Welcolm to the 2007 hurricane season. They announced today that they were expecting a more active hurricane season this year than normal with seventeen named storms. They say that the top shearing effects of El Nino helped reduce the number of storms last year. Of course hurricanes of increased severety and number are due to global warming. They've been saying that the temperature in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago was ninety or above. As Pete Richards puts it "I don't see how sea life could survive with the temperature that high. Clearly the temperature of the Gulf that year was one of the clearest effects of disasterous global warming. You know they are getting better predicting weather with "computer models". Well, if you had Jesus weather, you could predict weather two weeks or a month from now with total exactitude down to the hour. After all storms are inaminate objects with no will of their own which follow mathematical primciples. Likewise, fires show some "traits" of being alive such as respiration and growth and reproduction, and yet they are not sensient beings. At least outside some horror movie. Our first steps in weather modification will be accurately predicting it.
Al Gore has a new book out called "The Assault on Reason". People think the media is alve and responds to them but yelling at your TV st some commentator you don't like is like howeling at the moon. TV is not a "dialog". We need people to people contact. We need to bring back the old fashioned town meeting. Even in Churches, democracy is dying. They put congragational meetings at noon when people are passing out from starvation and they ramrod all their measures through and vote on them like mindless zombies. I'd like to know how much "debate" in congress is for the CSPN cameras and how much of it is for the other congressmen, to change their minds. One gets the idea politics today is not about changing minds but cutting some "deal" to get your bill through. We need more head to head debates among our politicians, and it has to go on all the times. You don't just "stage" a debate for your TV viewers to hike raitings. Everything is ratings today. We don't get involved in our local PTA or school board or city hall. We need more part time "citizen" politicians. In my opinion we could some "citizen" church pastors too, ones that aren't trained to sugar-bait their words and manipulate people. I have not yet read Al Gore's book but I would imagine it's well worth reading.
They now have a drug approved to eliminate a woman's menstral period. I suppose this is a good thing unless clinical research shows otherwise. The government approved that anti diabetus drug - it starts with an A. But heart attacks increase by 64%. What this means is that of those small number of diabetics who get heart attacks that number is up 64%, but I don't know whether that number is based on a "healthy" population, or based on other identical diabetics. And as drug companies point out sometimes a drug can have meracle working effects on some people who'd be willing to pay good money for it. And to those people they don't want to hear about heart attacks. My own bias is considering the rectal exam drug companies are put through to even get a drug approved for sale, I am reluctant to say that they haven't jumped through enough hoops, but now they have to jump through a few more. That's my take.
Now "My Space" is getting seventy thousand certified sex offenders off their web sites. They say "we have not begun to look for these perverts. We are only just starting". I guess we can look on the bright side. If everyone is as militant against sex perverts as they claim to be, in a short time we ought to wipe out the sexual predator as a species. Of course Dateline is doing all these sting opperations and the Patriot act is even letting the government search people's computers. If nothing else there should be an epidemic of "Clean living" as people fear even the slightest hint of suspicion. It does seem though that fear on this issue seems to opperate inversely to the problem. The more the problem is on the verge of being solved, the more heightened the fear. Oddly you could say the same thing in many cases about international, particularly Islamic terrorism. I think the chances of another 9 - 11 with all our precautions is slim to none. But a fear monger like Guiliani can still generate a lot of votes.
Gasoline prices are now at an all time high with a national average of $3.23, and of course prices here in California are about thirty sense higher. I used to believe we would never in this country see the sort of gasoline prices of four dollars an hour that have been routine in Europe for decades. But demand is still going up. People's "pain thresshold" for high gas prices seems to be getting higher and higher. Larry Elder of course whines that whatever the oil companies are making- - it still isn't enough. There is still too much regulation. They say gas prices are so high now because all the refineries in the whole nation coincidentally made "independant decisions" to close down their refineries for maintenance opperation or something. If you believe that there's some swamp land in Florida I want to sell you. If it's really true that refineries "really want to supply gas" as Larry Elder maintains, then it seems to me at least ONE refinery would buck the trend and sell all the gas he could while the others were closed down. Nobody believes there isn't price collusion. It's like if the price of flour went up bakeries might charge more for donuts and pastries. But if it turns out their profits were five times higher than the year before like 500,000 instead of 50,000 you know people are going to get suspicious. Of course Larry took the oppertunity to say how medical insurance was an overregulated industry. And if oil companies could drill more on Federal lands the price of gasoline would come down. The thing is that gasoline is NOT in short supply. If it were they would not be selling so much of it. Larry Elder also talked about other things like charges that cops in LA deliberately allowed peaceful protesters to mingle with agitators, just so that cops in the end could beat up more people than otherwise would be "necessary".
