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.