The Irrepressible Trump Continues On

This is Thursday October 13, 2016 and I just called Mom and she knows nothing about the dental billing.  Judy has never contacted her about it.  I said I’d call her when I have the bill in my hands and can break it down for her.  Mom has been keeping up with the three debates and listening to news commentary about them.  She’s also aware of all the sexual stalking stuff Trump has been accused of.  He goes into women’s dressing rooms at beauty pageants and some of the females are only fifteen years old and Trump piers in and oogles them.  I gets a “free look” because he owns the pageant and can do whatever he wants.  Now other preachers are saying that Trump has become a born again Christian in the last couple of years and is not the man he used to be.  But like Bill Clinton he’s pushing seventy years old and his sex drive probably isn’t what it used to be.  So his “moral reform” is more dictated by biology than moral conscience.  The general concencus of the polls is that Clinton beat Trump in the last debate 57% to 34% for Trump.  And this is the “debate where Trump did well’ according to Shawn Hannity.  So what did he do in the first debate?  Tim Cane was much more substantive than Mike Pence in the vice presidential debate.  We still have nearly four weeks to go.  There are still another three and a half weeks to go before we go off of Daylight Savings time.  Both events are late this year.  But this week early voting has already begun in a lot of states.  This is obviously significant because Hillary is way ahead in the polls now and therefore these votes are being “banked”.  They say that requests for Democratic ballots are up fifty percent over four years ago. 

Well so far the “master plan” to defeat the trio of master criminals on Days of our Lives has worked out about as well as Donald Trump making the decision to follow Shawn Hannity’s advice.  So far we have Lucas and Adrian busting in on Andre, Clyde and company and they defeated the Di Mira security system completely.  And Clyde shot Chad just to show that me meant business in demanding that son Thomas be handed over to him.  You have Demas turning to the dark side by promising to turn over Teresa in exchange for getting paid passage out of the country for Zander.  That’s kind of a lose-lose situation.  And you have Brady and Teresa playing fantasy wedding when after Teresa is killed it’s predicted that Brady will turn to drugs again rendering him unfit to rule the Kiriacus empire.  So far Orphius is lying low not divulging what plans he has for the people of Salem.  I went out and got one cup of iced tea and two orange slices in the courtyard.  Later I turned on Shawn Hannity.  At three it was Dick K substituting again for Norman Goldman.  It isn’t the first time I’ve had dental work done on Yom Kippur, which is where Norm is today.  So I guess he’s more Jewish than we thought.

Today the soap opera was preempted by Officer Owens’ funeral.  Have you ever wondered what Jesus’ funeral was like?  Because in Jewish society they said they tried to bury the body the same day.  So they most have invoked God in some way to speed Jesus off to a successful after-life and refered to him as a “servant of God”.   Have you ever wondered about those seventy disciples Jesus sent out to cast out demons in his name, referred to in the Gospels?  How could a movement of even that size be not noted in history with seventy evangelists running around out there.  And if there were two thousand saved at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down the first thing I thought of (well actually I just thought ot it today) would be these are two thousand “sheep” in need of a teacher, or some might say- - fleecing.  If there ever was a point where there was egalitarianism in the church I don’t know when that was because right from the git go there was the notion being “sold” to the public of this great object of belief.

Today is October 12, 2016 and last night it was ABC news and Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  I took inventory of the laundry and made out a list on a fresh slip of paper.  The basket was returned before six thirty this morning.  Everything was there minus the list.  I decided not to try and get coffee from Glenda last night.  However I did get coffee from Glen again, this time for three cigarettes.  It wasn’t as strong as Monday night’s cup.  I watched NCIS and dozed off toward the end of the program.  The sun shines over the Washington monument just a little before sunset on March 25^th every year, and in the fall, too.  There was a different show of a similar nature at nine.  I didn’t sleep too badly.  I didn’t try to get coffee from Glenda in the morning and decided to wait until the store opened.  I threw out those Republican ads I got with my voting stuff.  So is proposition 61 initiated by an HMO organization or not?

I brushed my teeth before and after breakfast.  I got a dollar cup of coffee from the liquor store and took it into the dining room.  We had oatmeal followed by scrambled eggs and French toast.  I didn’t get any extras from Paul.  I was kind of planning on our leaving for the dentist really early.  But it turns out that Federico had already taken Stan for his dialysis.  I was around a little after nine and Sarah took me and Mary to see our respective doctors.  Her appointment wasn’t till ten fifteen.  Mine was at nine thirty.  I got there early and had a smoke.  The weather was overcast in the morning and through the middle part of the day, clearing by two o clock.

There was no idle time.  Again Dr Bui did not do the work.  His assistant was that blonde assistant who had worked in the other building.  Before he got started they took two more X rays because the dentist said the cavity was very large and might need a root canal.  But this was the last I heard about having to do a root canal.  It was very intensive with a lot of drilling and there was even filling going on, which puzzled me.  Then there was other picking and stuff and then the impressions were made and then drilling on the new crown getting it to fit right.  I was done at ten to eleven.  I had the receptionist call the office.  At first there was no answer.  Then Jennifer answered and said she would text the driver, which turned out to be Sarah.  Since I wasn’t picked up till nearly twenty after twelve or nearly an hour and a half wait I wondered what went wrong.  I had the receptionist call Judy but I didn’t talk to her myself.  Sarah has a lot of gall because she accused me of being impatient and suggested that next time I take a taxi cab.  How do you like that?  She was with Connie the whole time with her appointment.  I was a little bewildered.  Then we picked up Mary across the street (Brookhurst).  Then I had Sarah call Judy and cancel the pick-up of me, because Paul was already on his way.  Connie and I went straight into the dining room for our micro-waved lunch.  It was a hamburger and two things of potato salad and we had chocolate pudding for dessert.  There was also grape drink but no coffee.  Mary had her meal served to her in her room.  Maybe she has scabies or something.  By now it was getting close to ten to one and I had a chance to smoke a cigarette before soap opera time.  I bit my inner cheek because she frequently told me to bite down.  The whole area is swollen now.  

