SENATE GIVES THUMBS UP TO

LONG SOUGHT WALL STREET

REFORM BILL

The senate finally passed the final version of the Wall Street and banking reform bill that has been hanging in the balance. The vote was 60 to 39. They call it the most sweeping bill since the great depression. It regulates derivatives and apparently sets up some whole new committee. It gives the consumer further financial protection. But the liberal opponents call it LINO for legislation in name only. If that’s the case maybe according to Walter Martin and Neil Savedra, Jesus was a WINO, or wimp in name only since they say he didn’t oppose violence or war but taught self defense and encouraged people to sell their goods and buy weapons. This bill will not “fix” the basic economic problems we have. Banks will contionue to sit on cash and starve out the little guy and small businesses. Chase is apparently offering a new deal on getting a loan. Randy points out we can give away buckets of money to the big banks but all they do is continue to devour slightly smaller banks so that there even fewer of them. Apparently the part of the bill involving corporations financing their own dissolution was taken out of the final bill. However by way of contradiction a headline quotes Obama saying “Never again will Americans have to foot the bill for Wall Street mistakes”. That’s more like it.

Just to correct Randy Rhodes on something. She reminds us that back thirty years ago that 25% percent of the work force of the United States was unionized. Now that figure is down to eight percent. She then went on to say “That means that 72% of the service industry is not unionized if they comprise eighty percent of the work force”. Assuming that o 100% of that 8% were service job unions, that would mean that ninety percent of the workers were no longer unionized. People can still name the main unions such as the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters, and the AFL-CIO but they don’t have near the sway with politicians as they used to. I am reminded that when George Meany heade the AFL-CIO newscasters might devote two whole minutes to some quote of his on a news cast. This was before the era of the ten second sound bite. It used to be when you said “Union” and “Buy American” you were being patriotic. Now the tea baggers have bought into the whole “New World Order” crap where the worker in the US’s wage is dragged down to the level of 2^nd and 3^rd world countries. Today when you say “Union” people think “Inflation”. They have bought into this whole lie about “The government just printing money out of the blue”. As someone reminded us, the government doesn’t print money when it needs it; it borrows it from us. Deficets are money that we owe ourselves. As Jimmy Stewart said “Your money is in Tom’s house and Joe’s money is in Harry’s house” etcetra. This whole “pull yourself up by your boot straps” chestnut is getting old. When there are five people applying for every one job opening you’re going to have a lot of disappointed people. The tea baggers continue to be against extending the unemployment bill. I guess they all must be retired or something. Someone needs to come along, some bright boy, who knows how to “Market” and “Package” liberal concepts once more so they are again accepted as part of the “meme” of society, the way they were when I was young. We still have time before the November elections to turn things around but we better get started now. Apathy is the liberal’s worst enemy.

The Catholics have issued some new “Bull” or Epistle or whatever they issue on two subjects – women priests and child molestation. Liberal Catholics are angry because ordaining women priests is “one of the gravest of offenses”. If you are expecting the Catholic Church to change on anything, I believe you are waiting in vain. They are not going to change on things like artificial birth control, or allowing any kind of real Divorce. So they have these Ted Kennedy style divorces called annulments, meaning in the eyes of the church you were never even married. How does Joan Kennedy feel about that one? Obviously married priests would be an obvious idem on the agenda if you’re going to talk about child molestation. If they had children of their own, perhaps they would have more respect twords children in general. I’ve said enough on this before.

I would now like to reference a phrase most often used in Psychology, and that is, “It’s all in your point of view”. I tend to not use that phrase myself in my writings because it conveys kind of an A-Moral outlook on life with no right and wrong. That’s why I say I have “utilitarian tendencies” because I tend to look at the common good. Liberals tend to look at the common good. For those of you curious ones I read up on Fabian Socialism yesterday. And I was with them till they began talking about Eugenics and a “Scientifically engeneered society” like some planet on Star Trek where everyone knows what their role will be in life from birth. I believe morality trumps utilitarianism every time. However in areas such as the economy utilitarianism makes sense. It does little good to talk about the “Point of view” of an ultra rich money hording polluter who corrupts politicians with bribes. When compared to the “Point of view” of the poor who just need a job- - there is no contest. Even the Communist Chinese used to believe that work was good for the soul and community spirit. Minimum wage was something that the Fabian Socialists argued for- - because money provides an incentive to work, and work is beneficial, so it strengthens the “puritan work ethic” in my view.

But I would like to talk about now is what you might call the “physics of the Rapture of the church” or any other group that would like to leave planet earth. We know we can’t get there on our own. Things “people of Faith” talk about have never been proven. We don’t know if there is a higher world or even if we have a soul, since nobody has ever measured it. If “getting there” somehow involves traveling faster than the speed of light we definitely can’t get there on our own. Albert Einstein and our physics won’t allow it. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. We said last fall that much of Einstein’s theory of special relativity could be explained away as an optical illusion. But here is something to meditate on a bit. This "illusion" would not be Possible if in fact light were not finite in its speed. The fact that the speed of light is limited enables the illusion. Remember also what we said how size was relative and there is no big and small but only bigger and smaller. And as that chicken commercial with the bloated chickens goes “We could always go plumper”. But you can’t get away from it. Things going away from you shrink in distance and all that other stuff. Things coming tword you expand in distance, and all that other stuff. I am reviewing this for our new readers who maybe didn’t read the stuff from last fall. Now for the punch line. I said last fall that “adding speeds together gives you smaller numbers” and “subtracting speeds gives you bigger numbers”. Someone may ask, “Is this really true. Here comes the punch line. “It’s All In Your Point Of View”, in this case literally. If you don’t like the term “Optical Illusion”, well, it’s also a Gravitational Illusion” too, because gravity is radiation, also. So you have gravity and light combining to give you double the illusion. Maybe I’d simplify things if I just said “Pretend you’re stoned on mind altering drugs, and all of your friends are stoned on the same drug also”. Does that clarify it for you? Now here’s my conclusion, the thing you’ve been waiting to hear. Life could be compared to an Ice Hockey game. In the old Ziggy’s Air Command days- - we frequently used the metaphore of an Ice Hockey game. OK yeah, the whole idea is scoring. But have you ever thought about this: The ice rink is basically a two dimensional surface. The hockey puck rarely leaves the ice. It is confined to a two dimensional surface. This is like you and me in this life. Now- - the pucks don’t move of their own accord. Some SOUL moves them, and I deliberately used that word. In other words some three dimensional body moves the hockey puck here and there. But for some reason our minds are limited to a puck’s eye view of the world. What if we could move our view from the ice to the three dimensional view above the ice. You see the player never is a part of the ice rink. He is always above it, yet controlling the movement of the puck. So it is with our souls. I’m saying that our SOUL whatever it is – is some entity not measurable by Science that is of a higher, psychic dimension. And that if we could move our consciousness into that dimension a lot of things would be suddenly much clearer. It would be as though we just picked the puck up off the ice. (Selah)

I WOULD HAVE SAID

YOU WERE CRAZY

Today is July 14th. Bastille Day. This is the day the comon people of France rose up and started guiatining French royalty. One thing you could say for them is that they were taking advantage of the moment. If only liberals in this country could "learn to take advantage of the moment" we would get a whole lot more accomplished. Some would say we are in a liberal's fondest dream, politically. A Republican administration screwed up the economy for probably the next decade to come. We have a massive oil spill by a corrupt foreign oil company that is more of a "bank" they remind us. The opposition has been largely reduced to using empty slogans and racial epithets and have an intellectual IQ of about eighty. We have a democratic president and a congress democratic in both houses. When was the last time all these factors came into alignment? And yet liberals are constantly on the defencive. The opposition is not just conservative. "Conservatives" tend to go for the status quo. They are not even mildly reactionary. They are Extremely reactionary. Though many of them are younger than me they appear to want to go back to a time long before I was born. Indeed the America I myself grew up in was about as far removed from these people as night and day. No - - they would have said you were crazy if you predicted all of these things.

