THE TRUE NATURE OF ACTUAL
AND ETHICAL REALITY

One area that I’d like to get into now that we’ve covered the basics is whether there is such a thing as “enlightened self-interest” that can serve mankind. As you know in the “Dune” movie she asked, “Are you a human or are you just an animal?” What’s wrong with this is that animals are not altogether devoid of such “human” traits such as self-sacrifice for the benefit of the whole, or “democracy”. Today Thom Hartman was thumping one of his favorite melons. He was saying that corporations aren’t people and that they shouldn’t be accorded the rights of human beings. There should be an unlikely ally in this from the words of Rush Limbaugh in his having said, “an animal has no rights because he can’t contract together to obtain rights like we did with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Man is there accorded certain “inailiable rights” and also is regarded according to Randall Terry of “being accorded certain divine grace, and also subject to divine laws”. But even the Calvary Chapels, whom I don’t like, can be said to have been accorded “certain inailable powers - - by God”. Because they are what they are and have the power they have because of God’s providence, and I or anyone is a fool to deny this. How you ask can an objectivist deist believe in things like “God’s laws” or “God’s graces”. That’s simple. Because in the words of the Document itself, such things are “Self Evident” and as such exist in this reality and we, be we friend or foe, have to deal with the awareness of that reality. But someone like Captain Piccard would argue that Business Corporations are not “Sensient Beings” and as such should not be accorded the rights of Personhood (although Piccard has at times accorded these rights to things that were clearly just machines) I learned as far back as my senior year in high school in business law that corporations had the rights of persons. But now Thom Hartman says that corporations lack these rights and should under the “death penalty” after a certain set time. According to Hartman, corporations used to need to have a “Reason for being” or a Charter, which explains all the altruistic functions of the corporation and why society would benefit by having them exist, somewhat akin to the Fairness Doctrine of the FCC. But now we learn that according to modern law that a corporations Primary purpose must be to make a profit. And this could become a problem in the area of health care where the primary purpose should be to insure and restore health to the public they serve. If only- - . It is pointed out that in all of Europe including Switzerland, that no for profit corporation is allowed to participate in the health care process. In England the government owns the hospitals and pays the doctors. In Germany and France these are private, but the insurance plan is provided by the government. Last week I heard a guy on the internet talking how single payer health plans could never work, but that doctors would only charge fees for unnecessary care and bankrupt the system. I cannot agree with this assertion. Like teachers, I believe most doctors would be happy just to be insured a decent income and they would give the patient all of the medical care that he deemed that he needed. It’s a question of who you trust. Do you trust the doctors more or the HMO insurers more? This question is virtually self-answering. The question is whether doctors can practice medicine in their own “enlightened self interest” and still provide the amount of medical care necessary and most expedient to the patient. I think it’s an experiment worth running. It’s a solution we have not yet tried in this country except on a much smaller scale. Let’s try out the system they have in France and Germany. In utilitarian terms it will benefit the increased health and “general physical welfare” of society. As such we will get better human beings, because things like mental health and the issues thereof will also be attended to. If you catch a condition in time it will not mushroom into a far more serious medical condition that requires a long, expensive hospitalization. After all we do have police and fire protection and nobody doubts that these things are part of “the commons”. It’s kind of a basic problem that you can’t turn back the hands of time to the 1950’s where the average person could easily afford a doctor. There are times in life where you have to account the past as so much “water under the bridge” and deal with the realities of society that we face now.

