THE PERIL OF THE UNCERTAIN TRUMPET

. Let’s talk about General Motors going into chapter eleven bankruptcy, cince it’s the topic of the day. As with Chrysler, this arrangement should be of short duration, probably only a few months. Of course Pontiac will bit the dust so farewell to the G T O one of the legendary muscle cars of the ‘sixties. What Thom Hartman alerted me to today was the fact that these bond holders aren’t heroes but villains. This is because they aren’t real bond holders but have these hedge funds. According to Hartman, these people are actually holding these investment swap things. As you know the “uninsured” or un-secured” investment swaps are the ones that have caused so much of the trouble because these people are betting against the American economy and the very corporate structures they profess to be under-writing. It’s kind of like betting against your own baseball team. It’s unethical and should be illegal but isn’t.

I changed the screen saver today to “No Corporate Sellouts”. I wanted to put “Obama is a Corporate Sell-Out” but there wasn’t room. As you know the rant against Justice Sylvia Sotomayor is that she is a corporatist and has sided in many cases the way the corporitists want her to, and as such can’t be trusted by Obama’s liberal base to “storm the gates of the Establishment and break down the barriers”. Her views on abortion are the biggest mystery since Justice Suitor, whose lack of opinion bothered me at the time in 1990 but that’s because he was appointed by a Republican. With any appointment by a Democrat, possible waffeling on the abortion issue is just added gravy. It’s just a bonus we pro lifers hadn’t expected. But I’d like to reference Justice Sotomayor’s speech on race that people thought so troubling. Her quoted remarks didn’t bother me when I initially heard them, but now having heard all of her speech, in context I am more troubled by the things she said, because she appeared to be unambiguous in her view that race and background should be taken into account when rendering a decision from a bench. Again – Lady Justice is blindfolded for a reason. This is so she can weigh the evidence impartially without regard to race, color, creed, or socio-economic standing in society. Indeed, if a big corporation were being messed over, I would hope they too, as much as the poor man, would be confident in getting his day in court. Respect for the law and legal precedent benefits everybody and creates an aire of stability and certainty in society- -as it’s natural to human nature to respect basic fairness and impartiality. I hope she will speak of these things in her confirmation hearings.

One case that will be coming before the next Supreme Court is the new case that gay activists will be bringing to say that “equal protection” rights have been denied to gay couples who want to get married. The gay lobby has a Queen Esther type dilemma on its hands here. This was the Queen who dared to speak to the King knowing if he did not extend his royal septer tword her could have her head lopped off for speaking out of turn. The gay lobby has to ask themselves when filing this case, “Do I feel lucky today?” because if they lose, it will deal the whole gay marriage movement a major setback. I’m thinking in my own mind, “Bring it on!” because with this Supreme Court with the four far right justices on it, the gays have a better than even chance of falling flat on their ass. It’s like that Charlie Daniels song about Johnny bargaining with the devil for his Golden Fiddle. Future justice Thurgred Marshell filed the integration case in the early 1950’s. He gambled heavily and won - - so it can be done. But that court, as Alex Travek reminds us, had nine Roosevelt appointees on it. Only Washington himself appointed more justices. The smartest thing the gay lobby could say to themselves when filing this case is “Thy Will Be Done”, which will be a real fine accolade – if they win. Even a Warren Court style “win” may only avail them a phrase like “they should proceed with all deliberate speed”. Loving verses Virginia wasn’t decided till 1967.

Thom Hartman opened his show this morning by having Randell Terry on, the militant anti-abortionist. He weighed in about the gunning down of that late term abortion doctor in a church working as an usher in the morning service. As I said higher up, I don’t believe people should call themselves Christian is they don’t have the goods. There are Bible cases to illustrate my point. In the New Testament a man was violently attacked by demons because he professed to be a Christian and yet wasn’t. Bob Dylan once had a song about going down south and “You could get killed down here so you better get your story straight”. In the OT there is the saga of a profit who was to prophesy against the Northern Kingdom, and he was told neither to turn aside on the trail neither to the right nor to the left. The man failed to follow Jehovah’s explicit instructions and got himself killed. I only say this to say that people should take their commitments to the Lord seriously. I’d like to address another erronius point that Hartman and callers raised. There was the implication that Randell Terry believed that your own blood had to atone for your sins in any case of murder, and that this would justify the man in the afterlife. He couldn’t be more wrong. In the first place I’m not aware of Jesus ever forgiving a murderer as he did with other people. In the Bible it says “There is a sin that leads to death” but the Greeks are vague about indefinite articles. They can be either used or dropped at the descression of the translator, and one should not believe this expression denotes singularity. It could just as easily be rendered “There is sin that leads unto death”. But I’d also like to say that the only sacrificial blood that counts in Christian theology is the blood of Christ. After all, how can the sin of an imperfect man bring about perfection? (Selah) I heartily agree with Randell Terry’s remark about this guy should be put on trial for Nazi like war crimes. This is where the man deserved to rise or fall in the eyes of justice. He should have been found guilty and then promptly executed “in a manner prescribed by law”. But also know this. People will ask, “Was it God’s will for the man to die the way he did?”. You know my answer to this. It’s an emphatic “Yes”. Everything that happens is God’s will. God’s will will never be the subject of mockery. But on the other hand it follows that the deaths of all those late term babies was also God’s will. And this I cannot logically justify. Only know that the decision to take the lives of all those late term fetuses was made before the creation of the Universe, indeed before Time Itself was created. (Selah)

Increasingly I am hearing rumblings of the idea that this economy is in a false recovery. Randy Rhodes is correct in her statement this afternoon, of course. All of this bailing out of the banks is undermining the strength of the dollar. Up till now being a holder of dollars hasn’t been that bad of a deal since this recession has been an occasion for the dollar to gain in value. But I could not expect this to continue. The world is an uncertain place. Both in Iran and North Korea there are the distant echoes of war drums. I continue to say that astrological indications are that we will be in a war, I believe with Iran, before the Obama administration’s first term is concluded. Nothing makes the traders in dollars more skiddish than the possibility of war. If I were President I would engage in a staring down match with Kin Jung Il. What do you do with such a self-deluded leader? He is surrounded by his enemies, and if I were President I would make him painfully aware of that fact by turning up the heat. I would oh so delicately remind him of what we did to two major cities of his neighbor to the east, Japan. And I’d just say “You know we have a lot bigger bombs now than we did then.” In the immortal words of Rush Limbaugh, "We are the ones who actually used the A Bomb. And it was a good thing. We used it to end a war". In terms of Iran, you’ve heard my remarks over the years. I believe we have screwed things up and acted at the wrong times and not acted at the wrong times. Once the preacher gave a sermon on “The uncertain trumpet” and I do not believe we are sending clear signals to Iran. I do not hold out much hope that Achmadenijab is going to be turned out of power in next month’s elections. Remember Zimbabue!

I’d like to close this file and this blog with a reflection on the milk of human kindness. Dr. Levy extended me the courtesy of three dollars today because I told him I was out of cigarettes and couldn’t afford another pack. With this money now I can pay off my debts to others and also be able to extend generosity to others. We need more one on one charity. We need to do things for others to brighten their day, and hope that the gesture is catching. Many times recessions like we are having brings out the generosity in certain people, while revealing the greed in others. Randy Rhodes today remarked that our work force is the best educated best trained work force we have ever had. Our nation should utilize this national resource as much as it would utilize “green” new sources of energy. People can be put to work building new, “greener” more efficient cars, and also rail systems for transportation within and between cities. These corridors themselves will be utilized to further our commerce getting people where they need to go- - so that they can earn and spend money. By contrast all the money we spent on the Iraq War is only wasted and there is no infra-structure to show for it. These are priorities we need to change. One would hope that President Obama would be a conduit for change instead of an obstacle to change that needs to be overcome. Think about that. Is Obama one of those working diligently to clear the log jam, or is he part of the problem? Which side is Berock Obama on, when it comes to “the inevitable march tword enlightenment?

