LEAVING THE PAST BEHIND

Now I have the darkest shade of green up here.  I thought I'd be doing this posting in Firefox but just this morning Google Chrome invited me to download so I did, so now I have their nice picture on like I had before.  At least they wanted to transfer all my settings.  Andy got my bookmarks to the new Firefox but History seems to be lost.  History begins with "Today" in Firefox.  Just to update you readers as to what's been going on, I know I did not post for three days.  The last entry was a Saturday morning update.  Andy came in the afternoon to bring me my new Computer which is one of these Jay Leno antique jobs from Leno's garage or something.  But the boot up is faster.  I have about 50% more RAM and the speed is up to 3.07 gigs.  But the big thing is I don't have all that junk clogging up my system upon start up.  Before there was all this stuff I didn't dare un-check because i didn't know what it did- - - and I had stuff like Voice recognition I'm only ever used a few times because it makes mistakes.  Adobe Media player kept rechecking itself in the Start-up menu.  And I'm also free of Yahoo Messenger now.  Before my desktop was filled with stuff from Dell and Napster and Kazzah, and Vongo and Milkago - - stuff I never used.  The programs I do want to download again are I Tunes, Sketch, Picassa, and Earth.  So understandibly I've been busy shuffling files around and organizing home page defaults the way I like them.  I've been doing other things and yesterday I developed a sudden, bad cold, which threw off my rhythm.  But the thing is there hasn't been anything in the news worth commenting on later so it was no real loss that I wasn't posting for three days.  I was never cut off from the internet, so I could have posted if I had wanted to.


Mc Cain and Fred Thompson were on Sunday.  Mc Cain is smarter than any of the previous eight republican candidates running and strangely, even at this juncture, Mc Cain would be a better candidate choice out of those eight.  Fred Thompson has that distinct type of "David Mc Millon" Tennessee accent that Al Gore Sr. had and some of Elvis's friends like Red West and Sam Philips had.  Newtie is looking bad in the polls.  He still has that Kermit the Frog vocal inflection he needs to do something about.  Romney is leading fifteen points in the polls, but Romney has been there before and we know what happened.  If Romney wins Florida it may be all over because places like Maine and Nevada in February will favor Romney and by March, Newt may lave lost all his momentum.  So February will be a new month in a lot of ways.  Of course in my personal life my monitery problems will be a thing of the past after tomorrow- - at least hopefully.  These past two weeks have been rather tight.  In terms of the photograph, when I get around to downloading it, it is Loretta Hill and Richard Powers, two people I miss.  One is dead and the other is not available.  Seid and Nicky were apparently unable to get Loretta to sign that hospital visitation form they wanted people to sign so that Seid could visit them if they became ill.  I didn't want to do it.  Of course now Seid and Nicky haven't been here this whole month of January.  I don't know if it's from our end of perhaps their end.  The last time Seid was here on Christmas night he said that "I'm making an exception and saying it's OK for you people to smoke as long as you live here".  That could have gotten him into trouble with the Mormon superiors.  Clearly the people who run this place are fundamantalist Christians who talk about Satan all the time, so there may be a problem there, too.  Anyhow- February will be a new month and a different month.  Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we enjoyed what I call "super-bowl weather" because those three days, and some of Monday were warm, dry and clear blue sky with streaky clouds like the desert.  If they had Super Bowl when they used to that would have sync'd right in.  I've never understood this whole two week thing.


Sixty Minutes had that Texas ranch that's turned into an African safari hunting experiance.  It's kind of like an amusement park for rich people where you pay a fancy price to bag a rare wild beast.  I've been the matter a lot of thought and concluded that there is nothing wrong with the opperation.  It certainly will preserve a lot of species that by now might have gone extinct in Africa.  It's a place where people can come and have that "African safari experiance" kind of like Lion Country safari used to be in Irvine 40 years ago.  But the government is sticking their nose in things.  Governments like to do that.  Now you know that "Tweets" will be  censored  - - so that there can be no more "Arab Springs".  Of course Qatar organized the previous Arab spring a year ago and it was a good thing.  But now "twitter" is bowing to pressure.  Google will start collecting information on all of us, hopefully not to be turned over to the government, but you never know.


Thom Hartman wants to remind us that by law in the 'sixties- - all health care coverage had to be non profit and so Blue Cross and Blue Shield and all the rest used to be strictly non profit.  They say a single payer health care bill narrowly missed passage by two democratic votes here in California.  That is interesting to know.  Now Hartman wants us all to contact four particular democratic state senators.  Of course you know that it's a myth that Grover Norquist is for small government.  He is only against limiting people who would cramp his personal brand of dictatorship style.  He wants a center statist government where Cities are "owned" by the States and have no rights to their own property but all the property belongs to the State regardless of any contractual stipulation.  So valuable local parks and monuments will be turned over to a central government to opporate at a profit, or not at all.  Also the European Banks want to take over the Greek government and buy up all their ancient wonders and conduct tours at a profit and not give the Greeks access to any of their own revenues.  Sounds crazy.  Now Norquist wants to impeach President Obama if he allows the Bush tax cuts of 2003 to expire.  And of course there is this one billionaire republican congressmen who wants to hold up all sorts of government posts that are vacent in the Obama administration, till he can get some sort of hard assurance about the Canadian - Texas oil pipeline.  So these are crazy times.


