A Last Look At the Year 2014

On the Hal Sparks show they are talking about Steve Sceliss – who will be the next Republican majority whip.  He’s come up in the world.  That speech he gave before David Duke’s “European Heritage” group really brought in the support for him.  And Hal Sparks says to watch people’s language.  He never said he was horrified by what these racist groups stand for.  He never affirmed his love and respect for all races.  All he said was “I have always been concerned about my people who vote for me and they know they can count on me”.  And saying you are “shocked at people’s reactions you might be a racism” is not to say you are shocked by racism itself.  Hal Sparks is a student of tricky language.  In 1999 Steve Sceliss made a statement that went ‘The novelty of David Duke has worn off.  And we need to find a way of getting the type of people who hold our beliefs into power.  The trouble with David Duke is that he was not electable”.  I don’t know how widespread this use of the word “Thug” for Nigger is.   You’d have to do a Word find and swap out on a document, and see if the document still made sense.  But of course hate speech sells.  That Wilson fellow who said “You Lie” in a Presidential State of the Union speech - - garnered a lot of popularity and support from that out outburst.  And of course Ronald Reagan began his 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where four Black little girls were murdered.  Today I hear that it’s the KKK more than any other group that insured that Ronald Reagan got solid support from southern states.

Sean Hannity had two women on who were victims of the Veterans Administration.  They had a high level of credibility listing places and people and times and the order of events.  But one of the women dragged in the fact that “We can’t trust Obama because of Bengazi and the IRS scandal”.  I guess I find it a little difficult to believe that the first person either woman thinks to blame is not the nursing staff or the hospital, or some administrative fowl up- - but right away they go to the top and blame President Obama personally, and say that he has to pay.  Then it was Days of our Lives.   Chad is having to admit his past with Melanie.  He signed a strange legal agreement where he agreed not to implicate Gabriel for what would in any other case be a felonius act, of- - pretty much hiring a thug and putting Melanie’s life in grave danger.  Jordan is mad because Chad kept a legally binding agreement not to tell anyone about it.  Meanwhile that hotel doorman failed to keep Nicole’s secret.  I guess there is no way to go to court and sue to get your - - - hundred dollar bill back

The number of “Ring of Fire” episodes is still frozen at 98 and the most recent one is December 7^th but I keep hearing references to new ones being made.  Of course they haven’t had “The Big Picture” in a couple months.  But I found “The Big Picture” at the RT web site and watched it there.   My biggest fear at this point is that the US Senate will adopt “The nuclear option” and make a rule that bills now don’t need three fifths majority to be voted out but a majority will suffice.  The democrats really should have done that in 2009 when they had the chance, especially with that “Block Obama by any means” strategy was announced by the Republicans.  “We’re going to be like the Taliban insurgence”.    That way the President politically will have to use his veto pen a lot more often than he otherwise would.  Of course the filibuster rule has been in the US Senate for over a hundred years, but that won’t stop the republicans from wiping at away in a single swoop, if they can gain political advantage in doing so.   I continue to hear reports that the Republicans have plans to launch a campaign of “we did it”, in the event this economy ever turns around robustly in a big way.  Grover Norquist is planning to say that “It’s because Republicans in congress shrunk government that’s responsible for the economic growth in 2014 and 2015”.    I hope for my own sake that the economy does grow in a major way in 2015 and that all of the funding cuts spawned by the recession of the past seven years become a thing of the past.  I don’t want to be among the ten percent who think things are getting worse.

