To Be Perfectly Honest- - -

Mendacity is always a problem. People want to give false, glowing impressions about themselves. It's always nice to have other people doing your lying for you. People made a big thing out of Bob Dylan's being Born Again in the late 1970's. So, supposedly Dylan has now discovered the virtues of stable Christian life and a solid, monogamus relation with a woman. No. Dylan actually during this period got a divorce from his long time wife Sarah, with whom he'd been married for over eleven years. There apparently was a lot of bad blood between Dylan and Sarah for years after this. It's too bad this "isn't something he could work on as a Born Again Christian". It's so easy to commit a defacto lie of omission. We all live by subtle signals and implied contracts and mutual unspoken agreements. If you give someone clearly "false signals" and a problem develops, it's the same as a lie. Then we have Governor Rick Perry. Dr. Levy sang his praises saying that Texas cut taxes and the jobs in that state began pouring in and they call it the "Texas meracle" with all these new jobs, alledgedly "showing the rest of the nation how it should be done". Apparently Texas is 24th in unemployment rate now, or just about in the middle. Most of those "created jobs" are as burger flippers at a minimum wage fast food place. And apparently Perry vastly increased both state expenditures and taxes. Also Texas is singularly blessed with the influx of all that oil revenue now that oil prices have risen sky high. A lot of Texas jobs were created due to military contracts. Also Rick Perry profitted more than many other states such as California because Texas was one of those red states that ran a revenue surplus with the Federal government because of the Bush administration. Not only has Rick Perry talked openly about Texas secession from the Union, but apparently he is into Dominion theology. This dominion theology is regarded as a cult even by other main stream evangelicals. This kind of theology is an offshot of Calvinism. I have never found the things in John Calvin's teaching that Thom Hartman claims are there. I've read Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. I haven't read it all. It's a big book. But I have read large portions of it. I remember reading something about if you are in the will of the Almighty, he will reward you with blessings, and that includes material blessings. And these are a "natural consequence of doing God's will". I think that's the wording. But as to this bit about "Well we need a method of determining who will rule the world. And the best way is to pick rich pluticrats because obviously they have God's annointing", - no I haven't read that. It may be there. I just have never seen it in the text. Nonetheless there are people who believe that. In November of 1980 I remember Dick Llyle saying to Pete Richards when I was over at their house, "Pete, I perceive that you have the Favor of the Lord". I took that to mean that Pete had a job. He had a new job working as a loyal assistent to Pastor Mark at a decent wage. Pete didn't prove all that loyal in the end. I'll have more to say about this later in this posting. But Calvary Chapel engage in some of this "Calvinistic Darwinism". In fact when I heard the tone of the early Bible Studies as a Christian I felt a little bewildered at the tone of much of the talk. And so I coined the term "Calvinistic Darwinism" in my writings. Of course you have heard the term "Social Darwinism" saying that the "fittest people naturally rise to the top in business. Well the Calvary people just extend that a little to say "It was God who did it" when in reality it was just blind luck. That's the basic theory behind evolution after all. It's based on the idea of the "hopeful mutation" that works out in a big way. But you can't impute to the species any special attribute of karmic deeds that somehow "earned it" this new power, any more than you could if somebody suddenly gave me the power instantly to become invisable at will. You know if Rick Perry is such a good governor what is he doing for all these farmers in Texas who are suffering from such a bad drought right now? What is his position on global warming? And it's beyond me why a profession Jew would ever be for a person whose platform plank is "to turn America into a Christian nation". And also I think his record on Capital Punishment might be attackable, just as George Bush's was. I keep hearing persistent roomers that both governors routinely spend only about fifteen minutes in total reviewing each case before signing off on the prisoner being put to death. Certainly if you could find an innocent man who could be proven even NOT beyond a reasonable doubt to be innocent- - then this is an issue that would catch on. Many northern states such as Michigan haven't had capital punishment in their state in many decades. I'm not sure how someone with the air of a swaggering Texas gun slinger would play there. And of course perhaps the dream scenario from the point of view of a liberal Democrat is for Rick Perry and Mitt Romney to get into some kind of all out religious shoot-out at the OK Carral, on some doctrine or another. In that case I'd be routing for Romney. Fundamentalist Christians have little regard for Mormonism, and I think Mormons, probably justly, think a lot of Christians are just shallow and don't practice what they preach anyhow. And I guess the bottom line on Perry is that you know the leading bumper the Democratic campaign will be selling will be "Not Another Texas Governor!" I haven't even scratched the surface on Governor Perry. I'm sure there's lots more about him that we could find objectionable. We haven't even had to open the closet door yet to see if he has skeletons there. Some statements of Governor Perry are so blatently "off the wall" they need to be made better known. Perry said that it would be "treason" for the Fed Chairman to again begin buying its own US treasury bonds. Many people, the Glen Beck people, are "still waiting" for that "master switch to be thrown" that will make money difficult to get and drive interest and inflation rates sky high. Also Perry's record is attackable on things like 25% childhood poverty in Texas. In response to this Perry has cut funding. Texas has about the lowest graduation rate for High School among adults over 25.