I have a clear memory of many things I was doing twenty years ago and specific dates doing them. There are many personal events in my life if someone had told me would happen in my life on July 15th 1990 I would have said they were crazy. Twenty years ago today nobody would have guessed that a major war would again soon become fashionable. That we would start a war with what was then known as "the fourth biggest army in the world" and would line all of our troops up along the Kweit border poised to attack. I would have said that such a thing would be taking on a World War III scenario. And it was all in a land dispute where our own government said we had no Defense treaty with Kweit. It was that War that put Rush Limbaugh on the map. Boy how he relished that war- - -over - and over again. But I would have also said you were crazy if you said that a woman senator in California would serve eighteen years and become very popular and yet be fighting for her political life facing an ultra right opponet with no government experiance and whose greatest claim was shipping US jobs off to China. If you said we would elect a Black president and then he would be the object of threats and racial epithets, I'd have said you were crazy. I would have said "If we elected a black president we would owe him the allegiance we'd owe any other president. If you would have said that any candidate who ran on a peace platform to oppose an unpopular President who got us into a never ending war, I would have said "Well, that's good". But if that same man once elected abandoned his base entirely and got us into an even bigger, more hopeless was, in an even more distant country- - I would have said you were crazy. If you told me that the democrats took back congress in 2006 - - and then four years later after a successful 2008 election, under a democratic president congress would go republican again, I would have said you were crazy. After all just four years ago we Americans did elect democrats. We must have had a reason to do so at that time. What on earth could have happened in those intervening four years to make everybody change their mind the way they apparently have? The only thing that's changed in those four years are Sarah Palin and the tea baggers? What is it about these people that compels the media to fawn all over them?

Finally we all know that Jesus Christ said, "The meek will inheret the earth". But then if it happened that when war came and wiped out the planet, those people who had caused the war were raptured and went up to Heaven- - leaving the victims, the meek behind- - to inheret this radio-active planet, I would have said you were crazy. But suddenly even this far-fetched notion is seeming closser to reality all the time. Actually I wish the rapture would come Before the next world starts- - and that way those of us who remain on earth would be able to prevent it. There was a roomer a couple weeks ago that an "event" was going to be staged or fabricated in Iran to get us into a precipitous war there. You know how Americans need to be pushed into wars- - be it the Golf of Tomkin, or the Lucitania, or "weapons of mass destruction" or whatever. They see us as cattle who have to be stampeded into action. I don't know what this "event" in Iran is, exactly, but you know it's going to be something that didn't really happen like Saddam Hussein turning off baby incubators. These tea party people, despite all their amazing success still are obviously not "happy". The only time they're truely "happy" is when we're in full scale War.

BRITAIN AND GEORGE BUSH

IN BED WITH QADAFFI

There are problems now with the British Petroleum capping of the oil, as if that were a surprise. This was one sure thing that was supposed to provide a tight “tupper-ware” seal. But they are afraid the shaft is structurally unsound. But they are assured because pressure readings are still good. Just give it a shot of Viagara and call me in the morning. Norway apparently took over their oil wells. And Hartman pointed out that in Florida they sold off a publicly held utility. So instead of having a lot of extra trucks and equipment and employees for an emergency, now when they have a Hurricane they have to get employees from Indiana. Of course if the government just took over everything like Hugo Shavez, it would solve a lot of problems and we could give everybody health care. Now they say British Petroleum lobbied the Parliament in England to free the Lockerbee bomber saying he had three months to live, and now it’s been a year and Parliament is thinking they’ve been had. They say there is a whole background story on Bush’s 180 with Qadafi and also British Petroleum. I guess Libya cut a deal with Exxon to drill on their land and British Petroleum felt left out, so they said “What can we offer you to cut us a deal too?”. And Libya suggested the Lockerbee, Scottland bombing terrorist that brought down Pam Am flight 103 and killed over 200 passengers, many from the United States. I don’t see why the tea party crowd isn’t hanging BP executives in effigy because this is sure a “British invasion”. It British Petroleum doesn’t get that cap on now when a hurricane strikes they’ll have to clear all the equipment out and won’t be able to work on the leak further, and of course the leakage goes on after eighty days and counting. The true magnitude of the problem is unfathomable.

JUST WHAT IS IT THE REPUBLICANS

EXPECT TO HAPPEN IF THEY GET THEIR WAY?
(many typos now corrected)

I watched some of “This Week”. The tone of much of the commentary inspires the question on my part “Just what is it are conservatives and notably the tea baggers offering?” First of all they’re world class liars so you can’t really believe anything they say to begin with. That commercial of Meg Whitman about “Jerry Brown’s greatest hits” has been refuted in part by a new Jerry Brown add where he catalogs at least seven lies in that broadcast. For instance his record as attorney general in attacking crime, and that Jerry Brown was one of the first politicians to go with this “less is more”, cutting taxes theme. If you want experience, shouldn’t it be someone who’s had experience serving the public at large? Today they were talking about a “new” add Sarah Palin is putting out perhaps trying to remake her image, portraying her as the Mama Grizzly, protecting her cubs. But this is by no means a new image. Other than being a completely vapid add, one might suppose it’s flattering to a few grandmothers out there, as to how they see themselves. George Will made the positively Orwellian statement of “The biggest problem achieving peace in the Middle East is in fact, the Middle East peace process over the last nineteen years. You see all of these Republican adds and rebuttal statements saying “While Obama is obsessed with increasing government spending, we republicans are concerned about your job”. And they go on to say “If it weren’t for all the government debt- - and if it weren’t for all the rising taxes- -you’d be doing fine”. That’s what they’re implying. They have this notion of “I never met a tax cut I didn’t like”, and although Obama cut taxes for the average person and small business, for these tea party people- - it’s never enough. You get the feeling it won’t be enough till taxes are down to zero. Then they talk about how “The average person cuts back expenses any way they can, but your government isn’t”. Perhaps one should look at this pragmatically. Some things are counter intuitive. If a husband and wife are fighting all the time or don’t communicate at all- - the answer to poor communication is not less communication, or no communication. Because as one party gets colder and more aloof and distant, the other party does the same and it’s a never ending self perpetuating cycle. Ghandi said “In a world which practices an eye for an eye – the whole world will soon be blind”. You say “Well, have you taken your own advice”. Well sometimes in a bad situation, I try and pretend the previous conversation never took place, and I try and start fresh. But I’ll admit that didn’t work. And it could well be that Bush screwed up the economy so bad that no amount of “shock reduction” or government buffering of the downturn will work, but the economy will continue to careen out of control over a cliff. The national debt is now seventy or eighty percent of gross domestic product. And I imagine when it reaches one hundred percent we will have reached the point of no return. Contrary to the republican hype, President Obama is not "the magic Negro", who somehow promises to to the intrinsically impossible. You know Christians always teach you to have patience, when you could wait till Hell froze over and their words would never be justified by events. And yet the Republicans are saying “Don’t wait; don’t be patient- - you deserve a break right NOW - - so vote republican and all your dreams will come true, and suddenly it will be 2006 again”. That was the last year everyone genuinely felt good about this economy. I wish it were 2006 again, or maybe 2005. We have been watching the economic four year slide into the abyss, that’s for sure. But you need an experienced captain to navigate through the ice field. I hope Obama is that captain. I don’t entirely trust him myself. But he is not a Socialist, as I have heard right wingers repeatedly say. Newt Gincrich calls Obama a “Fabian Socialist”. I don’t even know what a Fabian Socialist is- but I imagine it’s not good. There is not one shred of socialism in any of Obama’s economic agenda, so I really don’t know what they mean.