MY INNER SCHIZOPHRENIC

This is Thursday morning May 29, 2009, Sergeant Pepper day. You know, if this place were a restaurant they would long since have gone out of business. We had Raison Bran for breakfast with grape juice - - and after a protracted wait, pancakes and sausage. But there is this twenty minute or longer wait when you are just twiddling your thumbs. Marcus Blackwell once made the remark, “He who steals my time does me a grave injustice”. And yet around here all time stops while you wait for others to do their jobs like last night in the medication line. One longs for the scenario in Coocoo’s Nest where you each line up and are given your medication in ten seconds or so and the line moved on. Around here you wait a couple of minutes per person while whoever is in charge either looks for your medication they misplaced, or they get into arguments about when they can have their pain medication. Last night I had a dream about Gene Scott and the theme was “Pursuing the fight of Faith against all odds”. Many times, as in one of Gene’s sermons, Faith is like the case of Michelle, or something - -one of David’s wives, and David had ordered the deaths of five of her sons to satisfy a demand of Jehovah, so that it says “The five bodies hung before the Lord” and the mother would come by and look at the rotting corpses long past any rational point hoping they would be resurrected or something and she’d brush the flies away and chase the birds of prey away that would perch on the bodies. And finally King David was so impressed with a mother’s devotion that he ordered the bodies be given a proper burial. But this is what it’s like with your Faith sometimes. Like the whole snail mail thing was kept going despite it being an almost solo act on my part. In another part of this dream, and I’ve often dreamed something like this, I’d be writing a letter but something would be wrong. Either the pages would get wet on the way to the mail box, or in this case I ran out of ink in the typewriter ribbon and I would be pounding away at that last key sentence, that formed the keystone of the letter. Of course my snail mail letters (we’re leaving out Mark Campbell’s name for the purpose of this illustration) felt like a solo effort sometimes. But even when you’re alone, I guess Gene Scott would say you aren’t really alone but have God’s power with you. In this dream Gene told how he had to drive in a “Satanic direction” (in this case West) in order to go to church every Sunday, and what an obstical it was for him to overcome. Our snail letters went from weird to weirder in 1982 when we began using imagery from “Satanic Magesties Request” and there was a focus on just the two small “Red Birds”, which were like red Marinatha Doves, and the two stood for “The adequate witness” according to Gene Scott. And the “red birds” stood for Federation War Ships. There was writing which borrowed from Gene Scott’s teachings. These ranged from the book “Holy Blood Holy Grail” starting in September 1982 on through stuff about the Great Pyramid, to astrological stuff where Gene Scott taught there were 48 constelations and 12 zodiac signs each with three “attending decans”. And the whole Zodiac was designed to tell “God’s Story” to the world. But then the station Gene was on went off the air on May 24^th. 1983. But we wrote stories on various themes. There was that “Sheep” Pink Floyd parody where I was transported to what I thought was Heaven, or maybe it was Hell. There was stuff on the mystic symbolism of the waterfall and once I wrote a story about how Christ and his Desciples went into a drug trance beneathe a waterfall at Ceceria Philipi. There was the “Stoned Imaculate” zone of the Universe, which featured a drawing done in bold purple ink of those “squares” from Blue Oyster Cult’s first album. And there was stuff involving black holes going back to at least 1981. When we bought the Rush album with Cygnus XI on it, there was a lot of dissertation on that, how a black hole could transform you. Those of you who have seen our rock compilation of “Going Retro” will note that Cygnus XI is about going back to the period of Greek Mythology. There was still the Zachary stuff but that was being choked out. Then in the summer of 1983 I began to write allegorical stories about being transported to the East Coast in sort of a mirror realm. There was stuff about looking at the crescent moon just above the ocean, and the impending Rapture. In the fall of 1983 I again started talking about a possible Rapture of taking away of the faithful. In the summer of 1983 there was new stuff about elements of the I Ching and the “eight directions” and that number theory and the 1, 2, 4, 8, 7, 5 - - progression and all the numerological mysteries waiting to be unlocked. There were then introduced elements from the Stephen King books, “Christine” and “Pet Cemetary” at the turn of the year 1984 and it just gets weirder and weirder. It’s a whole treasure trove of writings just waiting to be rediscovered at my parent’s house.

After mulling over my dream for a while I went out into the real world and talked to Wally and Richard and I realized “I’m among sane people now; I have to act sane now and can’t tell them the insane musings I’ve been having”. This is part of the problem when I moved into my apartment in July of 1988. I was in “fantasyland” for years and years dealing with people with a tenuous grip on the real world. Of course I no longer have the book “Flashbacks” by Timothy Leary, and a lot of others. When you’re living with a person who’s even more insane than you are you tend to withdraw. But even Clark Kent must from time to time have doubts about the “Double Life” he’s leading where he goes to a boring nine to five job you can almost sleep-walk you way through. (Not exactly, but you know what I mean) After the fall of 1987 I felt myself forced to start thinking about reality and my own future again. Much as it would be an adjustment I had to climb out of that Philip Kiriacus vault I’d been reposing in. Now it was time for me to start dating again. I could buy new clothes, but how was I going to get a new mind. Of course at my apartment I mistook the crowd for College Students since there was a College nearby. In reality they were young married couples, often with newborn babies, who were truckers, utility workers and other redneck occupations. They liked to get stoned on weed and party but they tended to be very clannish. My Romulan friends felt very uncomfortable and warned me I shouldn’t have moved in. Aside from the obvious things I’ve mentioned, there were allusions to possible Satanic activity.

Then we come to Gail Mc Nally’s poetry “My Inner Schizophrenic”. I am dedicating this Blog posting to her. What is poetry written by an insane person? I’m waiting with baited breath to get my hands on a copy of her book. Is it any different from poetry written by a person not diagnosed? You know, it’s been my experience that genuinely insane people really aren’t that creative. They usually get stuck in one groove- - often the “I’m OK but everybody else is an idiot” kick. Quite often, genuinely insane people, like Born Again Christians, become very authoritarian. Look at Marcus Blackwell. He regarded the upper patio as the deck of a ship and he was the commanding officer, and we were all his subjects. If I had the whole Marcus thing to do over again I would have stood up to him and challenged him a lot more. People tend to think of insane people having vivid imaginations when in reality this just isn’t the case. If a person is creative, he is probably sane. People think of Alice in Wonderland and through the looking glass as being the ultimate in insanity. All this shows is a vivid imagination. Compared to the snail mail letters I used to write, my blogs are the epitomy of rock ribbed Sanity. I guess sometimes I’m curious about where the whole Timothy Leary drug crowd hangs out. I guess the problem is that- - this is a pattern since child hood with me- - - I want to bring other people into my insane world- - but often I show little interest in recripicating and going into theirs. Some say insanity is illogic. Paul Mc Cartney once though his line of “I go back so far- - I’m in front of me” would be a line John Lennon would love. I’m not so sure. John Lennon used imagination but it had a point to it. If you sat down and had him explain it to you it would all have a point. Even the one liner statements Bruce makes are reminiscent of the sort of one liners that Jim Morrison would come up with. They would be off the wall declarative statements to reflect and meditate on. Even when John Lennon said “Imagine there is no heaven - - no hell below – above us only sky” his point was isn’t it sad that religion has us so brainwashed that to a lot of us Hell is real and pursuing us every day, isn’t it sad - we have to only imagine a world without spirits and demons and heaven and hell. It’s too idealistic of a world to actually exist.

THE SHAPE OF NUMBERS

If you are like me perhaps you've found the whole field of statistics intimidating. All you know is that there is some magic percent that you can measure from a sample and somehow get a picture of the macro reality. One might infer that the greater the volume of sheer numbers, the smaller of the percentage of a sample you need take. There are no doubt mathematical formulas on this but I want to narrow the topic a little. I want to talk about the herolded "Bell curve". Once I did a program in BASIC where I had the computer spit out random numbers- - and in my model I used the "pile of sand" or the conical model rather than a bell curve. In my model I had the varience from the mean dependant on the square of the different of a number- - in this case a random number between zero and six. What this meant was that the "mid point" where half of the numbers were closser to the mean, would be at nine above the mean and nine below the mean. In other words this means that the middle eighteen points (in this case of IQ scores randomly generated) would comprise exactly half the scores.

However statisticians don't use the "middle hald and two end quarters" number. Instead they use a number two thirds the way out to the two extremes of the score. That is, two thirds of the numbers are between these two lines and one sixth is to the far right, and one sixth to the far left. In this model Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would be to the far left, if you catch my drift. These two lines are collectively known as "standard deviation". It is best to speak of a standard deviation line or set of lines rather than the oft heard "standard deviation curve".

Now that you understand what "standard deviation" is, I can go on to say that it needn't be always the same number. Obviously it will vary by what you are sampling. For some things it will deliniate a wider range and for others a more narrow range. One might imagine for measuring things like blood PH I would expect a very narrow range, or for human temperature, a narrow range. But there are a few other aspects to the curve you need to know. First there is the right or left "skew" of the numbers, if any. A "normal" distribution of numbers is not supposed to have any "skew". For certain things like personal income- - a rightward "skew" would be assumed. One way to define a "skew" is to the extent that the mean average is to the right of the median. As I may have said before, when you use "median" you are talking about human beings, the domain of the liberal. When you are talking about things like worker efficiency or energy usage or production, then you would use the mean. These are the sort of things conservatives are more interested in. Is this concept now clear to you?

There are two moremore dynamics I want to fermiliarize you with first and that is what I call the amptitude. This is merely "how high is your bell curve"? You can think of it as sine waves. If you turn up the gain on the ociliscope, the sine waves will become more vertically elongated. But this is a dynamic of "projection" of you will, of the image, and says nothing of the "nature" of the wave itself. Moving on - - a large sample of anything will generate more numbers than a small sample, so on the same graph marking or "projection" or one might say "calibration" the bell wave will look taller the more sampling that you do. These things are taken into consideration when you draft the chart. There is another "projection" you should be aware of. And often you hear of a "logarithmic chart". These can either be horisontal or vertical progressions. The key thing to remember with that these charts is that they are proportional, and also that you never reach zero no matter how low the readings go. There are places where logarithmic charts are and are not appropiate, and I think I went into this recently, and let me give you a simple illustration right now. If you bought a hundred dollar stock and it goes down to tem, you are all but wiped out for you have lost ninety. So a logarithmic chart isn't relavant. If you however wait till the stock is at ten to buy it, now the logarithmic chart is relavant. Because it can continue in your eyes to plumet sharpely. People like to use straight linear charts to show a stock's rise. But if you just bought a stock when it about to reach its peak- - a logarithmic chart would be more relavant to you. The first investor may have baught the stock at ten, so if the stock goes up ten now he's doubled his money. But if you paid a hundred and it goes up ten, you've only made ten percent on your money. Capish?

