Throwing Common Sense Out the Window

We need to talk about this latest theater shooting in the outskirts of Tampa, Florida a little more.  First of all Florida does have these "stand your ground" gun laws, and the parrellels to this shooting in a theater to the George Zimmerman case are worth noting.  First of all this 72 retired officer, Curtess Reves, IS planning on using the "stand your ground' defense because he believed he was in mortal danger from a bag of popcorn.  He says that "He was in fear of being attacked".  But any psychologist would note that this officer was in a paranoid state of "Fear of being Attacked' BEFORE the event ever happened.  He already MADE that decision when he decided to take a loaded gun into a theater.  He like Zimmerman already had "anger management" issues.  He once followed a woman into a restroom in a confrontation about "Texting".  First of all texting is not illegal in a theater.  He wasn't driving in a car on the road.  He was in a theater not making any noise but merely had his cell phone on and was checking with his two year old daughter's baby sitter, which any new parent could relate to.  The officer shot both the offender, but also his wife.  Now just a few minutes ago a caller to the Stephanie Miller program said that the wife "grabbed for the officer's gun".  I think this is about as factual as the notion that Trayvon Martin was found with a lot of stolen jewelery on him.  When these people say "We don't know all of the facts", for one thing this phrase of "knowing all the facts" presupposes that the CALLER somehow "knows" the truth as if by supernatural revelation a FACT that is not yet in existance, because it never happened, which doesn't stop FOX news from reporting it.   Interestingly some of these commercials on Free Speech TV are interesting.  There is this black and white thing about "Make a plan now to stop the shootings" which echoes that thing we did last week or sometime about "Imagine no more shootings and we can all make a plan".  When that was written I had never seen the Free Speech TV thing, so it was kind of a "heads up" from John Lennon.  I have gotten some of these "early warnings" or heads up from Dead people before.  We had that thing with all the bridges in the photo about a day or two before the Governor Christie story broke, for instance.

We now come to the Bengazi case where the Senate issued their report.  Unfortunately people on the Right have "spun" this entire report in their own fashion putting their own slant on the thing.  The right wing expects perfection from their President of an almost omnipotent nature.  The President should have "known" about that Lois lady in Cincinatti who investigated political groups in the IRS.  The President should have "known" all the facts about Bengazi apparently before they happened.  We continue to get "Facts" from FOX news how the President sat around watching videos of the attack passively while it was happening and told the marines to "stand down".  But in real facts are that Embassador Stevens said he did not WANT more security.  This is the exact opposite of what FOX news claims.  We are told that it was an Al Qaedi-ISH group that did the attack.  So like, is the Mormon church a Protestant-ISH church.  The vasst majority of churchmen out there would say that Mormons are NOT protestents.  Ask them yourself.  But people slap the "Al Qaeda" brand on something like they slap the "Obama" brand on something.  You hear Judy talking about how the President has a "real psychological problem with responsability continuing to blame George Bush for the bad economy and not owning up to his own mistakes".   That sounds so "psychological" many actually believe it.  They claim that the Clintons has a "political hit list" while in the same breath calling Governor Christie an honorable and forthright man who "owned up to his mistakes".  But as Stephanie and company point out - - Christie's speech of a week ago was far less on taking responsability than a "Feel sorry for me because I'm a victim of people I trusted" speech and "Personally I had nothing to do with it".