Let’s talk about objectivism today. The Wickepedia has a nice article on the subject. This article is closer to representing my own ideas of truth than just about any other writings I have come across. You’ve heard me state the truths in my blogs that the reality is in the thing being under scrutiny and not in the mind or “perception” of the viewer. There are at present completely unknown truths out there and this things are just as real as the things we are aware of, and once we learn of them we need to employ conscious, meaningful, rational terms to describe them. But of course one must have a rational, cognative mind devoid of any misleading engrams for this to be realized. Apparently Descartes speaks of a “veil of perception” and the claim is made that natural science believes in “representational reality” as its philosophical axiom. What is wrong with representational reality is- - we all know that a tree falling in the forest makes a sound, and this can be measured with sound waves. But one might say “suppose you were some as yet unknown and undefined organism and you perceived the sound of a tree falling as that of someone puking on the floor. Would this not be a valid “representation”? The problem is there is an axiom that you are your best source of information. It’s a bit akin to what some defence lawyers do in murder cases saying that someone else must have broken in and did the deed. You then run into the problem of what was in the mind of some imagined hypothetical suspect. The motive here is not to find reality but to deny it. It would be as if one of Phil Specter’s murdered victums went to some cosmic therapist in the afterlife who told them “You don’t know what was in Phil Specter’s mind” and then go into some rambling attack on the person’s character flaws and how they are not qualified to pass judgement on others. This thinking is off the mark. Whether Phil Specter uses and abuses women is not a subject of how I or anyone “feels about it” any more than my evaluation of Calvary Chapel theology and actions of its members is a function of how I “feel about it”. The truth of what Calvary is exists independent of whether I even exist. If I didn’t exist at all the truth of their character or the lack of it would remain unaltered. In like manner if I’m driving in the rain to a party and I get there and it’s pouring rain, coming down in buckets, and I remark to my wife, “boy, it sure is coming down now” this statement is true regardless of for instance a fish in the ocean who might protest “I’m surrounded by more water than you are so don’t complain”. It’s not a tribute to reality to deny the obvious. Likewise I would pose the question “Who is more qualified to say what a block of wood is. A theoretical scientists who specializes in subatomic particle physics, or a life long carpenter?” I give the nod to the carpenter. Because half of the things the scientists looks at and otherwise “deduces the existence of” with his electron microscope or cloud chamber- - half the things he observes are hypothetical constructions to begin with. Some may say that God has to exist because morality exists. But they don’t care to point to any rational scientific evidence that he actually does exist, they merely infer it. Certain aspects of morality are "self evident". But some people in order to hide their charished moral flaws would invoke an alltogether imaginary God and ascribe to said God certain "secret knowledge" about themselves and others that only they alone are privy to.

In the area of ethics, I believe that “enlightened economic greed” might work if everybody plays by the same rules. Of course people like Ronald Reagen and Bill Clinton changed a lot of established economic rules. Utilitarianism may well work- - provided everybody understands the rules and are not just “using the rules” to manipulate the situation to his own greed. Likewise, communism might work- - if people strictly adhere to it. But as David Duke or Tom Metzker may well point out- - it’s this mixing of messigenation of philosophies that gets you into trouble. Because you have separate philosophies designed to work unto them selves, getting all mixed up together creating only a big mess. Adam Smith's economics is a sound theory, in a vacuum. When you play a video game the assumption is made that it's played in the abstract and that no other realities are to be assumed, except the ones presented in the game. An important axiom in playing any game is you don't change the rules in the middle of the game. Human nature loves to change rules while a game is in progress, and the vast majority of the time they do this out of corrupt motives.

HOW THE CONSERVATIVES HAVE
LOOTED THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

You know, I can't believe all of the flack Governor Swartzenegger is getting for being a spending liberal, even from people from whom you normally would not expect such criticism. Some people say that those Ballot Measures deserved to be voted down because California is way over-spending. I can't disagree more. Governor Swartzenegger was put into office you'll remember as a counter-ballance to Gray Davis, who allowed the state to be looted by Ken Lay and Enron by unwise financial dealings and jacking up the price of electricity here in California. But you'd never know that our present governor used to be called "The Termanator" by the way people are reacting to him today. Among the hard right he is being referred to as a "liberal cave in" bowing to the Kennedy connection of his wife, Maria Shriver. All this because the governor believes we should start being energy efficient and bring California into the 21st Century when it comes to cleaning up our polluted air and water. But the seeds of our current Financial problems we are having now, and they are serious, date back over thirty years to that fateful day when Proposition 13 was enacted by the voters of California. This is the measure that restricted all statewide property tax assesments to one percent of assesed valuation of property. Prior to this measure, California simply didn't have financial problems. Now it is learned that some deal was made by commercial intrests that goes like this: "Right now commercial intrests pay three forths of the property taxes in the state and private citizens, one fourrth. We want you to reverse this so they pay three forths and we pay a quarter". So they worked a deal, and they had to take preemptive steps before the thing was even voted on to insure their success. You know that in Windows you set a "System Restore" point prior to the time you actually need it. This is a case like that. These conservative power brokers knew that real estate prices would explode in this state, and said explosion would actually be Caused by this measure, Proposition 13 passing. So what they did was set up dummy subsidiary corporations that owned the property. Now, any time a piece of property is sold it's supposed to be re-assesed and re-valued. But they got around that by not selling the property directly but having the dummy subsidiaries own their property. And then they would simply sell their subsidiaries, and leave title to the property untouched. You getter read that again. Any time they want to sell or buy property they leave the property title itself untouched but merely sell the subsidiaries that own the property, which accomplishes the same thing, only now they pay a fraction of the tax they once paid. With prices ageraging eighty thousand in 1978 and five or six hundred thousand dollars now for a private home, you can easily see the advantage of this set up. And they have worked it well, so that it's John Q Citizen that pays the bulk of local property taxes.