Now we come to the most difficult concept, at least that I am going to discuss here. There is a quality called kurtosis. I became fermiliarized with this word in wolframalpha.com. What it is, to put in simple terms, is the "pointiness" of a Bell Curve. A high kurtosis will be "pointy looking" whereas a low kurtosis will be "more blob like". What I also need to stress here is that the standard deviation curve needn't change for the kurtosis to change. In fact, kurtosis is best illustrated where the standard deviation number or "point spread" as I call it, does not change. Let me next tell of an excell thing I did lately. I took four quarters of a circle. Think of a black line circle on white cardboard pieces. Now take the pieces are rearrange them so that they form the shape of a "Bell", with the high point in the middle. Now, this is what I refer to as a bell curve with "trigonometric logic". This curve had a peak to standard deviation line ratio of 1.409. This number is close enough to the 1.414. square root of two that there may be some connection, since I was not that exact in my "construction of the model". In this model I did it was as though there were some gymnasium with a bell shaped roof, and you had the people file in and stand on the line on the floor which represents their IQ score, or highth or whatever I am measuring. From here it was simply a matter of "counting noses" to see how many were on the node or peak line of the "Bell" and how many were on the two-thirds line and taking the ratio of the numbers. I say all of this because what I'd like to do is recalibrate and simplify the whole "kurtosis" computation process. First you have to know some things about statistics. Reality isn't what you'd logically think. If you have a class room and Chaquille ONeil walks in to the room, his presence throws the standard deviation for height curve way off. Computing the standard deviation doesn't take into account "flook" or isolated numbers. Their motto is "where there is one, there will be more". If the tallest person in the room is six one - - statistical sampling will just tack on a half an inch assuming there are people you didn't count. But it gets a bit freakier than that. I wondered what a "flat" Kurtosis number was. One might suppose it would be a number like One, or perhaps Zero. But it isn't It's the square root of three. But here's another freaky reality. Not all straight lines are equal. You've heard there are certain words you should never use the adjitive "vary" with, such as "pure" or "unique". To use such adjitives here is to diminish the primary word. Are all Straight Lines created equal? No. Longer straight lines are more "pointy" and short ones are "more blog like". So a flat series of numbers counting at some regular intervle, like an Excell copy command, will render different kurtosis figures depending on the length of the line. I discovered that a line of numbers PI length, or 6.28 - -which is twice pi - - will render a kurtosis with the square root of three. My version of kurtosis would have this as ONE. How I would compute kurtosis is to divide the number they give you by the square root of three and take THAT number and SQUARE it. So the "normal" kurtosis of three would remain unchanged. This three would mean (I think) that the node of peak of the curve would be 1.732 - - times the "two thirds" hash marks, as we'll call them. In my model as you know the hash mark reading was only 1.409. So what accounts for the difference? Here is is: The difference is the peak or tightness of the curve of the line at the top of the bell verses the curviture of the line as the ends of the bell. Is this is a higher ratio or difference, then your kurtosis will go up. I'm thinking a scenario where the curvature is equal or "trigonometric" model - - this would have a Kurtosis of 1.96 or roughly two. In case you are wondering I have never seen a kurtosis number lower than one, and these may not exist but don't hold me to that. Even a chart spread with a "hole" or "U" formation of scores, will still have a curtosis number of 1.2 or something. OK, I think you're up to speed now.

CALIFORNIA COURT UPHOLDS GAY MARRIAGE AMENDMENT

The California State Supreme Court today voted six to one not to overturn Proposition 8, the so called anti-gay marriage initiative. It was an amendment to the State Constitution. The State Supreme Court last May voted to legatamize gay marriage in a contraversial 4 to 3 decision, which was unambiguous in its stridency for rights for all of the people. Now the court has changed it's tune. What is so perplexing about today's ruling is that it says that the 18,000 gay couples who got married in the "window of oppertunity" last year, are legally married and every state in the union has to recognize these 18,000 as such, according to a provision in the US Constitution. This indeed creates a strange situation where the Court is saying "You eighteen thousand have this inailiable right that's guarenteed; the rest of you don't". Many have questioned the logic of this decision and I am one of these. I never in a million years thought they would vote the way they did because this Court has a record of overturning the sovreign vote of the people on a lot of issues. The thing is that if this were officially to alter the state constitution, then it should have been first been passed by 2/3 of the state legeslature. This did not occur. The reasoning according to some if "Well, the court used the passage of an illegal amendment to justify their current actions that didn't exist last May". But in my oppinion this is engaging in circular reason, if hot "short-circuited" reasoning. I still am against gay marriage, but I'd like the issue be dealt with in a fair and above board fashion. Now the pro gay people are just going to get another initiative on the ballot and try it again. And this time, I have the feeling, they will succeed, because momentum for this gay marriage issue is growing.

Sylvia Sottomayer - - a Hispanic woman, has been picked for the Supreme Court Justice left open by justice Sutor's retirement. This lady is known for her thoughtful rulings, which on occasion have opted for the conservative side of an issue. I see no reason why she shouldn't be approved. Nobody really fought that hard about approving Roberts or Allito. If the Republicans try to be too obstenate in opposing this nomination they will only bee seen for what they are, and that is - obstructionist. Sylvia Sottomayer has been to all the Ivy League colleges and has served as both a trial judge and a prosecutor, among other things. My only reservation is that sometimes "What's in a person's heart" can be relivant. It's relavant for a husband or wife to be. If you don't love the things your husband loves and want the same things he wants, if you only give out a yawn when he pours out his heart and says what he'd really like to accomplish in this life, then such a man or a woman is not a very goot marital candidate. Personally, I don't like family members who show this kind of apathy. But you know what they say. You can pick your friends but not your relatives. Often when I show I'm really interested in a certain subject, there is a yawn apathy that rises up in them, like I'm talking to the fence posts. If I say, "You know, I'm going to spend some of my stimulus check on eating more snacks that I've been missing the past three years" I'm not looking for a lecture on how bad sugar is. I'm saying all of this because in our personal lives we're looking for empathy. If we have a Pastor we talk to, we would like him to care if we expressed concern for the physical health of a loved one, or if we'd just been fired or had debt problems, or worse were arrested in jail. It's classic Christian compassion to care about such thing and if a pastor doesn't do this he isn't doing his job. But in a Supreme Court justice, I don't want feelings, I want objectivity and fairness and a "rigerous legal intellect" and all of that. I want my candidate to have some respect for what "settled law" is. I would like to get to the other issue I wanted to raise and this is the idea of "Liberal activist justice". Statisticians have pointed out that Clarence Thomas has voted to overturn more laws than any other justice at 69% or higher. Justice Kennedy is in at second and Justice Sculia is in at third at 56% Justice Bryer has only a 29% rating when it comes to voting to overturn a case. So the great liber myth is showned to be a falsehood because Clarence Thomas is the most "activist" Justice we have ever had. Personally I don't like activist justices. Capish?

The US Supreme Court today in one of their famous five to four rulings with "the usual suspects" decided that cops have the right to continue to badger and question a suspect clearly after they have indicated they wish to say nothing untill their attorney arrives. While this ruling may seem proper on "technical" grounds, in the real world it doesn't wash, any more than Plecy verses Ferguson will play in the real world Blacks have to live in. You know as well as I that cops are authority figures and the suspect by the very nature of being in the presence of a uniformed officer feels compelled to so whatever the police officer tells them to do, and in real life that means continuing to answer questions. You know how cops don't take kindly to lying to them, because they have the power to let things ride or else to slap on more charges depending on how you, the suspect cooperates. Here is definitely a case where real life personal experiance would come in handy. But as it is now, this is just one more dimuation of personal Civil Liberties.

People are saying now that the Swine flue will be returning in the fall with a vengance. They say that in the epidemics of 1918 and also in 1957 that there was a virus in the summer time but it was dying out and in the cast of 1918 came back in the fall, of that year, and that's when it killed so many people. Some say that if a virus could think, it would never mutate into a fast acting virus because that way it would kill off its host and die out before it could be spread long enough to perpetuate its kind. But the answer may lie in the fact that the virus now has a short incubation period. If a virus had a long incubation period it could still be deadly but be spread for perhaps two weeks before the host had any symptums that could be tested for. At any rate those in the know say this virus will be coming back as more viralint than it has been to date.