Now on the Thom Hartman show there is a new term introduced called "solipsism" or something, and I see that word is not red lined.  Far from being an Objectivist as I claim to be,  solipsism is the belief that only the Self exists and when you die, you don't really die; it's just the world that goes away.  But a more dangerous aspect than this is that people like Ayan Rand and such are classic sociopaths in that they view other people as just cardboard cut-out things like targets in a video game to be moved around and shot at, but having no life of their own.  Classicly a sociopath has no empathy or feelings at all for any other person.  I talked about two major flaws in Calvary Chapel Christianity.  The one if the obvious is that your status is determined not by your own character or by how much you love or give to others, but rather how much "God" has loved or given to you and bestowed Blessings on you.  It seems that "Blessings" are the 'moral capital" in the world of Calvary Christianity.  But the other is the Grover Norquist problem.  That is not that their government is too strong but too weak.  So that you don't feel as you are joining a Church with an established government and set theology and organizations and rules everybody knows about and respects.  Rather it's like some dog eat dog business.  It's a cult of personalities where the strong rule over and devour the weak.  As I said, with Grover Norquist he doesn't mind big government is he gets to be the dictator.  Indeed his form of government might be called the Dictatorship of the international Corporatist.  It's just that Norquist doesn't want any governmental rules on his own actions.  Just as strong, carismatic figures within Calvary Christianity don't mind weak government of the church because it gives Them a lot more personal power with no sense of accountability or checks and balances.  Otherwise Chuck Smith senior comes out of a Calvinist Baptist tradition and as such in this way his background is little different from my own, and as such it's hard to have a genuine dispute with any of his basic theology - - except for the end of the world stuff - which is only used as a basic lure and come-on for new-comers, and then is discarded.  There is of course a psychological danger of anyone why buys into this stuff too much in that their alligences are with some imagined fantasy "hereafter" rather than problems of this real world, with real people with real lives and real concerns.  (Selah)  Dr. Levy asked us yesterday why more religions don't teach tollerence of other Faiths.  I said "It's just anathema to everything we've ever been taught, no matter which denomination we come out of.  We just aren't conditioned into even thinking in those terms."  (Selah)

RANDOM QUESTIONS
updated Saturday morning

Do you agree with the proposition, "If God didn't exist, it would have been necessary for man to have invented him".


If necessity is the mother of invention, what is the Father of it?


If a triangle had four sides, how many faces would a tetraheden have?  (this question is answerable)


In the song "Yes, we have no bananas", how many bananas Don't they have?


"I do not say that you should NOT do the Project you have in mind"  So what am I saying?


The Bible says "There is a sin that is unto death (a Mortal sin)  I do not say that you should pray for the Salvation of such a person".  So am I saying you should pray for this or that person to go to Hell?


True or false: In any room, for instance one with a standing wave of 200 hertz, other "feedback" frequencies would occur at direct numeric multiples of 200.


What "anomalies" does one notice in the Answers in the "addition of velocities" equation of Einstein?  I'm looking for a rational answer to this question.l  Hint. Hint.  How does this relate to a "simpler" or at least alternate way of computing the formula.


And now an editorial response to a KNX radio feature on smoking bans.  - - -  My prospective employer wanted me to sign a contract saying he could have sex with my wife anytime he wanted to as a condition for employment there?  Since sex with my wife is neither illegal nor is it a "protected status" like race or religion - is this a valid contract?


James Dobson believes that all Morality is black and white and there are no "shades of gray" but any immoral act is equally as bad as any other.  Funding of Troops for WW II is a good thing.  Smoking is a bad thing.  Therefore since money is a "fungible comodity" and you never know which dollar will be the one used for free cigarettes for troops, no funding bill should be passed for Troops for WW II.  (right???)  Tell it to my Mom.


God is a perfect being; Jesus was a perfect being; Therefore Jesus was God.  (valid?)


No man has died and gone to heaven and come back and report on his experiences.  Jesus was a man.  Therefore - - - what can we conclude?


If A is greater than B -- OR -- B is greater than C --OR -- A is greater than C, can C ever be greater than B and B be greater than A?


If A to the third times B to the fourth equals C to the seventh,   If A = D and D = B - -Express the value of C in terms of A.  express the value of C in terms of B.


Jeopardy Math:  What is the number in a baker's dozen divided into the ASCII value of control Z- - stated as a ratio between the number of different sexes in a gay marriage?


Johnny is twice as old as Ricky.  If I sign an advertising contract with NBC for six times the length of a session of congress and it's also the total of Johnny and Ricky's ages, how old are Johnny and Ricky, respectively?


If God is a "fully actualized being" as theologians concur that he is, meaning God cannot increase his sense of purpose or "fulfillment" by any future act, then by this reasoning God had no logical motive to create the Universe and the earth, given the human definition of the term "logical".


You are stranded in a frictionless piece of ice holding a pet beagle with claws like a cat in your arms.  How do you move on the ice from your current position?


Where do you save more money?  Paying full price for an item with no sales tax or taking a ten percent discount on an item and paying a 10.25% sales tax?


Is it utilitarian philosophy properly exercised to piggy back on someone elses' wireless internet all the time?  (open ended question)


If a moral utilitarian chooses also to believe in determinism, then logically speaking, in his own mind, what profit has he gained by adding this to his belief system, over choosing to not adopt it?


Is a president who decides he'd rather be a one term president rather than compromise his principles making a moral decision if he honestly believes none of his rivals is qualified to be President?


If what is Real is always greater than what is imagined, then would it or would it not follow that the only thing more powerful that could possibly Exist, other than man imagining God, would be for God to actually exist, and therefore he does exist. (?)


Is it sound logical reasoning to believe in an afterlife on the grounds that it is utterly impossible to Imagine any situation where one ceases to exist?


In a major ninth chord, how many major bi tonal chords are there and how many minor bi tonal chords are contained as its componets?


