Obama Sides With Denial of Freedom of the Press

James Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winner at the New York Times, may face jail time on a federal contempt of court charge if he doesn’t release the identity of one of his confidential sources.

THROUGH THE PAST DARKLY

"One time I glanced at a watch I've had that's been stopped since Memorial Day 2006.  It said seventeen to one.  (Antes de la media)  Do you believe in a rolling rapture on the Twelth Night- - to give most people a sporting chance on that final Sunday"

"And I heard an angel say that there should be delay no more"

"Shall we suffer evil while all the while comforting ourselves "Good will come out of it".  Lord, may it never Be"

"And if you are the first to go, you'll leave a Sign to let us know"

"Allright Fido, Beat it out for us"

"Don't Go where the Road Don't Go"

"I'm strictly by the book.  Disagree with the book and you better have a half a dozen good reasons why, and you'll still get an argument from me.  And I don't lose arguments"

"The reason why you say to stop searching is not because you're afraid we'll never find the answer, but it's because you're afraid we Will"

"The devil came in with some loaded dice, but the Lamb rolled a seven back to paradise"

"one more time - Tell Me Why you believe some magical disappearence will happen thirty four years after William Casey made the "October Surprise" - - just - - disappear"

The Bush Administration’s Justice Department tried to pry the information out of him, but ultimately relented.  Now President Obama, who vowed to restore our civil liberties when he ran for the White House in 2008, is letting his Justice Department pursue Risen even more aggressively than Bush did.  The information concerns a source for a chapter in Risen’s terrific 2006 book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.” That chapter dealt with a scheme to give the Iranians faulty blueprints for a nuclear weapon.

The U.S. government alleges that the source was Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA employee, whom the Justice Department is prosecuting under the Espionage Act.

Risen all along has invoked his privilege as a journalist under the First Amendment not to reveal his source. A lower court agreed with him, but an appellate court sided with Obama’s Justice Department. In a sharp dissenting opinion, Judge Roger Gregory, who was appointed both by President Clinton and by President George W. Bush, sided with Risen. Judge Gregory said the appellate court’s decision was “contrary to the will and wisdom of our Founders.”    In January Risen, appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. In his petition for a writ of certiorari, Risen wrote:  “If I am forced to testify, it will immediately and substantially harm my ability to gather newsworthy information” and “to secure the trust of sources in the future.”  He elaborated on how dangerous to all journalists this precedent would be: “Compelling journalists to testify about their conversations with confidential sources will inevitably hinder future attempts to obtain cooperation from those or other confidential sources. It creates the inevitable appearance that journalists either are or can be readily converted into an investigative arm of the government. This would seriously compromise journalists’ integrity and independence.”   He said the Obama Administration’s effort to go after him is part of its policy of “aggressively investigating whistleblowers and reporters in a way that will have a chilling effect on the freedom of the press in the United States.”  Obama’s Justice Department, in its brief to the Supreme Court, asserted that “no reporter’s privilege exists,” and that this case would be “an unsuitable vehicle for considering the existence of a qualified reporter’s privilege.”  If the Justice Department prevails and the Supreme Court decides not to take Risen’s appeal, he could be jailed for contempt of court.  Risen has vowed to go to jail rather than reveal his source.  The Freedom of the Press Foundation has called the government's effort to force Risen to reveal a source “one of the most significant press freedom cases in decades.”  The Progressive magazine, now merged with the Center for Media and Democracy, has joined with the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), The Nation magazine, Roots Action, and others to insist on protection for the confidentiality of journalists’ sources.

HOT NEWS FLASH FROM JUDY:
RUSH: Well, well, well, looky here. Koko Jr. at RushLimbaugh.com just sent me a quick note. "Documents released Friday..." This is from July of 2010, folks, so it's from the archives at RushLimbaugh.com. "Documents released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library show members of President Richard Nixon's inner circle discussing the possibilities of global warming more than 30 years ago.  "Advisor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the [Nixon] administration, urged the [Nixon] administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the public's attention." Here is the nub: Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned Richard Nixon in 1970 that unless the Nixon administration took drastic action to limit greenhouse gases, it would be seven degrees warmer in the year 2000 and parts of America would be underwater.  - - - OK,  my reaction to all this is to say "So just What Is It we progressives are supposed to be embarrased by this?   If this is a way of humiliating Democrats as bad prophets- - this pathetic attempt on Rush Limbaugh's part falls flat on its face.  Because the key line is "Unless major action was taken".  Well, major action WAS taken and STILL we are facing rising temperatures and rising sea levels in many places.  All this warning of some forty years ago - before a lot of people reading this were even born - - if that this is a major Problem that is NOT going away!

Today in the House they officially approved the creation of a “special committee” to look into the Bengazi case once again.  Rush Limbaugh said that all “old people (like me) are just a bunch of aging hippies.  Of course the leadership such as Ted Cruise, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and  Eric Cantor - - are all nearly twenty years younger than I am.  Actually the median age of a typical “hippy” was actually just older than I in fact am.  Magic Mountain normally costs $67.00 but locals can get a discount.  Universal Studios is much more expensive.  It will set you back $92.00 without a discount but there are deals.  And Disneyland tops them off.  The price of a ticket to visit both parks will set you back $175.00 which is positively obscene.  In other news Shelly Silversteen (not the guy who made  “The Smoke Off” but the wife is by California law a fifty percent owner of the Clippers.  She could make it official by getting a Divorce, which would make it beyond all dispute.  But Donald Sterling is fighting to keep ownership of the team, and frankly I agree with him.  And then we have the California State Senate passing a bill to mandate an automatic “kill switch” on all Smart Phones.  I think that is a bad idea for a number of reasons.  First of all just like with copy protection, it would seem they could find a programming fix around the switch before long at all and you will have spent all that money for nothing, like a vasectomy that didn’t take.  But more to the point it means that he who holds the code to the kill switch- - controls your phone and what is that is the Government.  Glen Beck was talking about this experimental plane that flew through LA international airport a few days ago- - and all of the air traffic control system was jammed.  To me the whole concept of a “kill switch” is altogether too Sci Fi for me.  What’s to stop our bright thief from merely taking the batteries out of the phone for a few days after he steals it and then putting them back in once “the head dies down”  so to speak?  They say that this Sanchez cop was intensionally rammed into with that Camero- - and it was done to help a friend escape police pursuit.  Now he is the third LAPD officer to die in the line of duty in less than three months.   LAPD has had dash cameras on a quarter of their patrol cars since 2010 and they hope to outfit the entire fleet.  The LA Clippers lost to the Oklahoma Thunder last night.  I knew they had their work cut out for them.  Right now the series is tied up two and two.  Game four will be on ABC Sunday afternoon.