I'd like to discuss for my final subject the Soap Opera. OK, the Soap Opera it is. In that one of Victor's sons named Brady, who is really a grandson, turned traitor and called the cops and fingered the other son, Philip, and interfered with a "hostage exchange" that was in a delicate state of negotiation. Of course the Salem PD can be counted on to muck anything up they get their hands on. Another son of Victor is the police comissioner, named Bo Brady, who has let his contempt for his father and his father's chosen profession, become rather obvious over the years. Meanwhile the other principal in this "hostage negotiation" is Elvis Di Mira. He has an employee who is a screw-up named Owen who goofed up deliverage of their kidnap hostage, a young woman named Stephanie. This put Elvis Di Mira in an embarrising position. In the end I think the king pins on both sides could have "worked the whole situation out" perhaps with a few thrown fists, but still worked out. But with the police involved it's a whole different story with a lot more complicating wrinkles.

AN UNMISTAKABLE OBAMA TIDE

It used to be said many long years ago that people didn't get serious about a Presidential campaign untill the World Series was over with. Right now the World Series has not yet started (it will in a few minutes) but it seems the "decisive" phase of this campaign is over and past. All three debates have concluded (Obama won all three of them) and people have basically made up their minds already. We wish Randi Rhodes luck in voting tomorrow. Apparently she couldn't vote today because the lines were too long in Florida. Certain things are becomming clearer all the time. NBC had a poll on the news saying that Obama had made fantastic inroads with two key segments of the population that Mc Cain was badly counting on - independant voters and older people. Older people now see Obama in terms of being "safe" and "stable". He had passed the threshhold of acceptability for the office in their minds. Mc Cain had a decision to make a couple months back. He could go for the independant voters, which everyone was expecting, or he could shore up the republican base. How ironic it is that Al Qaeda means "The Base" in Arabec. What a twist it is that Al Qaida should prove to be Mc Cain's undoing. Mc Cain was betrayed in his own mind by clinging to "Al Qaeda" at all costs. And he has cost him a great deal of respectability. One caller today was saying that he didn't know his mother had racist leanings untill she joined the Mc Cain campaign. And now Obama is up eleven points both in the NBC poll this morning and the Newsweek (?) poll I just heard this afternoon. There is no other indication but what this eleven point margin will continue to increase as people see the issues more clearly. They don't want to be told that Obama is a Socialist. They know better. How ironic it is that one of the best stump speeches I heard today for the democrats was given by none other than Ronald Reagan. They played that old speech from 1948 of Ronald Reagan stumping for the democrats saying the Republican congress passed laws that were bad for American workers and that now your wages aren't keeping up with the rising inflation. If you want you can hear speeches of Eisenhaur warning of the dangers of an excessively milliteristic society. Franklin Rosevelt made speeches against the industrial barrons of his time saying they want Power and to hang on to their power they will attack anyone who opposes them as Unamerican. No older person wants to vote for a candidate he deems to be running against Franklin Rosevelt. These people worship the ground Rosevelt walks on. If we are to believe Thom Hartman, they don't have this problem in European countries of being accused of being against their native country. The equalivance of "Un-American" is unknown over there. Unfortunately Christianity too has been dragged through the mud because many people see Mc Cain's people and Christianity as one and the same people. It's so petty to accuse someone os "stealing" or "coveting" when they want taxes on the rich raised. If this is true then John Mc Cain is guilty of the same sin of "coveting what the rich have" because he used to be against the George Bush tax cuts. Everyone always reguarded these tax cuts as temporary. But now to see them "expire" evokes howells of protests from the right. In the same way that poor southern whites voted with the conservatives because he believed it was all "Sambo's fault" for the state he was in economically, so people today live in this fantasy world of "I don't earn $250.000 a year but if I did I wouldn't want the government taking my hard earned money away". There is no doubt about it- - Thom Hartman believes obscene, excessive wealth is bad for the interests of America. I suppose the worst you could say is that Obama is "Hartman light". A more pragmatic truth is that the government is short on money and will raise it from wherever it can get it. This is a cold, hard reality but if I were running for President I'd remind the voters of this truth.

They say that Sarah Palin's Saturday Night Live performance actually hurt her as a respectable candidate. Now apparently she is traging her kids around like props or defense baracades or something- - even to places where her kids were not invited and she's putting it on the taxpayer's tab. By the way I've heard one third of corporations don't pay any income tax at all, or maybe the figure is even higher. We must make corporations pay their just and fair share. As to the notion of the 'eighties and the past eight years driving wages down- - Tom Hartman had a painful but perhaps correct statement to make. If you pull down five hundred dollars a week and you're taxed at twenty percent, the Boss knows that you'll work for four hundred. If they cut the income tax rate to ten percent you won't get $450.00. You've already shown the boss that you'll work for $400.00 so he'll cut your gross salary to $450.00. In like manner one would expect if you had a ten percent sales tax and they cut it to five percent, venders would hike the price of the goods and pocket the ammount because you've already shown what you're willing to pay for the product. We've heard outright lies in this campaign like Michelle Obama ordering lobster and Pursian cavier at a hotel where they were holding a charity event. And later it turns out that Michelle was never even at that hotel. Conservatives miss the big picture and fixate on things like flag lapels. How ironic it would be if Obama actually did "Fat" out of the federal budget. It would be the last thing the Right expected. They don't care if we run up a big deficet and make their kids pay for it, just as long as poor people don't get any of that money.

If you people took my advice and bought stocks a week or two ago, don't worry about today's low prices. Consider it a "Sale" that has been extended. It's an oppertunity to avail yourself of buying even more. Now you won't buy stocks, but a year from now when stock prices are up by 25% then you all will be clamoring that you can't wait to buy stocks. Today I was yelling at my TV screen for this lady on "Deal or No Deal" to get out of the game at $43,000. One look at the board told the story. But like all the rest she stayed in far too long and settled for twelve hundred. You know Jesus talked a lot about sowing treasure in heaven. If there is a hereafter, I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of a Mc Cain supporter with all their monitary and racial petty proclivities. The thing about karma is that it's what you do when you think nobody is looking- that counts. It's the things you do without an audience that carries the most weight, for good or for bad. And if you followed my oil advice, it's time to cover those naked shorts. Winter is coming and it's time to take your profits and squerrel away resources for later on.

There are a lot of petty things in the law. Slaves aren't slaves but "other persons". And if your grandfather was a slave it means you can't do certain things. On a game show today they had a man and a woman competing to answer questions and advance to the next round. I think it was the man who got "the wrong kind of question" that randomly was selected and therefore he was "unqualified" to even venture an answer to the question and lost by default. In voting they have their caging techniques. And they want to make sure your name is identical, and that your drivers license number was transcribed perfectly. I've never seen election officials behave in such a biased manner as the stuff I've heard about this year in terms of misplacing or losing ballots or not counting provisional ballots or else lying to people who are qualified saying they are not because per chance they defaulted on their mortgage payments or something. If nothing else Black people need to get smarter. You know, about the first letter I ever wrote to the media was in 1974 expressing my belief that the Symbionese Liberation Army was some kind of a stealth organization organized by the FBI with its one tokin Black, Donald De Freeze. Some people today are trying to rekindle this paranoia about connecting Black people with extremist organizations in people's minds. I'll say this. The Black Panthers got support from communities because they did "community service" and had those free breakfasts for children and all, much as terrorist organizations in the mideast to charity for the poor. Christians used to practice charity but somewhere along the way some bright person stood up and said "Charity is not an essential element of Christianity" and everyone stood up and applauded. We all need to "reach out and touch somebody" like the slogan says. John Lennon says in a song, "A million heads are better than one". This is true on so many levels. There is wisdom in numbers. (Selah) If it works on Wheel of Fortune with just two people, it will easily work with a hundred million.

THE FINAL FORTNIGHT

Well, early voting has begin, and from what we can tell this year could end up a year of total confusion on November 5th. We may not have hanging chads but we'll have the nightmare of the Republicans not wanting to let go - - because in Ohio and West Virginia and in Florida they have had problems with long voting lines and electronic touch ballots not working properly as the machines keep switching to Mc Cain when a person votes for Obama. I haven't even received my ballot yet and I'm a registered Republican. I've gotten recomendations for various state propositions such as no on eleven, the "better government" initiative. Yes on ten. That's the energy proposition where you get tax credit for efficient alternate energy cars, ect. Joe Biden is saying that Obama will be "tested" his first six months in office, and I have no reason to doubt this. As you know I've claimed that "The powers that Be" have a war with Iran scheduled in to the divine master schedule for the next four years. But Obama will not be siding with the Moslems as these Christians claim. They say he's a stealth terrorist and a socialist and a closet Moslem, whom all the extremist Islamic powers can't wait to see in office.

