TAKING BACK OUR POWER

A Democratic Contract with America

I think I’d like to call this essay “Taking back our Power” or some such thing. The democrats have more power than we know. As you may know, most of the primaries in the country are open primaries now, which means that democrats can vote for the republican candidate of their choice knowing their own guy is safe. In light of this ability, all we democrats need to do is to pick a candidates for the republicans to nominate, since there are so many of us, and this candidate needs also to be one whose philosophy can be torn apart by the media, and better still will be a thing of revulsion to the republican head haunchos and the tea party backers. In other words we want a candidate whose views will never be main stream, but also one where many tea party issues won’t even be up for discussion because their candidate won’t support them. We definitely want a candidate who is NOT a “team player” and who bucks the party line. Such a candidate is Ron Paul. As you Ron Paul is against our foreign wars and wants to cut defense. He’s also for leaving gays alone and also wants to legalize many drugs. As such if we pick him we can insure that from March or so on of 2012 these issues will no longer be in the media spotlight. Wouldn’t you like that? I would. I think we’ve had enough gay bashing for a while. We can settle some of the other issues later. Ron Paul’s candidicy will insure that we get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and also I believe Ron Paul is to some degree or another for civil liberties and against government encroachments in areas like surveillance and will protect our first, fifth, sixth, and seventh amendment rights to a fair trial and all. Randy Rhodes would like to see Michelle Bachman get the nomination. God only knows why. Sarah Palin spurred on the right wing whacko cause like Mc Cain never could have without her. All of the dingbats crawled out from under their rocks to join her movement. The same thing is happening now with Michelle Bachman. I would hardly want to encourage that. If they want to talk about how Paul Revere rode through the streets of Berlin shouting that the British are coming, and made a personal visit to the Czar in Germany to let the Jews go from secret prison camps in Switzerland- - the worst thing isn’t that she says it but people will believe it. I guess the Liberty Bell is in Plymouth Rock, and Abraham Lincoln worked tirelessly to insure that corporations had free speech, or whatever. To all this lunacy the democrats have no come-back. They say that silence on an issue is tantamount to agreement. If we accept that there will be no new corporate taxes or loopholes done away with, then the Republicans will only come back with yet more outrageous demands. They always to.

What we Democrats need to do is put out our own ten point “Contract with America” and have a set of political principles that will sway neutrals on to our side. So we need to come up with planks that are goals for us to get enected. (1) Some of these might be the Impeachment of Justice Clarence Thomas, for instance. You can make a pretty impressive argument here and I have done so previously. Keep his name ever before the media as a possible “suspect” or “bad guy” in the eyes of the American people. Knowing Thomas as we all do he will explodes with expletives and other invectives that won’t play well with the public. (2) Another plank is to propose a constitutional amendment clarifying the fact that corporations are not people and don’t have first, fourth, and fifth amendment constitutional rights. (3) Then we should go after the lobbyists in another measure. I thought it was illegal to bribe politicians. We need a whole batch of restrictive new laws against lobbyist abuse and impose strict penalties with fixed prison terms that can’t be shortened. (4) We need a religious liberty plank declaring that no religion, even Islam is an “enemy of the country” and remind people that “The founding fathers came to America to ESCAPE religious oppression and not to ESTABLISH it.” (5) We should have a plank that withdraws all troops from Iran and Afghanistan. We should make appeals to the troops themselves saying “You are no longer needed. You can go home now and take your rest knowing you have served your country well, but now we are no longer at war”. (6) And we also need to bring back the fairness doctrine and nail both Reagan and Clinton for the measures they enacted that have made the media the mess it is today. Perhaps the media themselves may be a little queasy about this one but let’s try it. (7) We need to promote the idea that protective terrifs are patriotic and if you want to be a good American you will buy American and support the US Economy. (8) We need another plank to go after Wall Street. Let’s get the American people on our side and say that Wall Street is the enemy and the measures passed under the waning days of the Clinton were bad for the economy and bad for America. Tell them that from the 1930’s through the ‘nineties the necessity of these Wall Street regulations was never questioned. (9) We should also throw in one about Space Exploration such as “Let’s put a man on Mars by 2030”. This one may not go anywhere but it will grab the attention of people like me and other science geeks. (10) And finally we need an aggressive new jobs bill to help rebuild our crumbling infra-structure. Our roads, bridges and water works are falling apart. We need to really go after these Republicans with their myopic fixation on short term solutions and “Whatever will look impressive on next quarter’s balance sheet”. There is the outline, so let’s get to it!