Some people take a passive view of life saying "Well, if a certain thing was meant to be - then it will happen.  Otherwise we shouldn't worry about it".   Others, often the same ones will say "We'll never have all of our questions about "The Faith" answered, so we - shouldn't even pursue the matter.  I have a response to that, which goes "People who say that we should be content never to know the Answers to certain questions - - Say This - - NOT - - because they fear we will Never Find the answers, but rather - - because they Fear that we Will.  Think about it.  You know one time when the Rolling Stones were recording "Let it Bleed" Brian Jones sauntered into the studio and says to Mick "What can I do?" as if to atone for all of the times he's flaked out.  Mick Jagger, obviously disgusted with him says to Brian "I don't know, Brian, what CAN you do?"   I would say the same thing of God.  Some people brag and are lauded as Heroes of Faith or something- - but then some entirely unanticipated event takes them entirely out of the running.  We saw this with Cliven Bundy on the whole government intrusion issue- - until he opened his mouth on the Race Relations issue- - and then most of his supporters back away from him.  Wayne Dyer made a big thing out of the news that "Each of us contains a little bit of God" and "We are in control of our fate".  Then Dyre got cancer or something and we haven't heard from him since.  It's like what happened to Al Franken.  He got out of talk radio to pursue a carrier in politics and went to the US Senate where he disappeared into a Black Hole or something.  We all have to live with unsettling truths - -about ourselves.  I have expended a whole lot of Time and Energy both in my writings and mental thoughts and even how I handle social relations - - in an attempt to "make sense" of Christianity or somehow to "clean it up" and "get it to make sense".  But the truth is- - we DON'T know all the answers and neither do They, but at least we Scientists and Empericists are intellectually honest enough to admit it?  So - - what CAN God do?  Are you going to sit there and tell me that God Almighty of the Universe can be cowed by a little bitty Cancer cell?  How is that supposed to impress me?  You know there is this "imprinting" stage of child development.  I learned that back in spring of 1969 from Dr Lee's class.  And people are slow to give up certain "childish things" as the Apostle Paul puts it.  It's stuff like "wishful thinking' and "magical thinking" and seeing patterns where there are none.  And it's throwing a tantrum when things don't go the way we Think - -  -the way we have a Right to expect they go, dog gone it!   But adults are too proud to throw a tamtrum, so they invent adult style mental Fairy Tales,  once again- - - nurturing the child portion of our brains with a lot of - - furtelizer.  So once upon a time it made sense, or at least More sense than today, to believe in a god who left Stars as signs, and heaven was up and hell was down and the earth was flat, and all the unexplained things we just rationalized as "Secrets of God".

Will The Republicans Defeat Themselves in 2014?

The Republicans are kind of like Nick Fallon on Days of our Lives.  They don't know when to quit "guilding the lilly" or "rubbing it in".  They are on a power trip or some might day "drunk with power" and we know that when people get "Intoxicated" by any means - judgement is the first thing to go.  We said that there is a skeleton in the closet in Bengazi, but- - it is NOT with the Obama administration, but rather why the hell the CIA was even there to begin with.  Why did the Ambassador decline extra security and how can the Republicans escape the fact tha THEY are the ones who voted cutbacks in embassy security?  All they do is to continually tell lies about everything.  They don't seem to know how to do anything else.  But this Kangaroo court thing is heightened by this so called IRS abuse scandal.  This case is Exactly like the Mc Carthyism that pervaided the 1953 to 1955 congress which by the way was voted out of Power in 1954 and largely because of the stench of Mc Carthy, the Republicans remained out of power in the house for Forty long years.  I think somebody somewhere was trying to tell them something.  Don't EVER pull a stunt like that again where people are denied their fifth amendment rights like Louis Learner is being subjected to right now.  They claim that because she spoke a total of 36 words in her own protestations of Innocence, and that's my understand- - that she somehow waved her right to plead the Fifth.  But a 1949 case ruling clearly indicated that Daryl Eisa's reasoning if deeply flawed.  Because that Court said the utmost latitude must be granted in presuming the Innocence of the Defendant as far as taking away his or her Constitutional Rights.  Daryl Eisa is a convicted felon so I understand and I'm not sure he should even BE in government at all- - certainly not the leader of a major committee.  These Republicans lied when they said that ONLY conservative groups were targeted.  These Republicans turned off the microphone at a hearing when this Black congress from Maryland, who was again prominent in today's hearings, testified or tried to in defense of Louis Learner.  And the committee won't even release the transcripts of the Testimony they have gotten already and there have been reams of it!  They don't want the American people to actually know the facts of the testimony actually given.  Now John Boehner, returning to Bengazi again, wants to appoint yet Another new comittee because they don't accept the findings of all the other committees that have conducted hearings so far.

It's possible the American people will grow tired of all this nonsense.   It's a tiresome drone, or to quote Dylan from a song "a meaningless rain of words".  And yet now the buzz is that the Republicans will indeed take control of the US Senate today.  As such they will be in a position to block replacement of any retiring Supreme Court justices, so the High Court may limp along a while on just eight justices deciding cases.  We know from experiance, high government posts have gone Vacant for months, or even longer, and this Congress thinks nothing of it.  They would rather take more vacations and conduct yet another vote on the Affordable Care act.  Now the buzz is that once these Republicans gain control of the Senate, they will conduct impeachment hearings against President Obama, just like they did with Clinton.  If they can impeach Clinton over receiving a blow job in the oval office, they'll find something on President Obama.  I remember reading the Ken Starr book in late 1998 and thinking "You mean - this is all they've Got?"  But if you think about it the Republicans have to pick up a minimum of Six senators in order to take control.  Keep in mind that only about 34 senators will even be up for election this year.  This means that, for instance- - should Nine senators switch parties- - and two seats are gained by Democrats and seven by Republicans, even if the Republicans get seven out of nine seats that switch- -they Still won't gain control, obviously because Vice President Biden is a Democrat.  I am also figuring that maybe another seven or eight seats will have replacements of people from the same Party as their predecessor as Senators retire, and the like.  I think it's safe to say that about half of the seats should not change hands at all.  And keep in mind that unlike the House, you can't gerrymander Senate districts.  So here demographics take over and women and minorities will get their fair representation in the final vote.  This is the reason the Senate wasn't taken over by the Republicans in either 2012 or 2010.  Yet nervous Nelly progressives are scared shitless it will happen this year.

Back in the old days when the John Birch Society was in bloom, people had to rely on mailings of often screwball pamflets and writings often crudely done on some mimiograph - - and they had to call each other on the phone.  There was no internet, and no FOX television.  These Birchers had to watch the same media with Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley along with the rest of us.  They were viewed by Big Money as losers, and therefore couldn't ever garner the big bucks.  At this time there was virtually no conception of things like zero terriff or zero income tax or gutting the ability of the average citizen to sue Big Business and there was pretty much zero hope you could get away with Trusts or price monopolies if you were an international or just a large American corporations.  Remember back in those days the adage was "The customer is always right".  Back in those days- - only the fringe nuts would actually advocate the notion that "Things were better for the Negro before they got any rights".  They didn't yet have their "Right wing echo chamber" and talk radio was only for people in retirement homes, and if you had a reputation of listening to them regularly you were considered an old fogy.

They say that in mid April it was still snowing in Topeka, .Kansas, and right now they are having record heat there, as they are in Dallas and in other places in the South.  They are expecting a record fire season this year and predict as global warming gets worse, the number and severity of the fires in the western Rockies will double.  As we said in the last couple of postings, the number of tornadoes and other violent weather will only continue to increase, along with absolutely vertigo inducing peaks and valleys in high and low temperatures going directly from winter to summer, and what ever happened to spring with the birds chirping and gentle warm breezes blowing.  There is absolutely nothing "Political" about scientific fact, or Reports delivered after often years of extensive research.