Well it's a new year and we're all another year older and another year closer to death.  I don't like the idea that I'm getting older because I know death is out there somewhere in the future, just waiting for me.   There is polar air all over the country.  There was snow in Seattle and big trees downed from high winds all over California.  They are worried about the flowers freezing in the Rose Parade tomorrow.  They are expecting temperatures between thirty and thirty two degrees as it approaches parade time.  There is snow in Silverado Canyon here in Orange County, which is something you don't see every day.  Nancy Bell said there was also snow in the Anaheim Hills.   My new year's wish, as long as we're toasting it, would have to be that somehow the black cloud of the past six and a half years would just depart.  Because this economic depression has had numerous negative bi-products on me in terms of family tensions and shortage of funds, and my overall psychological outlook.  I would like to get rid of that and go back to a time - - any time- - when post 20008 worries did not exist for me.  Is that too much to ask?

Back To the Ol' Bad News Grindstone

This photograph is mislabeled

Let me lead off with this piece of utter garbage from Washington's Blog.  First they go into a Glen Beck exposee on how a little girl in kindergarten was allegedly "brainwashed and programmed" by her teacher not to listen to her parents.  The exact issue they never ONCE deemed to go into, they only wanted you to accept the fact that IT happened whatever "It" was.  We are then treated to this little paragraph.  The trouble with this paragraph is that if we are indeed NOT an "accident" (by the way the occurrance of the Holy Host in Catholic litergy is in fact referred to as an "accident" meaning "an occurance" if one will get out his dictionary.  What Glen Beck wants us to believe that "certain people" are "special" and have this "pipeline to God" and therefore the public school system isn't worthy of their Holiness, so these kids are taken out and home schooled.  I'd like to meet this "God" in who's eyes these right wingers are "Special".  This "specialness' obviously does not extend to the urban, the poor, or minorities.  I think parents who are constantly telling their kids they are "special" are setting them up for a collosal fall in life.

In this day and age, our public schools have essentially become government indoctrination centers that train our children to let “the matrix” do their thinking for them. They are taught that they are just highly evolved animals that are here only as the result of a giant cosmic accident, and that morality and values are all relative.
The computer crashed during Thom Hartman a little after ten.  Right wingers are so strange in their logic.  They say they want to drug test all welfare recipients.  And yet they are always saying the government “wastes money”.   But they aren’t concerned about the generous salaries or expense accounts of congressmen and their private junkets, or money for remodeling their offices every six months.  They aren’t concerned about ending research in the sex lives of mosquitos.  They aren’t concerned about funding all of this military hardware to keep contractors happy that often the military says they don’t even want.  No.  Where do they go when they say “Making a few cuts”.  Right to the vitals.  They go after the poor, the aged and the disabeled.  And when they say they want to lower taxes most often they aren’t talking about motor vehicles fees.  They mean taxes on the very rich.  They mean those accelerated depretiations and deductions that yield a credit balance.  Obviously drug testing every welfare recipient would be an undertaking frought with complications.   They had the stand-ins for Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity today on the radio.   Some of these people try and sound reasonable when talking about racial tensions and the police.  The charge is made that “These civil rights groups that come in always “default” to their being a racist cause”.  Not me.  I didn’t know for instance either that twelve year old kid, or the overweight cigarette vendor- - were Black.  It turned out of course that they were.  The statement has been made that “The facts indicate beyond any doubt that the Ferguson PD acted responsibly and didn’t make any mistakes”.    This is made as sort of an absolute statement.  Often the line is used “Well if you don’t want to get shot by a cop, don’t go after his gun”.   We don’t know for sure that’s even what happened.  But here is a simple comprehension test.  This guy in KEIB claims he got a Masters Degree as though they are so easy to get any ghetto black could get one.  OK if this guy is so smart tell me the proximate cause of why Michael Brown WAS shot.   Give up?   Going after the gun had NOTHING to do with it.  He got shot because he STOPPED RUNNING and turned around with his hands up and made an easier target to shoot at, since Wilson was such a lousy shot.  And he kept firing and firing and Browns body was riddled with bullet holes.  Of course Mayor Giuliani still likes to attack President Obama and Mayor De Blazio.  One Black caller made the point that “If this thing is not racially motivated- - how come white comentaters immediately turn it into a racial thing by attacking black civil rights groups and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton?   Not that they actually listen to the words of these two, they just hear their names and go into some kind of a right wing trance- - and condemn any statement they make as bad.  I didn’t want to get into all of this today.  I went four days without writing or much hearing about all this stuff.  It felt good to be away from it, to tell you the truth.  Some would say looking on “News stories of 2014” that all these crises were in “the past” as part of the “year gone by” and we won’t have to think about any of these issues in the year 2015.  If only that were true.  The truth is that we have not even begun to see the ravages of this incoming Republican congress.   Some would say “We don’t have Institutional Racism and as proof we have a black President”.    Yeah, and one they are disrespecting and throwing disgraceful racial epithets at constantly.  I am more convinced than ever we still have entrenched racism even when it comes to red lining and bank loans, and which are “black cities’ and which are “white cities”.   I’m not buying for one moment Thom Hartman’s assertion that race relations are better today than thirty years ago.  America has been “fundamentally transformed’ all right.  Into a more racist place anytime in the last fifty years.