When it comes to the blog I plan to do, some of it is going to be Memorex and some of it will be Live. I went for coffee break at three that was delayed so it would not conflict with the Salvation Army singers. I put on the whole hour of “Meet the Press” and figured I’d be able to get the whole thing in and maybe a smoke break, too. If there were no interruptions. [material deleted here] Then I went back to the program. It’s funny how the right wing philosophy has even pervaded the hallowed halls of NBC. David Gregory didn’t think there was any difference between the Bush foreign policy and all the other security paranoia that goes with it, than the Bush foreign policy, and in this I must agree. There was talk of the tax cuts expiring and congress will be under pressure from their corporate benefactors to extend the Bush tax cuts. There was talk of how “worried” about things like the Health Care plan, and payroll taxes and capital gains taxes will styfle investment and also new hiring. In terms of democrats wholesale running away from the Obama record, I hope not. The President and this congress has already passed a lot of legislation liberals have wanted. But the people don’t see Presidential victories as reasons to support this president like in presidents past, but rather as just more reasons to be mad at him. This “magical liberal moment” where someone from the past would say “The president should be getting everything he wants” - - it seems that the climate of conservative indoctrination has overridden that. So this president is left with playing a game of “Can You?” like Stephen King talks about in “Misery”. As I see it, it all depends on what the economy does between now and November, and from here the signs don’t look good. There is this viscous cycle of contraction that is never ending where governments cut back, and this impacts jobs, and that impacts buying power, which impacts taxes, and the cycle goes on. It’s a bit analogous to a husband and wife having the controls on the electric blanket mixed up and whereas one was only a little cold and the other a little warm, they start adjusting the controls making each side increasingly uncomfortable, either hot or cold. If you don’t have a job you won’t care if your taxes are cut. The banks refuse to loan out the money the Federal Government lets them have for free, but instead choose to make themselves rich knowing in this tax climate, they’ll be able to keep virtually all of it.

A friend suggested I watch the Michael Medved show, which is just what I did a few minutes after twelve and I knew Randy wasn’t back. My friend has no idea what specific topic would be up today. I had KIEV on for the hour. They were talking about religion. One brother is an Atheist and the other is an ex Atheist turned Christian. Both wrote books. Can anyone say "sibling rivalry?" Some stuff comes immediately to mind. First of all the show was a tape replay. So there was no hope of calling in and talking about what you "just heard". The tape could have been months old. Another thing is, WHO makes a decision on the future of the world in the Age to come, as well as the future of their soul- - based on the experiences of one person, who writes a book? The next thing is- - Atheists were portrayed as teenagers throwing a hysterical tantrum- - and the conotation was that anyone who decides to be an Atheist must be immature like the man himself WAS a teenager when he WAS an atheist. I remember being a teenager. In the later sixties I remember doing cartoon things where I portrayed God as a cloud. I wasn't an atheist and never liked Russian Bolshevism. As for Jesus I saw him if anything in those days as a fellow revolutionary, who would heartily approve of one. My view of Jesus was influenced by Martin Luther King. I tended to put quotes in God's mouth basically suggesting that he walked around with his head up his ass and didn't know what he was talking about most of the time. The Christian author, who is English, had the one weak argument that “If there is no God then how do we know what absolute Good is?” My answer is simple. Of all the people who have told you about absolute good, how many have been divine and how many have been human beings just like yourself, who learned from other beings? I have my own views of perfect right and wrong that might vary a bit from yours. Even Martin Luther taught, "follow your conscience". I rest my case. There was a colony on Star Trek, where the crew told them that, for the health of the species, one man should impregnate at least three different women. As for things being “good” some of the time and “bad” some of the time, this can be a reality. Planting wheat is good if people are starving. Planting wheat can be bad if there is a glut of it and it’s packed away in storage bins for long periods where rats can get to it. The author portrayed Christians as loving and tolerant and sensible, whereas Atheists were hysterical, intolerant and ruled by impulse and emotion. I seldom come across an individual who has it so ass backwards. Let's put aside my own experiences with Christians beginning in the 'seventies. How about the experience the natives of this continent had with Columbus when he arrived? You know, all of the rapes, and the enslavement and the genocide and the demand for nine year old girls. And I was just watching that thing on Custer's Last Stand. We sure made the Indians pay for that victory, didn't we. Apparently Sitting Bull was dragged out of his tent in late 1890 and sumarily shot. And of course there is that march of death the Cherokee People endured under Andrew Jackson. And we're still doing it today but today we're wiping out people with drones. I don't think any Atheist has anything that he needs to be ashamed about.

There is always the looming question of "What happened to the Beatles after their trip to India in March of 1968. If I didn't know better I'd say they underwent a mass exorcism - - of their psychedelic spirit. The last gasp of that spirit was before they left when they recorded four songs, Hey Bulldog, Lady Madana, The Inner Light, and Accross the Universe. They had formerly been trying to impress and out-do each other on who could come up with the farthest out lyrics and sound effects and musical inovations. Some have suggested (was it John?) that the Beatles broke up two years too late. John could easily have made a great album of his White Album material. He could call it "Happiness is a Warm Gun" if he wanted to. Paul could have named his album "Within, Without, and Nowhere" or something catchy like that. George Harrison wrote "It's All Too Much" in 1967 because of truths he'd discovered on an acid trip. But he later called LSD a "false prophet". George wrote "Northern Song" as a slam against John and Paul for hogging the writing credits. John claims to have gotten the opening lines of "I'm the Walrus" from an acid trip he was on three weeks before when he'd typed the lines down. As you know the lines are really from "The Prophet". As to the opening sound effects it isn't a police siren in my oppinion but sounds startelingly like the egg sorting machine at my grandfather's ranch when I was a kid. Hey, I'm entitled to my own interperations. It beats smashing raw eggs over nude women, or whatever John says it referred to that Eric Burden did. Of course the line about the pornographic priestess is prophetic about Gene Scott's third wife. As far as elementry penguin singing Hare Krishna, my only remark is "everybody has a starting point".

