There's No More "Room at the Top"

I watched about half of the March 22^nd “Ring of Fire” episode.  Two things stood out.  The oil companies both for the “Baccan shale” and the Alberta tar sands- - don’t care about safety precautions for the trains seemingly at all.  They don’t want speed limits imposed, and they don’t want their braking systems updated- - even if the technology there is “a hundred years out of date”.  If that seems horribly callous- - consider the fact that the shale has naturally occurring butane gas trapped in with it, which is explosive.  And they actually thin out the Alberta tar sands with an explosive hydrocarbon such as butane just so the material will be easier to transport.  Clearly the petroleum companies are just money mad.  The second story is just as disturbing.  In order to get cell phone coverage or any of the modern “aps” and such people use- - you have to sign a contract agreeing to arbitration if anything goes wrong.  They say it’s for the benefit of the customer, in case anything goes wrong.  But in reality trial lawyers, tat most vilified profession by Republicans, is the only group with a moral compass.  They stand up for the little guy in his cause to right injustices.  Also these contracts forbid you to join in on any class action suits, which is another weapon the consumer class used to have.  Of course there was a lot of stuff on either Hartman or Stephanie Miller about this Indiana law.  Big money has turned against that law and that governor in a big way.  This is supposed to be the “Larry Elder market remedy” we’ve all heard about.  I don’t think people like Hannity see it that way.  No matter what Big Money says- - all of these corporations, the chamber of commerce, the NCAA and the rest- - - Sean Hannity is going to chalk it up to the work of hysterical leftists.  It seems as long as there is Sheria law in Iran- - we aren’t allowed to express our opinions (voting with our consumer dollars) here in this country.  Personally I wish women and gay groups would get concerned about repression in Islamic countries, but for some reason- - you just don’t see that.

I don’t want to fall into the same trap the political Right falls into by repeating the same laundry list of hot button issues endlessly.  I don’t believe my blogs do that.  I address the issues of the day when they come up.  And you can read commentary on past issues go going back a few years and looking at my concerns of - - 2012 or whenever.  Just now I have this Indiana Governor Mike Pence interview on.  This Indiana law is not about the “State” interfering with your religious liberty, so arguably its provisions are not even covered in the first amendment, which makes explicit reference to Congress passing laws.  In this case it would be congress passing laws to interfere with the “free exercise” of your religion.  But you don’t even have to be a member of any church to discriminate.  You can just say “My religion” and as Section 9 of this law apparently says – saying “My religion” is what is known as a “Perfect Defense” meaning it can’t be challenged.  Now he’s back-tracking, which Shawn is upset about- - saying that this religious rights law won’t violate the rights of gay Americans.  What is funny is that this is what Shawn and the others had been saying all along.  But now that Governor Mike Pence wants to make it official, people like Shawn think he’s caving to pressure.  Governor Pence just said “The religion restoration act doesn’t give anyone in Indiana the right to discriminate or the right to deny services”.  All the same the guy was nervous and pensive as he mounted the rostrum for the statement.  He’s been talking to all those businesses looking for a way to remedy the situation.  He said “I don’t believe for a minute it was the intension of the legislature to create a license to discriminate.  He also made reference to the 1993 law signed by President Clinton – about “religious rights”.  Shawn played some of Clinton’s signing statement.  It was the “Hobby Lobby” ruling that said that corporations can have religion.  Really?

President Obama had just commuted the sentences of twenty two drug offenders who had Prison sentences that were decades long.  Two criteria is that they pose no threat to public safety and also that they were sentenced under outdated laws.  The Republicans will no doubt make a lot out of these commutations.  But President Obama has done only about 42 commutations in the six plus years he’s been President, so with this one stroke of the pen, President Obama had doubled the number of commutations, which will still be just a drop in the bucket.