The World Wrestling Federation Debate

Last night’s debate was on ABC and I had the network news on first at 5:30.  I went out for a final cigarette at a quarter to six and did not have another till the debate was over at just after 7:35.  The debate was like a Saturday night skit and you didn’t even need to camp up the lines any.  In general Hillary was the more disciplined of the two endeavoring to answer the question that was asked.  This is something I would do even if I wanted to talk about something else because in doing so I’d be showing a sense of discipline.  When you just have some kind of a verbal meltdown, a veritable case of verbal diaria where anything comes out of your mouth- might be good for marriage counseling but not for a presidential debate.  The very first question about bringing America together was a question better meant for Hillary and a lot of the questions kind of favored Hillary the way they were worded and Hillary was happy to answer them.  Trump went off about Blacks in the ghettos and businesses moving out of the country and ISIS and what a failure Obama has been in all areas over the past eight years.  It was kind of a Christmas “wish list” and one suspects he took Shawn Hannity’s advice to just lay it all out on the table even if we weren’t talking about that topic.  ABC news wanted us to know the word was “pussy” and not “teats”, not that it makes a lot of difference.   Trump kind of used the phrase “locker room conversation” to imply that like high school boys- - maybe he was just bragging and mouthing off and he hadn’t done half the stuff he was bragging about.  The trouble is Hillary pretty well painted a picture- - a full portrait of Trump’s dealings with women and how he disrespects them in general and disparages all minorities, so it’s kind of part of a broader pattern of behavior.  I notice Hillary was careful how she worded things.  But I agree with Trump on one issue about not telegraphing to our enemies what we’re going to do or where we’ll attack next.  Because the people just leave there and attack elsewhere.  Trump contradicted his own Vice President when it came to taking a hard line with Putin.  Trump made it a point to say that Putin was a good guy and he disagreed with Pence.  In my letter to Tim I was going to talk about Putin and should be try to cut some deal with him.  I had in mind the point that in order to “get along” with Putin we’d have to morally compromise.  So when the bombs fall and Hospitals are hit and children are injured and die we could turn a blind eye to it and just say “well that’s what happens in war”.  And if Putin were to say to me “Look what you did in Iraq where a hundred thousand innocent civilians were killed”.  If I had no backbone I might be cowed by these remarks.  But the correct response is that two wrongs don’t make a right.  The same is true for sexual harassment.  While formerly Trump criticized people such as Paula Jones, Juanita Broadwick, and Cathleen Willy- - now Trump has seen the light and realized such sexual harassment and predatory behavior is wrong.  These women were in the audience.  My response is “better late than never” and after all we are all Christians.  You see the light and adjust your behavior accordingly.  I believe Trump when he says “Bill Clinton has said way worse to me about women on the golf course”.  The final question was about energy and I feel Hillary’s position on global warming and conservation was a little weak.  She had to compete with the Trump stuff about how our coal and natural gas and oil production is way down from what it could be.  Hillary rightly reminded us that when production goes up prices so down and so do energy profits.  Prices for coal may be dropping because the world now regards it as passé now.  But liberals were lamenting how the topic of Global Warming never got brought up. 

Donald Trump said he would sick the FBI on Clinton about her E mails regardless she wasn't in power any more.  Trump mentioned the 33 thousand E mails but he didn't particularly mention the fact that one of the E mails in the latest "dump" last Friday stated that Hillary Clinton in a Wall Street speech that she had a public persona and a private set of political beliefs.  Trump pointed this out and Hillary hid behind the figure of Abraham Lincoln, old Honest Abe, as portrayed in a Hollywood movie!  The dodge didn't work.  The other big thing that came to light in these E mails was a recounting that Hillary wants to end all trade barriers and have open borders and appears to say she never met an international trade deal she didn't like.  This would have been a bombshell with Bernie Sanders still in the campaign.  Trump said that Sanders betrayed his followers and made a deal with the devil.  The latest Stephanie caller analysis of Hillary is that she wasn't as "smooth and fluid" as she was in the first debate so points were deducted.

Rhapsody in Black was kind of a disappointment.  They said they were going to play the top one hundred songs by viewers.  The most recent song they played was the vocal version of “Grazing in the Grass”.  Then it was the original of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” from 1967.  There were two from 1966, “Tell It Like It Is” and “I’m Your Puppet”, and about two from 1965.  There was the original Temptations original of “Get Ready” and a Mo-town song I’d never heard before.  Finally we have, of songs recorded in the ‘sixties, “Soul Twist” by King Curtiss.  I remember “What’d I Say?” becoming popular this month fifty-five years ago in 1961 even though I know it came out before then.  We move to the older songs of note.  There was “Angel Baby” and “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” and “Lui, Lui” by Richard Barry.  They played both “Buick 59” and “Rocket 88” and their final song number 68 was “Bo Didley” by Bo Didley.  Most of the other songs were very obscure duds, however there were a few interesting hard core blues songs and one of them got John Densemore of the Doors to contribute money.  Oh yes, if I didn’t say, today was another pledge week.  I guess they played 33 songs in two hours.  They had as some special a unique James Brown DVD that’s worth something.

I had Norman Goldman on for the hour before dinner.  He was talking about the new Donald Trump sex tape in front of an open microphone.  Every other word had to be bleeped out it was so graphic.  I’m an adult; I can take the original.  There was also a letter signed by a lot of evangelical Christians many of them pastors of Black churches.  This letter says that Donald Trump is not a Christian and therefore unacceptable as a Presidential candidate.   OK I just saw the entire video unedited and with captions.  I guess it’s something what I expected.  This is a few minutes later.  Hurricane Matthew has gone from a magnitude four, to three to two.  Now it’s by Jacksonville and headed for Savannah.  It could curl around and re-trace its own path. 

