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)