Now a new article is saying what we already knew, that Ronald Reagan was already suffering from the first effects of Alzheimer’s while President.  He would repeat himself more at press conferences.  He would use “thing” and other filters, when he couldn’t conversationally identify the words he wanted to say.  He held fewer press conference- - apparently only half the number of press conferences in eight years as his successor, George HW Bush - - held in four years.  Son Ron, Junior- - knew there was “something wrong – but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it”.  President Reagan used cue cards for routine phone calls.  Others note that the number of words (vocabulary) appeared to shrink while in office.  I don’t know where Nancy Reagan’s belief in astrology fits in except, I believe she asserted “undo influence” over the President.   Friends of Nancy themselves admit that Nancy Reagan functioned as a “filter” for Ronnie.

Jesse the Body Venture has a show called “Off the Grid” on RT, which is an outfit to the left of “Free Speech”.  “The Big Picture” was apparently kicked off “Free Speech” because it was so pro Russian or something.  Ventura says he’s proudest of his interviews with Ron Paul, and also William Shatner.  And you never know when the next Klingon attack will come.  But he’s proudest of his “Fifteen minute monolog on the life and crimes of Dick Chaney. Ventura prides himself on his conspiracy theories, apparently.  We need all voices in television, and it seems Jesse Venture has definitely moved to the left since his days as Minnesota governor.     

Two men dressed as women stormed the NSA headquarters in a stolen car.  Both men were shot and one of them died.  One was 28 and the other was 27 and they were driving on a private access road on Fort Mead military base where NSA HQ’s are.  They are referred to as “common criminals”.  They had been at a party where they stole someone’s SUV, and my guess is alcohol played a role in their cross dressing.  Maybe.  Why are incidents like this happening more often these days?   We are living in strange times.

The NASDAC and the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock average registered slight gains for the quarter and it’s the ninth consecutive gain in stocks.  It’s apparently the most number of consecutive quarters of gain since 1998.  This is the sort of good news that makes the headlines and people see them on their TV and right away they want to jump into the market.  The Dow Jones Industrials registered a slight loss for the quarter.  It’s the same old song and dance and “fear of success” because if the economy is “too strong” then the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates, who’s first effect will be to depress the market for capital flow reasons.  But to me it seems a little short of silly.  It would be like being told by your doctor that your broken leg is completely healed and you don’t need crutches any more, and you’re depressed at the news.  I was already on SSI during the run up in stocks in the second two thirds of the nineties.  Had I not made that horrible mistake, then I too just might have made money.

We learn that there isn’t much “Room at the top” any more.  John Lennon once sung, “There is room at the top they are telling you still.  But first you must learn how to smile as you kill”.  Only today that means getting on FOX news.  So just what is this “middle class” that Thom Hartman says we aspire to.  It’s a group that’s sinking in income all the time.  Most young people if they knew how little people in the “middle class” made, wouldn’t aspire to it.  But there is also the reality that the number of “slots” or positions in the upper class- - aren’t that many.  It’s not like it is in soap opera land where all the kids get an A in calculus, and getting a taxi ride is pocket change to them.  We are told if you go to the right pre school then this will increase your income.  We hear a lot of things today.  Mothers are told to stay at home and spend time with their kids.  That makes sense to me, but apparently in terms of “future success” there is not the causal connection between parenting time and future success.  So I guess the question is- - “What IS the deciding factor for future success?”   It seems like one of those things where all you have to do is look at someone- - and see an expression or a “look in the eyes” and you know that person is going places.  Born Again testamonies are rife with these success stories.  In more cases than you think it seems they “Know somebody influencial” or maybe like Sean Hannity have such swollen egos they are natural born demagogues and natural broadcasting talent.  To a degree then, the money you get may reflect your “willingness to be used” as a puppet.