In portions of the EM spectrum using FM transmission, there is one area that takes up more logarithmic "space" on the scale than any other having the highest ratio of low to high of exactly five to nine.  What is this band normally used for.  (check your old Ten Band radio)


Would it be an oxy-moronism to speak of a "Bound Radical"?


If you are on the phone conversation and right off your friend makes a statement that prompts you to say "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say" but after a half hour he makes the identical statement again and you respond "That's the smartest thing you've said in the whole conversation".  Is this inconsistent?


What is the smallest consecutive intiger ratio of bi-tonal sound frequencies you'd ever care to hear in a chord?


Do you, like me, believe there is far too Little of isolation of Variables on Christian testimonies?


Computers are limited by linear logic in that they are incapable of "connecting up all the dots" if some of them are missing.  This also prevents a whole lot of bad logical mistakes.  (Selah)


One guy answered every question on an IQ test correctly.  The nest day he walked into a room with a bunch of his former friends and acts all pompous.  They say to them "Who the hell do you think you are- - infallible or something?"  Mr. Data says "He believes his mental performance is superior to anybody' s - and he is correct".


Someone computed how much Mitt Romney did NOT keep in income but deducted the percent he paid in taxes compounded by the figure he gave to the Mormon Church.  Each figure separately is 15% of the gross and he calculated the total compounded figure as being 32.25%  Is He correct?


If God says he'll pay for your movie admission and gives you the money for it.  If you walk up to the ticket booth and give him all of the money God just gave you but the ticket taker says he can't accept it- - can this be taken as a "Faith Challenge" by God in your life, or is it to be constrewed as something much simpler?

Some of the news from Libya is troubling.  According to Hartman,  the nation of Libya has degenerated into sort of a Cambodian slaughter situation.  The new government is engaging in so much torture that doctors are going on strike refusing to treat the victims in protest. (?)  I would hate to think that people like Michelle Bachman were right all along and that the world was “meddeling in other’s affairs”.  Of course I didn’t say it at the time but Mal Evans and the Federation were always rather chilly tword the idea of Quadafi’s removal, saying “he wasn’t all that bad”.  I guess you just never know in that part of the world.  Hartman now says “It’s always bad when an outside force removes your national leader, rather than the People rising up and doing it themselves.  So perhaps we should have let nature take it’s course. Here is more info.  NATO planes aren’t dropping bombs on Libya anymore and Moammar Gadhafi, the infamously eccentric and cruel long-time dictator of the North African country, is dead and buried like a stray dog in an unmarked desert grave. But Libya’s no paradise now that it’s ruled—mostly—by the National Transitional Council, the political home of former anti-Gadhafi rebels. The group Médicins Sans Frontières raised serious concerns on Thursday when it pulled out of a Misrata prison, saying they’d been asked to treat prisoners showing clear signs of torture. Amnesty International, meanwhile, released a report about how detainees of the NTC government had recently died in custody, suggesting they had been brutally interrogated.  In Syria violence is increasing.  And the Arab League and the UN want to take steps against Assad and Syria, but they are facing a Russian veto of any action against Libya.  Of course Pat Buchannon whoosed out on the whole Georgia invasion question a couple of summers ago saying how “We don’t want to offend Russia”.  If Newt Gingrich wants our country to take proactive measures in Syria that’s good enough for me.  At least barring any “dark elements” among Syrian rebels.

According to Thom Hartman, “Colleges for Profit” aren’t doing as well as other colleges.  I’m not sure what that means.  Normally colleges get better with age and status and the donations that flow to them and the calabre of teachers they are then able to hire and the subsequent experience of those teachers.  But Hartman says that Obama wants to take away student loans for “colleges for profit” and somehow this is a subtle slap at the Republicans.  Criss Business Colleges, where I got my degree, was little more than a hole in the wall of a large “Industrial Mall” and I don’t question their academic credentials, but I would not be a bit surprised if they were no longer around.

The experts say they are “disappointed” with the 2.8% rise in the gross domentic product in the last quarter of 2011 and now say they were expecting over three percent, despite my knowing of that same 2.8% figure weeks ago.  Now they are saying that it’s because government itself has contracted expenditures more in the last quarter than at any time since the immediate spend-down after the Korean War.  So really it’s something we should be proud of, shouldn’t we?   It’s hard to follow this Florida race without a score card.  It now seems contrary to what we were saying just a post or two ago, that the tide has swong again in favor of Romney and against Newt.  Newt has, justly in my opinion, accused CNN and the “Republican establishment” of packing the crowd with Romney partisans.  Romney didn’t function that impressively, but crowd “ambience” colors people’s opinions.  When you have Bob Dole, Charlie Christ, Anne Colter, Matt Druge, and most damning of all Tom “The Hammer” Delay coming out against you in one day, you know you are having a bad day.  Gingrich lost all his fire.  Of course the blow from Tom Delay must have hit Gingrich especially hard (pardon the pun) because they were best friends, weren’t they- during the 1998 period when they worked together.  At any rate Santorum is through but he’s going to hang on a little longer.  It doesn’t matter that from what I have gathered Santorum performed the best of any of the four,  logic doesn’t count for much these days.  So this whole race may be over in four days.  Today is Friday and last night was the final debate for a long time before we go into that long February hiatus.  So next month I will probably doing a lot fewer posts on politics.

