Monday, November 10, 2014

Risk Free Propositions in a World of Risk - Don't Exist


President Obama is the living embodiment of my personal philosophy that “Following everything to the letter in a Christian sermon is the fastest way to lose ALL of your so called “Faith” very quickly.  For instance what are you told in these Sermons?   You are told to ignore people who call you names, and never be dissuaded by negative people giving you all kinds of dire warnings about the course you have set for yourself.  You are told endlessly that patience is a virtue and there is an always a “happy ending” at the end of the journey.  (unless of course you are at a message parolor)   And most of all you are told that “Things that look bad today will turn around if you “stay the course” and suddenly the fruits of your deeds (or the laws you’ve gotten enacted) will come to fruition and pay big dividends in votes of confidence from others, and your detractors will all flee.  How many predictions at the end of the Mc Laughlin group would be laughable one year later- if only you had had the presence of mind to write them down as they were being spewed out.  ABC news says there was a rumor that a millionaire wanted to reunite Led Zeppelin but Robert plant didn’t believe it.   Sesame Street has been on the air 45 years as of today.  I was reading various things from Washington’s blog.  You can’t have a risk free proposition in a world of risk.  This is another way of saying either that “actions have consequences” or there are “unintended consequences” to any given act.  Also sometimes the element of risk in an action will be in an area you thought had little or no risk.  Many people thought, for instance, that real estate was a sure thing because we had never had such a wholesale collapse in real estate prices in my lifetime.  Of course my beef against the very rich is that they truly DON’T take any risks in the behavior they engage in.  Mitt Romney’s “vulture capital” was pretty risk free “taken by a person averse to risk”.  People like Gene Scott who say “I never bet except on a sure thing” are telling you they are immune to the rules the rest of us live by, and we ordinary peons resent that like hell.  It was pointed out for instance that is Obama were at all serious about repeating the record of Franklin Roosevelt, he would have Nationalized the Banks in January of 2009 and then held on to them for two or three years just like Sweden did successfully, and then once they were on their feet again- given their autonomy back.  But the President was too stupid to figure out how much this would have won him favor with the vast majority of the American people.  This Lynch lady, who President wants to replace departing AG Eric Holder, is just another stooge of Wall Street like Holder was, according to that article I downloaded yesterday in Word.  I don’t care if she is Black.  I don’t care if she’s purple. With all the good people out there who wouldn’t mind “public service” in the best sense of the word, do people like Obama seem to have almost RADAR like ability in selecting the crooks?  Of course now there is the buzz that Obama is the one fighting for a small (rather than large) stimulus because basically President Obama was not a Kaynsian - - and is rumored to have said privately that “Banks should not lend to businesses is there is a chance they won’t get it back” and also said that “Unemployment running high is a good thing because it shows that businesses are becoming more efficient”.  In short this article portrays President Obama as a stealth republican.  I have a saying I’d like to modify from Patriot Radio.  “It isn’t Free if you have to Pay for it”.   This is true for these “You May Have Already Won - - - “ ads you used to see in the mail, and it’s also true of these bullshit artists I never believed even as a teenager who said that “Borrowing money to get a higher education is a sure fire bet because “statistics show” that over your lifetime you’ll make a whole lot more money than whatever the loan is”.  Another saying comes to mind, “If it seems to good to be true, it probably isn’t”.  More specifically stated “Christian Salvation isn’t free, if you have to pay for it”.  I know of no church organization that offers truly “Free” salvation, with no strings or price to pay but is merely “there for the taking”.   


Then I returned to Norman Goldman who talked about Ferguson, Missouri where the grand jury is rumored to be returning for a final verdict in a few days and at that time they plan to announce that no charges whatsoever will be fired against Officer Wilson.  Wilson testified for four hours giving up his fifth amendment rights.  I’d like to see a transcript of that testimony to see how many lies it contains.  In the first hour Goldman was talking about how sparsely various western and plains states are populated, and yet they still get two senators representing them.  But you can win with two hundred thousand votes- - whereas the losing candidate may get 1.5 million, for instance, in even a moderately large state.  We said years ago that ten percent of the population and less can be represented in forty filibustering US Senate seats.  I only say this to indicate that when the democratic senators filibuster in the upcoming session- - the percentages of senators may be the same, but the populations represented by those senators will be vastly larger.  Yet as with the deficit under George Bush- - you know they are going to holler a lot louder than the democrats ever did- - if so much as one filibuster occurs next year screaming how “the democratic process has been thwarted”.   Keep in mind democratic messaging has been really poor.  For instance why couldn’t we portray the affordable care act as “realizing the American Dream” because people trapped in their old jobs for fear of losing coverage are now - - “liberated to pursue their dream- - their heart’s desire”.   But you’ve never heard this line from a democrat.  Now why do you suppose that is?  Not to be blunt but "How come in this age the democrats never make any of their own adept political moves?  Is someone telling them not to do it?  Is someone telling them to throw the game?   Or is it it that maybe democrats make whitty remarks all the time, but the corporate media doesn't report them because they aren't supposed to ever make progressives look good.