Turning our attention nationally to President Obama, we liberals find ourselves less than overjoyed by many of our President's policies. Now I hear he's intending on erecting a status to Ronald Reagan and also planning many other centenial celebrations to mark anniversary of the former President's birth. What if Barry Goldwater had after being elected said he was erecting a giant statue of John Birch to be venerated by the people in the spirit of Daniel chapter 2? Liberals rightfully wouldn't like that. Now we hear so often it must be true that "renditions" are still going on. Renditions or kidnapping people and shipping them off to third world nations to be tortured- - an practice begun under President Clinton- - said rendition is still going on. Now we hear that Obama is in trouble with West Virginia voters. Why the people of West Virginia would have voted so heavily for Hillary I don't know. Maybe it's because their all inbred. Perhaps if I were President I'd start my own racial "eugenics" policy. I'd re-institute bussing. I would bus in twenty million Blacks from the ghettos of our large cities to West Virginia to interbreed with the native population and improve the racial stock of the people of West Virginia. Anyhow, now we hear that to please all the mine workers, Obama has a plan to blow the tops off of all the mountains in West Virginia to strip mine for coal as part of the President's vaunted "Clean Coal Policy". I know strip mining is going on in Montana, but West Virginia is a whole other ball of wax. Imagine the ecological devistation! And we still hear that in the good old days of President Eisenhaur, Corporations paid 41% or something of all income tax in this country. Today they pay only seven. What's the President going to do about this? Well, he wants to get tough on off shore corporations. In a speech about off shore tax dodges he says there is a building in the Caimen Islands which headquarters a thousand corporations. He says "It's either the biggest building in the world, or the biggest tax scam of all time. You decide which". He says that off shore corporations only pay a two percent rate on income tax. One wonders, and I was scratching my head whether there would be a violation of some sacred Constitutional principle laid down by the Supreme Court or something, if they were forced to pay their share. Apparently this is not the case. Congress can change the tax law whenever they choose, only they are "choosing" not to. We can speculate why. Some say that altering our current tax laws would "cripple our economy further" and exaserbate the recession. I don't believe this for a minute. These corporations don't pay taxes in this country and they skirt the laws in the Caimen Islands or whatever, so they don't pay taxes over there, either. President Obama says if these tax loopholes were closed and they paid their fair share, we could raise 210 Billion dollars in ten years. No offence but this seems a really paultry ammount considering the size of our debt. I am confident we can do much better than that. Rewriting our tax laws so that corporations stay in this country along with their jobs, should be a high priority item for this president.

Some have wondered about me, "You've said many times what you Don't believe on the subject of religion, but just what is it that you DO believe?" Well, as I have said I'm an anti-dyspensationalist, Calvinist, Deist, Objectivist individual. The objectivist part I'll hit first. That means that IF Jesus Christ rose 2000 years ago, it must be a fact that is waiting to be discovered and Will be discovered. An Objectivist believes "The truth is out there- - and one day will be discovered and scientifically proved". Many don't like the idea of our being a nation conceived "By Divine Providence". I have no problem with this statement. I believe also in a form of Creationism. Let me explain. Some believe, and Hartman has said this, that a Deist believes God is somehow in all animate objects. I don't believe this. I am the ultimate believer in the separateness of God and nature. I don't believe God is in nature kind of "guiding the evolutionary force along". I believe that every decision that God WILL make he has ALREADY made. Hence I believe that whatever form that life has taken on planet earth, the seeds of dezign, if you will, were contained in The Big Bang long ago, and things now are just "playing out" as scripted by God before the creation of the Universe. I don't believe, as some dyspensationalists believe- - in a God who appears to be either constantly changing his mind- - or else playing some kind of mind game like Steve Jobs- - like "Can you guess what I'm really planning". I do not believe God ordained either progressive revelation or progressive evolution. I do believe it's proper to thank God for his grace in our own lives, and thank God that we were born in America. If that's corn-ball, so be it. That's what I believe.