IRAN LEADER AGAIN SEEKING PEACE ACCORD WITH United States

Akmedenijab is wanting to talk Peace again.  It seems the world wide sanctions have been more effective than I personally imagined.  It seems all the money in western bank accounts has been frozen.  And nobody is buying their oil so they have to sell it to China and getting the oil to China is the same as Canada’s problem getting it there.  It’s no easy feat.  Iran’s currency exchange value has dropped 40% hiking the price of badly needed imports for the people.  But there are other historic facts you ought to know.  First of all this is not the first time Iran has wanted to make peace.  According to Thom Hartman (I’ve heard the story nowhere else) back after 9 – 11 the leader of Iran contacted President Bush that they could cooperate to try and capture Bin Laden.  President Bush refused.  But more to the point.  Bob Ney (?) was the only other congressman who was jailed from the Jack Abramoff affair other than Jack himself.  The Bush administration went after Congressman Ney because he spoke Farsi, the language of Iran.  And Ney had learned that Akmedinajab wanted to talk Peace and was even willing to consider recognizing Israel.  If President Obama is able to somehow pull off a peace deal with Iran that would certainly defuse the impact of people like Michelle Bachman, who want to declare World War III the first day upon assuming office.

Governor Jan Brewer wagged her finger in President Obama’s face as he got off the plane to highlight some point on which she disagreed with him.  Of course the photo was quickly picked up on the internet.  They say that Brewer did it to boost her book sales.  Others on call in shows have pointed out that Arizona has in general had a really wasted bunch of immediate previous governors.  Many conservatives regard it as a badge of honor to disgrace the President of the United States, which is pathetic.

They say that magic mushrooms of Phylociben- - in small doses, can be used to treat depression because it decreases certain “depression hormones” produced in the brain of depressed people, according to Hartman.  I just happened to think that perhaps some who came to Jesus around 1970 were still searching for that “feeling of connectedness” that they claim Phylociben produces.   Could it be that religion is just a trick of brain chemistry to begin with?  Dobson says “Your feelings will lie to you”.  The normal rejoinder to this or “the rest of the sentence” is “We want you to adopt OUR feelings”.  But there is another rejoinder I haven’t pursued.  If someone like me for instances knows in his gut that “things just aren’t the same” as with other Christians.  You know you just aren’t “fitting in”.  They will tell you to ignore this feeling NOT because they themselves don’t judge their OWN relation with God by THEIR feelings, but rather they Want don’t your problem to be “fixed”.  Because you’re “not one of them” and so they will do nothing to do anything that might “enable you” to fit in better.  These people "thought" of the word "Enabeler" in disparaging terms before Dr. Phil overtly used this term.  Pete Richards reading over some Bible Study notes to a friend once remarked "I don't like people to the group coming and trying to "fix" Marcus"  (spring 1980)  The implication here was obvious.  But in truth there are only two grand truths of Calvary Chapel religion.  One is “You’re a Christian if you feel like you know Christ” and the other is “You shall be judged by the Blessings you get from God, which increase your bragging capital”.  I have no doubt that aside from the “Andromeda connection” we have discussed in later sixties music- - there was a Cosmic Awareness and artistic instinct of music from this era that is virtually unparrelled.  Of course you know, don’t you that if you tell Chuck Smith or Neil Savedra of some “work of God” in your life and you are NOT a member of their group, they will do everything in their power to try and Talk You Down- - and discourage you.  (Selah)

President Obama made a convincing argument for letting illegal aliens stay here is they came here at a young age with their parents.  I still have my doubts, but it does make sense that if they get a degree in something- - not to just go home and share their new technology back in their native country.  The President picked up on Rick Perry’s “boots on the ground” remark by saying we now have more Boots on the Ground at the border than we have ever had and that illegal border crossings are way down now.

Mitch Daniels of Indiana has sign that state’s “Right to Work” law, or as Thom Hartman calls it, the “right to work for less” law.  In the past I’ve had no real problem with Taft Hartley.  I’ve gotten in arguments countless times with Stewart Sutcliffe on this issue of unions.  (“You argue with dead people?”)  The issue is that 22 states of this land are “right to work” laws and these states are mainly in the South.  In these states Unionism is virtually dead.  Here’s why.  Suppose everyone wanted to elect a President that wanted to raise taxes and he won by 55% of the vote.  It would not be legal for me to decide “well I’m just not going to pay those higher taxes because I didn’t vote for the man”.  Yet this is the case with right to work.  You hold a vote at a business, and preferably it’s a secret vote to guard against mob intimidation.  You vote to Unionize your shop.  And so the Union comes and gets you better working conditions and higher wages.  And then you decide, “Well, I’m just not going to pay union dues”.  Stewart says this is wrong.  Harry Truman in his veto message of 1947 of Taft-Hartley said that this measure would be “divisive in the work place” and it doesn’t take too much imagination to see that happening. Ronald Reagan in an often repeated 1948 Democratic Party campaign spot, says that Standard Oil’s profits were up 70% in the year of 1948 and yet worker’s wages didn’t move as the Republicans had promised in 1946 when they promised to “bring more competition into the business world”.   Of course Mitch Daniels allegedly only was able to balance the State budget from raiding the unemployment fund for workers.  I wonder how many other Republican “economic miracle workers” have resorted to the same tactics to balance their own budgets?  It seems as if Governor Scott Walker may be guilty of outright criminal activities.  We had 35% unionization before Taft-Hartley.  By the time Ronald Reagan became President it was down to 25%.  Right now 93% of workers in the private sector are not unionized.  But as Stu Baby points out “You take away that remaining nine percent and all sorts of things will happen”.  They say that work place accidents are 53% higher in right to work for less states.  Wages are lower and one and all agree that union dues are well worth it, even if they are automatically taken out of your pay check.  Gordon Gecko’s motto was “Greed is good”.  Steve Jobs obviously followed that credo when he decided to have the I phone and I pad made in China where the workers get paid 84 cents an hour.  At that rate they still will earn more money per week than these “jobs programs” at places like Founders where your work hours at $3.00 an hour are quite limited.  But Steve Jobs had a moral decision to make and he flunked the test.  He would either sell a little more “product” at a lower price and higher profit, or else do the right thing and not feed the Chinese exploitation machine and give American workers a break, and sell the devices for what they actually cost to make.  Somebody said this decision along costs America 800,000 jobs.  (?)  Of course back fifty years ago in magazines and publications we were told of this golden “Jetson’s” type era where you would work a 25 hour day and have lots of leisure time because robots and computers would do all the hard lifting, so to speak, freeing up human beings for less repetitive and more expansive and creative employment.  That didn’t happen.  But it’s downright silly for those on the right to ignore the fact that we’re never going to get certain jobs back and no tax race panacea will cure it.   Ronald Reagan taking credit for the economic recovery of 1983 is like the rooster taking credit for the sun coming up.  These things run in well established economic cycles and Paul Volker is to blame for both recession and the recovery to follow, and those who refuse to accept this basic fact are fools.  And yet this vaunted “recovery” seems to be the ONLY thing the right wants us to even remember the Reagan Administration for.