President Obama put in a good plug for Internet Neutrality today with the FCC.  Unfortunately companies like A T & T and Comcast are saying that “the fair thing to do is to give us special privilege by giving us faster service if we’re willing to pay for it”.  Clearly the internet IS a utility just like our gas or our water or our electricity.  To consider it anything else would be an absurdity.  But some court said that the FCC was “madding regulations against corporations without first labeling the internet as a common carrier”.  Because you have rights under the FCC, in terms of right to hearings for raising of rates.  But what someone like Sean Hannity will probably say is “Well the courts have been abusing their rights all these years so now let’s just make it official and declare that you have the right to speed up or to slow down internet packets depending on how much the person pays.  But if I’m driving on a highway in a Ford Mustang and my neighbor drives up in a BMW, is he to be given special allowances because he has a “nicer car” and arguably “we want people like him to be the ones on the roads to class up the joint- - so he gets waved through in road blockages and he gets a special speed limit of 85 mph but we’re going to lower people driving cars like yours to 55 miles per hour”.

Sean Hannity on his show talked about being paranoid about Iran seeking Nukes and made a lot of strident statements.  If I were president just to humor him maybe I’d have Sean write all those things down, and then ask what the hell I was supposed to do about them.   But the whole relation we are "supposed" to have with Israel - puzzles me.  What if Israel decides to invade Iran and take out their supposed Nukes.  But then something happens and they need the help of the United States to bail them out of a jam, should we just say "You made your bed now lie in it"?   It almost seems to me it's like having a pet dog who is vicious, and if the dog does something wrong like bite someone you can always say "That wasn't me it was the dog" or you can reason to yourself "I have the dog do things to my neighbors that I couldn't get away with if I didn't have the dog".   It's not like Israel wants to be PART of the United States or anything.  There is no way in Hell that Israel would go for our up and coming tea party government.  Hannity said "When it comes to the world's leaders- - Benjamin Netenyahoo is the one adult in the room".  He seems to be the one and only international leader deemed worthy of Sean Hannity's trust.  We insist that Jews in this country give up their "religious rights" and lay their ethnicity aside and embrace this "Christian nation".  Yet again though- we hear right wing fundamentalists fawning all over the Jewish nation of Israel- - as though they had some sort of, I don't know, magical powers and if we watched them long enough we could learn their secret.

 I downloaded that exposee thing on President Obama that ran twenty-two pages in Word.  Lisa gave me a white cigarette when I was looking for one and I raised the subject of establishing a moon colony to Wally and he talked about a gigantic floating barge for cities and parks and such should all the costal land get wiped out by global warming.   In the vintage places of Los Angeles there was this one eating establishment where the Doors, the Mamas and Papas and the Eagles hung out where Drew Barrymore had her diapers changed as a baby.  Another place was where Guns and Roses met for their first group photo after they just signed their recording contract in 1985, and it’s also a hang-out of the Red Hot Chili Papers.  As you know my psychic vibes tell me this group is not only associated with jinxes but also spiritual darkness.  I discuss this in my blog postings.  Then it was America’s Funniest Home Videos.  I fell asleep just before the end of that and roused just as “Once Upon a Time” was coming on and was too lazy to change the channel.  I caught about the last minute of the Simpson’s.  It was kind of a Cinderella story where there were these three sisters but one of them had magic powers their parents were afraid of, and also her “memories of her childhood” were stolen, and someone told her to go to Rumplestillskin for advice. 

Sunday, November 09, 2014

Hillary Clinton Could Lose in 2016

This photo is a blast from the past - - late 2009
This is Sunday November 9, 2014 and they say it’s the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, and Google had a video on that today.  It was a time to celebrate, hopefully, a new era of peace, which lasted for a while.  Ukraine was ready to give up their Nukes in order to consolidate the peace with neighboring Russia.  It’s too bad it didn’t work out that way.  I would rather celebrate either 25 years ago as a day of peace, or else commemorate the hundred year anniversary of the end of World War I.  But instead we have “Veterans Day” one of the countless hail to the concept of armed might in this country- - which is also echoed countlessly in other holidays now such as Memorial Day, the 4th of July and the 9 – 11 anniversary.  You would think a fitting tribute to our veterans would be to swear we’d never get in a meaningless war like Iraq ever again, but alas that won’t happen.  President Obama just agreed to another 1,600 troops in Iraq in what they keep denying is “mission creep” though that’s exactly what it is because we’ve seen it so many times before.  North Korea released two US prisoners of that country but both sides were careful not to signal that it was a sign of any diplomatic thawing.

I read George Washington’s blog, who is still convinced that there is going to be a major economic crash.  That would be a pipe dream for liberals as sort of a divine retribution, but it’s not going to happen.  The logic behind the fear is irrational.  If you have the alternative of getting zero percent they claim you’ll put your money into the riskiest ventures possible.  Given zero inflation and very low accrewed interest tax rates, would you not much more likely opt for a safe investment that paid a modest amount, but it would still be way more than your money is earning right now.   They claim the Federal Reserve wouldn’t “dare” end the monetization of the debt that they’ve been doing all these years.  That’s only more good news for stock holders.   Hillary could lose in 2016.  I was reading The Rude Pundit and clearly- as previously statesd-  the victory was not the result of anything the democrats did wrong.  We don’t have one reason to be ashamed of our record.  And yet with the FOX news deception machine running full bore- - they could at this point about convince anyone of anything.   Just look at how complete the loss was for the democrats.  They lost between seven and nine members of the US Senate.  Democrats lost thirteen house members, and more governorships, and quite a number of state houses newly fell into republican hands.  If they had an unfair advantage before to do the Communications Act of 1996 and FOX news, and more by Citizen’s United and Mc Cutchenson - - then now it’s no reach at all to believe that it will be harder to get any progressive Justices confirmed- - and that increasingly Republican Governors with messiah complexes like Scott Walker and Christie will appoint corrupt judges who will about write any decision they want them too.  So like global warming it may well be “too late”.  We may well have reached that proverbial tipping point where there is no going back, but only look forward to the inevitable disaster.  People say if things get bad enough there will be resolution in the streets but people who have seen Tiemimin Square know spirited protestors can’t possibly compete with government armored forces.  The situation is just plain “bad” and I have no solution.