Mike Pence is showing signs of wanting off the Trump ticket.  It seems he has to "clean up Trump's image" in the debate.  Others noticed this more than I did.  Actually the most vocal spokesman that Trump has is Shawn Hannity, who is a professional liar on so many topics.  If you see his lips moving he's lying.  Shawn likes trump because he's going to go hog wild on energy oroduction and continue to turn West Virginia into a moonscape with strip mining and all and build oil pipelines accross Indian reservations like this "Standing Rock" tribe protests going on a few weeks ago.  He wants "energy independence".  He wants to build that wall and keep every last Muslim out of this country.  The theory is that since some of the worst victims of Russian and Assad terrorism in Syria are ISIS people, and he uses the analogy of the m & m candies and if three percent of them were poisoned, then you wouldn't want to eat any of them.  Trump of course wants "worse than waterboarding" as far as torture is concerned and appears to want it as a first rather than a last resort and even wants to torture innocent relatives of terrorists.  Shawn has never criticized Trump for this.  The only minorities that haven't felt the full wrath of Trump's policies are the Blacks.  Trump appears to want to meet Black people half way on these police shooting cases.  Shawn Hannity is not that way.  You could almost say of Shawn that "He never met a police shooting he didn't like".  Trump is making a play for the Blacks calling them victims of Obama's policies and say of them "What do you have to lose at this point?"  Of course then there is Trump's tax returns and they will no doubt show that Trump hasn't paid his taxes in twenty years.  Aside from the actual law Trump took advantage of- - most of us can't take a billion dollar loss and still keep going.  Shawn Hannity praised him for this- - that he "didn't give up".  If you have another nine Billion in the wings of reserves- - the question is what taxes Trump paid on that Nine Billion, assuming he even has that much.  Of course now we have all of the sex stuff which is just another "smoking gun" and there is also some letter circulating of Black (and possible white, too) Christian evangelists saying Trump is unfit to be President.  

In the US Senate debate between Harris and Loretta Sanchez, clearly Harris was the more articulate of the two candidates airing on ABC the other night.  Harris accused Sanchez of taking money from "for profit" private colleges that only rip you off and Harris wants to crack down on these.  Both Harris and Sanchez want to crack down on Vladimir Putin.  Trump may be soft on Putin.  This is one area where he and Mike Pence appear to have a disagreement.  Clearly you would have to- - morally compromise- - to make a deal with Putin.  I was going to go into this more but this letter is long enough already.  Actually, it's a tough call.

Harris More Articulate than Loretta Sanchez

Tim Cain interrupted Mike Pence constantly last night and I felt like telling him to shut up and wait his turn.  Cain has one of those twerpy voices that grates on you after a while.  Mike Pence was more personable talking about his family, faith, and Indiana roots.  Both candidates were asked whether their Christian faith impacts their decisions.  I would have said mine didn’t because it’s my belief that my morals are dictated by my own conscience and not some like some pastor tells me from the pulpit- - and for the most part quoting the Bible is risky.  Sometimes it’s good but a lot of the time you can quote the Bible to prove anything you want.  I agree with Mike Pence on the abortion and gay marriage issues.  Pence was correct to bring up partial birth abortions, which the Democratic Party as an institution is all for.  In general though Tim Cain was the more substantive of the two candidates and mentally sharper.  Mike Pence was a little fuzzy in how he dealt with Donald Trump’s many faults.  He said that Trump was “smart” not to pay any taxes for eighteen years.  Will that argument fly?  These “smart” tax laws I guess were written expressly for Donald Trump by “smart” rich people.  I question the whole thing like how could ANYBODY lose a billion dollars and still live the life of a rich person?  The very rich live in a wholly different world from the rest of us.  Both candidates talked right over the moderator who would try in vain to move it on to another topic.  I think Mike Pence’s record as Indiana governor could have been delved into more deeply.  With the gay lobby as strong as it is the topic could have been milked a little more.  The word is that Trump picked him “bailing him out” from the likelihood he would not be re-elected as Governor.  I wasn’t happy at all with either candidate’s discussion of the economy or trade.  Moth candidates had vague outlines.  To me knowing the economy well and being able to explain it is a valuable selling point. 

I had Stephanie Miller on this morning and a lot of little new icons appeared on my task bar.  This morning I changed the wallpaper from “Watering Hole” to “Autumn”, the one with all the leaves.  Bill kept asking me how his hair looked and I was distracted with things like the “language bar” popping up.  I went to the store just after seven and the coffee had just started brewing.  It starts off pouring coffee in quickly then continually slows down.  I got my coffee and paid two dollars and got three quarters in change for a large coffee.  I took it into the dining room and drank it there.  We had sugar frosted flakes and later on we got a fried egg and a waffle.  Judy complained about the slowness of service but actually it was faster than usual.  

I got coffee from Glen in his room.  It was Taster’s Choice and a smaller amount than last time but I didn’t complain.  I was sleepy last night and didn’t type then.  It was ABC news and then I smoked a cigarette and then got in the medication line because it appeared to be fast moving with Tom.  He started early and I was done at five after seven.  I went to the store for cigarettes when it was almost completely dark.  Then I watched the US Senate debate between Camille Harris and Loretta Sanchez.  Harris won the debate because I agreed with her on more issues and she above all was much more articulate than Sanchez.  Sanchez reminded me a little of Kathryn Koolman like she was trying to cast a spell over the listeners.  Harris has a rather stiff presentation but I liked what she said.  The debate lasted an hour.  Then I watched Blind Spot.  Then it was Law and Order SVU at nine about being accused of rape because you lied to get sex.  I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately and I’ve been coughing at night and otherwise sleeping poorly.  The covers come off my bed.  I’m not making it well enough.

I woke early and restless this morning.  Bill has been bleeding a lot lately and one of his towels was covered in blood.  I got medication with April.  I had cough medicine because I’ve been coughing at night.  I went and got a dollar fifty cup of coffee at the bakery.  I need to shave.  The computer is working good.  I take that back.  Now the internet has conked out again. 

I’ve got the internet coming in now on this modem for the first time since just before seven o clock.  Maybe I better go on and do a posting before the thing changes its mind.  Twice I unplugged the main outlet of the surge protector and the second time worked.  Olivia was over today and seemed to be getting interested in the soap opera I was watching.  She gave me the majority of a bottle of brisk lemon iced tea that was good for two average sized glasses.  But she didn’t stay long.  We had that horrible unsweetened spice (?) cake for snacks along with two cups of lemonade.  This morning I had two cups of lemonade.  I had Gary and Shannon on over the noon hour.  Clyde was ruminating about how his father abused him as a kid and did Ben harbor the same thoughts about him as he harbored about his father.  Theo is packing a gun now because the Salem PD as usual aren’t getting the job done.  This should be interesting.