Shovel Ready Government Jobs Are What We Need Now

Former Fed Chairman Ben Vernanke is speaking on the problems of the US economy and says things are similar now to what they were when this one guy made a speech in 1938 offering his prognosis of the economy then.  For background- - according to Hartman there was fiscal tightening in the previous year and the economy was once again stagnating.  They aren’t talking about it much but Factory Orders were down in February and this in my mind signals a major slowing, if not reversal of this economy.  This 1938 guy said that due to low demand and a lower reproductive population- - that demand would continue sluggish for the foreseeable future.  Of course he had no way of knowing about World War II.  Now there are bloggers out there who say that the way our of our current economic doldrums is to have another World War.  Ben stated that because this economy is the way it is- - you need negative interest rates in real terms- - approaching a negative two percent- - to keep employment levels decent.  There was talk about how demand for investment capital is down now from what it was forty or fifty years ago because a company like Facebook or Mac Donalds doesn’t need massive influxes of heavy factory equipment.  There is more of an enphasis today on creative brain power- - rather than scads of assembly line workers (which now would be done by robots anyhow) One solution he offered was to make the government the agent of needed demand with infrastructure jobs programs on a major scale.  What we need is fiscal stimulous that way.  In terms of interest rates we are only in a fraction of the danger we were under Ronald Reagan where we saw a similar ballooning of the Federal Deficet.  Ben Vernanke came right out and repudiated the “Supply Side theory”.  This is the notion that “Supply creates its own demand”.  Recent economic experience has proven this notion to be untrue.  Rather the opposite is true.  “If demand continues to be chronically low- - this will in time hurt supply”.   It was President Bush that appointed him but he was not above criticizing the economic policy of his own boss.  For instance there are things the Republicans used to complain endlessly about such as rising energy prices.  They also complained about high deficits, and also a high trade imbalance.   Ten years ago both the energy picture and the world trade balance was far more adverse than today.  But you’d never know it from the lack of republican criticism then, or the abundance of Republican criticism now.

The latest entry of Washington’s blog at this time is “Government Corruption has become Rampant”.   The usual horror laundry list of items is listed with links you can look up if you want to see more facts and statistics to justify your shock and horror.  It used to be back when I listened to Christian sermons- - that most Christian pastors held government in major distrust.  Today things are different.  If Shawn Hannity were President a lot of things would scarcely change at all.  We’d just have an increased efficiency in the Police State we are in now under Bush and Obama.  All of the police and Wall Street and military graft and corruption would remain intact.  In time a few of the people who voted for President Ted Cruz or whatever would wake up and know they’d been duped.  But it would only be a loud minority.  All of the talking heads at FOX news would back up the next Republican phase of corrupt government the same way FOX news didn’t criticize President George W Bush when he was President.  So today the progressive democrat is in odd agreement with the proverbial Christian pastor of fourty-odd years ago that mistrusted “the government”.   One of the things they mistrusted most was our government’s propensity for getting into one War after another.  My that’s sure changed over the years.  People forget that the word “Radical” as scary as it sounds- - means “root”.  Some of us really want to get to the ROOT of the problem.  That means the yanking out of a whole lot of political shrubbery.  Whatever democratic candidate we get needs a whole radical perspective on things which they INTEND to FOLLOW THROUGH on.  “Aye, there’s the rub”.  Because some people will say anything to get elected.  Then all their political resolve turns into mush.  Political pollsters consistently indicate the American people want a radical push to the left, but the political party structure is too fossilized in the tradition and platitudes of the past.   Like a major earthquake- -it will come sometime.  And to quote that guy on TV talking about Shingles- - “and when it does it won’t be pretty”.  As Lenin said, “You have to break an egg to make an omelet”.   But as Dr Levy said in one of his last times here “Some changes are painful but must be made because the prospect of the status quo at some point becomes even more unthinkable”.

Yesterday Former Vice President Dick Chaney supposedly said “This time- the United States will be greeted as liberators in Iraq”.   But there are rumors galore that the United States is giving aid to both sides in this current ISIS conflict, and the persistent rumor that the United States secretly backs ISIS and wants them to win.  I’m still not entirely sure who ISIS is.  All we know is that a lot of them are apparently disgrunteled Baathist Iraqui generals who turned bitter against the United States while in prison camps.  To make things more confusing Shawn Hannity the other kept using the term ISIS when he was referring to these Shiite Yemeni rebels in this new conflict.  Everyone agrees that our Mideast policy is a ball of massive confusion.  But this does not stop Hannity and Israeli Prime Minister Netenyahoo from saying “The issue is perfectly clear.  Radical Islam is the Universal menace”.    People like Hannity seem far more concerned or not about whether you order a whiskey sour at your local bar in Indiana and you might be gay - - then they are in actually trying to trace out the origens of all of these conflicts now in the Middle East.  So I’m back to what I was saying last summer.  We should just walk away from the whole thing and leave it to the people with actual “skin in the game” to fight for themselves.  And we should take our money with us.  That means all the money we have given to the Saudis- - and all of the money we have given to Israel.  I see no earthly reason to support either country at this point.