We are upon the 25th anniversary of a day I was almost run over by a speeding white car making a left turn from Lincoln into Holder Street in Cypress.  But it raises the question of why I'm not dead or how the car even physically managed to miss me entirely.  There is another alternative entirely of course, and that is that I am in fact dead and have been dead for 25 years and nothing that has happened in the past 25 years is at all real but all part of some Star Trek Holideck program or something.  I was talking to an insane guy the other night whom I thought I heard utter an actual same thought.  (I was probably mistaken)  I thought he was agreeing with me about fifth dimensional transfer or leaping- - via a process that defies any known material or physical laws and necessitates that thing nobody likes to talk about called- a Soul.  Normally one would think that the best PROOF there is life after death would be the obvious one, mainly that you are alive and envoking Decarte's "I think therefore I am" conclude that you must have survived death.  But I warned the guy and Joe and Lisha and whoever else was out there that- - "Of course where you are NOW isn't real and nothing of This life is or ever WAR real in your NEW existence.  It's a little too taxing a mental concept for most people to endure.  But how much trickier if your new habitat is so entirely similar to your OLD habitat, you don't know that a change has taken place.  (They have a star trek episode for that, too)  So you slog onward and count your blessings, continuing as before.  We don't know how tricky any "higher powers" can be, but probably (or at least likely) they only GOT to be "higher powers" by being a lot more intelligent and crafty than we are.  It's just something to think about anyway.

Here are some remarks from Washington's blog I actually strongly agree with.  The Democratic Party is at a crisis of its basic values, of its basic reason for existing; it is at an existential crisis regarding what its ideology is. If it does not figure out soon what its ideology is, other than merely ‘not conservative,’ then it will die and it deserves to be replaced, because its opponent, the Republican Party, certainly knows what its ideology is, and they proclaim it with pride, loud and clear: conservatism.   The Democratic Party has become merely Republican-light — not as far to the right as is the Republican Party, but also not progressive, and not even actually liberal — after the NSA scandals, the houndings and constant abuses against whistleblowers, the increasing militarization of the police, the forced-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo, the unanimous support of Israel’s bombings of densely populated civilian areas in Gaza, the bombings in Syria and Iraq (of terrorists that Obama originally supported), Obama’s support for the fascist coup-regime in Honduras (throwing them the lifeline that enabled them to solidify their power), and his instigation of the coup d’etat in Ukraine, which new regime’s ethnic cleansing in Ukraine’s southeast he also endorsed, the ongoing bailouts of Wall Street, and the sufferings on Main Street. If that’s not conservative enough, then what is? The Republican Party, perhaps?  But, above all, the Democratic Party has failed because it supported the President on all of these things: it did not do the only thing that could possibly have prevented the Republican win of the U.S. Senate on November 4th — it did not break away from this very unpopular President, and condemn those far-right actions and introduce against him a bill to impeach this fake ‘Democratic’ President. It has instead kept him as a deadweight to whatever little the Party still stands for; and so it stands for nothing in most voters’ minds. In standing for Obama, the Democratic Party has stood for really nothing at all, certainly nothing that is progressive or even liberal.   And, thus, it fell, because too few voters like or respect Republican-light, enough to go to the polls and vote for it. If they want conservatism, they’ll go for the Party that’s proud to represent it, not the one that claims not to.   And so we shall now have two Republican-controlled houses of Congress passing extremist-right-wing bills into laws which the till-now closeted conservative U.S. President Barack Obama will sign into laws, providing the most-conservative U.S. Government since not only George W. Bush, but perhaps since ever. Deregulation will reign supreme, over our food-safety, our water-safety, our air-safety, our product-safety, our product-labeling laws, our healthcare, the environment, workplace-safety, workers’ rights, and everything else that America’s international corporations want to be deregulated in their international competitive race-to-the-bottom on everything except stockholder-profits and executive compensation. (That’s how our aristocrats can beat their international aristocratic competitors, by winning this race to the bottom, this race against everyone else but our aristocrats themselves, since they don’t bear any of the costs of their war against the public and their competition against each other.) President Obama will continue talking a pretty line of liberal clichés on all of these matters, but the only progressive thing that he will actually fight for is gender-equality, which he really believes in. Other than that, we have an extremely conservative President and an even more extremely conservative Congress; and if any of the Supreme Court’s four Democratic appointees becomes replaced, it will only be with a Democrat who is even more conservative than the ones who are there now, because otherwise the Republican Senate will not confirm the appointee.  So, this country is set for what is likely to be the most extremely right-wing Government that it has ever had. And the Democratic Party failed to do the only thing that it could have done in order to avert this, which was the situation that I’ve been warning about repeatedly, to no effect, for over a year.

