintenance care that formerly they were denied.

 Betrayal really sucks, doesn’t it.  Randy Rhodes was too optimistic if she thought that John Boehner was rational and would bend to logic and reason on this issue and realize his side couldn’t win.  What' scarey is that if the President and Vice President were to suddenly get bumped off - - Speaker Boehner would become President!   Scarey thought, huh?  In the first place their side has no “end game”, which is to say they really don’t know what they are fighting for, or when they have won or lost.  I’m sure Sung Su must say something about that in “The Art of Warfare”.  Short of some right wing govt takeover I just don't see any way the tea party can win on this issue.  What can they possibly gain that they don't have now in terms of any sort of respectability?  They can only end up the losers, as I see it.  But in another sense Randy Rhodes and all the other lefties I think are overly pessimistic about the prospect of either picking up house seats next year, or peeling off house republican votes now to reverse the decision of the House last weekend.   Six republicans bolted in one vote led by a New York republican in a liberal district, perhaps afraid of vulnerability from the left.  The thing is there is only thirteen house republicans out of the 430 that are in the House, have to switch sides and the game is over for John Boehner.  But now Boehner is proposing that they selectively vote on which Government departments they will or won’t fund, individually.  This, of course, is insanity.  72% of the American people think this government shut-down is a bad idea.  More people blame the Republicans for the shut-down than they do Obama,  My guess is the numbers here will steepen as the ratio between the two numbers goes up as more and more people understand the Affordable Care Act.  The numbers on how they like the act per se, is about evenly divided.  It’s not a case of “An overwhelming number of Americans being against it”.  As we said, John Boehner did not even put the Senate "clean bill" proposal to a vote in the house.  So the position of the entire House on this issue remains an unknown.  In fact, the House has been planning for this very day since at least last May when John Boehner refused to schedule a conference committee meeting with the Senate, because the US Senate did what they were supposed to do and passed an official Government spending bill for the fiscal year 2014.

Government employee wages are frozen, just as the government workers right next door in LA County, have had their wages frozen, and now are being offered peanuts of a two percent pay raise over the next couple years.  I remember when they announced this government pay freeze people on the right called it a "meaningless gesture".  Everything done to placate the right done by this President is seen as "A meaningless gesture".  In the case of the county workers - they suffered through the bad times of the recession by making a "temporary" sacrifice.  Now they're offered two percent - - for all of the economic loss suffered since 2008 or so or the past five years.  This, needless to say is way below the inflation rate on things people actually need.   But the democrats have already compromised because they are using republican funding rates- - and keeping the Sequester intact indefinitely.   The political discourse has become much coarser than it used to be.  The guy who shouted ‘You lie” to the President at the State of the Union address, was a ground breaker because Randy Rhodes had been repeatedly told by politicians that “Terms like that were not used in polite society”.   Another term in common usage now is “Blackmail” and many people don’t even blink at the phrase “political terrorist”.  These are dire times.   Many have likened this situation to playing a game of political “chicken”.  The trouble is THEY are not in either of the cars.  They have all of us strapped in securely in one of the cars so that we can’t get loose.  Then the whole car is remotely controlled and revved up at high speed into oncoming headlights.  People used to speak of “brinkmanship” as “Taking it right to the edge - - and then pulling back”.  The thing is with today’s republicans is that they are taking us all OVER the edge!