Let's do one of our David Stanley stories. Sometimes people can walk into a jinx force in their lives but the question is what is causing it and once you isolate the cause to your own satisfaction, can you prove it to others. On Larry's show it was stated "Could you trust a juror who rendered a guilty verdict with the statement, "I can't prove he did it with evidence, but I just have a gut feeling". You know, sometimes your guts are right. We pick up our story about October first of 1990. At this time parents had renewed their efforts to look for another newer house to live in, after formerly deciding they would NOT move. This puzzled me slightly at the time why the change in heart. But by mid October they had actually bought a house. They had been flapping their gums for decates but now that they are both long retired, they move. On the radio about this time on Dr. Demento they were actually playing songs AGAINST the coming war in Iraq, such as "Must we be the policemen of the world?" There was also a track about "running out of ozone hole patches". About the first of November a lot of people, neighbors that David was friends with moved out of the apartment complex. He later learned it's because rents had been hiked. David was concerned about the economy with the coming war with the Fourth most power army in the world, the Republican guard. People were predicting our troops would be slaughtered wholesale and ten thousand body bags had been ordered. David was also worried about gasoline prices which he feared under a worst case scenario might rise as high as three dollars a gallon. It was news like this that prompted him to sell his car in late January for a good price. David had been taking an ROP course in Lotus 123 and the day he was to take his final, his car wouldn't start. The battery was dead and he went to Joe and Kathy to borrow jumper cables but they wern't there. In a panic and runing out of time he called his Sister in law for a ride to ROP because it had been sporadically raining this day. She refused and he ended up taking the bus and praying for a break in the storm, which he got. He then learned that he would not be getting the employment from ROP that he had been promised. He saw the hand writing on the wall. He hadn't worked in over six months and he knew his bank account, once large, was now in jeapordy. In late December he called up Jim Cooper, which turned out to be the last time he would ever talk to him. He thought Jim might know someone who wanted to buy his car. He put a for sale sign on it and continued in ROP in Word Perfect but someone there saw the sign. In mid February one overcast day he was feeling low and blue because his church pastor, who was to be installed that afternoon, had given a totally awfully sermon. He called up an old friend named Linda, who had recently gotten married to a guy who turned out to be a religious asshole. But Linda got a bad case of PMS or something talking to David and taking offence to everything David said. A thirteen year relationship was flushed down the toilet and came to an end with that phone call.
OK, we're doing a "bluebird" cut here. This is going to go way too long. I'd like to close however on just this one example. As you know we said that democracy is a good thing. And democracy involves dialog. Jefferson and Madison believed in an informed, involved citizenry. When David's father saw David in late November or so and David mentioned the church letter that stated they had found a Pastor, when David's Dad talked about he got a glint in his eye and a certain lilt in his voice. David had the overwhelming feeling his Dad "knew something". David said, "Oh you don't mean the fat lady, to you?" The Dad was non commital. Well, "The fat lady has song" and it was bed time for democracy at his local church. On December 9th. the Pastoral candidate gave a sermon on the subject of "Doubt". It was the last time he would ever preach on that subject. This man had no tollerance for doubt and just as little for any "dialog" in general on any relivant subject. They had a rather quick discussion afterwards. Then they took a vote. David voted to approve the Pastor, but had he to do it over again, there is no vote with which he would disagree with more. That vote was a mistake. The pastor was elected with only one dissenting Vote in the whole congragation and I don't know who it is, but I'd like to shake his or her hand. After this he went to lunch with his parents to Howard Johnsons and his Dad complained that smoke from the smoking section was wafting over into their area, and David found his Dad's remarks annoying.
We need to cherish the times when we have power like being a juror doing void deor, or whatever. That's a time when you can tell the whole Court System to fuck off if you want to and not only will you not be frowned upon, you will be doing your civic duty. Give your politicians a hard time BEFORE they are elected and harrass them with letters and phone calls and question. They will never be as responsive after the election as before. In like mannor young girls should cherish the time in their lives when they are virgins. The minute they give it away their price goes down. Any leverage you have with a boy you have is Before you consent to having sex. I think more of us need to be political virgins and stop being political whores. (Selah)
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