Here is a extended "trailer".  Soon after Barack Obama was elected, on a platform of providing every American with a “Public Option, to keep the [health] insurance companies honest” (by providing nonprofit government competition for the health-insurance companies), and of providing accountability for Wall Street and other elite crimes, Obama appointed Bush’s N.Y. Fed chief Timothy Geithner (who had pushed for and organized a 100 cents-on-the-dollar bailout for investors in Wall Street’s toxic assets to come from U.S. taxpayers) as his Treasury Secretary, and appointed Eric Holder (who had wrangled a Presidential pardon for billionaire commodity trader Marc Rich) as his Attorney General, and Obama also told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to block any movement for single-payer health insurance, which the Congressional Progressive Caucus had wanted to introduce as the left-most position for the bargaining and horse-trading that was to come on health care. Once Obama was ensconced in office, he chose the anti-public-option conservative Democratic Senator Max Baucus as the person to write his new health care plan. Baucus’s staff aide, Liz Fowler, formerly the VP of the nation’s biggest health insurance company, Wellpoint, promptly set about drafting the Obama plan. Right out of the starting-gate, Barack Obama was doing everything he possibly could to block any fight from the left against extremist right-wing Republican legislative initiatives in Congress. This drove everything farther to the right. He was thus doing exactly what a secret conservative fake “Democrat” would do to cripple Democratic opposition to Obama’s actuallyconservative legislative initiatives.

Saturday, November 08, 2014

The Brain and Human Consciousness


On book TV there was a lecture by two authors on the human brain and consciousness.   There was talk about De Carte and how he had this idea that the brain could be reduced to a biological machine, but he lacked the knowledge we have today in order to prove it.  There are of course pet scans and things now of the brain which indicate which people in a “vegetative” state really have something going on in their mind and which don’t.  It is said only ten to twenty percent of patients do.  But even this could be a breakthrough.  We have all seen these color graphs of activities in various parts of the brain and how various narcotics affect these.  Rather than physical say “Yes” or “No” they can be asked to “invision yourself playing tennis – if the answer is Yes”, for instance.  There was talk about how most stimuli we receive is of a pre conscious nature meaning it’s received but not “shared by the whole brain” and this ‘whole brain attention” aspect seems to signal consciousness.   There was talk about seeing a number and then designs- - and if the time lapse is short enough you will fail to see the number.  This one puzzled me because I always clearly saw the number.  (?)   The other guy came at it from a slightly more philosophical (or linguistic) aspect.  For instance we should be aware of the “surely” alarm.  If you see the word “surely” in an argument, a bell should go off in your head because you could well be in the process of being scammed.  This is an author who states a fact as TRUE yet doesn’t want to take the trouble to prove it.  More importantly in my view- is that often these “Surely” statements like in politics or religion- - are bogus statements on their face and should NOT be accepted as a sound premise for an argument.   There was talk of how this ‘surely’ tip is like an “app” for the brain, and that our brains run on a lot of “apps” that other animals don’t have access to draw on- - because they are conveyed by complex speech.  But the statement was made that even a talented carpenter would mainly be lost without his tools.  Besides build bookcases out of bricks and plywood planks- - there is a lot a carpenter can do without his tools.  But it is also argued that- - man evolves in his ability to use the tools he does have.  Yet some would say that one neuron doesn’t know in itself the knowledge it is conveying.  Here is a brain teaser.  We are told that the cerebral cortex for example assigns ‘meaning” to the stimuli we receive.  But at the same time- - deciding what HAS meaning or what is SOUND FOUNDATION is tricky.  For instance if a tea party person goes to France and is charged for something in Euros- - he may respond “Yes, but what is its cost in real money” meaning the American dollar.  It’s a brain teases of an analogy but this is how this speaker was saying that no part of the brain- - in itself- - is the fount of “all that’s real and has meaning” than any other part of the brain.  And many times, and I found this out independently, that people can engage in behavior without knowing WHY they do it- - and many times I will even say (or at least think) well necessity dictated that I EVOLVE that behavior because “it Works”.   What WORKS gets held on to and reproduced more often because it increases survival odds.  There is this little “stotting” as they call it that gazelles do when they run away from a lion hunting them.  This behavior is sort of a prancing behavior as I understand it - - and expends physical energy so can be stated as “inefficient”.   The gazelle doesn’t know why he or she does it.  And the Lion may not know why such “prancing’ or whatever discourages the hunt- but it does.  It’s an unknowing message (without comprehension by either) of a behavior and a signal received- - of a behavior designed to prolong the life of the gazelle another day.   Now the first question fielded was whether either guest believes in any concept or existence of “the soul” and the answer seemed to be “No” simply because we have enough to work with right in the here and now - - and there is no need for “a soul”.   Some say we need a thing like a soul to govern our morality.  However ‘Morality is just another neck-top app” to these people, just like Mr Data had a morality program installed in him.  Animals show signs of morality.  There are acts of generosity in the ape community, and someone pointed out that even if you feed a stray cat a whole can of cat food, they will leave a portion of it, and endeavor to alert their friends that there is food around.