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE HAS ITS PLACE

"I use my body like a car

It takes me both near and far"

You know, physical appearance has its place but you’d never know it from most of the snail mailings I did to the media or else my blogs. In my blogs I don’t think I have once stopped to describe the physical appearance of aliens I encounter. Some people in that History.com film said that perhaps those creatures an eye witness saw at Roswell were chimpanzees wearing space suits and the federal government had actually been doing early experiments with animals for testing. I have stated in my posting that the beings were Pikes, from a star system in Pisces, and that Pikes were considered weird even by other space aliens. That’s not entirely true. For instance Federation people are usually fully dressed in long sleeves and all, and are obviously wearing some sort of heavy make-up and that without their make-up they look pinkish with obvious blood vessels running through their skin like humanoids with radiation damage. With the Andromadans it is worse. Andromeda D is the most powerful of the three planets, and there the population lives in what we would call a poisonous atmosphere with an incandescent sky of kind of a pinkish-orange. The being themselves are squid like things but they have human thoughts and actions and even tastes in food just like we do. They got their name Andromeda, from the Romulans and the word means “Hidden”. Unlike the shorter word Ramada, which means an inanimate thing being hidden, the word Andromeda refers to a living creature hiding himself. The Andromedans used to be noted for sending out propaganda to show how human they were. This was thousands of years ago but the name stuck. On Andromeda E, this is a thing like Sirius “0” where the planet is a long distance from the sun, which even in the day time looks like a bright star. These creatures are noted for spending a lot of time hanging out in bars. And the natives look like one of the creatures in the bar scene in Star Wars. I’d have to look at the film again. Actually they look rather Klingonish, without the long hair. On Andromeda F, these people do look humanoid. These propaganda pictures make this planet look like the pre Civil War South or something with white mansions and colorful vines growing up through the white picket fences. When it comes to the Reigellians, they come in different races and languages, of course, but they all have that greenish Reigelian look to them, kind of vaguely like the Valcan features on Star Trek. The Seveners are racially speaking half Romulan and half Bajoran, just so you know. All of the Phil Specter group guardian angels (Sylvia Brown would say “guides”) wanted to be sponsored by the Neir Reigellians along with Leslie Gore, The Chiffons, Dianne Rene, Andy Williams, Dion Warwick, and of course the infamous Four Seasons, and don’t forget Frank Ifield. But they never seemed to make the grade. The Romulans themselves have a rather “Roman” look about then, but look pretty humanoid otherwise. Also humanoid are the Alcion people, although in this case they look Oriental, or one could say Mongoloid.

Physical appearance has its place. You would like to know what kind of houses aliens live in. Do they read books? Do they play the Stereo? Of course as you know that Dr. Martin Luther King said “Longevity has its place” in sort of a diminutive fashion, as if to downgrade its importance. But some people are disinclined to send photographs because they don’t want to be identified. And you know what kind of electronic technology they have today. My fear is I’ll be pegged as something. I don’t want a “non essential trait blinding people to the message. People say you’re too Black, or too nerdy, or in my case I don’t like the shape of my head. It’s too round. Of course you know what they say about baldness, “grass doesn’t grow on a busy street”. That’s good because I can’t use that other saying, “Just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there isn’t a fire in the fireplace”. My roof doesn’t have “show”. It’s bare. Bill Gunderson can be more easily identified than I can. He has a distinctive voice. I’d like to say for radio, but more for cartoons. People have asked him if he did voice overs in cartoons. He has a big, gray Afro and is given to wearing retro clothes like Hawaiian shirts. He’s the history.com nut. Physical appearance has its place. But if you watch all this Afghanistan stuff now and you see these VA hospitals with so many people with limbs missing or in other ways disfigured. It’s not the first thing I would not put out about myself in a dating service. On the other hand perhaps it’s best to grab the bull by the horns and be done with the issue once and for all. In a world of pure thought, we can make the world whatever we want. That is we can radiate to others what we want seen (at least hopefully) and they can radiate to us what they want seen of them. Perhaps in this way the world will be more pleasant. On the other hand, perhaps not. I know of no alien with angel’s wings or a halo. People in Sirius B have black, metallic skin with a greenish sheen. You know, some artists are really talented at drawing their impressions of demons. I wouldn’t mind being in a room full of them. I just hope they let me take my camera if I have to go to Hell. On the other hand I hope I have a better camera by then. People say that Christ appears under the “Accident” of the bread and the wine. Bob Dylan wrote, “somebody got lucky, but was an accident”, meaning that it actually happened, and anything that actually happens in this life is called an Accident. For Deborah Harry to say “Accidents never happen in a perfect world” is not to know the definition of the word. Life, it could be said, is one big accident. This four-dimensional universe construct is an accident. It’s something that “just happened” out of so many possible things that could and do “just happen”. Capish?

One motivation in doing another blog today is that I want to see if I have to jump through that maze hoop thing like I did this morning. We’ll find out right now. I’ll join you on the other side. OK I wasn't asked to go through that line-up again. Now we'll pick out a photo for the occasion.

CHANGE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS -

CHANGE YOUR BELIEF SYSTEM

I’ve thought about the title and what the central theme of my thoughts are today. And I came up with it. Our beliefs are based on the Assumptions we make. If we change our assumptions we change our belief. You’ll never get anywhere with the EST organization, for instance, if you don’t first buy into the assumptions they make about human nature. Soren Kirkigard said that in order to become a Christian we make an “Unreasoned leap of faith” but then goes on to back that up by saying that it’s all in the basic assumptions we make, and we all make them. Scientists make them. Dick Schimmel, a Sunday school teacher I had in my high school years said “Math is based on the assumption that the number One exists”. Dr. Laura makes assumptions about her callers all the time that I would never make. To me what she does is un Christian. Let me define that. I believe two Christian precepts that aren’t in the Bible are as follows. They are a part of my ethical code. One is “What if everybody did what you were doing”. In the case of evangelists, with all the cars and plans and gasoline they consume if everyone used as much of the earth’s resources as they did, we would all be in big trouble. The other is “Walk a mile in the other person’s shoes”. If you are going to have a conversation with a caller, that involves two people, so put your outlook in the other person’s place. That sounds pretty simple. Many will point to my changing beliefs over the years, particularly in metaphysics and cosmology, and they might say to me “If you are going to change your opinions on things all they time, why should we listen to you?” I can point to changing political beliefs. Society makes them. The republican party makes them. The 1956 Republican Platform under Eisenhower was a whole lot more liberal sounding than the Republican platforms are from recent conventions. What changed? The “memes” or assumptions of the party faithful must have changed. What accounts for this? This is the $64,000 question. I have often said, but it bears repeating, that my beliefs haven’t changed all that much in ten years when I was voting for Bush. I don’t think I changed; I think society changed. I think the political atmosphere is much more toxic now than it was then. I don’t see, for instance, how John Mc Cain could make such a wholesale leap to the Political Right in ten years or less. He went from Mc Cain – Feingold and Mc Cain – Kennedy - - to now opposing his own bills. It takes a mighty caticlismic psychical event to make such a change in a person. I have changed a few assumptions along the way and I have pointed them out. In 1998 I believed President Clinton should be impeached. Then I saw the sort of crimes and atrocities the Bush Administration had committed and it kind of put things in perspective for me. Robert Byrd was interviewed in early 1999 and he said that although he believes President Clinton committed High Crimes and Misdomeanors, that he wasn’t sure he’d vote to convict. His reasoning was based- - on an Assumption- - that “Appearences can be more damaging than the real thing” and having the appearance of a corrupt President would be so damaging to our country and to history, it would be better to just shove this under the rug. Just like BP sprays oil dispersant to shove the oil under the “rug” of the ocean. Another change in assumption I had was that “People who invest privately save up more money for their retirement than the government could possibly save up for you, so they should be given the choice”. My assumption was “People ought to be responsible for their own actions”. I also did not believe then that retirement pensions were part of “the commons” as Thom Hartman would say. I also didn’t have the input of the last few years of the stock market weighing on my decision. To advocate playing the stock market seems a case of financial Russian roulette to me now. By the time I began blogging in late April of 2006 I had more or less undergone my political metamorphisis, although remnants of conservatism, still remain as part of my beliefs.