I"d like to clear up one mystery about "Is there really any moral requirement to become a Christian?"  Actually there are Two of them- - and they are found in the book of James.  The first is to remain a virgin untill your wedding night, and never to commit Adultry once you become married.  And if you are a woman who is divorced by her husband because of adultry, you are never allowed to marry again.  The second requirement is that you eat meat that was prepared in a kosher manner and bled properly from an animal that was neither strangled or died a natural death.  As such there is no requirement not to drink caffeine or carbonated drinks, and no liquor restrictions of any kind unless you plan to run for 'High Office" in your local Church.  There is no ban on birth control or smoking or vacetomies or for that matter - Abortions are not spoken of as a cause for not being allowed to become a Christian.  The only other ban I can find is- -there is no record of anyone guilty of First Degree Murder ever getting "Saved". So I hope you didn't have your heart set on meeting Ted Bundy or Tex Watson in heaven.  People throw this "morality" stuff at you and often you find it hard to defend yourself.  Clearly nobody can live up to the Virgin thing.  So if they throw the coffee and cigarettes thing at you, just throw the whole Virginity thing right back in their face and they'll have to Shut Up.

The Black Robed "Supremicists"

The latest Supreme Court ruling dictate that official government functions may begin with an overtly Christian prayer and if there are any Jewish or other religions represented there, well, it's just too bad for them.  We are NOT a "Christian country".   The constitution says that "No religious test shall ever be required to hold government office" and yet Jewish and Islamic and other religions "Just have to get used to the idea of feeling uncomfortable" at these meetings now.  It's hypocracy because they will say that local school districts are BANNED from ever allowing prayer, which clearly is a local or state jourisdiction.  And yet for congress and the like, we somehow have to accept this state imposed religion because we've always done it that way or something.  Phillis Schaffley was on the Thom Hartman program the other day and Thom Hartman said something amazing.  He said there was a clause in the Constitution that allowed Congress to carve out Exceptions to what the Court may rule on' and Thom suggested that "Perhaps congress should carve out exceptions in certain areas such as abortion or gay marriage of campaign financing where the Court may not intervene".   Thom also said something else that buttressed the argument of the John Birchers actually.  He said that throughout most of our history these constitutional "Overturns" of a duly passed law, applied ONLY to the case wherein they were brought.  For instance Abraham Lincoln said "Perhaps it's too late for Dread Scott, but it's not to late to do something about the fate of the others".   Presidents Jackson, Jefferson, and Lincoln all spoke out in strident terms against this power the Court claimed for itself of overturning duly passed lagislation "Because it was Unconstitutional".  And Thom Hartman said "On an issue like abortion" and one might add to this list Citizen's United and Brown verses the Board of Education, the High Court way overstepped its authority in ruling on these cases both broadening the peramaters of these cases, and broadening the number of people whom they apply to.  But couldn't we for instance on the abortion issue, have just let the issue work its way through the State Legislatures and in time we would arrive at some sort of a national concencus.  But the court instead created a Red Hering ruling that is still a contraversial issue today.  If you don't like a bad law such as Sodomy laws, for example, then just change them.  That's the legislative process.  I know the Constitution grants to congress the power to Impeach Supreme Court Justices.  As you know I firmly believe Justice Clarence Thomas should be Impeached.  But then we have this cell phone thing.  Apparently the Obama Administration is arguing FOR the right of the Supreme Court to specifically ALLOW the contents of anyone's cell phone to be gone through and inspected by Law Enforcement on a mere traffic stop or something, when there is no probable cause.  Wouldn't this going into one's cell phone records- - where your whole life is stored- - be equivelent to authorities rifling through your persons, papers and "effects" in the old days, coming into your home?  There seem to be countless times when the Obama administration has just decided that if congress won't pass a law I'll just legislate with my pen with an executive order.  While I as a liberal may welcome this move sometimes, if I am to be consistent, I have to stand up and say "No.  This is wrong.  If I'm going to criticize Reagan for doing it and Bush for doing it, then it's just as wrong if President Obama uses executive orders to legislate points of law.  Indeed one of the things Justices of the Court were saying on this Phone thing was "Gee this is a complex issue.  How we go about legialating policy on this issue?"  It's none of their damn business!   - THAT'S what.  It's like coming up with this whole elaborate tri-mester thing on Abortion.  There is no legislative precedent for that.  The Justices just made it up out of thin air.  And when Ronald Reagan decides via executive order in 1982 apparently (according to Thom Hartman) that the Sherman Anti Trust act, passed in 1890, will just not be Enforced any more- - this clearly bode ill for business and commerce and competetion in general and the consumer has suffered.  No matter what the corporations say, or even what Consumers believe at the time,  Mergers of giant corporations, particularly in the communacations area- - is invariably BAD for customers both as to quality of Service and the prices they now or will soon have to Pay for the the services they receive.

Another thing Phyllis Schleffley discussed and that Thom and I both regard as important, is this whole idea of terrifs.  Because- - up untill 1980 or so-  terrifs on foreign goods ranged from 25 to 30 percent.  This meant that there would be no slave substitance wage workers in other countries competing with goods produced in this party.  The Republican Party was founded as a protectionist party.  Actually the Republicans stood for such thing as free homesteading (forty acres and a mule) and also the building up of the infrastructure such as the trans contenental railroad, and also things like acquiring government land, and Ulisys Grant was the first President to form a National Park in 1872 when Yellowstone National Park was created.  Teddy Roosevelt was also a conservationist.  So today's Republican party is a far cry from its founds not only on racial matters but also on these other issues I have outlined.  Certainly this whole Free Trade thing- - someone called it "a racket".  Because it subsedizes places like Thailand and India and Viet Nam- - and places with virtual slave labor, and also places where they don't respect the environment- - and NAFTA and SHAFTA or whatever- - these treaties will compromise our environmental laws.  Thom Hartman once said "Perhaps there are cells in the body, but cells have walls to determine what is allowed IN and poisons that are kept OUT.  Today we seem to have forgotten this.  Both Hartman and Pat Buchannon say that economic nationalism is not a bad thing.  And if Latinos in Mexico and other places south would fight for their OWN rights in their OWN country instead of coming here it would work out better for everybody, us and them.  If they had fought for their OWN rights in Mexico they wouldn't have all come here when Reagan opened up the floodgates in 1986 and come here to depress OUR wage base.  Hartman believes that we should charge other nations the difference in the COST of what the same item would be if it were produced here as opposed to what is cost them to produce it overseas.  Thom Hartman spoke of the "supply chain" where in the old days if you needed something like a battery- - you'd just go a couple blocks down the street and get it- - or some particular widget may be produced on the other side of town.  Now you have to literally span the globe for needed parts in the supply chain.  We need to think about these things.  I think I'm going to throw in a paste or two on a later posting.