You know the Beatles have that new video game out now containing old Beatle studio recordings with chatter never heard publicly before. Paul and Ringo have been promoting this game, due out in September, the past couple of days. It's nice to see a little Beatle unity, however belated. But I'd like to address the original planned cover of the "Get Back" album. This is the photo used on the cover of "The Blue Album" Beatles 1967 - 1970. This whole idea of "getting back" oddly is a gnostic one. It's born of the belief that "Evolution is only Devolution". Any progression foreward only increases the degradation and devolution of the original product. The trouble is of course that getting back really isn't getting back. The songs on the "Get Back" album were so awful that none of the Beatles originally wanted them released. It was John Lennon having a conversation with a certain "somebody" in the Revolution song where he says "You say you want a revolution - - you tell me that it's evolution". I was a big fan of the slogan "Revolution is Evolution" back in 1968. But John Lennon had other ideas, On a show last sunday, we would be led to believe that that certain "somebody" whom Lennon was addressing the song "Revolution" too was Abbey Hoffman. Now John Lennon is attacking people on the left for "ruining it for people like him" who want to live in this country peacefully and not rippling any waves or troubling the Establishment". I think God placed in each one of us the natural desire to grow and evolve personally and intellectually and yes, musically, as the Beatles did. We should always be "pushing the envelope". But Gnosticism was engendered by the desire of a child to crawl back into its mother's womb and find confort there. The hook of attraction to Gnosticism, is "a fundamental lack of belief or confidence in one's self". It's my belief that the Beatles met their demize before they had to, and that there are musical idea forever now laying dorment.

THE PERIL OF THE UNCERTAIN TRUMPET

. Let’s talk about General Motors going into chapter eleven bankruptcy, cince it’s the topic of the day. As with Chrysler, this arrangement should be of short duration, probably only a few months. Of course Pontiac will bit the dust so farewell to the G T O one of the legendary muscle cars of the ‘sixties. What Thom Hartman alerted me to today was the fact that these bond holders aren’t heroes but villains. This is because they aren’t real bond holders but have these hedge funds. According to Hartman, these people are actually holding these investment swap things. As you know the “uninsured” or un-secured” investment swaps are the ones that have caused so much of the trouble because these people are betting against the American economy and the very corporate structures they profess to be under-writing. It’s kind of like betting against your own baseball team. It’s unethical and should be illegal but isn’t.

I changed the screen saver today to “No Corporate Sellouts”. I wanted to put “Obama is a Corporate Sell-Out” but there wasn’t room. As you know the rant against Justice Sylvia Sotomayor is that she is a corporatist and has sided in many cases the way the corporitists want her to, and as such can’t be trusted by Obama’s liberal base to “storm the gates of the Establishment and break down the barriers”. Her views on abortion are the biggest mystery since Justice Suitor, whose lack of opinion bothered me at the time in 1990 but that’s because he was appointed by a Republican. With any appointment by a Democrat, possible waffeling on the abortion issue is just added gravy. It’s just a bonus we pro lifers hadn’t expected. But I’d like to reference Justice Sotomayor’s speech on race that people thought so troubling. Her quoted remarks didn’t bother me when I initially heard them, but now having heard all of her speech, in context I am more troubled by the things she said, because she appeared to be unambiguous in her view that race and background should be taken into account when rendering a decision from a bench. Again – Lady Justice is blindfolded for a reason. This is so she can weigh the evidence impartially without regard to race, color, creed, or socio-economic standing in society. Indeed, if a big corporation were being messed over, I would hope they too, as much as the poor man, would be confident in getting his day in court. Respect for the law and legal precedent benefits everybody and creates an aire of stability and certainty in society- -as it’s natural to human nature to respect basic fairness and impartiality. I hope she will speak of these things in her confirmation hearings.

One case that will be coming before the next Supreme Court is the new case that gay activists will be bringing to say that “equal protection” rights have been denied to gay couples who want to get married. The gay lobby has a Queen Esther type dilemma on its hands here. This was the Queen who dared to speak to the King knowing if he did not extend his royal septer tword her could have her head lopped off for speaking out of turn. The gay lobby has to ask themselves when filing this case, “Do I feel lucky today?” because if they lose, it will deal the whole gay marriage movement a major setback. I’m thinking in my own mind, “Bring it on!” because with this Supreme Court with the four far right justices on it, the gays have a better than even chance of falling flat on their ass. It’s like that Charlie Daniels song about Johnny bargaining with the devil for his Golden Fiddle. Future justice Thurgred Marshell filed the integration case in the early 1950’s. He gambled heavily and won - - so it can be done. But that court, as Alex Travek reminds us, had nine Roosevelt appointees on it. Only Washington himself appointed more justices. The smartest thing the gay lobby could say to themselves when filing this case is “Thy Will Be Done”, which will be a real fine accolade – if they win. Even a Warren Court style “win” may only avail them a phrase like “they should proceed with all deliberate speed”. Loving verses Virginia wasn’t decided till 1967.