I’d like to discuss this “new” notion now that “The earth is the center of the Universe, after all”.     This whole like of thinking shows a lot of ego centrism, and they appeal to someone like Aristatle and the concept of “the un-moved first mover” that has been debunked.  In this line of thinking God is assumed to have vast amounts of “gravitas” (a Dick Chaney word)   But in reality we can’t even define what a stationary point is.  Indeed there can be no concept of any “shape” or physical limit to the universe because as I said in 2011 “Infinity, time, and space are all artifacts of God”.   Hence to label God as infinite is to limit him by his own creation.  (Selah)  We therefore know it is silly to portray the Universe as either spherical, pear shaped, saddle shaped, or even donut shaped.  There is no place where the universe “stops”.    Some would speak of “space folding, but are unaware of the fact that a gravitational or magnetic field needs aether to propagate its waves of influence in- - and this cannot happen is the “Magnet” is outside the realm of either space.  (Selah)  These people show themselves to be ignorant of moving vector geometry where even trying to find what the “center” or stationary point in an object or group of objects is impossible.  Also there is no “speed limit” and when push comes to shove, even Einstein will agree with this.   Hence it cannot even be said that a particular “event horizon” is moving “more slowly” or faster than another event horizon.  You smart ones already know this.  When people design their god they design him the way they wish they were.  Hence any portrayal of “god” invariable shows him to be with a gigantic ego, utterly obsessed with Self.   How strange it would be then if God turned out to be Black.  Because President Obama knows that Bl.ack men can’t get angry because otherwise they’d be just another angry nigger.

Chris Matthews kept having buffering pauses.  I blame the phone company as much as I do that site.  I never used to have those problems.  I watched almost two days worth of clips running nearly an hour and a half.  Sometimes it makes you wonder whether I should start blogging along lines of other interest such as music, or the ETI stuff or theoretical metaphysics, or perhaps Excel math formulas - - or perhaps do some fictionalized account of my own life experiences.  Clearly the usefulness of political discussion has run its course.  Ronald Reagan said it was “Morning in America” in early 1984 when the unemployment rate was a point and a half higher than it is right now.  Yesterday the new figure came out as 5.8% and well over two hundred thousand jobs added.  Any republican criticism of the economy is groundless at this point.  But FOX news doesn’t have to be factual or even logical.  It can appeal to the basest fears and irrational tendencies of the immature emotions of the human brain.

There was a line on “Reign” about the royal carriage being surrounded by armed horsemen, where the Queen says “There are a million peasants and only a few of us Royals, and we need to show the peasants respect. I only wish the Republican party of today was as eager to show us peasants proper respect. Clearly if you had to justify tea party philosophy by using the Bible it would be impossible, because the Bible at every turn says the opposite on the value of money and such as the tea party portrays. When Jesus gave the parable of the talents, he was not referring to profit but a free gift from God to you that you were to share with others that profit may occur to all of you. Jesus rebukes the individual who stuffed the money in his mattress. The man seeking to justify himself said "I was afraid, therefore I hid my talent". How odd then that Mitt Romney and all the rest said that the Banks and the Wall Street financiers - - were GIVEN vast sums of money by the federal reserve but we are informed by Newt and Mittens that "They were afraid because they didn't know what the tax policies would be the next year". Well they know them now- and these banks to a great degree still are not lending. There are many such stories in the Bible if you look for them- - saying that either trusting in riches or worshiping riches to the exclusion of people - - is a sin. There are countless injunctions in scripture not to disparage the poor but to nurture them. I cannot think of one scripture that instructs us to rebuke a man because he IS poor. Yet this is what Mitt Romney did with his famous 47% remark. It seems to me a strange ingratitude tword God that the rich would resent being in a higher tax bracket rather than get down on their knees they even HAVE that money to begin with to be able to give to the government or anybody else. (Selah)

Friday, November 07, 2014

FOX News Sets the National Agenda Now

One obvious thing that occurred to me about the recent election was that it was in no way a reflection of the way President Obama has conducted himself.  The economy is steadily growing and the stock market is making new highs and all the other of those fourteen points are still true.  The voter’s little hissy fit was engendered entirely by the hysterical hype of FOX news.  I doubt it has anything to do with a desire to see the affordable care act repealed, or that mothers and children were flooding across the border last summer or ISIS or Ebola or any other excuse.   Clearly having Republican governors and Republican senators will solve none of these problems.  Today the President was scheduled to have a Bourbon summit.   Sean Hannity accused the President of “already drawing a line in the sand”, which is something I would have done but is out of character for the President.  And we know how reliable those “lines in the sand” are anyhow.  Expect the Trans-Canada pipeline to be one of the first things the President approves.   If it were me dealing with Mc Connell I would say “I am not going to sacrifice the last shred of credibility I have with my base.  I already know I’m not trusted one bit by you and John Boehner;  I don’t want people who have supported me now despising me with an equal passion.  Certainly you can understand that.  Of course this whole thing was set in concrete months ago.  Since June we’ve been hearing “The Republicans are going to take back the US Senate and there is nothing our side can do about it because people on our side just won’t show up.  Who would guess that there was a record low nationwide turnout of 37%.   On Election night the media led us to believe this was some ground swell of heavy turn-out viting with conviction.  Now we learn it was never that way.  This whole deboccle was preventable in any number of ways- - most of all if the President had gotten on the campaign stump the way Harry Truman did for his party in 1948.  His situation was even worse because he faced already both houses of congress in the hands of the Republican party- - as it looked like an inevitable ground swell of Republicans were passing bills right and left over the Presidential veto.  But if THAT was a “do nothing congress” this past congress is far WORSE in that regard.  But like I say this whole thing was pre ordained just like the networks telling us that the Twin Towers were going to come down on 9 – 11.  And when they did the cameras were ready with live coverage.  This election thus was one gigantic train wreck in slow motion.