Another big area of change for me is in my cosmology. For instance in June of 2006 I said that I didn’t believe in the Big Bang or in Predestination. Although I did say that “the two beliefs seem to fit together into a logical system. Further I said that I didn’t want to believe in predestination because I believed it was psychological unhealthy to do so. I still believe that. But there are times when God or Nature or whatever demands that certain items of belief be left for God alone to know. “Gee, that sounds mysterious”. OK take the notion of animals killing one another for food. Does a lion worry that he might be killing an endangered species when he kills and eats it? Do animals worry about the ecology? And yet nobody would question that the food chain of life is part of God’s plan for nature. As I look over previous years I see a lot of stuff I have changed my opinion on. But are my beliefs right now and wrong then? Well, not so fast. A lot of my beliefs about Black Holes now, or the absence of them, is based in Einstein’s math. After all if Neil Savedra says “No object will ever go faster than the speed of light” who am I to doubt him. It goes back to assumptions again. If I assume that the whole speed of light thing is not an insurmountable barrier, then we can be open to other ideas. Scientists, who now believe in Black Holes, obviously believe now that matter can be made to go faster than the speed of light. But I don’t want to say that my beliefs in 2006 and 2007 were wrong because I don’t know what I’ll be believing in ten years. Hopefully it will be better than what I believe now if I change. And if I change I will try and sell you people on the new belief. There are two models for belief evolution. One is the ripening fruit analogy where an Apple reaches the peak of perfection and you pick it before it begins going bad. In classic rock or classical music we speak of “early” or “late” periods and also a certain “peak productivity” period. In this case we look back to a classic as the standard. But a different view is children growing up. The inference of any child is that one day he too will grow up to be an adult, and so sees adults as role models to be emulated. I don’t get feedback from my writings on line. Perhaps I need to make adjustments in the “comments” sections. I thought I made them but perhaps I need to take another look. With your feedback I will evolve faster. A big part of my problem as a Christian is that I didn’t have any real role models. There was nobody else, no one’s personality that I cared to emulate. This hindered my “growth” as a Christian. It is said that we all should be growing all our lives, like a tree. And as such by the time 20112 rolls around I’ll be a different individual than I am now. We’ll see.

I would now like to delve into more detail, if you are interested, in this whole Einstein and Black Hole thing. It was March or April of 2008 that I declared that Black Holes were not a part of this universe and therefore were unprovable. Prior to this I believed heartily in their existence and incorporated them into my beliefs. Sometimes I come across one of my own statements that’s a head scratcher. No doubt you’ve encountered them too, where you say “Could somebody just explain the last sentence”. Let me lay one on you. I said in summer of 2006 that “Matter that takes up more space moves through time more slowly”. I’ll tell you what I meant by that. I could have clarified saying “Matter with big molecules moves through time more slowly”. Or put another way “Matter that isn’t subject to Einstein’s incredible shrinking machine of relativity- - moves through Time more slowly. That is, put another way, things just take longer to happen. Feel better? I believe it was August 2007 in “The Ten Commandments” blog that I made the statement “I know what hyper space is. Hyper-space is matter inside a Black Hole. I no longer believe that. My “model” for the Universe back then was based sort of on a Vitamin D info-mercial on KTLK like they have Saturday mornings. Picture a big mountain. Now water is pouring in over the top of it and it’s filling up a pool or indentation in the ground at the top of the mountain, and that water is slopping over and filling up all the pools below it, one by one. My view of the Universe a few years ago was as a “perpetual falling machine”. That is I believed at the center of this universe was one or more black holes, like a program subroutine. And that material fall into these Black Hole lower realms like variables being passed to a subroutine. To put it more simply, I believed that Black Holes were a part of this universe and functioned like someone pulling the stopper out of a sink filled with water and the water would slowly drain out. So you would gradually have matter being sucked into black holes like a giant vacuum cleaner into this lower level. But this falling notion would be one way, of course. I did not bother to ask whose supplying the constant stream of new matter, only that the new matter came from a higher level (with bigger molecules) and fall into our level of the universe and thence to a lower level inside a Black Hole. I’d like to review for new readers and emphasize that my views on Special Relativity have changed over the past few years, and here’s how. With special relativity and this means “matter not inside a gravitational field” or a very strong one, there is a thing called “reciprocal relationship” and the word Reciprocal means exactly the opposite of what it means in ordinary math.. I’ll make it easy for you. Don’t even think of math. When you see reciprocal just substitute “phony”. Much of special relativity is just an apparent optical illusion that people say are real. People say that gravity is a ray and acts like light. It’s “radiation”. Light as such is called “ultimate reality”. What you see is taken to be real. This isn’t that complicated. As such the shrinking and the time dialation and also the stretching and time hastening - - are all optical illusions in Special Relativity. As such the only variable we haven’t handled is mass. I would like to review this for you new people. In the Smallville series Clark Kent had not yet become Superman. And he wasn’t yet able to fly. So he gets from place to place in a hurry by dashing. So they came to call him “the blurr”. Now the problem is that all of that dashing and rounding square corners violates the physics of physics and inertia for someone of his weight. So you get what I’m driving at? So for this whole “dashing” thing to work, Clark has to lose a whole lot of mass or become a whole light lighter, for this thing to work. Is this all jelling for you? If you fail to adjust the mass values, the time values no longer make sense. So this means that the opposite is also true. For time to slow down- - the opposite has to happen and the same matter suddenly defacto gains a whole lot of mass even though it’s the same matter. Nothing magically happens to the matter. So let me wrap this whole thing up in a bow for you. There is this thing called the “Event Horizon” scientists believe in where it’s as if you’re traveling into a black hole and new objects appear before you that were invisible and “new space” appears to open up as you shrink and so space appears to expand, so that there is a whole lot more of it. And I just assumed that given a strong enough gravitational field pulling on the matter that by definition it would have to exceed the speed of light. And once hyper-space was achieved I more or less assumed it would continue to travel at hyper light speed in it’s new space continuoum. So the whole area inside a black hole would be shrunken matter but it would all be relative. “Big” and “Small” would no longer be relivant but only “Bigger” and “Smaller”. Questions like “who’s supplying the new matter” and “Where does all that matter go when it goes down the drain” aren’t supposed to bother you.