I was annoyed that Sean Hannity had Dennis Prager on his show because Dennis fawned all over Sean like they were two political peas in a pod.  The only issue I agreed with them on solidly - - was the fact that Hillary Clinton has politically disqualified herself with this server wipe thing.  Engaging in over-kill condemning ANY proposed treaty with Iran won’t sway people who are on the fence.  Because it’s not just that one issue but a whole grab of right wing issues you have to agree with them on.  But worst of all people like Prager and Dr Laura are “moving targets” in that they are continually - - moving farther to the political right.  So far Dennis hasn’t used the word ‘Nigger’ in a phone call like Laura has, but given the “mental deterioration” I’ve seen in him in just the past few years, that one is coming. Prager says just because scripture says to honor your father and mother doesn’t mean you have to love them.  Of course Dennis is quick to point out that it a prohibition against murder rather than killing that God is against.  However I would advise Dennis that Jesus had a thing or two to say about the idea of war in general.  But Prager doesn’t believe in Jesus.  Dennis says that you can tell a truly evil man because a truly evil man dislikes others who dedicate their live to “fighting evil” like the Governor of Indiana and this whole religious freedom charade.  And by the way Jews either spying on Americans or directly attacking an American ship- - is not exactly lily white purity in my book.  This whole thing with Israel and the Saudis getting together is a little strange.  Not to go Yiddish on you but it kind of puts the kabash on this whole idea that it’s predestined for Jew to always hate his “Arab brother”.  I get the weird impression that Sean at least thinks when the Bible speaks of a revival coming to Israel like in the books of Daniel or Revelation that somehow these two can be a part of that.  And all Israel needs is some Messiah figure to promise them everything and rebuild the Jewish temple and they’ll be all set.  The trouble is that these passages refer to after the rapture takes place so if Sean is a Christian he shouldn’t be around to even see that.  And the next thing- - if we’re going to be so “orthodox” or conservative- - would be the rise of the Antichrist in Israel.  As such Israel would be advised to not be emotionally attached to ANY leader at this time.  But Dennis Prager has a whole most of moral inconsistencies I’ve gone into in the past that I won’t cover again, except to say my respect for the man is near zero.

In terms of the soap opera the thing wrong with Ben is that he’s so paranoid and edgy, that if I were Abigail I sure wouldn’t want to move in with him- - especially knowing that his biological father is a renound abuser of women.  Besides Abigail’s mother and brother are going through this crisis, and I’d want to see them through that.  Plus there is a certain sentimental value to living in Tom and Alice Horton’s house after all these years.  Will Horton is having some sort of a paranoid break-down.  You can’t even talk to him about anything these days.  He takes everything the wrong way.  In terms of Lucas calling Kate out on her moral hypocracy- - it’s time somebody did.  Because Kate was born a manipulator and she’ll be one all her life- - - and she seldom has much of a moral leg to stand on and Luke knows this.  Afterward I went for coffee in the courtyard and had one cup.  Earlier Joe gave Connie two cigarettes but she said “They smell funny” and gave them back to Joe, and I asked Joe “Can I have one?”  Joe said no.  Yesterday Joe was complaining about how I’m a moocher.  But the ones that complain the most have the least grounds to do so.  I’m pretty sure Joe hasn’t given me so much as one cigarette in the past six months, and I haven’t even bothered to ask for about half that period.  We had the residents council meeting in the dining room after two, and coffee was being served in there, but I didn’t ask for a second cup.  Sarah read off some complaints from last month’s meeting then left the room.  Patty led the thing.  I complained that we didn’t get served our coffee often till the breakfast meal was over.  But I extended a complement to Denise for doing the laundry so promptly.  In general it was a fairly short meeting.   I also mentioned how the end of that carpet by the back door is rolled up in sort of a kink, that just might cause a person to trip- - who’s getting up in years.   I left maybe a minute or two early because a topic bored me- - and I came back up here to shave.