So now we have another Asian airliner that disappeared under mysterious circumstances.  I hope we don’t spend months talking about this one in the media.  It was across the Island Nation of Indonesia, a two hour flight- - - and suddenly a storm comes up and you can cue up the Gilligan’s Island theme.  The thing disappears.  They wanted to get above the weather climbing to 38,000 feet and then nothing - - no communication, no nothing.  Just the speculation.

A majority of the population believes the year 2015 will be better than 2014 with only a minority of ten percent believe it will be a worse year.  I have trouble being really confident myself.  Just when you think things are going to improve, something comes along to bring you back to reality.  If my own lagging behind the indlation rate routine continues- - costs of one nature or another will outstrip that paultry 1.4% increase I got in my Social Security payment.  They told us it would be 1.7% but California isn't pulling its weight.  If you use the analogy of a wave- - a top heavy wave eventually breaks.   Perhaps it isn't a big stretch to suppose this same imigry can be used with the economy.  Just like with real estate, those who speculate either in oil futures or in common stock prices, rely to a large extent on the "greater fool theory".  It's a ponsie scheme where someone will eventually be left holding the bag.  Joseph Kennedy got out of the stock market just prior to the crash of 1929.  I read that in a Kennedy biography.   But it just could be that some prominent rich people will "take a bath" this time.  President Obama according to sources, is always the one in the room saying "Don't prosecute" and "Give Wall Street everything it wants".  It was President Obama who argued now to prosecute the Bush - Chaney - Rumsfeld CIA war crimes.  I don't know how you can "move forward" when you are constantly shoving anything and everything under the rug.  It seems to me in the end you have a mighty lumpy rug and an even greater need to "clean house" properly.

This is Monday December 29, 2014 approaching two thirty or “tooth herty”.   You know, the one thing I wanted for this holiday season is not to be in the middle of some dental incident where I would be restricted as to what I ate, in terms of nuts and candy.  All in vain.  I just called the male dental receptionist about my “chipped tooth” as he refers to it.  It’s more like a “chunked” tooth.   The lower part of my tongue is all red and I’m getting canker sores, plural, on it.  I still have not unwrapped the fruit cake, or the baggie of walnuts.  I’m working my way through those chocolate sandwich cookie things- - two flavors remain now, ginger, and double chocolate, not good for my canker sore.  The bad news is that Dr Bowie is off all this week, which maybe explains why next week’s appointment originally was so late to begin with.  I told him the crown had already been paid for and to just switch off teeth, and the guy said that would not be a problem.  Now of course I’m guilt ridden eating anything sweet.