Still Looking for that "Smoking Gun" in Trump Campaign

Hillary needs to talk about "the issues" more such as global warming and fair trade and auditing the federal reserve.  I think "Black Lives Matter" is a winning issue and perhaps why so many Black people voted for her.  Stop all this National Enquirer stuff about personal attacks on Trump.  People need to look upward and outward a little more, to how the next President will actually govern.  And most of all people need to be reminded to vote for their Democratic Senator and House member.  Without this- government will be just more of the same.  Hillary needs to talk about a "Do nothing Congress" the way Harry Truman talked about it in the 1948 campaign, which was so successful.  Ronald Reagan ought to know.  He did commercials for the Democrats in 1948.  Why can't today's public be reminded that if anyone is at fault for the seemingly weak economy, it's Republican policies over the past six years.  But today's American voting public seems to have their head up their asses on the actual issues.  People are looking for the "smoking gun" that's going to do Donald Trump in.  Nothing that has occurred so far as done the trick.  No matter what outragious stunt Trump pulls people's ability to be shocked into action- - has never been reached.  It goes to show the morally depraved quality of the electorate now.  I had Gary and Shannon on.  They are a little bit dense when it comes to Donald Trump and his taxes.  Who can run up over 900 million dollars in losses- - on a casino no less- during 1995, one of the biggest boom years of all time?  How do you stretch those economic losses over the next eighteen years so that Trump paid no taxes over that period?  Gary and Shannon see nothing strange about that.  If you get wiped out with a flood or a hurricane you can’t deduct those losses.  Most people can’t do what Trump did even with business losses.  This looks to be the number one issue on the next debate which is October 9^th or John Lennon’s birthday.  Tomorrow, October 4^th is the Vice Presidential debate.  More and more I hear that Trump will not govern the way he campaigned and got votes and won in the spring.  That was by promising them he couldn’t be bought by Wall Street money and that he would fight all of these international trade agreements.  The concencus is that he won’t keep his word, any more than Obama kept his word on a lot of things he campaigned on in 2008.

On Days of our Lives we don’t know who the father of Clowie’s baby is but Clowie is either being mighty protective of him or mighty afraid of him or both.  She’d terminating her contractual obligation to record for Philip’s record company after extensive recording sessions and him getting her some good material to record.  She won’t say who the father is, only that we know she had sex with him within a few days of having sex with Demas.  She’s going to New York to live with her parents and be with Parker.  She told Nicole that they would keep in touch but if you believe that I have a bridge in New Jersey I want to sell you.  In terms of Aden, he came out and told Hope he’s got the goods on her and knows she’s the one who murdered Stephano in cold blood.  He expects her to just fall into his arms at this blackmailing of her.  Of course if she comes clean the Truth will not set her free but will send her, along with Roman Brady and Raphael Hernandez up the river for a long time for cover-up and conspiracy.

Donald Trump may finally have to answer some questions about his foundation’s activities.  New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Monday that his office had sent a cease and desist letter to the Trump Foundation for operating without proper certification. The charity will no longer be allowed to raise money until it properly registers no later than October 15, the attorney general’s office told The Daily Beast.  New York law dictates that any charity that solicits more than $25,000 a year needs to have a special registration prior to doing so. The attorney general’s office also said that the Trump Foundation did not provide annual financial reports or audited financial statements.  Trump campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks said the investigation by Schneiderman, a Democrat, has "political motives," but that Trump would cooperate.  That means Trump, under penalty of perjury, will have to disclose more information about his charitable organization than he ever has before. 

In the news recently they ran a thing on how today’s teenagers don’t smoke, and they wouldn’t date a girl who smokes and none of their friends smoke.  This is so different from fifty years ago when cigarette commercials ran free reign on television.  But today we have all these new drugs as though we're all supposed to be doctors listening to all the lurid side effects of these new drugs.  Back in the old days people trusted and respected their doctors and you had role models like Ben Casey, who seemed to have all the answers.  You didn't have these feminine hygene products back then or advertizing prophilactic devices (Rubbers) or all this incontenance stuff- - and even things like toilet paper advertizing is getting strange.  Both Northern and Charmin have ads so off the wall they never would have been approved fifty years ago.  In the old days if you “couldn’t get it up” you kept it to yourself, besides your doctor would tell you that it was all psychological anyhow.  Views on war are very different today.  Nearly fifty years ago Martin Luther King gave a forty minute sermon coming out against the War in Viet Nam.  One of the strongest arguments he used was “People come to me and say if you are going to be non violent as far as getting Civil Rights is concerned, how can any of us condone the rampant violence of the Viet Nam war burning women and children’s villages and all?  Today we choose not to think about that stuff.  Back then computers were great big things that took up a whole big room in a company basement or whatever and only the trained elite knew how to program them.  Back then we appreciated the computational properties of a computer and we “respected” smart machines and smart people.  Today we don’t.  We used to believe technology would save us and that the problem is what to do with all our leisure time.  We screen out applicants for being a police officer if they have an IQ of over 120.  We don’t want people “over qualified” for the job, a term I doubt was in existence fifty years ago.  Back then everything was seen in terms of psychology.  All of these terms for mental illness were “in” and we saw psycho-analysis as the cure to a whole host of problems.  Today we just say to take a pill for it.  As little as a generation ago we saw all of those Wrigley chewing gum commercials.  That’s how people used to work out their problems back then.  Today they go on mass killing sprees.  In those days we measures musical evolution in terms of months.  If you were six months behind the time in your musical tastes, people knew about it.  Things were evolving that quickly.  Back then evolution was a good word.  Today it’s considered taboo to even talk about evolution and the view “people never change” has gotten more popular.  Our political discourse is a lot sicker today.  As little as ten years ago the very idea of a Republican running for President the way Trump is doing now would have been considered beyond the pale.  Thirty years ago talk radio was the restricted to little old ladies talking about last night’s three point zero earthquake.  Today everybody “tweets” and we don’t keep anything to ourselves but broadcast it to the world- - even if it’s completely mindless.  The idea of actually reading a book today seems strange because nobody does it.  