As you know Collin Powell enfoursed Obama last Sunday morning on Meet the Press, and we out here heard about it in the early news before the show even aired. Mr. Powell's endoursement of Obama is dismissed by the born again lobby and apparently people like Rush Limbaugh saying that it's strictly a racial thing. Naturally Powell endoursed Obama because they're both Black. The narrowness which the Far Right is guilty of they are projecting on to their adversaries. Race was never cited as one of the many factors why Powell is endoursing Obama. The reasons were that Obama is cool as a cucumber under fire and shows a "steady hand of leadership". Some may argue that Obama is "playing possum" and he's just waiting till November 5th. Guy Fawks day before he "comes out of the closet" and announces his true identity. Some say the reason why people like Randi Rhodes want early voting is "because something bad is likely to come out about Obama in the next two weeks that could turn things around". Another reason why Collin Powell is endoursing Obama is that the Republicans are appealing to too narrow of a support base, and I'd have to agree with that, and I'd throw in the words "biggoted" and "racist" myself. I have myself heard racist remarks out of the mouths of these right wingers, both against Blacks and against anyone of Arab or Islamic extraction. Collin Powell talked about the grave of a young man who died for his country in the Iraq war with a star and crescent on his grave. There are contrary to belief, actually good practicing Moslems who are 100% pro American. This whole idea of being "un American" is a troubling one. Sarah Palin said she was happy campaigning in the "pro American parts of the country" like in North Carolina. Powell has stated that Obama by contrast to Mc Cain has appealed to a broad spectrum of the population. Many say that Sarah Palin's inclusion on the ticket is a major reason for viewing Mc Cain as unstable. Powell also cited (as did I) Mc Cain's lack of decisiveness on the bail out bill as a reason not to trust his decision making powers. Powell spoke of a virtual "Final Exam" that the candidates have undergone these past few troubling weeks. Many conservatives such as George Will have expressed doubts about having Sarah Palin on the ticket. Supposidly the buzzword is "I'm voting for Obama but don't tell my neighbor". Raher than a white backlash or "The Bradley effect", we may instead see a voter "front-lash" of many coming out in secret for Obama.

I had a conversation with someone the other day and it made me angry. I'm getting tired of this like that restoring the Clintonian tax rates for upper incomes as somehow "socialisum" or "a major redistribution of the wealth" or somehow another form of "welfare for the non tax payer". Of course even thse who pay no income tax because they are so poor still pay sales tax as well as FICA withholding, and perhaps even health plan withholding from their payroll checks. If Mc Cain is going to pitch his campaign for the benefit of those earning over $250,000 then I say say"Who does he think he's kidding?" if he thinks the top five percent of incomes represents the broad main streme of American workers. Somehow Mc Cain wants you to buy into the notion that the mean old government is unjustly conthiscating your "hard earned money". Why would "Joe the plumber" jeopardize his own intrests by coming out for Mc Cain. Clearly Joe the Plumber was a shill for Mc Cain. Even if he did earn over $250,000 he would profit from the Obama tax plan because he'd get more business because potential customers had more income to spend. Also the new health care regulations would help him so he'd pay a net less to the government anyhow. But don't confuse republicans with the facts.

There is this push by the media to recessitate Mc Cain's campaign because they want to peddle the notion that the race is tight and could go either way on election day. But if it does it will be because of corruption of the electoral process. All of the polls show Obama leading from between about six and eleven points. Obama has more money to spend, "hard earned money"- - than Mc Cain does. So if anything the Obama lead should increase. Collin Powell's endoursement should help Obama. In 1992 Clinton increased his lead in the final week. In 1988 Bush increased his lead over Dukakis in the final week. I'm thinking probably Clinton increased his lead against Dole in the final week. It's rare for the media to portray this as a "tight race" with Obama so far ahead in the polls, unless they know something they aren't saying.

IT'S GETTING CLEARER ALL THE TIME

Well last night Joe the Plumber won the day. Mc Cain launched the charges of "class warfare" and "wanting to spread the wealth around" against Obama, whereas Mc Cain says "I want Joe the plumber to keep all his wealth that he's made for himself". I heard the same charges leveled by O Riley against Obama when O Riley had him on as a guest. The truth is that if Joe the Plumber wants to get out of that high tax bracket he can take on an employee and write off his salary as "business expence" to get his income down. Also Obama plans to give small business three thousand or something to provide new jobs. Also if Joe the plumber makes 500,000 only half of his money will be subject to the higher tax rate. One statement that Obama did not repeat often enough was the idea that McCain votes with Bush ninety percent of the time. When Mc Cain said "If you wanted to run against George Bush you should have run four years ago" Obama should have come right back with "That's about the dumbest thing I've heard anybody say" and sit back and listen to the applause. In a head to head confrontation Obama won the day every time. Obama said Mc Cain would tax your health benefits. Further Obama said that under my plan you could keep your health coverage if you were satisfied with it, but Mc Cain may well put the health coverage you have now in jeopardy". Mc Cain tried raising the specter of Ayres the weather underground bomber. Mc Cain brought up ACORN. This is a group who has been in the news for regestering Mickey Mouse and other bogus names such as Al Kilyoo and Pepe Roni. But the truth is that in Colorado, which has swung dramatically democratic in the past four years, more names have been taken OFF the rolls by Republicans than there were newly registered. And these new voters were largely democratic. Obama kept coming back to economic issues every time Mc Cain would launch a personal attack saying how Mc Cain wants to reduce the taxes of big oil companies by 300 Billion or something. Obama reminded us that we have only three percent (?) of the world's oil reserves so cannot "drill ourselves out of the energy crisis". I wish Obama had come up with something a little more specific as to which form of energy he thinks would get us out of our energy crisis. The truth is that we need to explore so many different types of energy and we'll have to see which one does the trick.

On education I like Obama's money for public service feature. A student gets funding for college and in exchange does a year of community service. This helps everybody. Obama needed to stress more the notion that his plans "help the country as a whole" and not just one individual. If we spend money on disease research now we will cut our medical costs later. And if we spend more money on education now we cut the crime rate later and our citizens get better jobs. The one area where I do agree with Mc Cain is this idea of vouchers and the right to let market forces dictate which school parents send their kids to. Both candidates believe that we ought to fire bad teachers who don't perform and this is a good thing. On abortion Mc Cain admitted that he voted for judges Ginsburg and Brior in the Clinton adminestration. Obama said he regarded sex as a sacred act, and this should appeal to Christians. I think it was a cheap shot myself since the issue is not where the partakers of sex have right moral standing by virtue of being married, the issue is the taking of an innocent human life, and I would frame the argument in this way.

Larry Elder says the cure to every economic injustice is to let market forces take over. In the case of this animal rights bill in California I'm inclined to buy his argument. Passing proposition two would wipe out the poultry inductry here in California. We can't have that, especially is we then get eggs from such dubious places as Mexico or China. Rather the solution to a lot of problems including this no smoking quandry is to let market forces and social pressure rule the day, and in the end companies will be pressured into more humane conditions for livestock.

Obama's basic plans for this bail-out bill are better than Mc Cains. He wants to offer job incentives and also a chance for people to remain in their homes and try and make their mortgage payments with a ninety day freeze on foreclosures. Mc Cain wants to cut capital gains taxes and dividend taxes. My understanding is if you're a millionaire and live mostly on stock dividends, you are taxed only at the low rate of fifteen percent. This will not do. I would raise the top income tax rate back up to fifty percent where Reagan CUT it to back in 1981. In terms of capital gains cuts, this will leech capitol from the stock market because people will have an incentive to rush to sell the minute they see any profit because they know they can keep more of their sale price now. The same thing will go on in real estate if we ever recover. Of course capital gains taxes raise revenue on the short term because people have a sudden incentive to sell. But it won't last once the excess capitol is leeched from the system. Thom Hartman has talked about how Jefferson, Madison and others didn't want a nation of filty rich "landed gentry" who owned everything. This is what the progressive income tax prevents. Of course the government has a societal intrest in overseeing the wealth in this country and who gets it. A major purpose of the tax system should be to encourage activities we like, like hard work and production of a needed product, and discouraging of activities we frown on, such as speculation. In this sense we have a remnent of our Puritanical ethic. Mc Cain wants to abolish the inheritance tax in this country and that will insure that we have this Dynastic Wealth that our forefathers frowned upon. It's a strange thing to me that the Joes of the world are worried about and side with the "landed gentry", the multi-millionaires and don't identify with their own pasts and the comon working people. We need to bring back the worth ethic in this country. And I think to a large measure we already have, because the average Joe is working harder than he used to. The trouble is that his bottom line income is not showing it. For the past thirty years the income of the average person has been shortchanged, and it's this situation we must remedy and one way is to raise the national minimum wage to a livable figure. I think we need a quarter or maybe a half percent stock transaction tax to cut down on speculative day trading in the stock market. Michelle Obama gets a huge salary from a corporation that is not doing all that well economically. They had a thing on You Tube on this. Obama is not lilly white in this area. I'll close by saying that we in America need to start looking at the Big Picture economically. Mc Cain can talk about deals with the Columbian government. But we democrats who see the big picture know that dealing with crooks and people who don't prosecute criminal terrorist groups in other countries are not the sort of people with whom America should be doing business.