I would not for a minute minimize the severity of the loss on November 4th.  It’s a rare thing is a democrat wins ANY race because they say there is not a single blue democratic district left in Arkansas and looking at the map of the nation the thing is a sea of red with isolated patches of blue.  We are a Republican nation and both congress and the states are more dominated by Republicans since Herbert Hoover was President, and suddenly that doesn’t scare anybody.   But John Warner held on for another term in the Senate in Virginia as a democrat.  There was some last minute concern about him.  And of course Al Franken won- - who tied himself openly to the President, vindicating my theory that is more democrats had done that more would have won.   But the media saw to it that all of the polls everywhere were tied neck and neck.  How many times did we hear “There have never been so many dead heat races”.  But it was all just a media ploy to keep us interested, or perhaps it was just the usual “red shift” we’ve been seeing the last decade or so where magically votes turn up republican.   Things don’t look good at all for the runoff of Mary Landreau of Louisiana.  The numbers are against her.   So is she like eight or nine?   Monsanto dumped untold sums of money into the Genetically Modified Organisms labeling campaign in Oregon, and apparently there is no definitive result there after three days.   But Sean is right of course.  The devestation was pretty much total.  You also had more younger republicans winning as well as more blacks and women going republican.   But one thing Sean keeps managing to forget is that President Obama is still President for two more years.  So when Sean says “I think it would be wrong for Mc Conell and the President to come to any agreements” I’m not sure what he means.  Because it’s something he and I agree on.  I don’t want there to be any AGREEMENTS (as a code word for selling out principles) either, and I would be perfectly happy at this point is the Republicans would go back to what they have proved themselves so well at doing- - absolutely nothing- - just spending taxpayer’s money.


I don’t think we have EVER had an eight year Presidential term where a chief executive faced an unrelenting wall of resistence for all eight years.   Few Presidents have had to face congress in the hands of the opposite party the past six consecutive years as Obama has.  Those hoping for some turnaround in 2014 won’t get it, and the political nightmare lives on another two years, at least.   Last night Paul called me on the phone just after five.  I was concerned my phone wasn’t even working because people would keep calling and the line would be dead.  Paul voted for Young Kim, who is a lady who is pro life and anti gay and anti California high speed railroad.  I may agree with her on all three of those issues- - but it’s canceled out if she’s an unqualified flake to begin with.  I confessed to Paul that in my zeal to follow aspects of the national results, I have been derelect in finding out how various local races went.  Paul said he was going to be in the same room with David Limbaugh tonight and even invited me to come along, but I declined.  I told Paul how I disagree with the thumbs down on Props 45 and 46 but Paul did not specifically say he voted AGAINST these two propositions himself.  I only assumed that he did because Judy was so against them.   I told Paul this cold has been going on for two weeks or something as some never ending virus.  I don’t know.  I’m starting to get a complex about it, like it really isn’t a cold but T B or something.  I know they have ways of testing for it- - and OK I had a test but there was such an elapsed period of time between the injection and the examining - - I’m not sure if we can trust the results.

We move once again into the looney land of Judy.  I watched that “Earth is the center of the Universe after all” trailer and the thing offered no proof of it’s outrageous statement other than saying that cosmic rays come from all directions equally, and also that “the galaxies are perfectly aligned in concentric shells around the earth”, which is a statement I’ve never heard before in over fifty years.   Then there was the statement from two Iranian leaders that President Obama is the weakest president the United States has ever had.  I suppose we could drop a bunch of bombs on them in an endeavor to convince them otherwise.  “If you think we’re just stupid, maybe we can’t trust ourselves to negotiate with you without your pulling the wool over our eyes, how about that?”   After two thirty I watched the John Boehner press conference.  I would make my response to John Boehner plain.  "You welched on the “grand bargain” in the debt deal of summer 2011.  Your good buddy Mitch Mc Connell avowed to his buddies the day I took office that he would do everything he could to make me a one term president.  So it isn’t a question of making a deal with him because he thinks I’m an illegitimate president to begin with.  Also at great cost of credibility to myself I delayed a ruling on whether I would use executive power to help with the immigration situation.  I gave you a full year to come to an agreement, and by failure to even bring up the Senate bill, you have already made your decision on the matter and your word now, even if you gave it, which you haven’t so far, would be worthless”.

I bookmarked the page on voter turnout.  The turnout in this last election is the worst we’ve ever had by about three points and you can sort the thing either alphabetically by state, or by the 2010 date or the 2014 date, and even sort by the amount of change in those two dates.  There was no demographic breakdown, but in another site- - it’s the young people who didn’t show up.  I thought I saw that there were twice as many people over sixty who turned out- as opposed to under thirty.  That’s a horrible figure.  Also there was a drop in Latino voting, which given immigration, is understandable.  It was beef Stroganoff for dinner with generous corn (it gave at the office) and a green salad.  I felt bowied in my energy from the vitamin C from the fruit plate.  We had tapioca pudding for desert which they served and I ate first.  There were no seconds.  After this I paid Federico two of the five dollars I owed him at the office window, and confirmed my dental appointment tomorrow

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Republicans Take Over US Senate Gaining Seven Seats