People say that in the Pre Adamic Rebellion period it was a Garden of Eden on Planet Earth and sin was unknown.  Nature was in perfect harmony.  Why the lion would stroke the antelope lovingly without a thought in the world about having it for dinner.  Just to use a Rush-ism.  But alas things were not like this and right now I'd like to resume our little narritive from Sunday night about how things Really were on Planet Earth long before the Bible people rewrote the record of Natural History.  And the problem was too many trees because suddenly trees had evolved plant cell structure that bacteria couldn’t eat because they hadn’t evolved the ability and termites did not yet exist.  But the trees grew so high that vegetation was out of reach and animals died, and for some reason all the trees died and there was this mass of dead wood- - and the wood became petrified.  With so much death in nature occurring the carbon balance was thrown off and there was more methane in the atmosphere now- - which along with the added CO2 meant major global warming.  Add to this sulphur dioxide- - and then we got acid rain and there was horrible eruptions of volcanoes worse than anything today and temperatures ranged from ice but mostly a heatwave that could not sustain life and nearly everything died.  And this state of affairs continued for fifty million years or so.  During this period the continental drift occurred- - and I’m not sure how dinosaurs could cross from Africa to Brazil because I thought the atnoshere and hot weather killed them all off.  And once again it was some woman researcher in the twenties that discovered the truth of the matter, and the men slowly had to come around to accepting it.  So to continue then - - today we have a choice about "Cap and Trade" or the Carbon Tax thing.  Now they say that congress will not take up this bill.  And those in the know say even if Hillary becomes President or for that matter if the Democrats take over the House in 2014, they say "The carbon tax is dead because- - after all the democrats tried to introduce the bill before and it failed, so why do it again and only "make themselves look bad" on places like FOX news?

There is a "smoking gun" or evidence that hasn't seen the light of day on the Bengazi matter.  Because it has come to my attention that the President "Wanted t keep the Arab Spring going' for political purposes, and so got NATO to authorize intervening in Libya to overthrow Quadafi.  As you know the Orion Federation has always supported Qadafi's remaining in power.   But now we hear that the CIA flip flopped and switched sides once again- - and now are supporting Al Qaeda type groups in Libya setting up the whole Bengazi thing because the CIA was headquartered in Bengazi because this is where the anti Qadafi activity was coming from.  And this whole thing could indeed reflect on Hillary's decision to even RUN for President in 2016.  Because- - just as the tea party said- - Obama had staked his hopes in an Arab Spring- - where democracy would take over in the whole region.  So people like Gingrich and Michelle Bachman were right in saying that getting rid of Qadafi was not wise.  Because as they put it "We don't know who we will get in their place".  But of course now we know.  Like it or not- - we are going to get Bengazi'd to death on FOX news and probably the rest of the media.  Because our government is so mixed up it doesn't know terrorists from those who genuinely wand democracy.  I'm not saying anything about Syria at this point.  I believe that's a whole other matter.  So yes there was a Video showing all over the mideast in maybe fifteen different Islamic countries from Moracco to Indonesia - - but it wasn't the Video that was the problem but rather our own CIA for reasons of its own- - siding with terrorists in Libya, according to George Washington's blog.

E J made the phone call and met with a guy in the park to have Nick Fallon murdered within 24 hours.  Nick talked to Julie today, and also Nick engaged in taunting, abusive behavior with Abigail.  Alley told Samantha that Nick was her favorite cousin because he was so smart and helped her a lot with her science.  Again, I can no support any of Nick Fallon's recent actions of the past week or so on that show.  He's way over-played his hand.  I think the whole child custody agreement idea was a pretty ill advised idea to begin with.  I would have were I Nick, have tried to steer Gabriel away from the whole concept, and then I could rightfully have made out Samantha out to be the bad guy- - or "protagonist" on this issue and I would have told Gabriel "Samantha wants to limit YOUR rights to your own daughter" and this line of argument would have reframed the whole discussional reference.  Now Nick has crossed the line- - and if he gets bumped off he'll have no sympathy, even after he's gone.  Eric now is suddenly passion struck and wants to marry Nicole as soon as possible.  We still don’t know the secret that Jordan Ridgeway and Benjamin share, but you get the feeling there is still a whole lot of “stuff” we don’t know. 

Comparing Bush and Obama

Mike Papentonio talked about the misdeeds of Chevron Oil today on "Ring of Fire" that I saw.  They are causing cancer in the Amazon due to their tainted oil done by Texico becore Chevron bought them out ten or so years ago.  But the judges in this case rather than finding Chevron culpable, turned their hostility on the public service "pro bono' attorneys who argued the other side of the case saying that they were incompetent or something and should be dealt with.  Apparently President Obama routinely sides with all the wrong people in petetions to the Supreme Court.  He argues FOR all of the national security abuses and FOR big oil and big bankers, and has a notible hostility tword whistle blowers.  When you think about it Barock Obama is one of the WORST presidents we could POSSIBLY have at a time like this.  Because if he were a republican- - or if Romney had become president- - things for the average working man would be much better.  This is because Congress is just being political and voting things down, often against what a majority of even Congress would do if put to a vote,  they vote down things they would embrace were Mitt Romney president.  Examples of this include things like immigration reform, jobs bills, and a raise in the minimum wage.  Congress had no problem approving a minimum wage under George Bush and Bush pushed for immigration reform.  Remember in 2004 President Bush actively courted the Latino vote by easing restrictions on real estate bank lending.  As such the deficet even though half of what it was, would be much smaller, under a more robust economy.  The decitet had already been cut in half- - but the Paul Ryan budget if passed would actually SLOW DOWN the REDUCTION of the national deficet.  Because to eliminate the OTHER HALF would under his plan take another ten years untill 2024, whereas if things were allowed to continue as they are now, we could well be running a budget surplus by the off year elections of 2018.  In such a case, were Hillary President then, she would take a lot of the credit for doing that.

The Bengazi thing is completely silly because we all agree WHO did the terrorist act of 9 - 11 - 2012.  There is no disputing that.  The truth has been known about this case at least as early as late October of 2012, or BEFORE the election was even held.  Voters had oppurtunity to render their judgement and opted to re elect Obama for four more years.  When people hear the word "conspiracy theory" they latch onto the notion of some crackpot with some unproven theory.  But clearly it's PROBABLE that George Bush WANTED the 9 - 11 attacks to happen.  In police work they speak of means, motive and opportunity.  Bush in that book draft of 1999 demonstrated a Motive for wanting War in the Mideast.  Bush is on record is being almost the ONLY person to actually witness the FIRST plane crashing into the north tower.  He watched it happen on some secret monitor from Seresota Florida right before he went into that second grade classroom and made a joke about "That guy must be a really bad pilot".  And then went on to read "My Pet Goat".  Bush and Secretary Rice responded to all of the dire warnings about an iminent attack by Airplanes- - multiple warnings- - by going on the longest vacation of any President.  And on 9 - 11 President Bush seemed to turn over the running of the country to Vice President Chaney in a move no one has explained.  Secretary Rice said "There is evidence we will bring out in due time to prove that Bin Laden planned the 9 - 11 attacks".  This "day" has never arrived.  Bush canceled the Computer system President Clinton had set and ready to go as an advanced security system, and we are told he did so for political reasons.  This is a guy who jokes about people being executed in Texas.  This is a man who joked about "Weapons of Mass Destruction".  This is a man who seem to actually Protect Bin Laden, and showed no inclination to go after him.  The Republicans in turn seemed bothered by the fact that "The President was making such a big thing out of the raid" that resulted in Bin Laden's death.  President Bush also said 'Don't listen to the conspiraacy theories that seek to shift the blame for 9 - 11 from the terrorists to other individuals".  I know of no "Conspiracy theorist' whose motive is to get Al Qaeda or the Talliban "off the hook" as he puts it.  President Bush closely monitered Goldman Sachs all the whole period leading up to when they went Bankrupt and did absolutely Nothing to prevent it.  I think clearly we have demonstrated that Bush had all three meaning Means, Motive, and Oppertunity- - to have shall we say "Made 9 - 11 a lot worse than it needed to be".