Yesterday, July 7^th was Ringo’s birthday and he turned seventy. He still looks amazing for his age. We all have to revise our notion of what a seventy year old man looks like as we, one by one approach these decade milestones. Ringo said his favorite song was “all you need is love” and still wants us all to focus on Peace and Love. If it’s true that we all are evolving to some higher level- - -one can hope this reactionary fever we’ve seen in this country these past two years is soon to be a thing of the past. Let us hope so. I fear that some cataclysm is still necessary to shake mankind out of its lethargy- - like some nuclear war or something that causes One World Government. Not that I’m a fan of that I’m just saying that the carrot and stick principle is a powerful one and given a frightening enough stick- - mankind can change its beliefs quickly. They will see themselves as having no choice, that is if they reflect on the change at all.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SUES

OVER ARIZONA STATE IMMIGRATION LAW

I'm not entirely happy about the Obama Administration suing over a popular state law, which other states like Florida want to emulate. It sends the wrong message - and an unnecessarily combative message to the Republican party. And it also sends the wrong message to the prospective illegal aliens out there. The "Allan Greenspan" factor can be useful here. We need to create a fear factor among prospective Illegals not to do what they are contemplating because the Arizona authorities are gunning for them. I know the rationalization for the move. There is an unwritten rule that certain laws are the perogative of the Federal Government alone. Among these seem to be immigration policy, and drug policy, and in the case of admitting Utah as a state, marriage. The Feds wouldn't admit Utah till they agreed to give up polygamy. I am not an expect in this field but I have to defer to others who know more that there is an unwritten "supreme law of the land" doctrine in Federal laws. My view is different. I believe there are only a few areas where Congress has leave to make laws and in other areas they are tress-passing on State's Rights. In old 1930's news reels, there was talk about how the growing marijuana problem could not be dealt with by the Feds because the constitution would not allow that kind of law to be passed. Evidently they changed their minds. As to the Arizona law, Nicole Sandler had an Arizona highway patrol guy on her show. He says the law only allows cops to stop for the normal reasons like erratic driving ect. and only then can they ask for ID, as cops routinely do. And you give your registration and driverse license. Only then if the people in the car appear nervous does the officer investigate further, like are they drug running or are they illegals. Nicole Sandler said for her to get her last job she had to produce her passport. I don't think I have ever been asked for my passport to get a job. I don't even have a passport, and if I did it might not be up to date. Nicole wonders why employers don't crack down on statutes already on the books and demand ID of suspect illegals. I don't know. I do know that the LAPD has a policy of not pursuing illegal aliens. I assume they have their reasons for not doing so. To me the Arizona law (suck in a breath) seems perfectly reasonable to me. It's certainly not worth making a fuss about at the Justice Department. I can think of a lot better things for our Justice Department to file a law suit over. Nicole picked up on a caller's idea that Social Security cards should not be so easy to counterfeit. If they had them laminated and water marked with other coding incryption like they do with our money now, then you could feel more secure about the identity of who was handing you one. Nicole seems to not mind if we had a "National Identity Card". This ruffles the fur of both extreme ends of the political spectrum. I have tended to be against a National Identity Card myself our of my religious background as a forerunner of the Antichrist or something. Perhaps I need to grow up a little.

ROOMERS OF A DOUBLE DIP RECESSION

GROW STRONGER

All of the roomers of a double dip recession now seem to have sprouted legs and are gaining substance as new economic numbers reveal troubling trends. We know about the recent unemployment numbers revealing net job losses. But retail sales are down. New automobile sales are down. And housing sales are down. Nicole wanted to buy out her sisters share in a real estate inheritance. I figure she wanted to leave her high and dry in case of an extended real estate boom. But now the tables are turned and Nicole feels cheated. If i were Dr. Laura counseling her I would say "You knew well what you were getting into. You agreed to pay a mortgage rate at a certain interest rate and certain amount per month. And that is just what you are paying. You have nothing to cry about. If you are "underwater" just wait for the economy to turn around. That seems the obvious thing to do. Hey, you still own the property. The house is still there. It wasn't destroyed by a hurricane, was it? Now there is talk how certain bankers have been "holding off in foreclosing property" out of some hope. But now they are tired of waiting and they fear a round of foreclosures will hit big. People ask me if this is the time to sell stocks. Thom Hartman says the time to fear is right after the November elections. It could be the government is priming the numbers now, and will wait till after November to let the bottom fall out. So right now I would plan to sell around November first. I have often wondered what if there is some "critical mass" that develops in an economic downturn like the 1930's where you get this deflationary spiral and there is less and less money to buy or spend on anything, and the more people constrict their wallets (as the conservitives want them to) then the worse the problem gets in a self-defeating cycle. Clearly this will turn out to be the longest recession in over seventy years. People are saying we might not be out of it in five years. Just think of all the earning power and commerce that will be lost in that time.

In my personal life, it looks like I really am going to have to get a new TV. I just talked to the shop today and the repair man still can't locate a part, and now says that nobody owns my brand and if they did they sold it, and all the stores that carried Olivia TV sets are out of business. In terms of the weather it's over a hundred in the east, but we had rain this morning and the weather is almost chilly, for early July. It looks as if I might get some minor job involving yard maintenance, but it doesn't pay well, and the guy who has the job now is emotionally attached to his work, but is going in for back surgery. When you think about it- - things always need to be done. Work suddenly doesn't stop because we're in a recession. People still have needs out there. With all the jobs that need doing in this nation it seems there should be scads of "green jobs" out there just begging to be filled. At least one would think so.

On a quazi religious note here's an example. If the head waiter at a resturant told you that your dinner tab had already been paid by another, would you believe him? I would. But how many prospective Christians out there when told "Christ died for your sins" view the words with skepticism. Something is either a fact or it isn't. If somebody in your dinner party keeps nagging you on the way home about the bill, just tell them to fuck off. In another example, Neil Savedra encountered the question of "If heaven is a perfect place how come certain Angels rebelled?" Yet Neil states that "Once we make a decision for Jesus, our choice is locked in for eternity". I fail to see the distinction why one standard for us and another for angels. There are roomers of a massive Castration job done on angels by God that may have instilled fear in the others. Something "happened" after Lucifer's rebellion that prevented subsequent rebellions. We know this. To me, this is the question that needs probing into.