Let's talk about energy and some common sense things we could do right away, because we are making "mistakes" that border on the silly.  First of all when it comes to growing grain and such- - it would be more efficient if beef and sheep went back to grazing on naturally growing grass, and not consuming grain that it takes great expenditures of energy and petro chemical fertelizer to produce.  It consumes far less energy to let nature take its course and get photosynthisis from the sun- - and not plow vast investments of petro energy into these crops.  And in many cases it's not just animals but CARS that "consume" this energy because we had the idea of growing corn for ethanol for cars to run on, in a highly wasteful process where we expend more in production than we ever get out.  We then come to hydrolic fracturing, and a video on Free Speech TV explained this one more comprehensively.  We shoot all kinds of highly toxic chemicals of the ground- - dozens of different kinds- - these open up cracks in the rocks to free up the bubbles and pockets of natural methane gas cloistered in the rock- - and we mix it with sand, to keep these cracks from closing right up again.  And of course we have to keep repeating this process over and over in a very inefficient manner because these new "sources' of natural gas are much more fleeting than ordenary drilling, so we have to keep befowling more land, and poisoning more drinking water, and creating geological instability and earthquakes in places such as Ohio.  President Obama has bought into the 2008 political platform of "drill, baby drill" and forever is talking about "Clean Coal", which expects say there IS no such thing because coal contains any number of carsinogens.   It's funny that on some issues- - "If the event occurred in the tenure of the Obama administration then the President is responsible".  Hence in their eyes the president is "responsible" for the Increasing income disparity between the Rich and the Poor.  However if there is an oil boom in North Dakota or the US had vastly increased energy production, or if solar pannels are going on roofs of houses at record rates- - then the President had nothing to do with it.  Some have said "The improvement in the economy we are observing now is something the President is NOT being credited for".  Interesting.  Just to sumarize- - we should stop investing vast ammounts of petrol-energy in growing our crops, and we shouldn't be feeding so much or these crops, grown this way, to animals.  Let the animals take care of themselves on the range.  Perhaps we should cut down on these compressed feed lots and have more free range beef and lamb.

There are eight official vegetables in V8 juice, which is now a prominent sponsor of the Wheel of Fortune.  The eight juices are tomatoes, carrots, celery, beets, lettuce, parsley,  watercress, and spinach.  I am uncertain whether these are in the order of prominence.  I have not bought one can of V8 juice at the store since I made a resolution on Christmas to do that.  Despite what Judy says, I believe it's a good place to get your carrotenoids, which are valuable nutrients to the body in many ways.

Unemployment extension will not get done today, and the word is that congress is going on recess again- - to celebrate Martin Luther King day, which is silly because if Dr King had something to do he wouldn’t “Not Do It” because it was a holiday.  But John Boehner is fulfilling the FOX narrative that “we must do everything we can to slow down the economy to make Obama look bad.  These people are willing to sacrifice innocent people and the US economy to make a political point. The state of the Union is running a contest with the Super Bowl to see who can come latest - - and it would seem that the basic parameters of both have been pushed back several weeks from what they once were back in the ‘sixties.

I have Ed Schultz on now at a quarter to twelve and counting, on the Monterey station, which is coming in fine.  Ed was concerned earlier about entities called “Walk On’s” that don’t get scholarships and yet play college football and have to pay for expensive involved in their trade, that people with scholarships have covered, such as meals out.  They don’t just have games on Saturday afternoons any more but all hours of the day and night across time zones, and are expected to attend their eight o clock class the next morning after playing past midnight the night before, and I agree with Ed that since these people make money for their respective Colleges, they are engaged in a quazi professional pursuit.  It has become, in essence, a business.  There was a California millionaire that touted the virtues of a twelve dollar an hour rate here in California.  He raised the idea of government subsidizing low wage workers with food stamps, and so it’s almost as if the government is subsidizing companies that are chincy with their workers. 

