"You Didn't Listen Again" -Geddy Lee

One of the lines in "Boot to the Head" is the phrase "Politicians who can't think", which is rhymed with "The waiter who forgot my drink".   On one of the programs on "The Patriot " station around here, KEIB,  the idea that a number of these "horror stories" about health care are just completely made up.  And apparently Harry Reid cited one of these from the Senate floor last week.   This is where a lot of people get mentally very lazy and it comes under the general category of "Answer the question", in court.   What happened was that Harry Reid was attacked as a liar on a completely different issue- - on whether or not there was a ten year period where Romney paid no federal income taxes.  The answer to this question can't be known because Romney only submitted two years (of his own choosing) of his income taxes, and not the twelve years the Obama campaign wanted.  So there is just no way of knowing whether Romney did or didn't.   Interestingly these progagonists of- - the Hannity show I think - - had no clips of Senator Reid to play - - we take their word for it but MISSED in the whole exchange - - is that the charge against these "professional victims" wasn't even dealt with.  In legal lingo it's called "An unrefuted statement".    These people don't know how to read a report.  For instance they don't know the difference between the number of prospective Workers- - and the number of Jobs.  And they will tell you that an Obama executive order will cose two and a half million Jobs, when the statement was that two and a half prospective employees- - - will no longer be counted as part of the labor market because now the Obama order has freed them up from the sword of damacles of "losing your health care if your hours are cut" and they are free to invest some of the freed up time in educational and vocational self improvement.   And by the way should FOX news - - say that a "Popular vote of the people" is PROOF that the Soviets were justified in invading Crimea- - you say "NO".   I don't care is 100.0% of the people, a clean sweep- - voted for incorporation- - it was an ILLEGAL ELECTION under ANY circumstances under International and UN Law.   If you could just vote yourself out of a country after all, they never would have needed to have fought the Civil War.  Because Jeff Davis could just wave an election tally in front of President Buchanon   (I could make a joke about that too but I'll restrain myself) and say "Mister Buchannon - - here is the document that has just freed the South from "Northern supression" or whatever they call it.   But the thing is people are so adeled if not downright crippled in their ability to think clearly- - arriving at such obvious conclusions in this paragraph is a real "mental challenge" for them. 