A British scientific study concluded that fried foods do NOT cause increase incidences of heart attacks, provided you use the right kind of oil, such as sunflower oil.  I’m uncertain whether this specification applies to ANY unsaturated vegetable oil  But I have always regarded this “fat” and cholesterol scare as something just for book writers to make money and for legislators to stick their noses in our private business.  I believe every American has the right to make his or her own decisions in life and to chart his own destiny.  Thomas Jefferson said “Government which governs best is one that governs least.  And Abraham Lincoln is even alleged to have made the statement “Government should do only those things for the people that they cannot do for themselves”.

Newt Gingrich right now is in a dead heat with Romney in Florida, which, if past experience is any guide, that means he will win over Romney by at least fifteen percent.  It seems this paying taxes issue is the one issue of the left, which actually has gained “traction” with the center and right.  However Mitt Romney is the one who still leads the President in polls by 47% to 45% or something, which I find mystifying.  However even Newt Gingrich seems to be turning a little green around the gills lately as certain things have lately cropped up.  For instance there is the Nancy Pelosi “secrets” thing.  I would imagine there are untold files of data on Gingrich at her disposal that the public does not know the contents of.  Mitt Romney warned Newt today that “If there is anything harmful that she has, you better come forth with it now, or else Nancy will bring it up at a time when it will be most harmful to the campaign”.  The trouble with Newt is that he is an arrogant fool, and that will be his undoing.  There is one source that stated that Gingrich said in an interview that “I think having affairs makes you normal so you campaign better because the people hate identifying with someone whose perfect all the time”.  And now Gingrich has officially retracted his claim made in Thursday’s debate that ABC rejected “all sorts of friends at the time who knew the truth about me and Maryanne”.  It seems that “all sorts of contemporaries” amounts to his two daughters by a previous wife, who would naturally have a bias against Maryanne.  Now of course Newt Gingrich wants to have a US permanent colony on the Moon by the end of his second term in 2021.  This sounds like something I might say in a campaign, and as such I can’t fault him for it.  Newt said in another interview that a 30% capital gains tax would crash the stock market.  I have said till I’m blue in the face that the opposite is true.  If capital gains went to zero that THIS would crash the Markets.  I pointed out that even Mitt Romney knows better than to take such a drastic disinvestment incentive economic step.  There is no question but that Romney knows a lot more about economics than Gingrich, if he chooses to use that knowledge constructively.  But Newt has other problems with people like Anne Colter and the Drudge report.  That bunch has turned against Gingrich now saying he is not a real conservative; not “one of them”.  This is the kiss of death.  They have accused Newt of disparaging Ronald Reagan.  Tonight is another debate and this one I’m going to watch.  People say that Newt looked a little uneasy and shifty-eyed in the previous debate.  None of us know just when the next Newt Gingrich “flame-out’ moment is coming.  All we know is that’s not a question of whether, but when.  (Selah)

I have learned just this afternoon that I will be getting my new computer this Saturday around lunch time.  I don't imagine it will impact any of my postings but they will continue as always.  What I need to do now is come up with a fitting profile photograph of myself.  I'm thinking of using that multi-faced one.

IS NEWT GINGRICH GUILTY OF MAJOR PERSONAL BRIBERY DEAL WITH IRAQ?

Randy Rhodes had a lot of constructive, positive remarks to share today at noon.  But the larger question is why liberals don’t get traction.  Why did the Presidential speech have such low viewership?  This is not good.  I downloaded the text and it’s a long text and ran an hour and five minutes or so.  But there were far fewer applause.  There were some obvious applause lines met with dead silence.  Rush Limbaugh referred to the speech as an “occupy Wall Street rally”.  You would have thought since back in January of 2006 when I began listening to progressive radio that the left would be quite organized and effective by now.  But they aren’t.  I would have never believed you if you told me none of those issues would ever gain general “traction”.   How can a candidate “crash and burn” in Iowa and now be leading in the polls in Florida, and believe me- this one counts.  Not only is it by far the biggest state and also much more of a cross section urban state than any previous state, but they say Florida is a winner take all primary, so that the winner gets all the gold, and nobody else gets squat.  In some ways this is a dream scenario for democrats.  You have the top two Republicans tearing at each other’s throat, and basically seem to despize one another.  These economic issues are petty beyond belief and would scarcely be a blip on the radar screen any other year prior to 2008.  And you have an impressive list of Presidential accomplishment both at home and abroad.  You have some of the most marked consumer reform in years.  You have a President who is willing to get quite specific as to his plans.  You have an even tempered President who is not swayed in the least by the most vicious criticism and even overt threats.  You have the meer passage of time where yesterday “young voters” are in positions of influence now.  Assuming younger voters to be the more liberal, this should be positive.  At the same time memories of that great Icon- - - - president Reagan - -  would have to be fading since if your were forty-one now you would have been just ten years old when Reagan was elected.   Vast segments of the population would have no memory of President Carter at all.  In fact the strongest memories of vast segments of the electorate would be of a good US economy under a Democrat and a poor economy under a Republican.  You have minories and gay advocacy groups becoming more active.  But all of this is canceled out due to the Koch Brothers and tea party well funded hate machine.  Now Nancy Palosi says that Newt Gingrich will never be elected President.  Nancy is virtually certain of that because she knows something about Newt that when made public will finish him as a politician.  It’s been speculated that Newt in 1998 was in the process of bribing the Iraqi government to do one thing or another and Gingrich was personally guaranteed to be paid ten million dollars.  Admittedly in this day and age that’s pocket change, but remember that Newt resigned as House Speaker - - and investigations of him were dropped.  We don’t know what those investigations entailed.  They could well have entailed big stuff that Gingrich didn’t want to come to light.