METAPHYSICAL TRUTH: -

THE ILLUSION IS THE REALITY

You know, the Buddha taught that when you look into an apple and bite into it, you are experiancing an illusion. I will not contest this statement. However I would like to define "Illusion" is something which in this four-dimensional construct we call reality is measurable and provable in our own reality. Illusions come in varied types. For instance if you consult wolframalpha.com and enter "apple" I would imagine that you would get an analysis of water and sugar and cellulose content, molicule by molicule. Because the molicules are real, are we to infer that the whole of an apple as we know and experiance it in every day life is not real? No. Yet some web sites will say that "scientists are not objectivists, simply because they do not believe "what you see is what Reality is" but rather will say that certain things are under the guise of an illusion. This morning I was reading my own writings from July of 2005 in there was an exchange between me and an unnamed Federation source, and among the statements made were "If you have the faith to accept it, Detroit really won the NBA final over San Antonio", even though we know they didn't. This was an allusion to fifth dimensional reality, which Mal Evans refers to as "that fifth dimensional shit". The difference here from the first example of an apple, if we'll play along for the moment, is that this "Illusion" (of San Antonio winning) is an example of a physical manifestation- - that not only has an "other" or "scientific" sub-context you need to be aware of, but in this case an appeal to an alltogether (seemingly) imaginary reality of Detroit beating San Antonio. In other words the thing behind the illusion itself seems (unlike the example of the molicules) to have no backing in science. In the file itself ("intrigue") I pose the notion of the writings of St. Paul who claims "We are seated together in heavenly places with Christ". So St. Paul is calling this life we live as some veil of Life - -but also a veil of Illusion that, were it for its removal, we could clearly "see" that we ARE seated together with Christ. It's what might be called an appeal to the "analog detour". This is a thing on my TV where if you used to enter "Add Station" it would first find the analog TV station and then Stop because it found a station. So it would never get around to even looking further for the digital station. Unlike the apple there is no foundation in science. And unlike the example of Detroit even, there is not even an example of some parrellel universe one could appeal to where it could be argued such and such a truth is true in THAT universe but not this one. On the contrary it appeals to a notion called "Heaven" which is utterly undefined and may not exist as we know it in ANY Universe. Theologians will tell you one thing- - and this is particularly true if they are "allerting you to the dangers of Eastern cults- - and that is that God created the Universe out of no part of himself. Nothing of God's essence is IN that Universe but all of what God is and ever will be remains in himself. Wayne Dyer speaks of belief in your mind actually altering what IS reality by the power of that belief. I've said this many times but if I had THAT kind of belief I'd be "running for position of God. Dyer states that belief is the key apart from any action spawned by that belief. For instance these people cease upon the story about a man who crossed Niagara falls on a rope with a wheel barrel and the question is could he cross it with a man inside. And the crowd says "I think he could" (perhaps secretly yearning for a disaster) Were a man to get in the wheel barrel he would be acting on that belief. If the man subsequently falls and drowns, these people like Fred Price and Wayne Dyer would say "well, the man's belief just wasn't strong enough". Do you see my point? I think you do. It has near nothing to, for instance looking for an oppertunity and taking a gamble that might or might not pay off. People do this and succeed every day. Now we come to the statement that stuck in my craw, this line about "If you have the Faith to accept it". This is one of those escape clauses you could drive a Mac Truck through. "If you have the faith to believe it, Adolph Hitler died for your sins and rose again". But this is how Christians define faith. We normal people define faith as "something we aren't certain of but have a lot of evidence to support". It's one of those inferencial things like a slugger batting a baseball and you know he hit it hard- - and now guessing where the ball is going to land. Fred Price once "put it to his congragation squarely "How many of you believe the earth revolves around the sun". People raise their hands. Fred Price scolds then, "You don't BELIEVE this - you KNOW it. And so I say what's the use of Belief?" If Fred Price were to ask "Do you believe Jesus is the son of God" and everybody said "Yes" then Fred would praise them for their confession of Faith. I'd like to expose this phrase of "If you have the Faith to believe it". Christians occasionally appeal to Socrates' alligory of the cave. This is where you are kept bound in chains and you see shadows on the wall and think the shadows are the real objects. Here we have a third type of illusion. In this case the BEST way to experiance the objects if to unchain yourself and venture into the sunlight and see the objects. But the action of unchaining yourself and getting up from your seat and venturing out is something real. It would be silly for a person while still in the cave to say "If you have the faith to believe it - - these shadows aren't the real thing" and just continue to sit there and do nothing. But some Christians would consider it some high blasphamy to dare to try and take the chains off, the same way that Christians consider it blasphamy to "Investigate" God. Never ask questions like "HOW did God create the Universe" or "How can you come up with a prayer to make you rich?" Christians like to talk, and Neil Savedra is a prime example - but the notion of acting as if God meant anything he said in the Bible to him is called pure presumption. So don't get healed and stay poor. God planned you that way. We have covered at least three types of illusion. Optical illusions and mirages are other types. Don't confuse the words Illusion and Delusion. They are two different things. There is nothing inherently false about an Illusion. And a lot of times, as we have shown, Illusions are the most real thing we have. We define real by what is provable in this Universe and I restrict that now to the four dimensional universe of the Scientists. Actually I'm a fan of the dimension pyramid or the "three - two - one" principle. Leo Le Port says that you should have Three copies of any computer file and it should be in Two different media (medums) and One copy off sight. In my pyramid I believe in three dimensions of space, two dimensions of time, and one dimension of "Intelligent energy" for lack of a better term, the psychic dimension. This dimension is one I refer to that is in the Telestial realm, as opposed to the "celestial realm", which escapes the Universe entirely. We deists say that God created this Universe and every event in it. God cannot intervene in what already is Tellios, to use a Greek word, to mean "Completed". Theologians should study Greek once in a while. If you are talking about a Telliological Argument, at least know what the word is. Like if you're going to talk about atomic weapons, at least know how to pronounce "Nuclear". Gene Scott used to refer to "God moving people around like chess men". You see that I can do this with a chess set. But in the process I don't turn into a piece of carved wood. I remain Me. But for God to enter into Time- - he would have to enter his own Creation which theologians remind us is "apart from Himself". It could better be stated thussly. "You can't intervene in something if you aren't a part of it". I think one person used the picture of teenagers hassling and mocking each other and chasing each other around. But if a business man steps out of a taxi cab and walks to the office past the teenagers, they aren't going to hassle him because they and him have no comon intercourse that they are both a part of. So it is with God and the universe, as He plainly says in scripture "My ways are not your ways". So let the people who want a God they worship who can never be investigated. I'm happy and they are happy. My view of the Fifth Dimension is based as you know upon the statement that "anything that CAN happen WILL happen, so in some dimension whatever you can congure up HAS happened. So if it HAS happened somewhere, no psychic who believes in the fifth dimension and teaches it can ever be wrong. Scientists tell us there used to be eleven dimensions and we lost seven of them. I teach we have six dimensions and one of them appears to be Missing. Having a strong psychic impression of something that never came to pass might be called "fifth dimensional cross talk" but this is a convienience of verbiage. Many will say, "You show an apalling lack of concern for men's souls". I am not even sure we HAVE a soul. We ARE a soul but do we HAVE one?? And if we do does it dissolve upon death and be dispursed into the cosmic winds. Or do we as the Buddhists teach -Keep our souls intact from Life Illusion to Life Illusion, only to be dissolved upon entering Nirvana? And is this a good or a bad thing?

I’m not going to do a blog until Tuesday for the mere fact that everybody is on a July 4^th holiday now. My current posting is about the Fourth of July so we’ll leave it at that. There is all this talk about who has the power in Afghanistan. They have no planes or satellites and yet we can’t defeat them after eight years. I’ve heard this “Dr. Phil” argument often called “raising the price of Poker” where the losing side “Doubles down” in a last ditch effort to win before giving up completely. So death rates on our side are up but never fear “peace is at hand”. However the Colon Powell doctrine says to come in with “overwhelming power” to defeat a foe, and Obama was incapable of doing that but instead holds out this fig leaf of a deadline for people like Hartman to get excited about when in reality he may withdraw a hundred men and say “see, the withdrawal has begun”. If we aren’t going to take the ten years it will take to win there, let’s leave now.