TWO CONFLICTING POINTS OF VIEW

We are approaching a political divide so serious in this country it's starting to rival the civil war. Of course "Todd" wants Alaska to secede from the United States so we're practically there. It's good to see Mc Cain at least trying to "put out the fires" of the worst discord in his own campaign by trying to allay the fears of the most extreme elements who think Obama's an Arab. Of course Mc Cain was actually booed one time he did this, in Minisota. The divide between my two other brothers is enormous right now. So perhaps it's best to take on some of the troubling issues and examine them. One charge that almost makes sense that has been made by the right wing is that Obama knows little to nothing about economics himself and that he has been getting bad advice, from his friend, Frank Rains, who is associated with Fanny Moe and Freddy Mac. I was amazed to learn on the Rachael Maddau show today that Fanny Mae does not write mortgages, it only buys other bad loans up and guarentees them. I further learned that the vast majority of the bad real estate mortgages are actually from parties not regulated by the rules established by Jimmy Carter, who was naturally concerned about red lining. This is the complete exclusion of certain neighborhoods from either getting loans or insurance. Clearly no other practice is as instrumental in promoting "Segregation" that all liberals profess to hate. Some on the left want to blame George Bush for trying to hype up Real Estate sales to convince people that we were really out of the recession of 2001. But it would seem that corporate greed rather than "misplaced generosicy to minorities" is to blame. This whole idea of buying and selling debt risk and debt guarentee swaps are such an obvious Ponsie scheme I'm surprised corporate executives were stupid enough to fall for it. Averice knows no bounds! Mc Cain has a pretty good idea in wanting to buy up the bad mortgages directly from the mortgage holders and renegotiate the price of the home and established more reasonable fixed rates. To me, anyone who would buy a flexible rate mortgage is a fool- - and I never saw the appeal of it. But now Obama is promicing his "New Economic Plan" that was supposed to be out today except that I haven't heard about it. One part of the Obama plan is to not penalize the destitute for pulling money early out of an IRA. It would seem that Obama also wants to buy up individual mortgages. But in his plan the bank is bypassed and the customer is dealt with directly.

We were saying we'd tell you when we hit the bottom of the stock market. Well, I can pretty safely say we've hit it. Some may want to "wait for a pull back" to buy. Well, you just might have a long wait. We have gone up about fifteen hundred DJI points since mid day Friday, and you really should have bought in the depths of despair on Friday. We may "test the bottom" again or perhaps even exceed it for a day or so, but basically if you don't buy up now everything you can get your hands on, you are not maximizing your money making oppertunity. Experts will tell you industry group selection is important at market tops but at market bottoms it really doesn't matter. If the fundamentals of a stock are good, then buy it immediately.

The right wing has appealed to many people's fears. There is this "Manifesto" put out by the Communist Party, alledgedly in 1963 with all these bogus "goals for America". Most of the items have to do with undermining our culture or respect for authority. But there are other salvos like appealing to racism. Some of the things sent to me backfire in this respect. There are readings from Obama's first book about his upbringing where relations between the races are gone into. Obama mentions how his white grandmother fears being attacked by a white man at a bus stop. And yet clearly it's black women who historically have been the ones raped and taken advantage of. In fact a good case can be made that the white man can't be trusted to deal fairly with minorities. Today is Columbus Day. Thom Hartman today told of the native people on Haiti where Columbus landed. The people who live there now are imports from Africa and not the native population which was wiped out. Columbus kidnapped thousands of the native population and shipped them back to Spain and made slaves out of them. The sex trade was enormous, and somehow Columbus being a Catholic had no scruples against exploiting young girls, sometimes as young as nine or ten. My guess is that smallpox was the thing that wiped out these native peoples. Apparently the population of Haiti went from 160,000 - - - to zero, in less than a century. Some would say the Puritans of this country are more ethical. This is true up to a point. But reading of the Pilgrems in the thing sent to me it kind of bugged me that the kindness the native Indian population showed the Pilgrims was chalked up to "the sovereignty of God". This to me is an ugly license for ingratitude to say "It wasn't you- - it was God". This slick logic works the other way too. If you go to a church and the pastor treats you like crap, and the other people can't always be relied upon- - they might say "It isn't they who let you down, but God showing his displeasure tword you, or he wants to "teach you a lesson". Dragging "God" into everything is usually more trouble than it's worth. How interesting that this might well the last time the white man and the red man were on socially civil terms, before our nation decided to start systematically wiping out every trace of their culture, without which, the Pilgrems couldn't have survived their first year here. It's a different way of looking at something.

Sixty Minutes or somebody had a thing on this cute little nine or ten year old girl taking up hunting and having the experiance of blowing an innocent animal's head off. I guess if Sarah Palin gets in, a lot of young girls will leave the Mall Shopping scene and take to the back woods.

Of course if you're going to infiltrate the Mafia, it's best to be an Italian food critic. It wouldn't hurt to have watched Jeff Smith all those years and learn all the lingo for various cheeses and meats that Italians use. This involves the taking down of the Gambino family. The other sixty minutes story was on the battle for Al Sotter City in Iraq, which took place earlier this year from March untill May. What we did was build a wall dividing the city much as the prophet Neiamiah built the walls of Jerusalem when the exiles returned there, with a trowel in one hand and a rifel in the other. It seems we used advanced unpiloted drone planes with lazer heat seeking divices. I guess what both these stories prove is that our government can actually accomplish something constructive once we put our mind to it. After Obama gets elected we're going to have to go about healing the divisions in this land, and that will take on psychological aspects, as we "counsil" our right wing friends among us that resisting the Obama government is futile. People talk about blacks rioting but they never talk about white people rioting. The vast majority of the American people may agree that our nation has "turned the corner" and we will soon again be on the road to economic prosperity and fiscle responsability as well as regaining the respect of our European brothers. But there will be that troublesome minority that just won't "let it go" and want to return us to some glorious state that never was to begin with, where conservative values trickle down in abondance. Let me close with this one thought. In the first place we HAD this for six or eight long years and Roe vs Wade was never overturned- - and somehow we managed to not overturn our charished civil liberties in that time. But as I said two years ago "The trouble is how many bad rulings from the Supreme Court would you have to have in order to get the court far right enough to overturn roe vs wade." The point is, it isn't worth taking that chance. If Obama gets elected there will be no more "mass abortions" than there were before. But if Mc Cain is elected our constitution is in direct peril from one more right wing judge being added. This indeed to my way of thinking is "a clear and present danger".

There is a dangerous, growing climate of political Hatred in this country developing in this campaign season. I've never seen anything like it. At least not in this country. You sure never saw it in the Goldwater campaign, and I'm old enough to remember that. There is an appealing to the darker side of human nature rampent in both the Mc Cain and particularly the Palin speeches. The crowds who attend these gatherings are more like the crowds you'd see at a Reichstad rally in Germany with people yelling "Kill him" and "off with his head" and "he's a terrorist". The truth is a casualty in this campaign. I guess if you're a Christian, and not of the far right (which might these days be mutually exclusive terms) then you have to wonder what God thinks about all this hatred. But of course we know God will allow hatred to take place. If he didn't intervene to save his own son who was crusified 2000 years ago then I won't imagine he'll intervene to save Obama, should he actually be in physical danger. But now there are still other disturbing elements. We hear that the government has called back troops from foreign countries to be ready just in case Obama loses the election to handle potential Black rioting, much as there was in the second Rodney King, civil rights trial, where nothing ended up happening. You kind of have to wonder what sort of police state Mc Cain would "ideally" like to have were he chief executive. One supreme court decision I'd like to comment on (even if Palin won't) is the one involving 'enemies of the state' and denials of Habious Corpus. The Supreme Court rules five to four that "enemy combatents" had the right to Habius Corpus, or to know the nature of the crimes they are being charged with. Do you know how close we came to losing our freedom? If just one judge had gone the other way we would have lost these rights, perhaps for a generation. If for no other reason we cannot elect John Mc Cain as President, knowing the sort of person he'd appoint to the Supreme Court. Of course if you've seen that Keating Five vidio you know of Mc Cain's involvement in this scandal. Rush Limbaugh used to talk about the Keating Five, but if he had his old shows to do over again I bet he'd decline to discuss it now, knowing Mc Cain's involvement in a scheme not at all unlike the situation we are seeing with the banking system today. Lincoln Savings was driven into the ground and had to be bailed out by the government. For the life of me I do not know why Obama hasn't slipped this scandal in in one of the debates so far. The Keating Five scandal should be a "deal breaker" in its own right, precluding John Mc Cain from ever being thought of as a Presidential candidate.

One more topic never discussed in the debates is this whole area of N A F T A and the looming trade deficet and fair trade terrifs. We need to restore fair trade so that we can build up industries in this country. To listen to an Obama speech you'd never know that unfair foreign trade practices were a problem. Along with this we need to set some sort of immigration laws with real teeth in them- - not "because our culture is being undermined" as Pat Buchannon says but for (a) to restore respect for our laws in general and (b) to keep minorities from lowering the wage base in this country. If these people stayed in Mexico these "best and brightest" of that country could organize unions and such in their own country and improve everyone's lot who lives in Mexico. As Tom Hartman says, what the US is doing now is exporting polution by moving factories to other countries. I also personally wish Obama had not endourced this gigantic 700 Billion Wall Street bail out bill because I don't think we really needed it. As you know there has been no "stock market crash" of the perportions we had in the twenties. We aren't even close. It's inacurate to say people's funds are "wiped out". At worse they are down thirty percent. And if you wait a while they'll come back. Only people in the most dire emergency should think of cashing out now. We may well in fact be very near the all time lows in the stock market. Remember you heard us call the high first. We may be first to call the low. This is not the time for pessimisum or dire thinking. Countries around the world are taking unprecidented measures to prop up the banking system and cut interest rates on a world wide basis and get that cash flow going. In President Obama's inogural speech he may well be justified in talking about "The Audacity of Hope" once again. But untill we address our trade imballance problem I would continue to buy gold because the anxiety level through the world continues to be high and items on the horison won't make world tranquility any easier to invision.