Hammill's statement, however, acknowledged that this wasn't the first time that Pelosi hinted that she knows something about Gingrich that she hasn't revealed.  In December, Pelosi reminded an interviewer that she served on the ethics panel that investigated Gingrich's use of tax-exempt organizations. That case ended with a reprimand by the House and a $300,000 penalty against the then-speaker for misleading the committee and prolonging its investigation.  Pelosi said at the time, "One of these days we'll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich. I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff."

There are things which we should no longer necessarily assume.  You know I am arguably a quintessential conservative, because I believe there are certain unchanging principles and assumptions you can base your life and conduct on.  But these assumptions and principles are not necessarily shared by the other side.  According to Jeopardy – the state of Mississippi went 87% for Goldwater in 1964.  He had the bigotry anti civil rights vote down solid.  So one should not necessarily assume that those who voted for Goldwater shared his views on race where he said he personally was not a racist.  The problem is the public accomidations section.  We assume business have some obligation to serve anybody who walks into their venue, when they don’t.  A gambling casino for example can refuse to take a bet by virtue of the contestant being a card counter in blackjack, just having an advantage in the bet.  Gambling casinos and insurance companies are in the sole business of conning you out of your money.  If nobody got medical insurance, in the agragate, the individual would be better served and the odds are that at the end of his life he’d have more money if he did not regularly “place bets on his death” hoping perversely to cash in on the insurance lottery.  Of course Neil Savedra reminds us that churches need not necessarily invite anyone in to worship because if you don’t put money in the kitty you are “stealing their light and power to heat the building” etcetra.  In the same vein, we don’t necessarily assume that the internet will be free as it is today.  But certain carriers may decide to “segregate” their download speeds into paying and non paying customers and do other guimics to reduce public accesss.  We used to assume college bowl games would always be broadcast on free over the air television.  Now we know better.  In California the people voted down a pay TV bill because they feared loss of free sports coverage, such as the Olympics.  I highly doubt if we held a vote today we would get the same results.  People used to regard state lotteries to raise money for anything- - as immoral and a violation of Biblical principles about stewardship of the Lord’s money.  But no more.  Obama reminds us that banks used to be barred from gambling with our savings.  Now they want to turn Social Security funding into a giant gambling casino.  The time may come when atheists may be barred from attending church sermons “because they are only there to gather evidence against Christianity.  We never thought that someone of Newt Gingrich’s sexual morality would ever run as a serious candidate for President.  If Mitt Romney were to become President we have absolutely no assurance that he would not crash the economy and somehow some way find a way to personally profit by it.  We used to assume that Congressmen and women were barred from insider stock trading.  Now we know better.  How many applause did that line from the President’s speech?  (Honestly, I don’t remember)  The time may come with all this flip flopping by the right that it may soon be a called a hericy to believe that God either won’t lie to us, or that God will “change his mind on an issue” even though Scripture expressly says otherwise.  I cannot think of one Old or New Testament story that extolled the virtues of greed and selfishness with one’s possessions.  But this does not stop the tea party from extolling these virtues.  And just remember that Jesus said every citizen should pay his taxes.  We used to assume that Presidents cared about the poor.  Even Ronald Reagan in a 1984 speech talked about programs to alleviate unemployment in poor ghetto areas.  You’d never hear a tea party say “government jobs programs” were EVER good.  Reagan spoke of the basic fairness of closing loopholes for the rich.  Yet when President Obama says this he gets attacked.  Rush Limbaugh reffered to last night as “The occupy Wall Street rally”.  All through the Bible you find instances where optimism is praised over pessimism.  Jesus criticized the guy with but one talent for not having the faith to invest it and grow it.  But today people stuff money in a mattress or a Swiss account and have their underground food shelters.  They refuse to put money in circulation.  And why should they?  They pay so little in taxes.  Although to be fair to Romney, if you don’t count the income he gave to the Mormon Church, he really gave MORE than fifteen percent if you base his income figure only on the money you’re allowed to count, which is three million less.  The idea that Newt may still be hiding secrets is hardly an improbable one.  One could almost generalize that ‘If you can conceive of a sin, Newt Gingrich is guilty of it”.  In previous times we believed it was “bad tastes” to advertise legal or medical services on TV.  Who would guess that today corporations routinely spend more on lobbying than they do on taxes.  So when you come right down to it, my 59 points, far from being radical- is really a monument to political conservatism, in that I wand to ‘conserve” some traditions of the immediate past.  We used to assume you could not be held indefinitely without charges if you were a United States citizen.  We used to assume it was immoral for corporations to give to political campaigns.  Who would have guessed five years ago that an indignent woman would stand up and tout sexual morality with her out of wedlock pregnant daughter standing right next to her?  Who would have guessed talk radio would turn into a cesspool of such vile hatred and ignorance and incivility?  This did not exist 25 years ago.  We used to assume it was bad taste and in insult to the intellectual climate to show emotion during a debate.  Now suddenly debates are turned as poisoned in atmosphere as the court of some English King of the past like King Henry VIII.  We used to hear from the right that “free speech does not extend to the right to intimidate others from speaking”.    We used to believe that if you tuned in “the news” you were actually getting reports from real journalists.  We used to assume that racial epithets would not be hurled at a President of the United States.  We have Newt Gingrich saying that unless you have education in the context of some State Religion, that “knowledge is dangerous”.  You know- - the President bombarded the Republicans with cold, hard facts last night.  And not even Rush Limbaugh or FOX news are able to deny them.  So at this point you have to unhinge yourself from reality in order to live with yourself.  I don’t know what a psychologist would make of the thought process of these tea party people.  People speak of the evils of the 99%.  But if the 99% would just stick together, the one percent would have no power.  If women stuck together there are more of then than there are of men.  But the only people who stick together are rural right wing senators in the first Obama congress which single handedly blocked countless legislative bills passed by the House of Representatives.  Even though those who elected these rural senators amount to a sliver of the whole, their power is all out of perportion to their representation.  Yet these rich people continue to refer to themselves as “victims” of the progressives, and claim that there not Enough measures to insure their dominance but want to enact more measures.  They say “We have not been strident enough in pressing our beliefs”.   To say that Newt Gingrich would be an easily defeatable and amusing candidate- - is folly.  I’m sure the Germans said the same thing about Adolph Hitler.  Germans then made certain “assumptions” that turned out not to be so.  We know what happened.