Witness after witness has reported that loud explosions were heard as the Twin Towers came down, including Firemen who were in the building.  They say that elements used in explosives were detected in the area.  We have one guy on record as "pulling down" building seven, as it was called "Because it's easier than putting out the fire".  But we also know that it takes days to set up the proper demolition of any high rise.  I've also heard there has NEVER been a modern skyscraper come down after being on fire for short a period of time.  Of course news in England of the "pulling" of building seven, was broadcast Before it even Happened!  And we were told incessently that "The Twin Towers were going to Collapse any minute".  How did they know this?  Why was all the steel in the wreckage almost immediately shopped off to China?  How is it so much concrete was just turned to dust?  How come they saturated us with this "new crisis" for a full week preempting regular programming?  They were preparing us for the Patriot Act.  People agree that the Patriot Act was so comprehensive that it had to have been being written prior to 9 - 11.  They had the names of all nineteen hijackers- - even if several of them supposedly dead, turned up later very much alive.  The media ran some stories ONCE and never ran them again because they were not in accordance with the government line.  They stopped showing videos of the plane hitting the building because- - people noted irregularities such as the Flash- - that occurred Ahead of impact, and this is Provable.  Take my word for it.  There was also some strange device strapped to the belly of the plane that hit the South Tower.  This is beyond dispute.  Of course it's the strangest of coincidences that NORAD or whatever was told to "stand down" the morning of 9 - 11 - 2001.  One gets the impression that in this country it's the easiest thing in the world to hijack an airplane and fly it virtually anywhere you want to.  It's also pretty much a fact that it wasn't an airliner that hit the Pentagon.  It had to be a drone of some kind because it didn't make enough of a hole to have been made by a Boeing 757 airliner.  This is beyond dispute.  Besides there were NO remnents of any plane.  It would be improbable that a plane would attack at virtually ground level in a populated area- - when it would more logically make an ariel dive and hit the roof.  Dogs did not pick up on the scents of any passengers or ANY people for that matter.  This is because the plane just happened to hit the portion of the Pentagon that was being Renovated.  You can see all of the specifics for yourselves in the films on You Tube.  We also know the movie about Flight 93 was almot total fiction and again there was almost no wreckage at the alleged site.  This plane was taken out by a missile- - and many people reported seeing a missile.  Also the government routinely conthiscates Video footage known to be in posession of a private party.  First the government says they have NO Video of the pentagon attack despite all of the surveilance cameras.  Then they release five still photos that raise more questions than they answer.  If congress wants to investigate something- - try the events on 9 -11.  Let's put an end of the myth that the government has been selling to us because "People want to believe what they believe", and what the Bush Administration and the Media WANT us to believe.

Rush Limbaugh makes a plausable point that the forces of nature over the long haul are greater than anything that man could produce on his own. So on Cosmos- - a name I’m reminded that they stole from PBS otherwise known as the Petroleum Broadcasting Network - - and on this episode they talked about how global warming struck the earth 250,000,000 years ago.  And the problem was too many trees because suddenly trees had evolved plant cell structure that bacteria couldn’t eat because they hadn’t evolved the ability and termites did not yet exist.  But the trees grew so high that vegetation was out of reach and animals died, and for some reason all the trees died and there was this mass of dead wood- - and the wood became petrified.  With so much death in nature occurring the carbon balance was thrown off and there was more methane in the atmosphere now- - which along with the added CO2 meant major global warming.  Add to this sulphur dioxide- - and then we got acid rain and there was horrible eruptions of volcanoes worse than anything today and temperatures ranged from ice but mostly a heatwave that could not sustain life and nearly everything died.  The point perhaps is that we don't have to make things worse and "give nature a push" or whatever.  They say our own Sun is past middle age and may even now gradually be getting hotter on its own, which of course would affect all nine planets of the solar system and not just earth.  So there would be "Martian Warming" too.  We may all have to move there is things get too hot here.  There was a report released a couple days ago saying that climate extremes will become and in fact ARE the norm right now for planet earth, and we better get used to it.  Should the polar ice caps melt and the oceans rise ten or twenty feet, Rush in Florida will be one of the first people to be affected by it.  But a man of Rush's means with his tens of millions of dollars- - will just be able to move, something most people don't have the ready made option of doing.  Rush and others like him such as the Koch Brothers and Mitt Romney have absolutely no empathy or whatever for the average guy of limited means.  One of these days all these so called "victims of Obama high taxes" who watch the Rush Limbaugh show - - will figure it out.

"May the Fourth Be With You"

First of all I’ve always said that if you can come up with a jobs bill I’ll vote for it.  There is talk about “stacks and stacks of bills” piled up in the Senate needing action, and if passed will help pay off your “stacks and stacks of bills”.  Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Eric Cantor were in a debate in a nearly empty chanber- - and Hoyer was touting the virtues of fiscal responsibility.  Normally I’d be for that, but Eric Cantor trumped him- - because once I found out what the tax deduction was FOR I was immediately for the bill.  It was a 150 Billion tax credit on research and development.  This increases product safety and efficiency, and also stimulates jobs- - and would tend to encourage hiring.  This is money well spent as an economic investment.

I was just watching the end of a “Ring of Fire” episode I started last week.  President Obama lived a charmed life and never learned apparently that “life is not as easy for everyone else as it apparently has been for him”.  Because all he thought he had to do was not be loyal to anybody or have any actually principles, but just lie to everybody and then secure endorsements from Goldman Sachs and Wall Street- - and become an instant Campaign success having made a “deal with the devil” he deluded himself didn’t matter and somehow he could work both sides of the aisle and “have it all” - - with both financial security for himself and “The American people would learn that Wall Street wasn’t all that bad” or something.  Life seldom works like that.  And if the president hadn’t lived such an unusual- - many would say – Priveleged life- - he’d know that.  Some say it’s all the private school education the President had all his life, and now his kids are in private schools.  So he has this “charter school” solution to education, according to one detracter.  Just last night in “The Week” magazine, there was an article of “How this President lost the support of the Milenials”, which were so idealistically behind him in 2008.  Of course - - contrary to what Mal Evans and his fellow Romulan travelers might say,  I think at this point more people’s health has been directly threatened by British Petroleum than by Monansanto, as bad as they are.  Clearly nobody has been sent up the river for the acts of April of 2010.  And this phrase about “I’m not looking back- I’m only looking forward” was a dog whistle to the corporate world as understood “They are going to look the other way and we can get away with murder under Obama and Holder”.    I’ll tell you- - when Andrew Johnson tried this same “approach” after the Civil War of- -   “Well, I tell you what.  Lets just pretend that whole thing called the Civil War never occurred, and now all you slaves can go back to your chains”.  How well do you think that played?  He got impeached over it; that’s what!