Two things in today’s Days of our Lives episode ticked me off.  The first of course was that baseball player was told and rather indelicate terms that his carrier as a baseball player was finished.  He was all washed up.    Dr Daniel Jonas was certain of that even before the guy’s routine of physical therapy was through.  But the other whammy is of course now he has to admit this to Will.  Suddenly in the middle of his article he goes from this big success story to the on the spot coverage of his impending ruin.  It completely sucks.  And now even if Sonny needs an influx of cash, this is yet another financial source that has dried up.  He's already drained his personal bank account with Will, without telling Will what he was doing.  And Chad tricked him into signing that contract that say "If financial troubles develop, you and not me are exclusively responsible".  Thanks a lot. This can't be Sonny's best week. But the other is this love affair between Melanie and Gabriel in prison.  They both have this element of commonality of saying Gabriel did the right thing in killing Nick Fallon.  The logic is completely stupid because the whole point was Nick was “disrupting her family life”.   Well, her whole life is a lot more “disrupted” now that she’s in prison for life.  For Melanie to now say “You did the right thing” is to question her sanity.  Maybe Gabriel was under stress and not thinking straight.  What would be Melanie’s excuse.  Meanwhile Melanie is giving Gabriel a pass for basically trying to get HER killed.  Suddenly that is OK.   Gabriel is alive and Nick is dead- - but it seems as if Nick is the one that both girls are maddest at.   If Roman knew the full truth about this crime, he’d be a hell of a lot matter than he got at Raphael today.   Then I went out for coffee break.  Nancy asked me for a cigarette loan.   She gets ten cigarettes at eight and if she smokes ten by two, and then wants another- - she’s smoking too much.   Rico is back serving.  I had two cups of coffee.

This morning didn’t get off to the greatest start.  The liquor store wasn’t open so I ended up spending a dollar fifty for coffee at the bakery, and then had to break a ten to buy cigarettes to pay Paul after breakfast.  I had Stephanie on and looked at my watch and it was twelve after seven so I hurried down and now suddenly was a minute and a half late.   Usually at seven fifteen we wait forever for drinks and cereal and things for them to finish serving.  Today every drink and every bowl of cereal was on the table.  But strangely there were no spoons to eat our cereal with.   Joe Drisco was holding down the fort for a whole table saying “Don’t take anything off of this table” and JW wouldn’t let me have empty place settings either.  So I’m a minute and a half late and don’t get served and yet I have to look at milk and orange just staring at me that I’m not allowed to touch.  Eventually I was served- - except for the spoon.  It’s the first time I’ve eaten Raison Bran with a fork.  Tom found me a spoon for the last three bites finally.

Black Holes - The Womb Of the Big Bang

I wasn't anticipating having the origens of the Big Bang explained in a plausable manner when this day began. So - - did "God" do it? Did God set the whole thing off - - this so called "most unique that's ever happened in cosmological history? I read the rest of the article on Black Holes I had missed. This author revived a variation of my previously discarded ‘perpetual falling machine” theory where we ourselves came from what used to be a “singular event” Black Hole and it answers the riddle of how we “got the matter in a singular place” to begin with. We were just waiting for a critical mass, I suppose before some thermonuclear reaction on steroids occurred. In the past I have tended not to buy the “singularity” theory since NO time or space theory can explain a Black Hole since- - once again “They have left the Universe”. Hence it’s also silly to say that Black Holes contain either a finite amount of space or a limited amount of matter, since we have no way of knowing how long matter has been “falling into them” and that trash receptacle could be about three billion years overdo for emptying. It also goes against my pet theory of how multiple universes have the commonality of all being created at once at the same time and the “same space” as far as we dare even employ such a confining term. And as that TV show from whenever stated “dimensions did not EXIST then so that every event was a NEW event not connected or related to any other event. And since it was an event not relatable to any other event, it had to be it's own, new dimension. It would thus follow that if TODAY there could be some event not relatable IN ANY WAY to ANY OTHER event - - the axiom would be true that at that point you would have moved into another, new dimension. It's like George Washington as President. Everything he did set a precedent. There was no formated space as we know it. You may remember from previous posts that at its inception the Universe was so HOT that many bozons such as the Higgs bozon - - hadn't had an oppertunity to form yet. And it took “Time” (another misnomer) for various events to “accumulate” a commonality to them where you could say for sure that one event followed another, much as I mentioned in a recent blog posting. Another theory which mankind instinctively applies to Black Holes is that they are like a window blown out on a high flying jet airliner and are thus “gigantic sucking machines”. The Magazine makes clear this is a false analogy and that if our Sun for instance, were to be transformed into a Black Hole, nothing would change about the orbits of the earth and all the other planets. Of course again this assumes two things I’m not accepting. First that there is a limited, measurable amount of matter in a Black Hole, almost as if we could weigh it, and the second is that - - Black Hole gravity is just the same of ordinary gravity. But as I stressed in the previous posting- - I don’t believe this is the case at all. But the message here is “Even the mysterious - - has physical limits.” Some people I'm sure would love to have some convenient Black Hole to put all of their "expired sins" in. A place that's not too far away but hides quickly out of sight so that even You can no longer see it. (Selah) Chuck Swendoll once said "We reap in a different form than expected, and in a different season". So the Black Holes are "planted" with or without the vacuum cleaner quality of sucking out everything in their paths - - and then the "harvest" comes in another season and in another form. You have all of this "singularity" of matter - - - there for periods that defy Time measurement - - and then one day there is the trigger point - - and the whole thing just explodes.