I would like to do a little essay or exercise in “What constitutes a viable threat”.  Most people think of a THREAT as something someone else holds over you to somehow intimidate or control you or make you fearful and uncertain.  And they decide whether or not the threat will be carried out.  They are in control.   Now let’s take a look at Nick Fallon and Will Horton on Days of our Lives.  Will Horton agreed to give up claims to the baby and indeed keep his own paternity of her a deep, dark secret.  Will broke that promise.  Then Nick gets Will to sign a legally binding document disowning paternity.  The terms were once again that Will would not tell a soul- - and the thing would be buried.  In return - - Nick would not be instrumental in whether Will would be prosecuted for attempted murder.  Once again Will violates his pledge, and tells everyone he sees that he’s being blackmailed “because they want to prosecute me for the attempted murder of E J Di Mira”.   Do you notice something funny here.  The idea of Will ever being in danger of being prosecuted for this crime - - never existed.  Because everybody knows he did it and they don’t CARE - - because the Bradys run the police department- - and I’m sure Roman Brady is as familiar with the evidence in that police locker as anyone.  But just do divorce himself entirely from the situation - - Nick tears up the document and gives the baby back to Will and steps out of the picture.  But Will speaks of “being in Hell - - “.    He can’t be in ‘Hell” as he puts it, because there was NEVER ANY THREAT.   We now take Roe vs Wade.  Here again the doctrine of “It has to Exist to count” comes into play.  The case should never have been brought before the court because the Mother went ahead and HAD the child (and I am glad she did – and I imagine the child is glad to be alive)   So there is no case.  The mother has already made the decision not to challenge it.  So how did the case end up in Court?  It’s like Citizens United.  (And don’t get me started on that one)   Sometimes in Bible texts there is what I call the Christine De Mira factor you have to watch out for.  Cops know about this.  This is you look for “unexplained irregularities in a person’s action”, kind of like the orbit of Uranus leading to the discovery of Neptune.   You observe stuff like Christine freaking out during that counseling session with Father Eric.  And Christine freaks out in Marlena’s office and never explains her actions being there- - and Marlena seemed almost amused that Christine was even snooping around as if looking for something.   Now let’s look at the early chapters of Luke for more of these kinds of “hints”.   In the story of the temptation of Christ- - which is a post Marcion addition to the book of Luke- - - Jesus is offered “all the Kingdoms of the World in a single moment’ by Lucifer.  As Fred Price points out- - it’s Lucifer who is in controle here offering Jesus something he DOES NOT HAVE - - and again as Fred points out Satan has the power to deliver into his hands- - for a price.   Here is another story.  The Christmas story points out how some old man says “This baby Jesus will be the redemption and deliverance of the nation of Israel”.   So we have late additions to the Bible- - one makes Satan more powerful than Jesus - - and the other includes a “prophecy” that did not in fact come to pass.  Why?  These two stories were late additions to Humanize Jesus- - in reaction to Marcion’s doctrine.  The Authors knew if they were going to buttress the doctrine of Jesus being more than a myth, they had to as it were “put flesh and blood on him” and make him more relatable.   Here is another strange case.  In the earliest days of the Gospel in Egypt - - - “Crestus” was alive and Judas was dead.  According to the original version of what happened - - there was a beaurocratic snaffoo- - and Judas was rightly put to death for his act of treachery- - and Crestus went on to live and lives even as they are telling the story.  But later Bible writers a whole century had to reconcile this idea of a live Jesus and a dead Judas.   So they have to cast Judas as so guilt ridden that he hangs himself within a day or so of the act, before Easter morning.  But here’s something I never thought of before today.  Pastors pride themselves in saying how insignificant an amount thirty sheckels really were.  They say it’s about equivelant to “dinner and a movie” in our time.  So Judas essentially sold out for “a night on the town” by their telling.  Problem.  Scripture says “With the money Judas got for his fowl crime he went and bought himself a plot of land”.   I don’t know about you - - but I haven’t seen any vacant house lots selling for a cash price of fifty dollars lately.  But another obvious question arises.  Since Judas held the money purse, why not just run off with the thing and never be heard from again.  Why risk arrest himself as "one of those desciples" by even going to the Authorities to begin with?  Also the very idea that the authorities needed Judas help to apprehend is an insult to the intelligence of both the authorities and common sense.  Surely they knew, as Judas did, what Jesus customarily did and his habit of getting away to pray by himself.   The CIA wasn’t invented just in our time.  No.  They were going to arrest Jesus with or without Judas.  But then they feel compelled to bring in this “government snaffoo” angle, as if by compultion, and so the figure of “Jesus Barrabus” is introduced in all four gospels, as is this non existant “custom” of a Passover Pardon granted by Pilate.  Why bring into the story another character with the same name of “Jesus” and a pardoning ceremony that never existed.   I think once again as with the case of Christian Di Mira- - it’s nothing more no less than “guilty knowledge”.  (Selah)

