President Obama has picked Leon Penetta to be the next CIA chief. Formerly he was President Clinton's chief of staff, so he has executive experiance in managing people. To me this is a good, sound choice. I think it's high time that we had a man heading the CIA that "didn't come up from the ranks". We need someone to do a thorough house cleaning and re-organization of priorities. As is pointed out by liberal talk shows, we are "supposed to" have non military people heading up the military. There is a charished principle of civilian control of the military in this country. But I'm not especcially down on the CIA. If Obama had gone the other way it would have been fine with me. The CIA wasn't the inherent problem, but rather how George Bush tried to politicise the CIA with his own ideas and cherry picking information. In the broader scope of things people like Thom Hartman tell us all to get involved with politics and that we each have three congresss people we can contact, our two US senators and our House member. He says not to E mail these people since E mails are so easy to generate but rather to call them or write them a letter and wait several weeks while it's screened for Anthrax. Letters make more of an impression. Also we should "get in their face" and go down to their offices and annoy people and make our views known. If enough people do this- - things will change and needed bills will be brought to the floor. In the overall scheme of things it's the American public who should have been saluted by Time magazine for getting personally politically involved and doing the things that needed to be done. We as a people should not get weary with well doing.
The Unemployment rate has now climbed to 7.2% They tell us this is the highest it's been in fifteen years. I disagree with that only to the extent that 17 or 18 years is a bit more in the ball park. Larry Elder in no way can say we don't have an unemployment rate problem any more. If they used honist figuring, the figure would easily be in double digits by now. We have lost 540,000 jobs in the month of December when they used to do Christmas hiring. Most of the massive job losses in the year 2008 have come in the last four months of the year. The stock market was "restrained" in its decline yesterday. I continue to say to think about getting back in to the market and deciding which stocks you want to buy. My inclination at this point would be some kind of energy research stocks. We might see one more plunge. I'm not saying it will definitely happen but don't be shocked if it does. There might be some piece of bad news out there that we aren't aware of yet that could send the market into one final tail spin. But to me buying into America is the best way to be patriotic as well as help get us out of this recession, and by the way, profit monitarily while doing so.
There is some substance out there called getropa or something. It's some weed that produces black seeds or something that produce really efficient bio-oil fuel. They have used it on jet planes already and the planes have fantastic take off inclines never before seen. Apparently they are just now adopting the weed to grow in US climates. Some have held that America's future is in "clean coal" but the environmentalists tell us there IS no such thing as clean coal. Even the cleanest coal contains all sorts of carsonigian substances that would make a pack of cigarettes appear safe in comparrison. This while "running your car on vegetable oil" bit seems to be the thing of the future. It seems strange and inefficient to me, but you can't fight progress.
I guess one class of people who Annoy me are people who are totally lacking in curiosity. These are the "been there - don't that" croud who apparently know everything about everything. Many of these people are Born Again Christians. When I was a young Christian I was filled with wonderment. I wanted to find out more about ghosts and spirits and life after death. I was thinhking they would discover new metaphysical properties of matter. When people said that Jesus was coming I was thinking in terms of how having Jesus run the world would improve society and bring about universal peace, and unleash previous unknown scientific principles and technological progress. I was NOT thinking of people suffering from radiation poisoning after the Bomb was dropped and having their eyeballs melt in their sockets and run down their cheeks. And I wasn't prepared for the "I don't care" attitude you seem to routinely get from Christian whenever the subject of moral equity is raised. If there is one StarTrek race that gets me more morally insensed and angry it has to be the Packlid people. These are a race with an outward look of mental retardation. Like the Christians- - they lack the capacity to actually invent anything since Christians are inherently afraid of anything new. But they are more than willing to use things like computer web sites to propigate their Faith once they are invented. These are the original "Make it work" people. They hire outsiders to "Fix" their malfunctioning electronic equipment they don't understand- - so that they can resume their favorite pasttime of threatening and killing people with it. Of course as an enlightened individual I see logical fallocies where other people wouldn't. There is a Chuck Swindoll video of his talking about the ministry of Jesus. And he makes the statement that the key thing Christians need to do is to surrender your own wills of action in favor of what "God" wants them to do. And of course we know who's playing the part of God today. he has white hair. But in reality its absurd under Calvinistic theology to suppose that God would do ANYTHING that was contrary to his own will and divine providence- - and to suggest that Jesus "really didn't want to come to earth and save mankind" is to raise the question "what would Jesus prefered to have been doing?" You know in the song "Crown of Creation" by the Jefferson Airplane there is the line "In loyalty to their kind- - they cannot tollerate our Minds. In loyalty to our kind, we cannot tollerate their Obstruction". I guess what annoys me most about Christianity is it's kind of like used to be said of George Bush. He was born on third base and he thinks he just hit a tripple. The whole thing about "becomming as a little child" is of value to this extent. Little children think that they can do anything. Their creativity is not bound by preconceived notions. In like manner famous inventors and inovaters like Albert Einstein were not bound by preconceived notion. We need to bring about a change in society that once again values ingenuity and inovation. (Selah)
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