Here are a couple of translation extras.  The word “Carnita” is a Romulan word, but there is no such thing as a word meaning “little meat”.  “Carnita” actually is a past participle, and is to be translated “to have become carnal” and refers to just what it does in Christian circles of someone from a stoic Romulan cult spiritually backsliding from former lofty moral scruples.  And the word “Burrito” means “Package” or “Delivery’ and if often used in reference to dock shipments or the delivery of an appliance such as a refrigerator or a washing machine.  The word “Burro” means ‘I carry”.  The word “traect” means “he, she, or it brings”.   Oh- - as to the Al Qaeda thing- - usually the Romulans spell it “Al Qaida” and also they pronounce it with a ling I and not a long “A”.  As such- - I don’t know if there is an English translation for that pronounciation.

Just a little tweak on our two “Revived Original Beatle Album Releases” of a few weeks ago.  On “Strawberry Fields Forever” don’t rush the fade on “Strawberry Fields” but let it fade naturally and the usual five seconds of silence before the next song begins.  To do other wise might be cleaver if done once, but to hear this “rush” over and over could prove annoying.  The other more fundamental change is with the Sgt Pepper’s Represe.  As you know the radio version of this track always faded at a certain point- - and nobody even head the last two bars of the song that were included on the album.  I now decree that these two concluding bars are extraneous to the song- - which if it had been done properly would already have completely faded out.  Then you can have your five second break and then “A Day in the Life” begins.   In “Famous Lasts” for you- - the last “new” Denelus II group is the Easy Beats and “Friday on my Mind” from mid spring of 1967.  The last “new” Neir Reigelian artist is ‘Lulu” with two songs from later 1967.

This is Sunday May 4, 2014 at a quarter after two and the saying of today is “May the Fourth Be With You”.   It seems Harrison Ford and Josh Hammel will be back at Star Wars along with R2D2 and the voice actor of CP03 also.   We should savor our victories while we have them.  The Clippers won last night in game seven in a game we didn’t see.  Now they face the Oklahoma City Thunder in round two.  The SA Spurs are beating the Dallas Mavorics by 22 points at the half in a game I just turned off.  Mal Evans is back tracking on his view that he can “No Longer support the Star Wars franchise due to the purchase by Disney Corp.  He now says “If the Star Wars Episode Seven has the support of the Lucacites, that’s what counts, and I’ll concur with their opinion”.    First part of quiz.  What major city in California are the Lucacites associated with?    Now for the long quiz question.  Which of the following ethnic groups is NOT in the direct blood line of the Lucacites.   It’s a little tricky because some groups are included within other groups.  Here are your choices.  The Del Rio Group.  The Skyway Group.  The Atlanta Romulans.  Crestorians.   White Andromadans type II, the Houston Group, the Dardanians.  Think you know the answer?   We’ll have it for you at the conclusion of this posting. 

California Chrome won the Kentucky Derby and this Philly was the odds on favorite, breaking with my long established rule about favorites.  But she was a California bred and trained horse.  The horse looked strong at third but easily moved out front five lengths to win.  The rider was wearing purple.  Commanding Curve was 2^nd and Danza came in third.   Wicked Strong, they say is an aggressive horse and was named in honor of the Boston Marathon.  Candy Boy and Intense Holiday were another horses.  I was out on the patio and saw through the open door the singing of “My Old Kentucky Home” and got to the room for the procession of the riders.  There were nineteen horses and one horse was scratched.  This was the 140^th running of the Kentucky Derby and it was the second largest crowd attendance at 164,000. 

We had roast beef and mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner with carrots and green beans, with applesauce for desert.  It’s downright chilly in here with the AC on and I’m tempted to grab a sweater or something.  It’s after six and I haven’t gotten my medication yet.  I got a cup of coffee from Glen in his room for another cigarette perhaps making four.  I brought my ceramic mug because I threw away all my styrophoam cups.  I just watched the ABC network news.  They had that celebrity who was barred from the blackjack tables for counting cards.  What that does is cue you in is to make small bets on bets where the odds are against you and larger bets where the odds are in your favor.  If you do that consistently, you’ll win, and that’s what scares them.  It’s like picking a fight with somebody you think you can pummel and they are getting the better of you in the fight and so you pull out a gun and waste them.  It isn’t sporting in that context, and it isn’t one bit more sporting in the Gambling Casino business.

ANSWER:  The Skyway group is half Houston group and half Perseus.  Perseus is not in the bloodline of the Lucacites so this is the answer.  The word Lucacite is Dardanian for "White ones".   You could say that the Atlanta Romulans and the Detroit Romulans have in common in that they are both 25 percenters, meaning that each group is 25 percent non-Romulan.  White Andromadans type II are half Atlanta Romulan - - and the Del Rio group is half White Andromadan type II and half the Houston group.  Of course Lucacites are fifty percent Dardanian right off the bat.  There is some Crestorian blood involved.  If anybody asks you what type of Andromadan that is Andromada E and not D..

The Future's Not Ours to See - Que Sara Sara!

Germany could well be the fly in the ointment that prevents any President of the United States from solidifying a solid front against Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.  In fact Germany and China have this close trade symbotic partnership that verges on a brother and sister “bromance”.  Germany needs to generate exports, and China appears happy to receive Germany’s exports just as they are reluctant to take any of ours.  The Chinese admire the German technology and are particularly intent on acquiring German machinery and autos. Unlike here in the United States, the German people don’t see the reason why the Berlin wall fell in November of 1989 because President Reagan said “Tear down this wall” in a speech or was militarily tough with the Soviets threatening with the Stratigic Defense Initiative or “Star Wars”.   The German people are more nieve than I dared believe if they think “an appeal to mutual friendship” is what got the Berlin wall to come down and their country reunified after thirty years.  But if the German people have undergone such a massive brainwashing- - then it’s pretty hopeless because without their key cooporation, nothing that NATO revolves to do will have any teeth in it anyhow.  Meanwhile the bloodshed and combat only gets worse in Eastern Ukraine by the day, and the day gets closer and closer when Putin will decide to dispense with all pretense and move Russian tanks in there.