Well Dr Levy did it again.  I should have known.  He convened class and didn’t even wait for eight o clock to roll around.  I said to him “You really seem to prefer coming on Sundays, don’t you”.  He said “I don’t come on Sundays; I come on Saturdays”.  In point of fact in the past six weeks since his return from a long hiatus,  I have documented no less than four of those times he’s come Sunday morning- - - and one of the two other weeks hasn’t been positively confirmed.   I don’t see why people deny things.   Obviously it’s the worst conceivable time of the week he could come, and today’s attendance showed that because it was poorer than I’ve seen it in a long time.  People are probably at Church.   They said that 95% of the people who voted to join Russia, which is strange because only about sixty percent of the people are in fact Russian.  But with all of those Soviet tanks trolling the streets, the intimidation factor is formidable.   People got to “check in” in somewhat more detail.  Joe loves his book on Surrealism.   Arleen has pink eye just like I’m getting over.  Mickey’s parents live in Garden Grove, and he used to be a house painter.  He talked about “hearing the voices”.  I asked Mickey "I've heard you say that before but just what is going on in your mind when it happens?"  Strangely - - nobody even CARES to ASK a question like that, which puzzles me.  Which brings me to this stuff Dr Levy likes in terms of poetry.  He likes poetry by mental patients the way he “ideally expects a mental patient to act”.  But were I to submit poetry that normal people qualified as poetry with rhyme and meter- - and better yet I employed to express an actual VALUE that I have- - somehow I don't feel this class would even care.   To them it's more like Twitter.  The object seems to be to yap and yap about absolutely nothing - and from that moment on you never have to think again.  So what you get like from Gail’s poetry is a rather scitzophrenic approach- - not the illness- - but it’s as though there are two “selves” talking.  I’ve never known how, for example, how born again Christians do it speaking of their old selves as though it were a different person and they’re nothing like that now.   Like there will be two lines of some doubt- - and then they jump into this other “person” and psychoanalyze the first few lines they wrote.  I think that genuine poetry from psychotic people would be fascinating to read, but you’re never going to get that with Dr Levy.  It’s always the theme of “Why can’t people understand the fact I have a mental illness and accept me for that?” which demonstrates a level of introspection a real mental patient would never have.  I asked Dr Levy if he was interested in any of my stuff and he pretty much said “No to everything”.    I made the statement “Actually I’d like toget some employment around here for maybe five dollars an hour”  (of half the new minimum wage rate) to which I was told “You’re dreaming!  It would be five dollars a WEEK - - if you’re lucky”.   Now, I could write about how I feel about hearing THAT.  I could write about for instance, ways to improve the way this place is run.  I could talk about “how I got here” to begin with”.  I could talk about my letter on economics to Tim yesterday.  I could talk about Putin.  I mention stuff I had done recently playing both sides of the evolution question - - pro and con.  I mentioned that paragraph on the Historical Jesus, I think is really good.  And I mentioned the metaphysics of- - things like Cause and Effect and their relation to each other.  Dr Levy didn’t want to have any of it.  Rather- - he would have me scrap everything I’m interested in- - and write about “How I hope to improve myself and my plans for the next five years”.   It’s hard to conceive of a more stupid topic to write about.  Just like the bracket predictions above, anything I say will most likely be laughable in five years anyhow.  I din’t FEEL like writing about that.  I have nothing to SAY in that area.  And maybe I’m too elementary but I believe that if you have nothing to say or contribute, then keep silent.   But Dr Levy’s mind works in patronizing ways.  It’s like people say to me “Oh you have great potential” in terms of some pie in the sky goal they suggest way off in the future.  But if you ask this same person “Will you halp and support me now in THIS thing I want to do right NOW?” they will offer a million excuses not to.    It’s like some art teacher on the Simpsons or some comedy- - they praise to the skies all the crap they see their students doing, but get someone with actual talent- - they will either ignore it- - or fine some anally fixated technicality to criticize it over.  It’s like Dr Levy wants to be known as “Do you see how supportive I am at helping mental patients- - I even support this kind of crap” but don’t have the sheer decency to inform the students “Perhaps THIS is not your area of talent”.  But once again Dr Levy said he’d be here next Saturday.  You know CS Lewis had this saying in the Screwtape Letters.  He said “The future is the LEAST real thing about yourself.  Either the PAST or preferably right NOW is far preferable”.    But Dr Levy is so inherently shallow- - and is like a broken record that I have long since tired of.  But he did give me two dollars for cigarettes, for which I am grateful and wasn’t even particularly expecting.