Let’s remember how we got here.
 Long before the recession, jobs and manufacturing began leaving our shores.


 Technology made businesses more efficient, but also made some jobs obsolete.


 Folks at the top saw their incomes rise like never before, but most hardworking Americans struggled with costs that were growing, paychecks that weren’t, and personal debt that kept piling up.


In 2008, the house of cards collapsed.

 We learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them.
 Banks had made huge bets and bonuses with other people’s money.

 Regulators had looked the other way, or didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behavior.
It was wrong. It was irresponsible.

 And it plunged our economy into a crisis that put millions out of work, saddled us with more debt, and left innocent, hard-working Americans holding the bag

 In the six months before I took office, we lost nearly four million jobs. And we lost another four million before our policies were in full effect.
Those are the facts

PRESIDENT OBAMA HITS ONE OUT OF THE PARK TONIGHT

The President had a virtually flawless speech tonight.  There is no base he didn't touch.  There is no issue raised by the Republicans that he didn't more than deal with.  There is no claim made in any debate that the President didn't show the folly of, and came up with a better plan.  The President likened the people of this nation to an Army Unit in combat.  As Benjamin Franklin once said "We must all hang together or we shall surely all hang separately".  Randy Rhodes has often spoken of the effectiveness of a combat unit only being as good as the weakest link.  If somebody is screwing up you kick his ass to get him in line.  And there are a couple of republican Presidential contenders that need a good ass kicking right now.  As to that rebuttal address by the Indiana guy, Mitch Daniels, well I guess that's his kick-off speech for running for President.  His was a relatively sane speech compared to either Romney or Gingrich.  But it was drenched in unfitting doom and gloom.  That's all he would talk about and his whole case hangs on us believing that America is in such dire straits it is in danger of collapsing or something.  It's not a message that people want to hear.  All of the points Daniels tried to make in the speech were so incredibly weak that people will not give them a second thought.  I suggest everybody download the text of the President's speech tonight, as it contains so many good points that are well worth studying and contemplating.

This paragraph is very early Wednesday morning, Hump Day on Stephanie Miller.  The one thing I would have changed with the speech was rather than go on the usual "No troops in Iraq" line which everyone has heard and the Republicans are probably sick of hearing, I would have opened by addressing the political toxic climate we are in now.  Otherwise I think he did a better job than I would have done because he had more sweeping ways of expressing things.  I'd like to do a plug for the Dylan, Doors, and Stones compilation officially released by the Federation in the updated version today.  Some alphabetical stuff has been "fixed" including making "Alabama Song" the final track.  Most of the tracks, the bulk of them, were Mike Bloomfield's concept, in case you are wondering.  Jim Morrison was consulted and said he wanted "The Severed Garden" included.  Mal Evans wanted "Soul Survivor".  The song was saying "include me".  And some Dylan songs were just too important to leave out such as "Birch Society", "Footsteps" and "4th Street".  The following paragraph was written prior to the President' speech.  The remaining paragraphs were written just afterwards, last night.