To do a blog post today seems almost redundant because I’d just be saying the same things I said yesterday, but perhaps in a different, more creative way.   For instance people say that “Christian conservatives are by nature generous” and yet I can’t get the quote out of my mind from the Rev Gene Scott years ago who said “No, I don’t really care that much about seeing the church give to the poor; that’s the government’s job”.   Gene Scott and Rush care in common a mutual revulsion for the poor as a class and Gene will even mock the saying of St Paul in the Bible of “Remember the poor”.  Gene Scott and Rush Limbaugh both have an utter contempt and distrust of women, and both also share a general disrespect for children.  Rush calls them “Young skulls full of mush”.  Gene regards anyone under twelve as “too young to be exposed to the principles of Christianity” and so omits religion entirely and has these little bus excoursions planned for them to a California mission or some other historical site to “keep them entertained”.   Not only is Paul Ryan a follow of Ayan rand- - who is a hypocrite in addition to her general life of depravity- - happy to accept government payments while all the time criticizing others for it.  Clarence Thomas will climb up the ladder of affirmative action and then pull up the rungs of the ladder after him so that no others who come after him cal follow.  Gene regards one quote of Cecil Rhodes as particularly dangerous, when he speaks of “Implementing the principles of the sermon on the mount into governmental policy”.  And Gene also disdains the quote of John Kennedy in a speech of “A free society that will not help the many who are poor - - cannot save the few who are Rich”.  Dad liked that one.  I did not know that yesterday saw an all time high in the stock market.  But I’ll be perfectly to continually taunt all of you people who invested in gold waiting for that big run up and just salivating for that anticipated Crash in the market they convinced you was sure to come- - and I’ll be happy to do it for months or longer.  This news of an all-time High in the markets - -is something that in former times the Republicans would be bragging about.  But the President doesn’t brag now because the Republicans only refer to any sort of self recognition as “spiking the ball in the end zone” like when Bin Laden was captured and killed almost three years ago tonight.  The Republicans, as it were “have this President well trained” not to highlight his victories even when it’s most proper to do so.  That was then the President had his annual White House dinner for the press and gets pre written humor material.  When you’re big enough you don’t have to BE cleaver- - you can hire out others to make you LOOK whitty and cleaver.  That’s their job.

I watched Hardball with Chris Matthews talking about how strangely the Republicans always react upon good economic news.  In my opinion these Republicans will be strangled on their own talking points, because that’s all they’ve got, and after a while the same platitudes get downright stale.  Take Mort Zuckerman’s “eternal pessimism” about how the economy is primed for a major nosedive – which he’s been saying continually now for two years.  Of course FOX news tells virtually nothing but lies.  But this isn’t a single talking point; this is a hundred of them.  Just like when Rush Limbaugh claims that this recovery has only averaged a hundred thousand new jobs per month.  These tea party people claimed when the health care sign up level was not yet five million that “No way can they ever make seven million before the deadline”, when in fact they exceded eight million.  Or Rush again claiming that “the books were cooked on economic growth just before the election of 2012”.  These economic growth figures were revised, all right.  They were revised UPWARD.  But there is an interesting statistic Chris Matthews brought forth.   75% of those whole are optimistic about the future of the economy have a “firm resolve to vote in 2014” whereas for those whose confidence is low on the economy – only just over fifty percent say they’ll vote.  So the Republican’s mission is clear.  Just keep talking down the economy.  But they have worked themselves into a trap because they continually say “This economy is entirely President Obama’s responsibility”.  Therefore if the economy should continue to accelerate in the next six months and unemployment dip into the five and something percent figure- - these same Republicans will have no one to turn to as an excuse for their own - - - foolishness.  I caught the first two long segments of Thursday’s show after lunch.  President Clinton continues to be a talented speech maker, whether Hillary Clinton runs or not.  We had chicken nuggets and barbecue sauce for lunch.  We had potato salad- - and tomato soup - - and a banana.  I also watched some of Friday’s Bill Press show and I must say Bill even with the skip option at the ready, puts an amazing amount of stall and promo and fluff in his show, but after five there was this guy I wanted to listen to.

It was Chef Ramsey and another kitchen horror story.  It wasn’t quite as ghastly as the previous week, but the content of the plate did look like something someone had barfed up, and apparently it tasted little better.  At nine was Shark Tank.  I watched the flower delivery guy and then the magic tape that eliminates wrinkles on your face presentation.  Both of these were deemed properly as duds and the offers were turned down by everybody.  I dozed off after this and the next thing I know it was pushing a quarter to ten and I retired.  But I woke just before three and suddenly had financial anxieties.  I smoked a cigarette out on the patio and I was alone.  It was amazingly mild out there for that time of night.  I then got busy with the math and kept at it counting change, till the numbers added up, which they finally did.  But by now Bill had turned on the TV and seemed intent on watching one of these Open House things.  Then he said I could turn it off because he thought it was a lot later than it was.  Unfortunately it still took me time to get to sleep, if I even did.

Everybody who tries to say that the doctrine of Predestination Doesn't relieve a person of "Personal Responsibility for his actions" fails to understand the logic of Calvinism.  The Apostle Paul for instance, said for each of us to "reckon ourselves as Dead".  Let me ask you a question.  Are the Dead responsible for the things the do- - that is- - that they do After they Die?  Of course not.  They're dead.  They can't do anything.  Not to quote the Bible or anything but it says "The Dead know nothing".  But always, always with these people is the notion that "It doesn't Matter whether you are included or excluded or not because if you try to be good- - reely reely hard! - - you can convince God to override whatever plans he had intended for you.  However if I may invoke my dead father on this one, Dad once said 'God has an infinite ammount of time to consider each and every prayer of everybody in the whole world".  I don't know about you but I had an Infinite ammount of time to weight every single possibility and permutation of my actions - - I highly doubt I'd change my ruling just because someone said at the last minute "Oh please- - pleeeze - - I really Want to go to Heaven".   But Neil of KFI should consider this also.  One person might say of me "You spend too much time thinking about what God wants" and another may say "You don't spend enough time thinking about God".  One may call a particular action "dangerous co-dependancy" what another observing the SAME action might call it "Passive rebellion" or something.  Rick Nelson said it long ago "You can't please everybody, so you've got to please yourself.  After all, You are the one who has to live with You - - All The Time!  And as I said about those who speak of predestination is "Only making a very good guess" are deluded because I have given examples where even I don't know what I'll do or decide when a particular moment arrives, and if I don't know- - how can anyone else?  Neil has this- - Egocentric view of life that claims that if I just grit my teeth and have a reely reely firm resolve to do or accomplishes- - then any conceivable circumstance- - even ones I have no idea are Out There- - can be thus Overcome.  Neil is a fool! 

Unemployment Plunges to 6.3%

The unemployment rate for the country at the start of May is 6.3% - - which is the lowest it has been since 2008 and 288,000 jobs were “added” last month, which is one of the highest growth rates we have seen.  But rather than make people like Rush Limbaugh happy, their reaction was just the opposite, I may suggest more out of fear (of success) than any true concern for this economy.  Rush Limbaugh now raises the number of a so called 92 million people in the country NOT working, and that the percent of 62% is the lowest percent of employable Americans working since 1978, when I imagine, there were not quite so many women employed.  But there is another figure Rush kept throwing around.  Rush claims that 800,000 people LEFT the work force last month, and people like Rush claim the figure around there is the amount of people who leave the work force EVERY month.  This number makes no sense demographically, considering these uncertain times and if anything- - people would be more inclined to KEEP working past 65 for fear of having insufficient savings for their retirement.   Obviously if this figure has any substance to it at all, it would mean that there was a net LOSS of jobs of over five hundred thousand workers THIS month and EVERY month, which I have a real problem believing.  However Rush did say there is a secret unemployment number they don’t release of 12.6% - - which is actually the True number of the unemployed in this country.   Rush claims that Democratic candidates are being advised NOT to use the word “Recovery” when referring to people’s financial security, because the word “Recovery” doesn’t test well in Surveys their own people have run.  Perhaps because of the fact that the President has used the word “Recovery” to frequently that the word now leaves a sour taste in everybody’s mouth, when they realize that it isn’t so.