This afternoon I wanted to take a look at the great professed icon of the right wingers, that this being Christian Faith, since we all know the pilgrims fled England to get away of the encroaching rationalism and liberalism that was creeping into the Church of England. So I went back to Justin Martyr and read “Apology” (and I wish somebody would!) Years ago I downloaded “Dialog with a Greek” but I need to download Apology I too. It’s interesting to see that at no time does Justin ever attempt to PROVE anything (for instance why his son is gay) He never tries to PROVE anything but merely STATES what he believes and CALLS it proof. Oddly you never once see the term “tomb” in the piece. There is zero reference to any name of an apostle such as Paul, or James, or Peter. There is no reference to Pentacost or what happened that day. No “Mary” is ever referred to but oddly the word “Virgin” does appear. There is no reference either in Acts or in Justin’s piece just what the first Christian church consisted of in terms of- - did St. Peter just say one day, “OK I’m setting up a church and all my buddies can run it”. There is no reference to James becoming the head of the Jerusalem church in Acts, or how that could have happened. If I make a statement it will be scrutinized. You used to hear about all of the “Elvis” sightings, but no “church of Elvis” ever got started. In the 1980’s I referred to all of the “Bones sightings” referring to a black and white cat that disappeared from the Bosc house around Newyears 1985. Most of these “signtings” are only supported by me, except Frank saw him once. So you may say, “That’s plausible”. If we up the ante a bit we come to 1987 and 1988 and the “Denise sightings”. Of course you’ve heard about “Denise De Lovely” and various statements are made about her. But it’s harder to substantiate these because there is a lot more vagueness and uncertainty. And should I venture further into “Never Never Land” and make a statement like “Denise told someone that I was really the Walrus in those Beatle songs” you might think “OK, the guy is off his trolly now”. Let’s come back to Christianity now. We hear how the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts was blinded by a bright light and knocked off his horse- - and had to be led by others and then he prayed and a guy came and healed him. But then we are told Paul went down to the local synagogue and preached to the congragagion that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God and swayed them with “Many convincing proofs”. I’d like to know what those “Many convincing proofs” were. Then we are told he went to Jerusalem and tried to join the Apostles but they wouldn’t accept him into their group until Barnabus interceded for Paul. Here again we see the twelve disciples Jesus personally taught as the “bad guys”, I suspect, because they are JEWS, a sin exceeded by no other. Try going into a church today and stand up and start preaching your own made-up doctrine and see how far you get. They will escort you out, and if you’re lucky you won’t land on your ass. Yet we “seekers of truth” are compelled to accept such improbabilities. Clearly in Justin’s apology there is no attempt to say “how anything got started” or the mental processes the disciples went through to conclude either that Jesus had never committed a sin in his entire life, or that he was the son of God. No. Religious people START with a conclusion and as necessity dictates, they make up a few supporting details later.

This morning I went out at eight to join the van to go to the 99 cent store. I was last to put my name on the list. There were Richard Powers and Loretta and Glen and many others sitting on the bench. Sarah let Glen go on the first trip because someone dropped out. Marryanne Woods and Arlene and me and others went on the second van trip back to my old neighborhood under overcast skies, which remained so all the time I was there. The neighborhood hadn’t changed much. We arrived about a quarter to nine. I went to Stater Brothers next door. I felt like kind of a putz because let’s face it. I hadn’t been in a supermarket since former President H W Bush. (OK, that’s verbal hyperbola) Nothing seemed that different although coffee was substantially more than Dana had led me to believe. I bought a two pound can of Stater Brothers house brand of coffee. I had completely lost my “price sense” over the years. I got the wrong filter and unwrapped it to make sure and then took it back and was able to exchange it for one I was sure about. I had trouble finding the coffee creamer section. I went right by it because it was all French Vanilla and Café Late and all that stuff- - . So I picked up just those three things. I paid with fourteen ones that Milvern Drysdale had given me yesterday when he was under one of Samantha’s spells. I counted out fourteen. She counted thirteen. I took the bills and laid them down one by one- - fourteen. She insisted on counting them again and this time she got fourteen. I got a bit of change. Brenda was still out there from the first trip and I talked to her. Then came the waiting. Finally at 10:15 I lit up a cigarette, remembering I had them with me. My back was starting to get sore. We got there at quarter to nine and the van didn’t arrive till 10:25 when we finally boarded. Sarah made no apology for this. We went right home except we took a “short-cut” through that tract.