In terms of how I feel about President Obama- - clearly nothing the President wants done in congress this year will happen.  So knowing this whether they want to spend the year bringing impeachment charges against the President is no problem with me because it's basically lost time anyhow.  I don't care about President Obama's personal fortunes any more, and neither should you.  The President has been useless for Progressive causes.  He didn't take a stand in the Scott Walker recall case, or stick up for labor unions or pension funds.  He was a moral coward in NOT taking a stand on firearms regulations during the Presidential campaign of 2012.  I would have made it a major point in every speech, myself.  He's done zero Wall Street prosecutions, or prosecutions for torture and other abuses of the Bush administration.  He has set back the "personal privacy" rights of all Americans.  And Eric Holder refused to prosecute George Zimmerman for "Civil Rights" violations.  He campaigned on the "Public Option" in Health Care but then never even MENTIONED it again.  He has indicated a desire to cut Social Security payments to try and placate Republicans, in vain.  The President is obviously in the back pocket of these trans-national corporations anyhow as we've noted in recent postings.  He really doesn't care about us.  There is a big election in less than Ten Months and at that time we can kick all of these tea party jokers out of Congress, and refused to re elect all these irresponsable right wing republican governors of major states who bust labor unions, and refuse to accept free medi-aid coverage to the people of their states.  They will sacrifice their own people to make a political point, just as Governor Christie will impact the lives of innocent people to make his own political point.  The Nazis used to have a saying during the Blitzkrig send out propaganda of "Winston Churchill is resolved all right.  He has resolved to fight this war down to the last Frenchman".   Don't be a pawn on someone elses political vendetta is the message.  John Boehner takes money from this chemical company with the word Freedom in its title in West Virginia that caused all those water problems there.  He wants to sacrifice the lives of people of West Virginia all so he can get more funding for himself.  This is a piece of information that they are entitled to know about John Boehner. 

This is Wednesday evening January 15, 2014 and we have come to the “Final Spin” on Wheel of Fortune.  Who would have guessed that Martin Luther said it was better for King Henry VIII to get a concubine rather than ruin his people.  I have no idea what he meant by that.  This entry may be considered a bunch of inconsequential fluff but among that “fluff” was the US Senate in a highly republican dominated report on Bengazi, and it was basically “Just forget everything that was stated in that New York Times article”.  They expressly stated Al Qaeda was not involved and the Senate turns around and says they were and that the Obama administration denied them the security they needed, and all that.  I just saw the FOX news coverage, and if there were any facts that contradicted the FOX news narrative we’d never hear them from FOX news any more than we’d hear from a Baptist preacher if he somehow had unearthed evidence that the Bible wasn’t infallible.  Then there was the story about how the Westminster dog show will be admitting mutts for physical agility contests.  Perhaps the most memorable segment was that business man putting down his papers on the plane and attending to a three year old autistic little girl who suddenly took a liking to him, so he kept her entertained for two and a half hours.  In a way it’s really a sign of these strange times that the entire network news is filled with nothing but fluff and anecdotal stories.  If anything important really did occur in the world today, we’ll never know it.  As you can see we are using “floral” for a pattern now.

 

The Sad Truth About "Obama-nomics"