I listened to Glen Beck on the radio but at one point I listened to Bill Handel and gleaned that he generally favors a hike in the minimum wage.  Bill tried to make it more complicated than it is in terms of ramifications.  If you assume that employers intend to spend (allocate) no more money for employee payroll than they do now, one can assume that the amount of money put into the economy would stay static.  However- - should the profits of the company be going up- - it would well be that with a minimum wage, they could afford to dedicate (allocate) more of their funds to the payroll, in which case this WOULD put more money into circulation by those employees.  But something else would happen that I just thought of, that is a good thing and hopefully even Newt Gingrich would like it.  And that is the lazy or incompetent or marginal employees would be penalized, and those harder workers, who kept their jobs, would be rewarded with higher pay.  So there would be a biferfercation between the two sets of workers.  The slower ones would be let go and the faster ones would be rewarded.  In the process the overall quality of the worker would be improved, because those employees would now have another incentive to work hard, lest they lose their jobs too.   Bill Handel suggested, and he sounded vaguely serious about it- - that minimum wage should be raised to fifteen dollars an hour which to me is way excessive.  You see my “take’ on the whole thing is only valid if the now “harder working “employee pulls his weight and proves that he’s actually worth the higher wages he is now being paid.   Too high of a minimum wage would amount to meddling around with market forces- which seldom comes to good.

In terms of the news there is still continued fighting in the Eastern Ukraine- with Ukraine forces fighting back now, so the full scale Civil War is on.  And President Obama and John Kerry are living in a dream world if they didn’t anticipate the events the way they have unfolded and now events have gotten out of their control.   You know the Republicans want to investigate the Bengazi tragedy once again, though the event is now two years old.   Republican logic though is a little strange and I think I know their motives and THAT is strange.  The Republicans still can’t admit that President Obama got Bin Laden killed or that US Drones have struck all over the Mideast decimating Al Qaeda of its high command and they are only a shadow of the organization they used to be- - particularly after our drone attack in Yemen a couple of weeks ago killing that convoy of ten.  It’s like the Republicans are looking for a way to make all of that to “un happen” and they way they think they can is to show that the President, according to the tea party, was so desperate to prove that Al Qaeda wasn’t viable any more that somehow they manufactured a deliberate lie- - - and supposedly when it was “exposed as a lie” they wouldn’t accept it - -  so all of this really is the Republicans - - want to prove that it was all some “Campaign ploy” two years ago.

BLAST FROM TWO DAYS AGO:  Yesterday it was 92 on the beach at Newport, which was a record, and it was 95 in Laguna Beach, which was also a record.  They say it was 92 here yesterday and predicted to get to 95 today and 98 on Thursday, so this heat wave isn’t going anywhere.  The weatherman revived an old George Fishbeck term “cut-off Low”.   Actually we’ve had rare occasions where a low will stay in place for a protracted period and a storm will cycle all the way around the Low by way of Idaho before it works its way back here, and we get the same storm again.  I guess there was one of the first tornadoes in Tupelo since the one that struck Tupelo around Elvis’ tenth birthday in January of whatever year.  But Dallas Rains was saying that this High pressure system we have station now is a really powerful one, and it isn’t going anywhere.  

Last night- - while the internet was working I had “Free Speech TV” on a long time watching first a thing on how economics without taking into account people and populations or the environment- - “is a form of brain damage” and in all of their accounting math, they regard human and environmental issues as “external”.  In the old days you would exploit one natural resource till it ran out, and them "all the smart money" would then go into a different resource and exploit that.  In the old cays whole civilizations would rise and fall but if one went down, another such as China or Arabia would spring up.  Today with all the world's economics tied together, if one link falls, they ALL fall and the whole Earth goes down the toilet.  There was talk about surplus populations being congragated in cities - - and the growing number of poor as the rich get greedier and greedier till you reach a critical mass and then you have Revolution.  Clearly the Bible speaks against such greed and even of "giving the land a rest".  There were sabbaths for workers, and for the land, and there was also a sabbath for business- - where property related to its original owner where money was not allowed to accumulate into the hands of a few.  Clearly our Founding Fathers even warned against the potential economic harm caused by Big Financial Institutions.  Bush was an oil man and President Obama is in the grasp of Wall Street bankers, and will fashion no economic policy unless it is in accord with their wishes.  Also President Obama ignored the whole BP oil spill crisis.  BP has restored their public image but the land and the people who sffered loss from them, are still languishing.  Then there was some stuff on the Mike Papentonio show that would curl your hair.  First they said that if the Media reported ALL the stuff that Cliven Bundy and his minions believed, everyone in the country would see him for the fringe nut he is.  But it’s like the media is protecting him.  Also just like the tea party, this whole rally was carefully orchestrated with people being brought in from other states- perhaps funded by the Koch Brothers.  Then there was a thing on General Mills and Starbucks in saying that if you use one of their food coupons, the company is immune from any legal suit you might choose to bring in court, like if you were to keel over dead or get violently ill or something.  I spouted off about this on the patio, being positively incredulous about what I heard.

People looking to where to invest their newly required money from this - - Recovery - - should listen up.  Sometimes you learn something valuable from Rush Limbaugh that perhaps he didn’t intend to tell us.  Apparently congress was way ahead of me in 1993 in passing an expense deduction regulation for business, where no salaries over one million dollars may be counted as a deduction.  It made sense to me.  But they left themselves a gaping loophole.  You see they allowed these ECO’s to be paid in stock options.  Now in my day a “stock option” notably a call, was the OPTION to buy a stock at a previously established price at a future date, and thus garner an instant profit.  But you STILL have to have the money to PAY for that stock.   If this situation works as I describe it- - it would avail the market nothing but rather most all of said “Profit” would go instantly into the hands of the individual holding the Call option.  But the other school opf thought says that they are actually Awarded the Stocks themselves.  In this case it would be a windfall for the main exchanges - - the market- - almost along the lines of Obamacare being a windfall for Health providers.  If this is the case you have almost a guarantee there Will Be no “Crashes” in the market.  Because these rich people would only be hurting themselves.  And if these rich people Sell their stocks- - this would mean a substantial reduction of the government deficit, which we know they will move heaven and earth to prevent.  Keep in mind when Rush Limbaugh says “The democrats have no accomplishments to run on” or “Obama is a failure” he is being disingenuous unless he also says “Just like all of us republicans were planning - - all along, before the President took office”.   It’s like a marriage where the wife is bitching and moaning to a marriage counselor about what a failure her husband is and he has no good traits, and so the therapist asks her “Well, what would you say is your husband’s Greatest Weakness” and the wife goes “Well, that’s easy, - - he can’t get along with his wife.  Back when we were courting he said he’d work to make me happy- - and clearly he has failed at this because No Matter What gifts he gives me or how many raises he gets at work- - all he gets from me is constant complaint, so as you can see my husband failed to live up to his promise”.  And Nicole Sandler is right.  Obviously there is a racial component to this since the things they are saying about our current President they would have never said about Bill Clinton even when the rhetoric was at its worst and most vitriolic.  (Selah)