Thom Hartman opened his show this morning by having Randell Terry on, the militant anti-abortionist. He weighed in about the gunning down of that late term abortion doctor in a church working as an usher in the morning service. As I said higher up, I don’t believe people should call themselves Christian is they don’t have the goods. There are Bible cases to illustrate my point. In the New Testament a man was violently attacked by demons because he professed to be a Christian and yet wasn’t. Bob Dylan once had a song about going down south and “You could get killed down here so you better get your story straight”. In the OT there is the saga of a profit who was to prophesy against the Northern Kingdom, and he was told neither to turn aside on the trail neither to the right nor to the left. The man failed to follow Jehovah’s explicit instructions and got himself killed. I only say this to say that people should take their commitments to the Lord seriously. I’d like to address another erronius point that Hartman and callers raised. There was the implication that Randell Terry believed that your own blood had to atone for your sins in any case of murder, and that this would justify the man in the afterlife. He couldn’t be more wrong. In the first place I’m not aware of Jesus ever forgiving a murderer as he did with other people. In the Bible it says “There is a sin that leads to death” but the Greeks are vague about indefinite articles. They can be either used or dropped at the descression of the translator, and one should not believe this expression denotes singularity. It could just as easily be rendered “There is sin that leads unto death”. But I’d also like to say that the only sacrificial blood that counts in Christian theology is the blood of Christ. After all, how can the sin of an imperfect man bring about perfection? (Selah) I heartily agree with Randell Terry’s remark about this guy should be put on trial for Nazi like war crimes. This is where the man deserved to rise or fall in the eyes of justice. He should have been found guilty and then promptly executed “in a manner prescribed by law”. But also know this. People will ask, “Was it God’s will for the man to die the way he did?”. You know my answer to this. It’s an emphatic “Yes”. Everything that happens is God’s will. God’s will will never be the subject of mockery. But on the other hand it follows that the deaths of all those late term babies was also God’s will. And this I cannot logically justify. Only know that the decision to take the lives of all those late term fetuses was made before the creation of the Universe, indeed before Time Itself was created. (Selah)

Increasingly I am hearing rumblings of the idea that this economy is in a false recovery. Randy Rhodes is correct in her statement this afternoon, of course. All of this bailing out of the banks is undermining the strength of the dollar. Up till now being a holder of dollars hasn’t been that bad of a deal since this recession has been an occasion for the dollar to gain in value. But I could not expect this to continue. The world is an uncertain place. Both in Iran and North Korea there are the distant echoes of war drums. I continue to say that astrological indications are that we will be in a war, I believe with Iran, before the Obama administration’s first term is concluded. Nothing makes the traders in dollars more skiddish than the possibility of war. If I were President I would engage in a staring down match with Kin Jung Il. What do you do with such a self-deluded leader? He is surrounded by his enemies, and if I were President I would make him painfully aware of that fact by turning up the heat. I would oh so delicately remind him of what we did to two major cities of his neighbor to the east, Japan. And I’d just say “You know we have a lot bigger bombs now than we did then.” In the immortal words of Rush Limbaugh, "We are the ones who actually used the A Bomb. And it was a good thing. We used it to end a war". In terms of Iran, you’ve heard my remarks over the years. I believe we have screwed things up and acted at the wrong times and not acted at the wrong times. Once the preacher gave a sermon on “The uncertain trumpet” and I do not believe we are sending clear signals to Iran. I do not hold out much hope that Achmadenijab is going to be turned out of power in next month’s elections. Remember Zimbabue!

I’d like to close this file and this blog with a reflection on the milk of human kindness. Dr. Levy extended me the courtesy of three dollars today because I told him I was out of cigarettes and couldn’t afford another pack. With this money now I can pay off my debts to others and also be able to extend generosity to others. We need more one on one charity. We need to do things for others to brighten their day, and hope that the gesture is catching. Many times recessions like we are having brings out the generosity in certain people, while revealing the greed in others. Randy Rhodes today remarked that our work force is the best educated best trained work force we have ever had. Our nation should utilize this national resource as much as it would utilize “green” new sources of energy. People can be put to work building new, “greener” more efficient cars, and also rail systems for transportation within and between cities. These corridors themselves will be utilized to further our commerce getting people where they need to go- - so that they can earn and spend money. By contrast all the money we spent on the Iraq War is only wasted and there is no infra-structure to show for it. These are priorities we need to change. One would hope that President Obama would be a conduit for change instead of an obstacle to change that needs to be overcome. Think about that. Is Obama one of those working diligently to clear the log jam, or is he part of the problem? Which side is Berock Obama on, when it comes to “the inevitable march tword enlightenment?