I said it would be a cold day in Hell when the US Senate went Republican.  Well, if you consider this place Hell, it was cold this morning and calm, which flew in the face of ninety degree weather and Santa Ana winds blowing they had predicted.  It was a complete Democratic melt-down on Election Day.  The Republicans indeed picked up at least seven US Senators.  This following paragraph says it all.   By late Tuesday, Republicans had won at least 10 of the day’s 13 closely contested Senate races, more than the margin they needed to control the Senate for the first time since 2007. GOP candidates held on to seats in Georgia (Michelle Nun, highly favored, goes down), Kansas (Pat Roberts defeats independent Ormandy) and Kentucky (Mc Connell reelected and Grimes, as promising as she was, went down), and took seats held by Democrats in Iowa (meaning Joni Ernst, the hog castrater, defeated Brayley)  , Colorado (Cory Gardner feats Udall alias Mark “the uterus” Udall, where his play for women voters failed) , Arkansas (Cotton won)  Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia and North Carolina (another highly contested race).  But there were melt downs in all four key governor’s races in my mind.  Lex Luther of Florida defeated Charlie Christ.  Rick Scott is in for another term.  The dreaded Scott Walker of Wisconsin was reelected,  and the biggest heartbreaker of all Pat Quinn lost to Rouner, and also Wendy Davis lost in Texas to that Abott fellow- - the devil incarnate.  Governor La Page was reelected in Maine. If there was ANY bright spot - - Scott Brown lost in New Hampshire- - a lower priority race in my mind.  The Republicans also are slated to pick up twelve House seats, so I was wrong there, too.  But marijuana initiatives gave thumbs up to the weed in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington DC so there is a rising tide of legal marijuana.

The minimum wage was just voted to be raised in four red states, Alaska, Arkansas, South Dakota and Nebraska.  How strange it is that they will vote to raise the pay in their own state, but send people to congress that will prevent it from ever happening nationally.  It’s like people love their Kynnect medical care in Kentucky but put a guy back in power that will “rip out Obama Care, root and branch” in Mc Connell.  The idea of Grimes not tying herself to this accomplishment in Kentucky- is nothing sort of silly.  It’s also nothing short of silly that people who ARE prospering from this economy like “Made in America” on ABC news- - that these people and others would not be summoned up to say “You people don’t have it so bad”.  Again, we know that the Republicans are the ones dragging their feet on all economic stimuli.

We have Governor Christie doing what he does best, sitting in the lime light on the Today show giving his expert analysis - - or is that anal-isis.   We’re going to hear the words “schlacking’ and “Republican rout” a lot today.    Now it’s predicted that President Obama may indeed “work with” the Republicans just like Clinton did when he deregulated Wall Street after the election of 1998.  I only hope we don’t see an equivalent disaster this time, such as the President suddenly deciding he’s now all for the XL Trans Canadian Pipeline.   They say that the Republicans have the biggest majority in the house picking up an additional thirteen seats, that they’ve had in eighty years.  With a little luck maybe we can bring back the chaos of 1929.  I’m going to make it a point to be mentioning Hartman’s “Crash of 2016 Book” more often now.  So you were bored with steady economic growth and other good news that has been enumerated - - so now I say “I don’t care”.  It’s a case of “Fall Mountains - - Just Don’t Fall on Me”.

Stewart Sutcliffe and Dennis Wilson paid me a visit this morning.  Dennis “wanted to see how I was” because he’s bumbed about the elections and he assumed (correctly) that I was, too.  There are tons of headlines on Sirius A about the election not that it’s a done deal.  The people there think we have gone completely nuts.  Stu pointed out that Obama’s track record is really not the sort – “as little as I think of him personally” that would warrant such a Republican rout.  It makes no sense, but here for blog readers, is the list of fourteen things you didn’t know about the accomplishments of the past six years- making it a better world than you might think.  But the President showed such a wholesale lack of character in not fighting for or defending his own ideas driven by the most craven of emotions playing "not to lose" yesterday - - and we know when football teams play "not to lose" they lose.  So the President kept secret what the insurance rates would be for Obama Care next year rather than discuss it, or the immigration executive order he backed out of thinking he was "playing it smart" and also not appearing with hardly any democratic candidates,  President Bush would have never lost a chance to appear for Republicans during his term.   One might wonder whether the President is downright delusional and today he's waking up from a hangover.  This is strictly my own oppinion.  Now of course the Republicans are forced to do something they've never had to do and that's to actually Lead- - - in Some direction.   It's easier to block the agenda of others than to actually try and get your own stated "campaign promises" adopted.