In my personal life if you're curious as you know a friend loaned me some money a while back. Given the "deletion" of the renters rebate, I don't know how I am going to pay that money back. He has not brought up the subject but I've been thinking about it. Some of you may be wondering whether we'd have to do a little snipping of "Thick as a Brick" on our last posting to get the song listing to fit. The only other time the Federation has ever edited a song was the end of "In my time of dying" by Led Zeppeling, getting rid of all that stuff after the song is over.

There are a couple of other Supreme Court decisions I'd like to comment on, and I've already "tried out" in an E mail to the brother who is not a Christian. This concerns the ruling that states that people have the right to bear arms regardless of any local laws on the books. May I suggest that this is a violation of local sovreignty. Only in very specific, limited areas are state and local municipalities prohibited from passing whatever laws they wish. Clearly as I read it the second amendment is about limitations to the power of the Federal Government and Congress to abridge or eliminate the right to bear arms. In an urbanized area like Washington DC they have their own needs and they don't need street gangs wiping each other out throughout the city. In the same way some salloons even in the old west said "check your guns at the door". Because they didn't want any violence. But I would use this same local government sovreignty argument to overturn Roe verses Wade. Of course the basis of that decision was based on a previous bad ruling - that Griswald one on "privacy". The Griswald ruling overturned sodomy laws based on the idea that we all had a "right to privacy". The right to privacy isn't the Right to comit criminal acts in secret. Most blackmailing is done in secret but that doesn't make it any less immoral. But in the overall scheme of things- - I'd rather living in a world with abortions up the wazoo than one that's some sort of Fascist Police State, as Mc Cain dreams about fondly at night. It's a question for me anyhow, of priorities. As you know the Federation has not helped Obama in this campaign as it helped Kerry and Gore. But then again they both lost. In fact the Federation has stated that they'd rather see Obama murdered if it "has to happen to insure a greater good". Well, once again in God's oppinion God killing his son was preferable to the alternative of seeing Truth and Justice prevail in Palestine. So who can really tell with these Supernatural powers?

THE FINAL BRICKS IN THE WALL

Fingertips (Little Stevie Wonder)
Got My Mind Made Up To Love You (Marvyn Gaye)
Gimme Gimme Good Livin' (1909 artist)
Hot Buttered Popcorn (1969 artist)
Pictures of Home (Deep Purple)
Sock It To Me (Isley Brothers)
You Just Don't Care (Santana)
Shining Star (mid '70's disco group)
Get It On In the Morning (Bill Chase)
Thick as a Brick (Jethro Tull) Pts. 1 & 2

Now laying in that final tier of bricks. "Marvyn Gaye" and "Isley" are two songs similar to the selections used in "Soul Parade" in the Opera blog. The "popcorn" thing might be the name of the group, I'm not sure. "Gimme" is a Paul Revere & the Raiders sound alike group. The Santana is a former Reigellian B side. The Deep Purple track is track three of "Machine Head" and I wish I were able to positively confirm it. It's the song with the fast tripplicates. But Napster no longer let me use their product as is but insisted that I update it. "Brick" is kind of meant to be listened to with the pause in the middle. I don't think we have any repeats here.

LATE NOTE: "All the Young Girls Love Alice" had to be deleted for lack of space on a conventional CD. However there is a plug for the Elton John album on the back of the album as well as a plug for the Reigellian movie (Neir Reigel) "For What It's Worth" about the rapture on earth coming in November 1973, where a portion of the song "Good-bye Yellow Brick Road" appears. Also on the back of the album is the circled callendar date of November 23rd 1966 and November 23rd. 2008. This is more of that mystery stuff which may not mean anything.

We're like the Beatles. If we don't like reality as it is, we make up our own. In that spirit I have some recent day or two old news from the Federation. This whole tight money liquidity crisis we are in now is according to what the Federation says now, orchestrated by the Sutterans. They saqy "this crisis might have happened on its own but in this case it didn't. It was orchestrated by forces beyond earth control. The goal is (and here it gets weird) to put a man in office who will control the United States who will end up getting us in a war with Iran. This is because though the Sutterans and Alcyonne (who controls Iran) have gotten along till now, a major rift is developing between these powers behind the powers. So that the U S will get sucked into a nuclear war with Iran we will end up winning (or at least not wiped out) but that life and liberty not to mention spiritual life as we know it in America will be destroyed and come to an end.

Meanwhile back in the funny papers, they held a debate last night between the two principals of this campaign that was all sound and fury signifying nothing. I almost fell asleep during this debate. None of the hot button issues were even touched. Nobody accused Obama of being a traiter by talking to that Ayres guy. And Obama never brought up the Keating Five and that video now making the rounds showing that Mc Cain's hands are dirty. Mc Cain's age and his health were not brought up. Even the things they DID talk about we are no wiser for the hearing of it. We know both candidates have health plans, but if I had to explain the difference between the two plans or why one is better than the other, I couldn't do it. All I know is Obama says people happy with their medical insurence plan now can keep it. Energy was discussed but I heard no plans for effient auto engines or ethanol or hydrogen or most other sources. I believe Mc Cain did put in a plug for nuclear. But there was no Plan on the table from either side as far as I could see. The threat of both social security and medicare going bankrupt in twenty years was not discussed. We know Obama wants to invade Pakistan and Mc Cain doesn't. Basically what I heard was a lot of flapping of the lips but neither side was saying anything.

Last Saturday I was discussing politics with family members. The topic of the day was some secret law that was passed to enable nurses to euthanize patients, ie. kill them, and the patients would have no legal recourse. The medical care my late father received was discussed but nobody discussed the elephant in the room, ie. suing the hospital. We talked a lot about the wonder of creation and how unique each of us are, as created by God. We talked about what a crime abortion is, and how could anyone vote for a candidate so virently in favor of abortion as Obama is. A lot of people don't blame Mc Cain for the financial mess our country and now the world is in now. Because Mc Cain has people so confused some people think he's the big hero in all of this. There was a lot of talk about individual responsability. As of now I'm still voting for Obama but I'm doing it with a lot less conviction than I did a week ago. I like to think of myself as a moral, God fearing and responsible person. Obama needs to do a better selling job for the notion that you can still be a "Good American" and vote democratic.

PRESIDENT BUSH SIGNS
700 BILLION BAIL-OUT BILL INTO LAW

The house voted mid day yesterday and the bill passed by 260 to 150 or something like that, and not an hour passed before President Bush had signed the thing. It's the most heavily laden with pork boondoggle Congress has ever passed with an additional 150 Billion in added pork from the original bloated bill. Of course everyone on both sides of the aisle is happy that it passed. But now even people like Governor Swartzenegger are getting in line for hand-outs. They say that the state of California is going to run out of money at the end of the month. We usually borrow from the "private sector" to tide us over till January when income tax payments begin to roll in.

Winter has come to California, with the Sierra Nevada getting its first snow fall of the year and a cold front has moved on into Southern California rather suddenly and rain is expected later in the day. In other news proposition two is on the ballot here to prevent crowded caging conditions for livestock. The animals have to be allowed to move around and extend their limbs and at least have their feet touching the ground rather than be piled on top of each other. Of course even though 72 % of the people are for this measures, the nay sayers say that it will drive up meat and egg prices. Of course people who talk about "small business" have a certain dogma they live by. If they raise the minimum wage they claim it will drive up unemployment because people will be fired. Larry Elder talks about this. And yet when they hiked wages to $1.65 an hour in 1968 by the next year unemployment was down to 3.5% Some people say that raising taxes on incomes of over $250,000 will impact small business. Larry Elder likes to talk about these people working fourteen and fifteen hours a day only to have their money taxed away. Some will even say "businesses don't pay tax; they just pass on costs in the form of raised prices". I guess my response to all of this is market forces are pretty good at dictating success or failure and you hear stories all the time of people getting into business on the internet or something and making a killing and gettiong really rich, and they don't mind paying taxes. I guess where the logic of conservatives escapes me is that they say "Small businesses don't make any money with high tax rates". Well, if they don't make any money then they won't be paying any taxes, will they? Do you see how easily that all works out?

Now they are saying this home spun speech of Sarah Palin is all just an act for this campaign, and that she was never quite as "stupid" or country hick as we were led to believe and that in all her other debates she didn't have this folksy demeanor. On the "Frangela" show they were lamenting how education is distained today. Since when did ignorance become so fashionable? We hear the same lies from these people over and over on how Obama didn't vote to fund the Iraq War or that Obama wants to raise taxes on anyone earning over $42,000. The right wing lives by the three by five card spouting the same tag slogan lines over and over. To these people the American people are like a gullible mother getting sugar sweetened cerial for her kids because it's advertized and supposedly fortified with vitamines or something.