Of course President Obama is not off the hook in all of this. The conservatives aren't the only ones who think Obama may be hiding a thing or two. I mentioned to someone on the phone yesterday saying if she was so concerned about the adverse consequences of Obama's health care plan once implemented, then after Obama is kicked out of office in 2012 congress can repeal the entire health care bill and the then President can sign off on it. This is when she said that she fears an almost occultic force or "the media" or something is going to "fix it" so that President Obama will stay in office. She is developing an almost obsessive fear that President Obama is destined to get in for another term, and the culture of America will be destroyed, Yesterday I was just looking at this You Tube video from this "disinterested" average American who went to a meeting of the American Communist Party in 1992 and they talked about undermining marriage with liberalized homosexual laws, and "going after industry" with envirnmental laws, and eliminating the Christian religion. And initially the guy thought "Well, all these measures are a long way off. They won't happen in my lifetime". But now he looks at this supposed party checklist and sees them being fulfilled one by one. I only mention this to say that a lot of people on the right are genuinely afraid out there. Then they see this "Manchurian Candidate" President who the Media literally flung at us, and People like Randy Rhodes were saying as far back as February of 2008 was "Obviously the primary winner" just before Hillary Clinton began winning primaries one by one in a lot of the major, populated states. People are worried about this secrecy with all of Obama's college work and his term papers. And how come none of the professors and virtually none of the students remember him from all these Colleges he's supposed to have attended. And how come his "long form" Birth Certificate is obviously a fraudulant, computer generated form. It was done on that Adobe Flash software, and there are videos demonstrating step by step how it was done and the things would NOT be present were it a legitimate document. I am also concerned about the President's ability to "think on his feet" without a teleprompter. I am still troubled by that one statement John Boehner made about how they "almost had a major deal on raising the debt ceiling" back several weeks ago, but then suddenly "President Obama moved the goal posts". Apparently they had agreed to an 800 Billion dollar revenue increase. But then the President insisted on a 1.2 trillion dollar revenue increase and when he didn't get that, he walked out. I'm not entirely sure the President himself was entirely innocent of not grandstanding to the media or somehow "hyping the crisis".