This picture is from July of 2005. Later on

I came up with the "back story" that the reason

why there were just 42 stars is because

Texas and other states has seceded from the Union

Today we have many weighty issues that need to be tackled. I see that there is no Thursday Days of our Lives episode. Wimbledon must have been on the TV. Of course I still don’t have my TV and it’s been something like three weeks and now we hear that the part won’t arrive till at least Monday and they might not be able to get it despite calling over a hundred places. This Fourth of July has featured the early “rolling up of the sidewalks” in preparation for a long Forth. Dr. Levy is taking off both Friday and Monday, and Congressional hearings of Justice Elena Kagan ended on Wednesday because of the three day extended memorial of Robert Byrd. Two radio programs have had substitute hosts all week. So you have this long four plus day weekend when apparently everybody is out of town, so they won’t be reading this posting, but I’ll type it anyhow. We remember the Fourth of July as the throwing off of a non representative government that was too big and impersonal. How ironic that the Tea Party crowd likes this big, moneyed, impersonal trans-national corporate government despite the fact that the original Boston Tea Party was a revolutions against big trans-national companies in favor of local industry. The Tea Party set is pretty farsical. They are a media creation and people are saying that by November they will have little influence left because even Republicans are able to see through them, to what they really are. We can hope. Of course we are reminded of the constitution and how lobbyists are among the groups specifically referenced in the Bill of Rights under “- - and the right of the people to peacefully petition the government for redress of grievances. I wish people would meditate on those words. It says “people” and it says “petition”. The words are not “corporations” and “bribe”. If there is an issue over which I have genuinely changed my position over the last ten years it’s the enormous, obscene amount of money that corporations spend to buy and corrupt government officials. When it comes to States Rights- - people assume that ALL provisions of the Bill of Rights are universal concepts, which they are not. Many say “the US Congress shall pass no law- - - as to a state religion or some such things. States were not precluded from having their own church. Certainly civic officials in cities and towns were free to express their own religious ideas in the community without running afoul of the Constitution. When it comes to the second amendment, here is another issue in which I have modified my belief. It opens with the phrase “a well regulated state militia being necessary for a free people- - -“. The reference is to States and also expresses the idea of being “well regulated”. To me this means the States have the power over things like gun laws. Besides this, because of a little thing like “settled case law” precludes people owning machine guns or rocket powered grenades or what not. Once something is “case law” overturning it is almost impossible. So the average person can expect the federal government to regulate what kind of arms he can have. Sometimes an idea will become more accepted merely because of the fact that it is the law. In this spirit the Health Care statute is more popular now than when it was passed, and will continue to gain in popularity. In the long run the right wing republicans are doomed and they know it. Unemployment is now down to 9.5% This is painfully slow progress. They say this is the lowest it’s been since June of 2009. I take no solace in this fact. In fact people are still predicting a double dip recession. Who would have guess we’d still be worried about this possibility one year into the recovery, so called. If we use Roosevelt as a model we can infer that the economy is failing to recover not because the things we’ve done haven’t worked, but rather because we aren’t doing them enough. In 1934 more democrats were elected to congress than existed already because the people thought we weren’t doing enough, or rather it was to spur the President on to keep doing what he’s been doing. (Selah)

The United State has its Valley Forge with George Washington crossing the Delaware. The Jews has their parting of the Red Sea. Unfortunately for the Jews that story was made up. It never happened. The Jews were never slaves in Egypt and there was no forty year wilderness trek as portrayed in the Bible. Barring this, and the first eleven or so chapters in Genesis- - I have little doubt that most of the stories related in the Bible actually happened – in one form or another. What I take issue with is the appearance of God’s intervention on every page. Just to refresh your memory, during their stay in Persia, perhaps do the influence of Zoroastrianism, the Jews had time to think and reflect. The trouble is that the Jews began to “over think”. People do this with too much time on their hands, and I have been guilty of it. So they begin to invent things that aren’t there and look for meaning “in depth” for mundane events that used to pass by as easily as water in a stream. If the Jews were really as “tight” with Jehovah as they claimed to be then they never would have lost their nation under the Romans in two unsuccessful wars of liberation. One of the last books of the OT cannon is the book of Esther. This is revealing because it is the least, of any book inclined to lean on a deity. People have noted that there is no prayer, per se, in Esther. A voice did not come out of a cloud, “Set aside the maid Esther for today she shall go forth to petition the King for the welfare of her people”. It didn’t happen that way. Life is a gamble. Indeed if there is one way Jesus, as portrayed by Neil Savadra, was never tempted such as we are, is that he never experienced uncertainty, which we mortals face every day. Every thing we do and decide is a gamble in one way or another, and this was certainly true with Esther. One wrong move and she could have had her head chopped off. You know, C S Lewis said in “The Screwtape letters” that the Future was the least real of all. We may remember the past but we live in the present. Harry Green preached in my formative years that “The present is all you have”. “Now” is the moment to choose. I’d like to get back to this notion of “over thinking” things. We watched a film on Kabbalah in Dr. Levy’s class on Wednesday. Dr. Levy rightly says that they go about dissecting God in ways where he becomes scarcely recognizable. The film started off with the prophet Ezekiel seeing those wheels in heaven, and went on to express a desire on just how God created the Universe. I’d like to know the answer to that myself. There was talk of use of the 22 letter Hebrew alphabet, and it got off into stranger stuff I won’t relate. It came to dawn on me that Dr. Levy and I believe almost the same thing- - and other than he hasn’t a tenth of the background on what Christianity is really like that I do- - I think we can find much common ground. I’d like to ask Dr. Levy “Would you say that the most important thing is to live for the here and now, or to live with Eternity ever in mind?” I honestly don’t know how he’ll answer that question but I intend to find out. You see if the future is really the “least real” thing, then we’re in trouble. Remember this: Life is fleeting, life is transient. Death is eternal. So when you think of Eternal- - just substitute Death. So when you hear “He’s gone to his eternal reward”, I have no dispute with you. Or when you say “God exist in the eternal dimension” again I have no dispute with you. When we speak of Eternity we speak of the absence of time. Scientists tell us that Time is a created artifact much as space and matter are. Without time first existing, you can’t have “life as we know it”. I’ll tell you the difference between Dr. Levy and myself. (it’s earlier in this file but this is for the blog readers) I believe “God created the Universe AND we should try to serve our fellow man and make the world a better place”. Dr. Levy believes “God created the Universe, THEREFORE we should serve our fellow man and make the world a better place. You see I believe the only sane way to view God especially if you’re a Jew- - is to view God as a functionally A-Moral Being. As such things like the Jews losing their temple won’t come as so much of a trauma. The Jews of old somehow managed to cope despite their loss. But every loss brings trauma, and every trauma, according to scientologists, brings aberrant behavior. And I believe in the Jew’s case it was getting super mystical and over analyzing everything to the point of error. And this is the key thing. I don’t say we should live as if every day is the last day of our lives. This would entail panic. But we should most certainly live as if God didn’t exist and as if Eternity were not our friend. I even think Neil Savadra in his saner moments would give ascent to the same thing. There are cosmic questions and we should certainly pursue them. But life goes on every day- - and we should live our lives while we have it.