OJ Simpson is behind bars today. This is a red letter day for social justice. O J Simpson finally is getting what has been coming to him. A jury found Simpson and his friend guilty on all twelve counts on which they were tried, and how faces possible life in prison. And guess what? He isn't getting bail. This is truely a comeuppance where Simpson will have an "attitude adjustment".

THE FOLLOWING WAS TYPED YESTERDAY

Last night I was watching videos and such on computer right up to six o clock. The debate lasted just over an hour and a half. What immediately struck me was that Joe Biden was talking too fast to make his points successfully and he appeared much more nervous than did Palin who was smiley and radient throughout the debate. She made frequent eye contact, winking at the audience and such and unlike Biden, addressed her remarks right to the camera. They were limited to a minute and a half responses. But it seemed as though Palin got more time than did Biden. While his responses were rushed, hers were perfectly timed out. Biden did not go on the attack till twords the end of the debate saying that Mc Cain is not a Mavoric and enumerated the reasons why. Palin was at times short on the facts and once even said “I’m not going to answer the questions the way the moderator or Biden wants me to answer”. Palin set the tone making it a home spun debate with a lot of anic-dotes. Some topics were not discussed at all. For all the times Palin used the word “Energy” that topic never was discussed in a serious manner and nobody talked about research & development or carbon footprints. Other areas not discussed were health care and what to do about Social Security. Other areas not touched were the trade deficit, NAFTA, and immigration. Neither in general was overall border security from terrorists creeping into our ports and airports, ect. The big elephant in the room that Biden didn’t mention was that this tax bail out bill is loaded with pork, and that Mc Cain and Palin are both pretentious frauds on this issue. When it came to foreign affairs I was impressed that Palin knew names like Akmadinijab and walked about Afghanistan as if she were an old hand. Biden scored points talking about his interventionist mind set and human bondage and genocide, and intervening in Bosnia and Kosevo. Palin relied on these buzz fraises sure to score points with my brother and his wife. They are likely to describe her performance as “perfect”. There were only a few times when I felt Joe Biden was really “scoring” and connecting with the audience.

I listened to the commentary afterwards. Neither candidate was guilty of any significant distortions of the facts. Palin accused Biden of “living in the past” when he pointed out how Mc Cain voted with Bush 90% of the time. At eight I watched Superman. Not having coffee in the evenings means I go to bed a little earlier. If Joe had gone on the attack earlier I think he would have “won” the debate. None of the cute, witty remarks of Palin swayed me, but a lot of people are a lot more shallow.

They are still predicting rain for tomorrow. I guess I’ll check out WDRV now. And this is later. Drive radio was doing 1971 and two songs of note were “Burn Down the Mission” by Elton John I heard on a KLOS album play and also the stellar “Get it on in the Morning” by Bill Chase, which I have always admired for being immaculately executed. It seems that it’s always the good ones who die young.

NO HOT FUDGE SUNDAES IN HELL -
JUST COLD TURKEY

It's time to termanate the Termanater. Swartzenegger is really done it now. He had "deleted" any renters rebate payments retro-actively, and this isn't fair pool. This action of eliminating the renters rebate deprives the poorest segment of society, like myself, the use of about three hundred dollars that we would have any other year. At this point I'd be perfectly open to joining a recall movement of the Governor of California. I most certainly won't vote for him again. Up untill now I was on his side. But the Governor rejected a spending plan that had a one cent hike in the sales tax and also an increase in income tax withholding. Personally I wouldn't mind a bit paying an extra three or four cents per cigarette back, if I had three hundred dollars to go along with it. I imagine the Termanator will be getting a lot of hostile mail from this one. This story of the retroactive cancling of the renters tax rebate didn't even make the main news. I had to dig around for it.

It's Cold Turkey time in soap land. Of course anybody used to spending money in my economic state has to go through cold turkey, particularly if they're spending it on something addictive, such as cigarettes. Nicole Walker in Soapland has her own problems. She's such a severe alcoholic now that she's pregnent she can't keep anything down, including alcohol. She upchucks the very substance she needs to keep her going and prevent her from getting the D T's. No doubt her doctor will put her on a no alcohol diet. If I were in her shoes I'm contemplate abortion and get back to my first love that gives meaning to life- - - alcohol, but she's smarter than me. She knows the baby is a way to get an MRS degree, and perhaps a lot of money, even if she doesn't even want the brat.

Well, we all know Mc Cain refused to even look at Obama in the last debate. This shows a lack of style and civility. Apparently even while shaking Obama's hand he "gazed right past him" like he wasn't there. Of course Mc Cain was dismissive and contentious in his remarks to Obama. One might say he "over played his hand" considering that Mc Cain isn't that smart to begin with. I don't even think Mc Cain had any idea how he was going to vote last Friday as he rushed back to Washington. I sometimes doubt whether Mc Cain has the mental capacity to understand the issues he now so sure about, now that his handelers have told him what to say. But Mc Cain has other problems, health problems. Many believe Mc Cain has Belle's palsey or something because of his left eye staring off into space or something. One person said that Mc Cain had a really strange look on his face just before he tripped on a stage. One person today said Mc Cain had a one in four chance of not surviving his terms as president. I didagree only to this extent. On the Johnny Wendell show the other Saturday they said he had a one in five chance of not surviving his FIRST term. That right there peggs the odds of dying in eight years at two our of five, or almost half. But Presidents are generally less healthy in their 2nd. term than their first (for example, Reagan) and I dare say the odds of dying before the end of his second term are better than fifty-fifty. We should wish him a long life- - while we vote for Obama.

Sarah Palin will be in the debate with Joe Biden tomorrow night. One thing that troubles me is this idea of "Joe Biden won't look good if he does too well because he will be perceived as beating up on a girl". So let me get this straight. Obama is in trouble if as a Black man he tried to be to assertive in his debate because "people fear Black men that way". And yet in Biden's debate the bar is so lowered that if Sarah Palin gets through without falling down and babbeling incoherently and drewling, people will say that she won the debate because the bar is so low. Haven't you noticed that the media has been spending a lot of time lately telling us how to think. People in Palin's own party are losing faith in her and quietly hoping that somehow she will just drop out or be pushed out of the race, so they can get a real contender in there. Of course now the buzz with Sarah Palin is that she is such an air-head she can't name a single supreme court decision besides Roe verses Wade. But besides that she was asked what magizines she reads to get her news and she couldn't name any. She just said "Oh I read the ones that are out there". At least the Gardener guy in "Being there" had the savy to say "I watch television".

Herbert Hoover had a financial rescue plan out on October 8th. 1931 called the Financial Reconstruction Adminestration. It was to increase the liquidity of banks. How strange that as the stock market was dropping back then newspapers were peppered with articles just like today where "chief economists" and the experts said "Everything is fine. The economy is sound. Steps have been taken to insure that last Thursday's stock performance will not be repeated. Of course Thom Hartman has this theory that there is an actual conspiracy to wipe out the middle class because they are "a discontented rabble" and eliminating them from organizing or protesting would be a good idea. But of course Hoover's plan didn't work and this current plan won't work either. Last Monday you thought everything was settled because they had a fair vote and it failed by 23 votes. More republicans than democrats voted against it. But now they are sweetening the pot for the republicans. They are putting in new tax cuts for the rich and getting rid of the "minimum income tax". They're also hiking FDIC insurance levels from a hundred thousand to 250,000. The moderately rich should sleep better at night. But as far as I'm concerned it's kind of like sticking in a marshmellow in the middle of a cow pie. I don't know about you but I find it easier to get my marshmellows elsewhere. Both Obama and Mc Cain are now avidly for the bail-out plan. It's still a bad idea. Monday when the measure failed by a few votes in the house the stock market had a hissy fit and fell 777 points. It would have been an excellent time to buy and anyone with any brains should have known that. It's as predictable as Gene Scott glairing at the camera saying "I'm pulling the plug on my minestry if I don't get thirty thousand pledged in the next half hour". He never missed. Basically we haven't had a "stock market crash". We aren't even close. You'd never know that from listening to the news media. They love to scare you with talk like "The market is up today because they're all hopeful that congress will reconsider the bill". It's too much of a case of the secretary of the Treasury saying "Give me all your money or I'll blow my brains out". It used to be that calls to congressmen were running ten to one against the bail-out. Now the public is stampeeding congress to hurry up and get this thing passed. Such is the thorough job of media brainwashing and conditioning.

Many are wondering what psychological message I was trying to deliver with that last rock compilation. Who is to say the thing is my idea. I'll tell you this: I still feel really jinxed and don't know how to go about lifting or termanating it. But stay tuned- - .

OK the economic bail-out bill has just passed. 67 senators have voted in favor of the bill. I guess that answers all of our questions. What we're headed for is a new sort of fascistic economy where corporate and governmental are indistinguishable. Don't these people know they are only "buying a few months"? Just like Herbert Hoover attempted to "buy a few months". The stock market was actually up in 1032 before things fell apart and things got even worse. It's like the republicans have given up and want to stick Obama with as much economic heartache and fiscle bankrumptsy as possible. In the thirties we produced our own goods and our own energy and we were a creditor nation. None of these things is true today. We cannot escape having to pay the piper.