There Is No "Crash of 2016"

 I was listening to Obama talk about the economy.  For the first time in a decade or so incomes are measurably up.  It hasn’t affected us here yet.   At 8:06 I listened to the Republican response on the topic of dismantling Obama Care and coming up with their own better plan.   Even if we concede that the economy is betting better, which is no favor to the republicans because traditionally the party OUT of power wins if the economic figures look shakey, we still have the problem of Obama Care.  Everyone agrees it's just "bad medicine" to quote a proposition 61 commercial.  People pay more and everyone I've talked to over the past four years universally agree that the Affordable Care Act is a bad thing to jack up rates and make you switch doctors.  These "truths" aren't going away.  So maybe the President is smart to point to their being no "Crash of 2016" on the horizon.  We have 39 days to go or something.  It's in the power of the Federal Reserve to crash the markets at any time but they aren't going to do that five weeks before an election.   The trouble with all these doom and gloom people they point out all the things that COULD go wrong hypothetically but none of then NEED go wrong.  I don't see why we couldn't have a market like this indefinitely with investor gains out and out financed by the Federal Reserve's policies.  People like Thom Hartman agree that debt is no problem.  Not really.  After all "it's a place for people to safely save their money" in T bills and other government notes.  The one time we successfully paid off the National Debt was under Andrew Jackson and that destabelized the financial markets so much it threw us into a major recession and the Vice President, Van Buren, was labeled "Van Ruin" because of that.  Without grim economic statistics for the republicans to kick around, their changes for winning in November seem mighty slim at this point.  My only worry is that statistics show that Republicans will be ticket splitters this year voting Republican in "down ballot" races such as congressman and senator, while voting for Hillary and Cain in the top posts.  

A lot of KNX’s news was either about the El Cajon police shooting of s Black man who turned out not to have a gun but took a “shooting stance” or else it was this other Black man in Pasadena who was apparently tazed to death.   There is a delema as I see it because the police never wait any more for someone to point a gun at them before they shoot, and you don't even need to have a gun for them to shoot you dead.  Their aim is getting better because they are trained to feel comfortable firing their weapon at anything, moving or not.  They shoot to kill, going for body mass.  They know they won't be prosecuted much less convicted.  Hence they feel "comfortable" seemingly at times using a gun as a first resort rather than a last one.  But also it struck me that they have good enough vision to be accurate at killing their targets, but apparently have such bad vision they don't know whether it's a gun or a cell phone the person is holding.   And it's also true that the burden of proof is on the dead person to "prove" beyond a reasonable doubt that they weren't at fault at all, or "give the appearence" of being in the wrong.  And beyond that you are expected to go into the officer's own mind to wonder what he may be thinking or what "fearful state" he is in today.  They used to tell us in drivers ed to "drive defensibly".   Now they tell Blacks the perils of "driving while black" or "walking while black" and often they might as well tell us to "live defensively" but if you do that the preachers will get on our case who tell us we must be open and trusting and assuming the most honorable intentions of our neighbor.  (Selah)  There was a little bit about Trump and Hillary but the rest of it was traffic and weather and of course commercials. 

Gary Johnson was on Shawn Hannity’s and also talking with Chris Matthews now and he says that market forces will control the excess of carbon pollution and “the free market” has bankrupted the coal industry.  Shawn claims the Obama administration did that.   I will agree that “market forces” work even in areas of civil rights for either race of sexual identity.  But first there has to be that big stick of government threatening everybody just as in the case of labor unions “free markets” are affected by the presence of Labor Unions raising the wage scale.  Gary Johnson is now warning of the dangers of seeking “regime changes” in foreign governments.  I agree.   “A resume doesn’t impute to  you discernment”.   Recent history has shown that the world is so unstable now that the slightest jiggle will send the bricks cascading down to ruin. 

We had our resident’s council meeting.  There was a lot of lecturing by Josie and Patty and a lot of “dead air” just writing stuff down.  There seemed to be less time for people to actually bring up issues.  Almost no time was spent on food services because they read some mandate saying portion size is mandated and there will be no second glasses of orange juice.  I launched the topic of the lateness of mainly breakfast but they can get the plates on the table in a timely manner because they’ve done it before.  I said that our blinds needed examining by Augustine and Bill’s lamp needs a bulb.  Josie defended Nora against charges of theft, which occur all the time.  The meeting ended at three.  Norman Goldman was in a rerun of last Friday.   There are so many Black people either being shot by cops or else dying in custody I can’t keep track of all of them.   There is a fourteen year old who first killed his father and then shot up a grammar school and injured a teacher and students.   His mother defended him to the media.  

Hillary Clinton Decisively Beats Donald Trump in Debate

I wasn't even sure I put out a post yesterday or not.  I was intending to but apparently didn't.  Now Trump is thinking of skipping the next two debates just because he was beaten so badly.  Trump was as downcast yesterday as Hillary was upbeat and jubelant.  I don't care how many imaginary polls Trump pulls out of his ass, Hillary won the thing, pure and simple.  Trump complained his microphone was sabotaged so that when he interrupted twenty-two times it wasn't as impressive.  Those many interruptions didn't play well with the public.  Often Trump appeared stunned and at a temporary loss for words.  Trump had to just sit there and take it when Hillary enumerated about four reasons why Donald Trump might not to release his taxes.  Of course he as much as admits to not paying taxes for some years because they have a few really old returns now.  Trump considers this just plain "smart" just as he considers taking advantage of people being thrown out of their homes in a financial crisis is just "smart" and "good business".  In this sense he's just like Romney.  He's just not a likable fellow.  Trump is kind of like Scientology in that it's best observed and "appreciated" a safe distance away, but never allow yourself to get inside it.  Trump also defended his not paying certain workers now claiming that he must have been dissatisfied with their work, but gave no real example someone could rely on as justification.   It's bad business to screw over your customers and I hope Trump doesn't do that.  Here are more remarks from yesterday.  

