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)