Betrayal was the tropic of the soap opera today.  Samantha Brady realized she was betrayed by her future husband, E J Di Mira.  He pretty much sold out everybody’s happiness in order to placate his ogre of a father, who never seems to lose.  The last thing Samantha knew was that E J was offering publicly to work with the prosecutor even at his own risk, to bring down Stephano by supplying vital information about his father.  I saw him and he seemed dead serious in this.  But in Samantha’s eyes- - she comes into her house and Stephano was there, who had been kicked out of the house and all of his property lost to Elvis, who held all the cards.  But it’s kind of like the tea party.  We all think Obama is secure in his jovial speech - - but I have a prophecy for President Obama.  Being the “happy, smiling Nigger”  - - won’t work with these people.  They aren’t going to let it go that easily.  Mark my words.   Because they hold you and hold me at a disadvantage.  We in our logical minds view certain eventualities as “off the table” or “out of the realm of possibility”.  The trouble is- - the other side doesn’t see it that way.  Stephano knew way back when - - that this very moment of Elvis’ “undoing’ would arrive- - with seemingly a God-like certainty.  Maybe Samantha could view the bad dream of today as being some kind of karmic pay-back for sleeping with Elvis will still married to Raphael.  It’s above my pay grade to second guess karma or the ways of Divine retribution.  But I’ll say this.  Two wrongs don’t make a right.  Sometimes two Wrongs  - - just make -  Two Wrongs.  And this is such a case.   Samantha in no way deserves the sort of shit that has rained down on her today.  I keep thinking of the lyrics to “Take a letter, Maria” that go, “I kept my cool, I ain’t no fool, let me tell you what happened then.  I packed my things and I walked out, and I ain’t coming back again”.   Clearly this event ENDS the relation with Elvis.  Elvis’ big mistake was in not waiting till after they were married before he lowered the boom on her.  It’s the same mistake the Jewish people made at Massada.  (just watch the movie)   Elvis over-played his hand.  But it’s not too late for Sammy.  She can get out of it- - and she’ll have her whole family – and me, supporting her in her move.   Most of the time Betrayal is a horrible, ugly thing.

Jennifer began calling names for Money Draw before two.  I went down for two o clock coffee and greeted Loretta and noticed how much weight she has lost lately.  She asked me if I’d gotten my money and I told her I needed to write out my check, which I then did.  Anyhow we had two cups of coffee from Dora.  The gray bird was chirping a lot, as he has been.  The music class is so loud all the way from up stairs.  Lisha pointed out “I think they are singing – on top of spaghetti - - all covered with cheese”.  I became familiar with those song lyrics when I was about ten”.   Then they were singing a Beverly Hillbillies number, “Oh the best darn soap is Foggy Mountain Soap, it makes your whole day Brighter” from the mid sixties.  They also were singing “Oh My Darling”.  I think that’s the song Jethro Bodeine was singing when he almost electrocuted himself on the guitar.    They also sang “Charming Billy” or Billy Boy.  Rush Limbaugh played this – Jimmy Clanton track (?) he says came out originally in 1957 in mockery of the Clinton campaign and Rush began playing the Jimmy Clanton version around the time of Bill Clinton’s birthday in 1992.  They also sang “My Bonnie”.   Here I’ll go cosmic on you because there is a recording made by a fake Beatles and a fake John Lennon - - where the song “My Bonnie’ is sung in the style of “Baby’s in Black” complete with tambourine.  It is believed that the real John Lennon is aware this fake John Lennon has been around for a long time.   At some point I did get in the line for Money Draw behind Phyllis Green - - and it wasn’t too long before I got in and gave Jennifer my check made out for $1.050, which is significantly more than I’ve been plopping down, putting me in a better financial stance.  I asked for and got twenty and left.  There was no candy.   I didn’t need to buy anything.  I already had cigarettes & coffee.