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.