Mike Papentonio had a fantastic pod cast from Sunday the 12^th apparently.  I watched about a half hour of his hour long show on Free Speech TV and of this morning that same link was still there, and I’d strongly suggest to blog readers who care about their country to go see it.  The first segment has to deal with business fines, even fines of a Billion or more dollars, are just “the cost of doing business”.  Mind you if you rob a bank or you rob a person’s house and steal his property the first thing the police do is make you give back the property and return it to its rightful owner.  In big business there is no such regulation.  For instance Ford Pintos had exploding gas tanks.  And it was suggested the company KNEW they were dangerous to start with and they calculated that they could make X billion dollars in profits before they would ever be fingered.  And if a corporation kills scores of innocent people, there is no death penalty.  It’s what you call the limited liability law of corporations that no one individual can be sued.  And the companies pay their fines not out of their CEP’s salary – who caused the mess, but rather from the remainder of the stock holders, perhaps you and me.  If corporations really did have the “rights” of persons, then ALL of those ill gotten profits from an exploding gas tank or a defective or contaminated drug- - would be paid BACK before you even Began to assess the damages.  Here you would go monetary damages such as hospital or perhaps funeral expenses, and then you would throw in things like “emotional damage” and there might be an additional punitive find just as deturrance in case someone else tries the same stunt.  But if you know right off the bat you’re going to make four billion in profit from an illegal and immoral act, and you will only have to pay back a billion and a half in fines - - and nobody goes to jail and nobody gets fired, then you are going to do it.  Someone gave an example yesterday of some “game” that kids play using matches.  God knows what.  If you have three kids playing the game - - perhaps none of those three will set the house on fire.  But with each additional kid, like if you have ten or twelve playing with matches, there is going to be one screw-up along the way, and parents will then step in and say “That’s enough!”.  We should use that same logic in the proliferation of guns.  In the old days corporations used to have to abide by by-laws to “act in the public interest” according to the terms of their “Charter” or permission from the government to exist.  There was a “corporate death penalty” where a corporation would be dissolved by the Government were it violating this “Charter”.   No such public interests have existed in corporate charters for a long time.  The second part of the show was more in this Pan Pacific Partnership, which I have referred to as NAFTA on steroids.  Only Five of the 29 terms of this agreement have anything to do with trade according to Papentonio.  The rest constitute a “Bill of Rights’ for trans-national corporations, where they have the strength of sovereign governments and can “sue you” for “restraint of trade” is for instance- - you try and discriminate in trade against a product made in Viet Nam because you believe it’s shoddy workmanship or unsafe, and your Department Store has always had certain standards for things they sell.  Somehow giving corporations the rights of Sovreign Nations hasn’t bothered Rush Limbaugh at least so far.  I haven’t heard one time his bringing up of this Pan Pacific Trade agreement.  We already told you about the “fast tracking’ and how this thing is being developed in utter secrety, and kept from the main stream media lest the people at large know what’s in the thing and write their Congressman.  President Obama’s election was a complete and total fraud worked on us.  So on this perhaps me and Rush Limbaugh might have something to agree on but for completely different reasons.  Remember I told you about the so called “Urgency of Now” and how President Obama couldn’t wait four more years to gain a little seasoning and maturity.   But as I said in a recent post, he did this not for OUR benefit like he was so concerned about OUR needs and create some new Paradise in 2009, but it was strictly his own Ego.  Obama IS a Manchurian candidate of sorts just as the far right has claimed.  But he got funding for his 2008 election from Corporations and has done their bidding every step along the way ever since.  You know that corporate and Wall Street prosecutions are virtually non existant.  Nobody has gone to jail.  Now these corporations- - whose desire is to create some world wide permanent under-class of poor working stiffs who will never advance - - are really pushing for this Trans Pacific agreement to be ratified as quickly as possible.  In that post, I barely scratched the surface of the nightmare of horrors that are in the bill and are in those other 24 whole provisions that doesn’t involve trade or terrifs directly.  The final segment of Mike Papentonio’s program had to do with what we Democrats are going to do about it.  With the election of Mayor DeBlasio in New York- - and others such as Elizabeth Warren- - we are seeing a restoration of some of the principles the democratic party has traditionally stood for.  Back in the thirties there was a strong populist uprising against corporate abuses by farmers, miners, and many other groups all coming together for a united cause.   Even Rush Limbaugh is quaking in his boots these days because he knows this movement is already gaining traction out there.

I listened to Rush Limbaugh this morning and how he defended the National Football league and the right of any football player to get a concussion and Alzheimers, and any other form of brain damage leading to suicide or God knows what.  Rush will always come down against any Union and against any worker in any occupation.  That’s just the nature of the beast.  Of course Rush has always been “Out to Lunch” on economic matters, and you can tell he’s an ignoramus on anything economic every time he opens his mouth.  I doubt he’s spent so much as one day in a college level economics class.  If I were the teacher on that first day and I heard some of the bogus beliefs and FOX talking points he holds near and dear, I’d kick him out of the class right then saying “Nobody as Stupid as you should be allowed to remain here and taking up space of a seat that could be occupied by some student who actually wants to learn”.   In terms of charges made about the Stimulus money in 2009 I will say that a large percentage of that was spent unwisely, going into the hands of political crooks, in my opinion.   By the way paying money in Union dues, or even “protection money” to the Mafia- - - is Never Intended as any “economic stimulus”.  It is simply a “Fee for Service”.  I strongly urge these Ronneyites to read the story of Nabal in the Bible.  Because here is a case of a guy paying “protection money” and Jehovah comes down on the side of those parties demanding payment.  You could liken this to police protection being afforded to rich people that poor people don’t get.  When a rich person calls the police you know they’ll arrive promptly and be polite and sensitive and listen to the complaint you are making, and go after the bad guys.  In poorer neighborhoods there is no guarantee the residents will be anywhere near as Satisfied with the service.  (Selah)  In terms of this whole Austerity crock of bull - - - any businessman knows “You need money in order to make money”.   This is the whole modas opperandi behind the “stimulus” to begin with.  But in terms of my wanting to protect President Obama from personal attacks, those days are Over.  When I look at president Obama and his reasons for wanting to become President I am filled with nothing but disgust.  In fact if anyone wants to bring impeachment charges, don’t assume I’d be against that.  The liberals are in the process of completely divorcing their interests from that of the President.  In other words, our fate is no longer linked with His.   What every progressive needs to look it from now on is not ‘How will this affect the President” but, “How will what we choose to do today affect our changes or moving our Own agenda forward”?

