At War with God, Trump, and Israel

BATTLEFIELD   released December 23^rd 2017

Come On – Feel the Noise (Quiet Riot)
The Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin)
Life During Wartime (Talking Heads)

Call Me (Blondie)

Holier Than Thou (Metallica)

Girls, Girls, Girls (Motley Crue)

Please Mr. Gravedigger (David Bowie)

Love Is A Battlefield (Pat Benetar)

Vaseline (Stone Temple Pilots)

Calling Dr Love (Kiss)

Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd)

The Ogre Battle (Queen)

Third Impressions (Emerson Lake & Palmer)

The front cover is the shot of Al Franken giving his farewell address before the senate.  The back photo is mostly a battlefield scene on a Martian type landscape, kind of orangish only a few more jagged points with one army in white (advancing from back) similar but different from the stormtroopers of Star Wars.  The other army (closest to viewer) is in black heavy battle gear.  This photo was inspired by the Dune movie of early 1985 and there were several shots taken during that period.  The sky is darker than the land kind of a dark blue.  Title listings and credits are at the top of the CD.   The front part of the CD is a booklet summarizing the year 2917 plus some added facts and stuff about Al Franken that wasn’t in his speech.  His speech wasn’t that well executed, which is one reason why we didn’t include it.  The Supreme Court ruling overturning the voting rights law is referenced.  Also the law about corporations carrying pension plans as assets rather than liabilities is mentioned as well as not enforcing the Sherman Anti Trust Act, as well of course of various events in the Trump administration this year.  This update is later Friday evening.  We added "The Immigrant Song" and "Life During Wartime" so this album wouldn't be so short.  

A newfound cache of notes left by H. R. Haldeman, [Nixon’s] closest aide, shows that Nixon directed his campaign’s efforts to scuttle the peace talks [President Johnson’s 1968 peace initiative to bring the war in Vietnam to an early conclusion], which he feared could give his opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, an edge in the 1968 election. OnOct. 22, 1968, he ordered Haldeman to “monkey wrench” the initiative.  There is a tape where Johnson and Senator Everett Dirkson are having a conversation by phone where this very topic is discussed that can be heard at the Johnson library.

We must now weigh apparently criminal behavior that, given the human lives at stake and the decade of carnage that followed in Southeast Asia, may be more reprehensible than anything Nixon did in Watergate.

Nixon had entered the fall campaign with a lead over Humphrey, but the gap was closing that October. Henry A. Kissinger, then an outside Republican adviser, had called, alerting Nixon that a deal was in the works: If Johnson would halt all bombing of North Vietnam, the Soviets pledged to have Hanoi engage in constructive talks to end a war that had already claimed 30,000 American lives.

But Nixon had a pipeline to Saigon, where the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, feared that Johnson would sell him out. If Thieu would stall the talks, Nixon could portray Johnson’s actions as a cheap political trick. The conduit was Anna Chennault, a Republican doyenne and Nixon fund-raiser, and a member of the pro-nationalist China lobby, with connections across Asia.

Terry Hill stopped by just as I had tuned in the Norman Goldman show.  He had a brand new box of bakery straddles with fruit in them.  They were good but they’ll disappear quickly.  I have given Bill two so far.  For about the first time I didn’t ask Terry anything about Pastor Mark and I also didn’t ask about his writing.  Terry lives in kind of an alternate universe anyhow.  He says there is either a Spanish gallion or a Viking ship stranded in the sands of the Mojave Dessert that used to be a giant fresh water sea and the ship or ships got stuck.  He says perhaps the Viking ship traveled the Northwest passage when it was ice free all around Alaska and down the Pacific to the Gulf of California.  He also made allusion to monster sightings in Lake Elsinore.  One of his siblings is holding a gathering there in Christmas day.  I told him about our own planned gathering tomorrow night at Paul’s.  It’s about the only topic I got to mention.  Terry has seen the new Star Wars movie and says it could have been improved.  He related one scene that was similar to Return of the Jedi.  And Terry wanted to use the internet to look up a movie about Madeleine Murry O Hare that came out last March where Madeline was kidnapped and eventually killed in the mid nineties and we never heard anything in the news about it.  Terry weaved a very intricate plot.  He noted the Hubble book but I didn’t invite him to look at it.  He left about a quarter to four which was just enough time for me to have a cigarette.

We had quesedas for dinner.  They were cheese and chicken and we had salsa and sour cream to put on them.  We had three bean salad with that and rice pudding for dessert.  This morning I watched close to an hour’s worth of Al Franken’s speech.  Like I say it wasn’t what I expected.  He seemed to fumble over his words and he left out a lot of stuff I thought he would mention.  I’m guess I’m interested in how he got interested in politics and the decision process that led him from doing comedy to the US Senate.  One thing I’d like to look for in Washington’s blog is that speech where a guy goes off for about an hour on an anti Israeli rant bringing up their long checkered history with the Palestinians.  Of course now to be at war with Israel is to be as war with God.  And to be at war with Trump is apparently to be at war with God.  Needless to say I am against moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.  The UN vote was pretty decisive yesterday that the vast majority of the other nations of the world don’t want us to make the move.  We’re doing it just to start womething with the Palestinians and hopefully (!) lead us into war where Trump and Netanyahoo can bomb the hell out of them. t, as well of course of various events in the Trump administration this year. 

  Days of our Lives was not eventful.  Tim called.  He and Marie will be picking me up before they pick up Mom at ten after two.  He plans to spend a little while at Mom’s.  Tim asked about my health and I said occasionally I have bouts of tiredness.  I mentioned that just yesterday at lunch we finally had the heat turned on in here.  I mentioned how slow the computer was.  Gabby was in the courtyard.  We had lemonade and a graham cracker from Rico.  Bill is sleeping.