Fourteen Facts About The Obama Presidency That Most People Don’t Know

People have many perceptions of how the US economy or the country as a whole is doing in recent years. Depending on your political views, you may think the country is doing exceptionally well or on the verge of collapse.
Listed below are 14 objective facts, without interjecting any opinion, about the state of America under the leadership of President Obama. Every statement is followed up with a link to a source where you can verify these facts for yourself.
1. We've now had 63 straight months of economic expansion.
That’s right, for 63 consecutive months the US economy has gotten progressively better. That includes 54 consecutive months of private sector job growth. Forbes magazine, no fan of President Obama, crunched the numbers and demonstrated how the economic recovery under President Obama has been better in just about every measurable way than the recovery under President Reagan.
2. We are currently enjoying the longest period of private sector job creation in American history.
Again, this statistic comes from the Forbes Magazine article listed above. In fact, we have now had 54 straight months of private sector job creation. That is the longest period of job creation since the Department of Labor has been keeping statistics. See the link below.
3. Unemployment has dropped from 10.1% in October of 2009 to 5.9% and projected to reach 5.4% by summer of 2015.
Not only has the unemployment rate dropped significantly, but since the recession ended, our economy as added over ten million new jobs. You can refer to the Forbes article above or check this article on PoliticsUSA.
4. The stock market continues to set new records since President Obama has been in office.
Since early 2009 there has been a steady trend in stock market growth. The Dow Jones Industrial averages reached an all-time high of 17,098 in August, 2014. Since most Americans have 401K retirement investments in the stock market, this stock market growth benefits millions of middle class Americans.
5. The Federal budget deficit is shrinking. It’s been reduced by two-thirds since 2009.
The $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit that Obama inherited in 2009 was in a large part due to the high rate of unemployment. When millions of people were put out of work in 2008 and 2009, it resulted in far less income taxes and less economic activity to generate federal revenue. As ten million people have been put back to work, there have been billions more tax dollars generated. As a result, the deficit has been shrinking each year. The 2014 deficit is projected to be around $500 billion, the smallest deficit since 2007 and roughly 1/3 of what it was in 2009.
6. Under President Obama, spending has increased only 1.4% annually, the lowest rate since Eisenhower was president.
You may have heard critics say that President Obama is spending money wildly and running up our debt. According to this article from Forbes, Obama has increased spending by 1.4% annually, far less than President Reagan (8.7%) or George W. Bush (8.1%). In fact, Obama has increased spending less than any president since Eisenhower.
7. For 95% of American taxpayers, income taxes are lower now than just about any time in the previous 50 years.
After President Obama took office, thousands of Tea Party members all over the country held rallies protesting Obama’s tax increases. At that time, President Obama had actually passed several tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Most of the Tea Partiers who were protesting had only seen their taxes decrease under Obama. Yet polls indicated that most Tea Party members wrongly believed their taxes had gone up.
In fact, the only people whose income taxes have gone up during Obama’s presidency are those making $400,000 per year or more. That's less than 2% of the population. Today, for the vast majority of people, tax rates are exactly where they were when Obama first took office or lower. The article below from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains this in greater detail.
8. Our dependence on foreign oil has shrunk due to record domestic oil production and improved fuel efficiency standards.
While some people claim that oil production has declined under President Obama, the truth is just the opposite. Oil production has reached record highs. The United States now produces so much oil that we export more oil and gasoline than we import.
9. At least 7 million more Americans now have health insurance than before.
Depending on whose numbers you use, between 7 and 10 million Americans acquired health insurance due to the Affordable Care Act. Now that those 7 to 10 million Americans have insurance, the rest of us are no longer on the hook to pay for their health care when they get sick. This saves the American people billions of dollars in the long run.
10. The Affordable Care Act has added years to the life of Medicare.
The Medicare trust fund had been on course to run out of money by the end of 2016. But due to cost savings from the Affordable Care Act and lower healthcare expenses, Medicare’s trust fund is now stable until the year 2030 without cutting benefits.
11. Since passage of the Affordable Care Act, we are seeing the slowest rate of increase in healthcare costs since 1960.
Contrary to the predictions from Republicans, health care costs have increased at a much slower pace since the passage of the ACA.
12. We currently have fewer soldiers, sailors and airmen in war zones than any time in over 10 years.
With the end of the Iraq war and the steady withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, we have fewer people in war zones now than any time since 2002.
13. There have been zero successful attacks by al Qaeda on US soil since Obama became president.
Despite Dick Cheney’s claim that if voters elect a Democrat as president, we’ll be “hit again and hit hard” by al Qaeda, we have actually been far safer from terrorist attacks on US soil in recent years than we were under the previous president. There have been several unsuccessful attacks against the US under both presidents, but under Obama, al Qaeda has been largely unsuccessful in striking the US on our home soil.
14. We now successfully catch and deport more illegal immigrants than ever before.
Despite the publicity from busloads of children who illegally entered the country, the numbers prove that President Obama has deported more illegal immigrants than any other president.
All of the facts stated above can be confirmed through multiple sources, yet most Americans are not aware of all of this positive news. I invite you to do your own research and check these facts for yourself.
The truth is, most other presidents would envy President Obama’s record despite the fact that he inherited the worst economic crash since the Great Depression.
Here's a bonus. If you feel particularly ambitious, feel free to research these additional facts.
1.    Since Obama became president, our economy has gone from losing 800,000 jobs per month to adding 200,000 jobs per month. That’s a net improvement under Obama of about 1 million jobs per month!
2.    Before Obama became president, our financial system was in ruins and millions of people were at risk of losing their life savings. Now, the financial loopholes have been fixed and we are no longer at risk of another financial collapse.
3.    In 5 years under Obama the economy has created twice as many jobs as were created in 8 years under George W. Bush.
4.    President Obama passed credit card reforms that protects consumers from excessive fees, rate hikes, deceptive marketing and unreasonable due dates.
5.    Thanks to “Obamacare”, senior citizens have saved billions of dollars on prescription drugs.
6.    The Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies to spend at least 80% of your premiums on health care. As a result millions of Americans have received refunds from their health insurance companies.
Despite the unprecedented obstructionism and record number of filibusters used by Republicans to kill even the most routine legislation, the fact remains, in almost every measurable way, the American people are profoundly better off today than they were before President Obama took office.
SO YOU DETRACTORS CAN JUST SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!