Hillary Clinton decisively won the debate last night over Donald Trump.  The debate was held on NBC.  They had NBC nightly news with Lester Holt not there because he was moderating the debate.  They austensively divided the time into six segments but Lester Holt lost control of the schedule pretty quickly as if by mutual conspiracy Trump and Hillary would talk about whatever they wanted to argue about.  Hillary made a good opening speech.  She laid out the ideas of raising the minimum wage, equal pay for equal work and infrastructure.  Trump followed with a convincing rant about fair trade verses tree trade.  Later on while discussing NATO and trade Trump also slipped in the need for government to build infrastructure.  A lot of the “Bernie issues” could have been spelled out more clearly by Bernie himself.  Trump though was much more forceful on the notion of being taken to the cleaners by China and foreign powers than was Hillary, who appeared not to want to talk about this so much.  So I agreed with both of their opening remarks.  Both of them had good points.  However Trump often appeared more on the defensive interrupting Hillary with questions giving the impression he might be “impatient” or something.  Hillary pummeled Trump pretty good on the “trickle down economics” issue citing the folly of massive tax cuts for the rich, which were a centerpiece of Trump’s policies.  Trump also seemed to go with the Shawn Hannity view of abolishing all pollution regulations as a way to get the economy going.  Hillary was pretty flawless in her delivery and Trump tried to be sedate, where he wasn’t in his element.  He appeared “low energy” and also didn’t have the background on issues Hillary did and she beat him in head to head arguments.  One area where Hillary fell short is acknowledging Black on Black crime.  Hillary was so hung up on civil liberties that she seemed to forget the fact that Chicago even had a crime problem.  I agreed with Trump on the necessity of “stop and frisk” and how well it worked in New York.  But Trump fell down badly on the national security stuff and Hillary appeared much more in control of the ISIS issue.  Trump would often ramble toward the end talking about “stamina” in office and General Mac Arthur and those damn strawberries.  ( )  He’d make references to things people were expected to know about what he was thinking.  Hillary accused Trump of living in his own reality.  Lester Holt piled on when it came to whether Trump was against the Iraq War early on calling it a “fact” that Trump was for that war.  Trump referenced arguments he’s had with Shawn Hannity on this subject.  Trump raised some interesting points about NATO and financing but then took credit for “giving NATO the idea” to go after ISIS and national security.  But Hillary countered with the phrase “An attack upon one nation is an attack upon all” and invoked 9 – 11 and Afghanistan.   At 7:28 I decided to leave and go get medication from Tom because he’s been finishing up quickly.  Only Nancy Bell and Glenda were in line ahead of me.  Then I looked for cigarettes.  When I got back to the debate Trump was just finishing up his final remarks at twenty to eight.  The media tried to make it seem like nobody on either side was persuaded.  However they neglected to mention the over-riding fact that Hillary was much more in control than Trump throughout the debate.  

This is Wednesday September 28, 2016.  Lets take up the narrative before lunch.  I brushed my teeth in the morning and before lunch and again after lunch making sure they were as clean as they could be.  Having chili on my breath wouldn’t do.  We had a bowl of decent chili plus a big piece of rather dry corn bread.  I ate rather slowly being apprehensive about the appointment.  We had grapes for dessert and I had Paul’s bowl also.  I missed out on coffee because the guy said to get ready.  We got to the dentist’s office early and I filled out their usual form about health questions.  I was escorted in and they took X rays right off.  My last visit six months ago they didn’t take X rays so you never know what they might have missed.  She did one of these gum measurements.  There were the usual 3’s and 4’s with the occasional two, but one of the teeth was a six in one spot.  She said it was infected and needed anti-biotic ointment that had to be done at the time of the cleaning.  The problem was it was fifty dollars I’d have to pay myself.  I was unable to call Mom (or something) so they rescheduled it for next week.  The male dentist examined my teeth and I have that crown I need on tooth 29 from a year ago that was never done.  Now I have a new crown in the upper left somewhere he first announced as “a big cavity”.  I can’t find it.  I negotiated the next two appointments and then went out for a smoke waiting for my ride to return.  As it turns out the guy was late and the office here was on their lunch break and weren’t answering.  Finally the guy returned, not with a van load of people as he implied, but it was empty.  By now it was a quarter after one and we went to pick up Mickey at West Anaheim Medical Center.  But he wasn’t ready and we parked in the lot to wait.  I listened to JACK radio with the AC on.  About ten till two they finally returned.  I got back here about five to two.

I have very few cigarettes left.  I got two cups of iced tea and they served that dry corn bread.  It’s the first solid food they’ve served in a week and a half.  After a while I called Mom, who acted like she was thinking of not paying for it.  Then she said Paul and Judy control her money.  There was talk about not smoking.  Tim stopped by to see her after his (second) vacation.  I went to the office to let Josie copy the appointment dates but then was called back down by Federico to the office and he changed the times, but not the days, of both the appointments but let me keep the cards.  I had the Norman Goldman program on at the usual time.  We had a liberal amount of pork chunks, and a lot of spinach, which was kind of cold, and French cut potatoes the way French cut green beans were cut.  They were good.  We had peaches for dessert.  Paul gave me a whole second plate with even colder spinach.  Apparently they were supposed to have banana pudding for dessert.  That’s the second time they’ve said banana pudding and ended up having something else.

Officer Indicted for Manslaughter in Tulsa Shooting

That lady officer in the Tulsa shooting has been indicted already for first degree manslaughter or something.  Shawn Hannity most certainly isn't happy about that but then Hannity lies about everything these days and continuing to even listen to him, even if only out of curiosity, does one more harm than good.  Shawn lies about economic statistics and he lies about stuff like Lester Holt is a biased democrat, when Ijust heard he's a registered Republican.  He lies about these other Black shooting cases such as Ferguson, MO or the Trayvon Martain case.  Now Shawn Hannity is doing ads for Donald Trump.   But I will say this about Shawn and that is he is everything Trump would like to be in terms of an average working class American pulling himself up by his boot straps.  If Hannity had stayed in ANY of those other lines of work he's done over the years he'd be a well respected citizen providing no cause for anyone to be dissatisfied with him.  