WE MAY WELL HAVE JUST CELEBRATED OUR LAST AFFLUENT CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA

If this headline scares you, remember in mid summer of 2007 when I headed a blog posting "These are the good old days" as though we'd look back on the summer of 2007 as some mystic panacia we'd be longing to get back to? Well, as the material below explains- - sometimes EVENTS make the President more than the Man makes the President. Ronald Reagan owes our era of wealth in the 'eighties (which wasn't all that impressive if you look at the cold statistics anyhow) we don't owe that to conservative triumph, but more to the Federal Reserve, and to explode the federal deficets, but most importantly of all - - to the fact that oil was discovered in places like the North Sea and Alaska, which made abondont energy at a reasonable price - - doable. And as such the economy as a whole benefited.

As unemployment topped 10%, the January 1975 cover of Ramparts magazine blared:The End of Affluence: The Last Christmas in America. (TLCIA)

The government responded to the high unemployment, rampant inflation and rising budget deficits by manipulating data to mask the politically inconvenient realities of inflation, unemployment and deficits by playing with Social Security Trust Funds, inflation data, etc.–games it continues to play to cloak reality from the media-numbed public. The economic stagnation, despite various stock market rallies and false starts, essentially lasted 10 years, from 1973 to 1982.


The malaise had a happy ending: huge new oil fields were discovered in Alaska, the North Sea, West Africa and elsewhere, ushering in a renewed era of cheap, abundant petroleum. President Reagan re-set Social Security for a generation and introduced a lower taxes, higher permanent deficits ideology that is now accepted as the only possible way to sustain the Status Quo: deficits don’t matter, even when they reach the trillions, because our good friends the Gulf Oil Exporters and Asian exporters will buy all our debt forever and ever, keeping interest low forever and ever.


(And if they drop the ball, then the Federal Reserve prints money and buys trillions of dollars of Treasury bonds. Sweet! We don’t need any external buyers, just the Federal Reserve creating money out of thin air.) Then the U.S. created and launched two revolutionary technologies which both created new wealth around the globe: the personal computer (microprocessor and cheap RAM) and the Internet (TCP/IP, Ethernet, and the commercialization of Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web with free browsers) spawning the generation-long boom of the 1980s and 90s.


Those “saves from stagnation” were one-offs; there will be no more supergiant energy finds, nor any equivalents of the Internet expansion cycle. When the wheels inevitably fell off the Internet/tech boom in 2000, the U.S. did not create a new engine of wealth: it opted instead for a devilishly insidious simulacrum of wealth: debt which rose at an exponential rate throughout the economy.