First of all in a word - yes.  I agree with the video - all of it.  President Obama has been horrible on consumer issues- - and the conservatives may not admit it - - but President Obama has probably been the most pro rich business president we've ever had.  His picks for sensitive economic posts have been nightmarish.  And the Clintons were just about as bad.  Clinton was pro NAFTA at a time where it was just me and Ross Perot who were strongly against NAFTA.  Now you have this rather stealth Trans Pacific Trade agreement that the President is trying to "fast track" through congress below the media radar screen.  Ed Schulz has commented at length on this.  I usually listen on WCPT in Media player nine to twelve weekdays.  In terms of Hillary - - people like Randy Rhodes were beating the drum for Obama saying this election is a done deal as far back as late February of 2008 before Hillary's campaign even got into high gear and began winning elections, as well as bettering Obama in any face to face debate.  But the dirtly little secret of course was that Me - - and all the liberals who vote on call in show polls- - consistently voted for John Edwards as our pick and the best choice for those concerned about the common man.   Unfortunately after that Edwards met his political demise- - which to this day I still have mixed feelings about.  But Clinton also got that Media reform act through of 1996 which pretty much shot the idea of broadcasting in the "Public Interest' idea all to hell.  That's when the nightly network news really began going down hill in this orgy of info-tainment news.   Krystal photographs well, I'll say that.  I bagged a photo of her off of Print Screen and saved it.   And if I were the Republicans I'd be making more that all ofr this stockmarket deboccle we had in 2008 traces right back to the late Clinton administration when he feld prowd he was now "able to work with the Republicans".   Bad idea.  Personally I favor Joe Byden, although whether it's Byden or Hillary- - it could be we'll have the next President a little "crusty around the edges" - - getting older.  I've been a fan of Joe Byden since the days of the Justice Bork, and the Clarence Thomas hearings of 1987 and 1991 respectively.  Byden has always protrayed himself as for the common working man.  I am less than enchanted with the "public image" of Elizabeth Warren, though I confessed I haven't heard that many of her speeches.  In terms of President Obama himself- - I like his two most recent executive orders.  One was in saying that people who worked a fourty hour week had the option of leaving their jobs- - without fear of losing their health care.  And the other just a day or two ago saying that people actually go back to getting Time and a Half for overtime.  This obviously will encourages business to hire on new workers, which they should have been doing all along these past five years.  But these two acts won't undo the damage - - in a lot of areas such as privacy- - where Obama has fallen down on the job.  George Washington's blog explained the Federal Reserve moras to me (better than Judy did) and I have a glimmer now of how the very rich could prosper so much getting 95% of the economic gains- - and yet not having inflation or stimulus either.  Obama has pursued kind of a "Milton Friedman supply side" view of the Federal Reserve- - which is really a pipe dream for people like Rush Limbaugh and the Koch Brothers.  They don't know what a good thing they've got going - - or maybe they do. 

In terms of this whole Putin thing- - unfortunately it's a case of "the boy who crief wolf".  We are told about "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq and how wonderful it would be if democracy came to Iraq, when even people like Pat Buchannon agree that our overall national security if Less Stable now - - - fore the war ever started, and oil prices are sure a hell of a lot higher, if THAT was the goal.   The sickest thing about this almost love affair cerftain people on the Ultra Right have about Putin is "Well, he's trying to restore a pre Bolshivock Riussia - - with the Russian Orthodox Church reigning supreme- - and it fits in with the anti gay hysteria that has swept Russia.   These people on FOX news never tire of saying how masterful and macho Putin is- - and what a loser President Obama is.  It's sick.  Now John Kerry is making speech after speech outlining America's goals and values, and nobody - - at least on FOX news- - is listening to him. 

I wanted to talk a little about Power Point.  Yesterday I waded into it deeper than I ever had before and actually saved a file.  You actually can do slide presentations in Google Photo just fine if you're so inclined, and they make it easy to swap out the order of slides, if you're so inclined, and also can start and stop anywhere along the sequence, if you don't want to begin at the beginning.  Like Power Point, it does slides full screen and automatically timed, or a mouse click- - your option.   However in Power Point you can do quite a number of things.  Of course they give you "insertions" from anywhere you want including 'shapes" and even WordPerfect Letter Art.  You can import Excel charts or these "power organization diagrams" or clip art.  (these "bits" Microsoft thinks you should like)  But then there are the extra goodies I've always been aware of such as transition sound effects, and transition visual effects.  Some of the menus are hard to either find or remember where they were once you see them.  The drawing menu button- - isn't even ON the screen unless you do something.  Some of the "sound" options- - you have to click on the Sound File once you have alreaedy imported it to get that "dialog box" where you have start and stop times or coverage over how many frames.  One glitch that can occur- - if you opt for not manual mouse click- - sometimes if SOUND is playing - - the video will freeze untill THAT particular file has completed.  You can fix this in the "play accross slides" option but THAT is in a different Sound menu you click on the sound icon.  You have the option of not using sound already in the file by start and stop mouse clicks.  Also there is animation of shapes, and my only other experiance with these is a different program called Power Bullet- - which still plays in Firefox.  But I can't do any NEW files there because the basic program of that was never transfered over, just like Visual Basic  (not QBASIC but a different one) was never transferred over from the other computer.  Of course narrorating slides is a prominent option but what I'm unclear on is - - can you while you're narrorating- - controle when you see the next slide with a mouse click and will the program record THAT kind of like the old Windows 3.1 macros?  OK this is getting long so I'll wrap it up now.