Mrs. Keith Scott, wife of the guy who was shot by cops in Chaolette where all of the rioting has been taking place, released a video to the press which featured of police shouting “drop your gun” and the wife shouting “He doesn’t have a gun” and adds, “He has a TBI”.  When I heard this I thought he had some electronic device on him such as a PDA or something.  (Personal Data Assistant)  But it turns out that TBI is a traumatic brain injury, and I’m not sure how that fact figures in.  And then we hear the gun shots and the wife says “Did you shoot him?” and “He better not be dead”.   It is said that since multiple officers believed him to have a weapon that it can’t be the prejudicial idea of just one officer.  First they said they weren’t going to have a curfew and then they said there is a curfew.   The football game between the Vikings and the Panthers this Sunday will be played with increased security.   Three times the number of Americans have died from firearms this year than were killed on 9 – 11.  We accept that gun deaths are just part of the “background noise” and accept them pretty much as normal. 

Yesterday I watched a video that stated that the MAJOR portion of bank profits, in some cases most or all of the profits, comes from out and out fraud.  That’s an eye opener.  It’s true in Britain and in America and perhaps other places.  Today I watched and read a transcript of Neil Young addressing a “Farm Aid” concert.   Actually there was some row of tables and an audience and the microphone was in the audience.   He was attacking President Obama and Monsanto and the stand on GMO’s in general. 

Here is a news flash.  Raphael Edwardo Cruz today endorsed Donald Trump.  Apparently Cruz doesn’t want us to vote our consciences any more.   Cruz was suppose to shmooz with Sheldon Adelson after his speech at the convention but now he was turned away from Adelson’s office.  They are saying that Cruz was virtually forced to endorse Trump or else Sheldon Adelson would make it clear that Cruz's political carrier was through because all of his campaign donations would dry up.  If it shows nothing else it shows all that show of political courage and "principles" at the Republican convention was pure showmanship and that when push comes to shove, Trump will fold like a cheap suit.  I think this has to say something about how Ted Cruz would have acted as president.  

There is good news for Hillary in terms of polling this week, as opposed to last.  She is up seven points in two national polls and up five in a third.  But there is a ceiling of 48% for Trump where he never rises higher in any poll.  Hillary has scored higher than that in nine polls but for Trump the figure is zero.  So I think we can all rest easy after the previous week’s “medical scare” reflected in those polls taken then for Hillary.   Strangely this Chris Matthews fill-in says that 53% of Americans believe Hillary is qualified to be President but the same polls show the Trump figure at 30%, which is strange.  It means people who vote for Trump don’t think he’s qualified.  I dispute the claim that 92% of Bernie Sanders supporters support Hillary because if that were true it would mean Hillary would inherit Bernie’s ten or twelve lead over Trump in the polls.   If the poll numbers show nothing else they show large numbers of defecting Bernie Sanders  supporters.  In still another poll sixty percent of people say Donald Trump does not respect “ordinary Americans” but Hillary’s figure here is “only” 48%.   There is another poll that says 56% of people believe that Trump is a racist, a figure way higher than Hillary's.  People are forgetting in all of this tit for tat name calling that the important thing is whether Democrats take congress, and I mean both houses.  You need both houses to get anything done, the Senate and the House, and even when you have the House too, if you don't have sixty percent there is no guarantee that you'll get all the things passed that the House would pass on its own with a democratic majority. 

Jim Webb Prefers The Donald to Hillary

By nominating Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party is handing over the presidency to Donald Trump.

This is a sentiment I’ve been repeating consistently over the past several weeks, and one that has yet to be truly appreciated by most people. There continues to be extreme denial amongst those who want “anyone but Trump” in recognizing that Trump is exactly what you’ll get by nominating a corrupt, Wall Street puppet under FBI investigation with more baggage than American Airlines. It’s obvious to those of us who have a sense of the national mood why this is the case, but remains beyond the grasp of those who are either a part of the status quo or depend on it for their financial survival.

Up to this point, I’ve been going on personal interactions with friends as well as interviews with voters to conclude that a significant number of Sanders supporters will simply not “fall in line” and vote for Hillary in November. While this is interesting in its own right, what has really surprised me is the number of people who have maintained they might vote for Trump if Sanders doesn’t get the nomination. Conventional wisdom would say this is impossible, but what many voters seem to want more than anything else in 2016 is to burn the status quo to the ground.

It’s one thing for voters to publicly express such sentiments, it’s a whole other ballgame when a former 2016 Democratic Party candidate does so. Yet that’s exactly what happened earlier today on the “Morning Joe“ show. It appears Jim Webb isn’t “Ready for Hillary.”

The Washington Post reports:  In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Reagan administration veteran-turned-Democratic senator from Virginia turned short-term presidential candidate Jim Webb said twice that he could not support Hillary Clinton if she won the Democratic nomination for president.  “No, I would not vote for Hillary Clinton,” Webb said.

Pressed on whether he would vote for Donald Trump, Webb said he was “not sure” but had not ruled it out.

“It’s nothing personal about Hillary Clinton, but the reason Donald Trump is getting so much support right now is not because of the, you know, ‘racists,’ etc. and etc.,” Webb said. “It’s because a certain group of people are seeing him as the only one who has the courage to say, ‘We’ve got to clean out the stables of the American governmental system right now.’If you’re voting for Donald Trump, you might be getting something very good or very bad. If you’re voting for Hillary Clinton, you’re going to get the same thing. Do you want the same thing?”

That last part of his statement is downright shocking, yet speaks a lot of truth. Jim Webb’s logic is sound and reflects the type of questioning that will be endlessly percolating through the minds of tens of millions of voters come November.

There’s no question about the type of president Hillary Clinton will be. She will coddle Wall Street (and bail them out again if necessary), while pushing a neocon foreign policy abroad. It’s not an exaggeration to say that a vote for Hillary means a vote for oligarchy at home and murder abroad. This is merely an inconvenient truth the Democratic establishment wishes to pretend doesn’t exist. Jim Webb understands this, which is why he says he won’t vote Hillary.