We now come to the next segment on “Ring of Fire”.  This one has to do with what they call “reverse eminent domain”.  This is where a government can come in and ORDER the banks to sell the city or State their mortgages and these governmental agencies assume they and charge the residents of the houses in decaying neighborhood affordable interest rates.  Excuse me if I sound like Rush Limbaugh on this one but I say it’s government meddeling in private markets.  Some may say “so what if the government screws the banks out of money!”  I happen to still believe two wrongs don’t make a right.  If the government “asks” the banks if they want to sell and then inquires how much the banks are willing to sell them for, this is one thing.  But we know that eminent domain is about Conthiscation first and foremost, and fairness takes a back seat.  You wouldn’t want the government saying “There’s a freeway coming through your neighborhood; sell us your homes”.  A few people leave just out of that fear.  Meanwhile vacant houses accumulate and the neighborhood gets run down.  And now the remaining residents say ‘OK we’ll sell our homes at the price you offered us” only to have the government then say “Well, they aren’t worth that now because the neighborhood has declined”.  This would be a case of causing your own problem, and then profiting from the situation you, yourself caused.

In terms of gold and silver we see a major scam job going on among these ‘Patriot’ stations where you get Financial agencies that base their policies on political consideration rather than on economic reality.  Needless to say your odds of getting any kind of “advise” or opinion that’s actually worth anything from these agencies is near zero.  We hear of a great economic crash coming in three months.  There seems to have been a steady decline in gold and silver prices over the past three years or so.  Isn’t it strange how the better the rank and file or “main street” economy does, the more panicked Rush Limbaugh and company get.  This is just a classic case of projection, or they sensing their own inadequacy and coming uselessness,  project their fears on to those asking them advice.  So they say things like “This is a red hot silver deal and you better jump now while we’re still offering it.  If I’m a guy who has food in a world of scarcity, the last thing I’m going to do is to broadcast that fact to the rest of the community, and pay for the privilege, only so they can all come clamoring to my door saying they want some.  (Selah)  People pull bogus shit like yesterday on Dr Oz and that “heat loss” experiment thing he ran “proving” that you lose LESS heat from your head on a cold day than you do from the rest of your body.  Dr Oz knows better than doing such a carnival stunt.  I’ve seen the actual chroma results on me personally, on a cold day at a science exhibit in December of 1998.  Most heat loss come from your head.  And I’ve seen these results replicated on TV showing that the vast majority of heat loss on a cold day comes from your head.   Of course I am sympathetic with Rush in that a lot of bogus health crap is being peddled on us.  I know the stuff they are doing to redefine the basic food groups, and they’re doing it just to be assholes.  Did you know, for instance, that the reality is that cholesterol is created by the body to combat inflammation - - and if you take an antibiotic to cure the inflammation- - you eliminate the cholesterol problem.  Believe it or not, fat is actually an important nutrient to the body, particularly in brain development.  You’d never know this from watching television.  Those in the know would say that a cholesterol reading down to double digits would in itself be a sign of cholesterol levels that were Abnormally Low.  In terms of suicide and the NFL I might say that certain limelight professions such as acting and professional sports lead to a sense of “peaking out’ and ‘past your prime” anxieties that you don’t have in other profession.  The suicide rate would appear to be 75% higher for NFL players as opposed to the general population or less than double, and NOT the six times the rate that Rush Limbaugh was concerned about.