If the President is smart tonight ( which is probably asking too much of him) he will cajole the republicans in the House to work with him just as Bill Clinton in part owes his reelection in 1996 to Newt Gingrich for making him look good.  And he should go on to say that the road to economic recovery from the long 1990 – 1992 recession was charted when Clinton boldly raised taxes enabeling the deficit to fall for four straight years,  beginning in 1998 when Newt Gingrich was voted out of his House leadership post.  Then remind the people that right now income tax rates on interest and dividends as well as capital gains tax is fifteen percent.  But in 1986 Ronald Reagan lowered tax rates so that both standard income tax and capital gains were pegged at 28%.  And it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see that at almost double the tax rate you could raise more money, but even then Ronald Reagan was unable to whip the deficit problem.  Of course Newt Gingrich is a world class liar it may be difficult to top for a some time to come.  Newt said that he “balanced the budget” for all four years he was Speaker under Clinton.  This as we have shown is false.  Gingrich didn’t voluntarily leave congress but was voted out of power.  Mitt Romney has stated that the President opened up no new trade markets but in October 2011 the President concluded trade deals with three countries including South Korea.  The political climate is becoming increasingly toxic now.  And Bill Press has a new book out called something like “The Obama Hate Machine”.  I fear for the President’s life because it’s just this sort of inflamed environment when unseemly things can occur.  To contrast what has happened in just the past four years, four years ago when some crank woman greeted Mc Cain and called President Obama a Moslem,  John Mc Cain corrected her and said the President was a decent Christian.  But when Santorum confronted another such crank woman just today, all he said in response was something like “Well we are doing our best to try and get him out of office”.  Ronald Reagan spoke of optimism.  These Republicans are almost pathologically negative.  And yet the positive economic news continues to keep coming in.  Manufacturing has been the spear head of lowered unemployment.  And employment increases in December were broadly based and not localized.  You readers obviously will know what Obama said tonight.  It would be my wish that all the remarks I’ve been making these past months to fade into the dimness of memory when we make our way into 2013.  You reading this piece in 2013 that you managed to dig up from the archives, will also know the answer to that one.  But as for those of us in the present in 2012 we still live with the uncertainty.  And if by chance things are actually worse a year from now, people then may look back on now as a time when “things weren’t nearly as bad as they are now” with Newt Gingrich as president telling lie after lie about why the US economy is suddenly tanking.  The President has pulled the economy out of the ditch, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to give the keys back to the same Party that drove it over the cliff to begin with.

. So many people are obsessed with somehow pleasing that "reactive mind" within them that they can't think straight. Now they call Newt Gingrich a “Faith Journey”.  This “old news” line really gets to me.  Suppose I serve somebody moldy meat at my restaurant and I say “Oh that’s old news!  Everybody else around here knew that meat was moldy yesterday”, that would not make it one bit better, would it?   I have not heard from Tim in a while.  Neil Savedra made the logical pitfall I warned about in a recent posting of "arguing from the greater to the lesser - - or the much greater to the virtually non existent.  I have this vague feeling he's alluding to imagined sins that just may not exist in most people, but he still wants you to obsess over them, to take your sights off of what you know is really Important for you now.  He spent the whole first hour last Sunday roomanating about that Italian cruise ship captain that was neglegent in his duties.  Here is a thought about Neil’s “steering away from sin” line.  I say, “Don’t operate on jerk reflex.”  What if you’re in a narrow strait not of your choosing but God led you there?  You have to be very exact about where you go because in case it escaped Neil’s notice, there might be an even bigger pitfall in the opposite direction.  Sometimes fleeing one whacko extreme to an opposite whacko extreme serves you quite poorly.  Because all too often, if you aren't careful. will become the very thing that you hate and claim you are fleeing from.  Neil talked about "warning signals of sin that people routinely ignore".  Unfortunately I have no idea what he's referring to.  We're all supposed to be psychic and read his mind.  For instance if you are a white racist, the solution is not top become a black racist.  If you are adverse to homosexuals, the solution is not to pass a law mandating "tollerance" of homosexual employment, for instance, in private churches, or to somehow make all references to God "gender neutral" or worse yet, marriage "gender neutral".  Cramming your oppinion down someone else's throat isn't a good idea regardless. But the bigger problem with Neil Savedra is not that he's close friends with a race baiter and atheist like Bill Handel, the biggest problem with Neil is that his basic ideas are just not "Christian".  Personally, I believe in the golden rule and have been trying to practice it.  I believe others deserve dignity.  Neil regards the callers of his show as props to make himself look good by putting them down and chastizing them and humiliating them, like Dr. Laura used to do.  Neil claims that if you're prejudice against inviting your Black neighbor to dinner then you clearly understand why God won't let just anyone in heaven to dine with.  And if you don't like country music why would you want to go there anyhow?  I am much more inclined than he to take a clearly stated scripture at face value.  Neil filters every verse through his own private "hermanutics" filter.  So he, for instance says "speaking in tongues is only a way to make unimportant people feel better".  He says that healing was a virtually insignificant part of Jesus' ministry.  Neil talks about how Heaven is so wonderful it's like some kind of a drug high.  The real Jesus was far more concerned with the here and now, and spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven as being among the people here and now.  Neil is a highly legalistic "pharsiac" person, whereas the real Jesus wasn't.  The real Jesus hated hypocracy above all else.  Neil Savedra says that if you are not a hypocrite you "just aren't with the program".  The real Jesus didn't endorse any organized church.  Neil says if you aren't a member of some institutional church, your Christianity is suspect.  These are just "differences between us" as the President might say, that need to be worked out.


In my personal life things still aren't that great.  I have money problems.  And I still don't have my new computer yet and the keyboard driver still doesn't boot half the time, and may be getting worse.  Relations with my family relative overlords are still tenuous and volitile.  Jackie Johnson died today.  She is the fourth person from Dr. Levy's class to die in the past twelve months.  As to Stewart Sutcliffe's warning about dark spiritual forces out there - - those two people who were hospitalized- - still aren't back and it's been a month. And obviously the political climate in this country has gotten sicker in just the past month due to the rise of Newt Gingrich, who is the source of the lot of epidemic political pathology we see all around us now.  I cam't have a political discussion with anybody because the smart ones are too intimidated to express any oppinion and the rest are brainwashed.  And too often it's true that nobody picks a fight with me unless they have the assurance ahead of time that they can fight dirty, where I am either not allowed to or just won't.  The President has taken a lot of crap from the reactionary racist cesspool that is the Republican party now.  Now perhaps he can begin to fight back and at last present his side of the case.  (Selah)