I would like to talk about myself just a little. In The Ten Commandments blog, there is a June 2006 posting called "My History as a Bosc" or something. Fortunately Google Desktop hit pay dirt this time. Often it doesn't. This writing preceeded "Moonshot" both in the originall July 2004 word files and also in my blog postings. This file is reliable. However other references to "Laura" are blatently false. For instance one document states "Me and Laura had sex three times in the space of a week and then she turned cold and I went to Chicago". Me and Laura never had sex in September of 1980. Other documents state that when I got back from Chicago that "Laura heard I had money and came to me asking for money to pay for an abortion, because she had committed in indecretion while I was gone". This never happened. In the first place I never got the money hoped for. I also owed a thousand dollars or so for printings of my book "God's Winepress". I got the money from my parents with a lot of argument. But don't worry, I paid back every penny I got from them within a few months. As to "Laura suddenly turning cold" that part is true. But I also changed. There is a line in a Dylan song that goes "Don't want to defeate nobody- - if they've already been defeated". The times I saw Laura later that fall I had "lost my picnic spirit" to use another Dylan phrase. There was one time in Irvine park when the leaves were falling and we were on the teter-totter. And there was that Halloween potluck where she gave me the book "The Peek to Peak principle" to read. And there was another time at the Bosc house when we held a "Make your own pizza" party. At all three of these I felt completely estranged from Laura. I got the money for my book about December first of 1980. It was then I bought a Who album "Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy". The last Who album i had bought "Who's Next" Wallace got shot a few days later. I thought, "There's not much chance of That happening again." I remember Chuck Smith gave a morning sermon that Sunday, December 7th. He talked about the sudden deaths of his father and brother flying in an airplane, I thought "OK, God doesn't descriminate on who he sticks it to". I remember it was an overcast, almost foggy morning. The previous Saturday night Laura was ignoring me but spent a lot of time talking to Pete. Not Pete Richards, but that other Pete who I mention little, if at all. The last time I talked to him he told me he heard Jeane Hayse had been murdered. Anyway we all know what took place on Monday. No, not my deciding not to pursue a job interview from CETA but instead took a leisurely walk home through tract streets on a pleasent afternoon watching the leaves turn. Then when I got home Pete Richards was playing some instructional tape on how to talk to little kids about Jesus, and there was this little song "How do I know Jesus loves me", and I was thinking to myself "screw that". I don't mean that event- I meant the other one on December 8th. The shooting of John Lennon that night on the steps of the Dakota in New York, that I think was announced near the end of a Monday Night football game- - I believe between the Patriots and the Dolphins. It was the next Saturday that when Laura showed up she looked awful. She had no make-up and she had cut her beautiful long hair off. She looked frankly like she'd just been in hospital surgery or something. I'm relating this based on my total lack of knowledge at that time. From that evening on she fell into a depression. It was in early 1981 I'd have phone conversations with her and sense that she was "slipping away". As you know I relate to the song "I'm Losing You" more than any other song on Double Fantasy. I remember though that Judy had contacted me and says "Laura stridently defended your Book when I spoke critically of it. That must be true love". A lot of people liked my book, believe it or not. Jim Cooper was encouraging. Bill T. liked it. Even Dick Llyle liked it. However Dick Llyle is famous for that tag line "- - but it's just not the way Pastor Chuck does it", referring to prophecy. Relatives that Christmas were open to reading it.

I want to talk just little about lying in the generic. There are certain things the Torah teaches and certain things it emphatically does not. Nowhere was the Torah say you're supposed to turn in Jews you're hiding if Nazis knock on your door. We are all entitled a "personal space" that others may not invade. I know they've done these movies about "what if a person never lied about anything" and we'd have total chaos. Culture is based on a veneer of civility. You don't ask a woman how much they paid for that dress they are wearing, and if you should, you would not expect them to tell you the truth and embarras themselves. What IS in the Bible is NOT bearing "false witness" against your neighbor, either in court, or in things like false gossip. In fact gossip in any form is contra-indicated in the Bible. Honesty also extends to being a person of your word. The reason why you swear an oath in court is that it's "insurance" for the jurors in court that you won't lie to them. It might not always work. In a similar vein, we all "protect' ourselves but not leaving our homes wide open fir burglars to enter at night. Not that it will happen every time but life on earth demands a certain ammount of prudence. In the same way we bind people to taking oaths of affirmation and putting things in writing as a "protection device" lest they fall into temptation. We are certainly to keep promises we make to God as well as business promises we make to our neighbor. Dana had this saying of "You don't screw with your customers and they won't screw with you". In terms of Campaign promises, this is a gray area. But I've found with Christians that the more emphatic they are about stating a certain "truth" of theirs- - - the Bigger Lie it turns out to Be! I think being a man of your word is a good thing. Being better than your word is a better thing. In the end people get along better if they have a reputation for not being a real flake. (Selah)