Democrat Hillary Clinton loses by 7.4% to John Kasich, by 4.7% to Marco Rubio, and by 0.8% to Ted Cruz, and she wins by 2.8% over Donald Trump.   Democrat Bernie Sanders wins by 6.0% over Trump, by 4.7% over Cruz, by 0.5% over Kasich, and ties with Rubio.   Because of this latest number, the Democrats are now hoping and praying for a Cruz nomination at the Republican convention.  This will be much more likely if Trump loses Florida which he is increasingly likely to do.  A week ago Trump led by 18% over Rubio in Florida.  Right now Trump is in “single digits” and it takes little imagination, given the rate of fall in Trump’s popularity now, that Trump will lose Florida and will also lose Ohio.  This is because the anti Trump establishment is carpet bombing Ohio and Florida with anti Trump ads fueled to a virtually unlimited supply of money.  In my opinion, Ted Cruz is the weakest candidate the Republicans could put up.  These statistics show Sanders beating Cruz by 4.7%. 

The Jekyll and Hyde of Donald Trump.  Of course, some of the things he thinks will “make America great” like punitive libel laws, censoring the internet, agreeing that the government can force Apple to create a backdoor, and more brutal torture would undoubtably do exactly the opposite. On the other hand, his opposition to phony trade deals, donor money in politics and ending the overall way things work in Washington D.C. are undoubtably positives.  A “very good” Trump presidency would mean that some of his more authoritarian and barbaric positions will be pushed to the wayside, while his tremendous will and force of personality can crush the rule of oligarchs for oligarchs and restore an economic future for the decimated middle class.  At the end of the day, there’s absolutely no way to tell which Trump you’re gonna get. So the real question may very easily come down to, should we take a gamble on someone who could be an ever worse fascist disaster, or do we maintain the current corrupt and destructive status quo? If Hillary Clinton is presented as the only alternative, I think a large number of Americans will be willing to gamble on Trump, for better or worse.  (note: “Gambling” is something desperate people are known to do)

Donald Trump’s son was just on the Shawn Hannity show and he was a spirited, fast talker who seemed to have all the answers.  Then at the end Hannity said the Democratic debate was pathetic because “They want to halt all energy production in this country and make us hostage to Saudi oil”.   Then he said “They want to eliminate all fracking in America”.  Then there was the line of “They want to give us all free stuff”.   Externalizing the costs of oil drilling and fracking is “free stuff” from the government.  It’s part of the cost of producing energy but the oil companies don’t have to pay for it.  Furthermore only Bernie said he would end all fracking.  Hillary seemed flexible.  But you also must consider that any anti fracking legislation will take time and while the fracking is still going on more energy is being produced.  Keep in mind that Saudi Arabia can pull the plug on our whole domestic production of energy program any time they want because they can produce oil for twelve or fifteen dollars a barrel if they want to, and can undercut our price any time it suits their fancy.  The only way we can beat them is to switch to a less polluting fuel such as wind or solar or geothermal.  People like Judy and Shawn have no conception of the notion that energy is not a fixed comidity.  If so we could say that the whale blubber business is in serious trouble today because until the 1850’s when you talked about “oil production” you meant whaling.  Shawn bends and twists people’s words and bends and twists logic in his own mind to arrive at his pre-determined outcome.  No candidate for President is going to go against Governor Snyder for instance because they are all so much in agreement with his policies.  Republicans believe that the dollar and profits are the supreme morality.  No matter how much corporate greed is out there or off shoring of production people like him and Judy are going to justify it every time.  When it comes to trashing labor unions or gutting the life of the inner city- - of course these people are going to do it.  The very idea of “a community of people” who have to get along is alien to these people.  Democrats on the other hand hold to John Lennon’s slogan of “Power to the people” but to people like Trump and the other Republicans “Power to the people” might as well be a Bolshivic communist slogan.

Staying Out Of Foreign Entanglements

Both President George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower were military men.  Both were elected by a landslide of popular acclaim.  In his final weeks, President Eisenhower warned us against the rise of the military industrial complex.  George Washington advised us to stay out of foreign entanglements.  For over a century the United States was known as a nation that stood for Peace and staying out of foreign wars, which were raging almost constantly in Europe.  How strange if citizens of the United States who lived in 1816 could see us now.  We have been in a virtual state of continuous war for the past fifteen years.  We are still, fighting in Afghanistan.  President Obama's instinct has been to resist withdrawals of troops anywhere.  Now we hear Mitt Romney lodge the accusation that Trump wants to use ISIS to get rid of President Assad of Syria before we get rid of ISIS.  Washington's blog charges something entirely different.  They say that Turkey is secretly supplying armlements to ISIS and the United States is secretly going along with that because the United States secretly desires the implementation of Solifist Islam everywhere in the Mideast because it's authoritarian and despots are easier to deal with than leaders of democracies.  I don't know what to think at this point.  It used to be that Hillary Clinton would say "I'm not running for a third term of Obama's administration but the first year of my own administration".  She's not saying that anymore.  Instead she is dropping President Obama's name as if it were seeds used in spring planting.  Some say that powerful military men really run the country and that when a new President such as Clinton or Obama gets elected, this military junta in this country sits them down and tells the new President how things will be.  I am more in sympathy with this point of view than over twenty years ago when Michael Benner first suggested it.  We know that the Obama administration tried desperately to maintain neutrality on the XL Canadian pipeline.  Obama could have taken a stand in the 2012 election but didn't. President Obama could have taken a stand against firearm polifferation in that same election of 2012 but he didn't.  President Obama could have done a lot of things but he didn't.  President Obama could not get reelected today.  Everyone agrees about that no matter what their political perswasion.  Perhaps Donald Trump is a wild card.  Maybe he really is mentally unstable.  But whether you are to the left or two the right, you agree that we need major change in the way Washington is run.  Bernie Sanders won two states on Saturday.  He's still in the running.  If you disqualify all of the Republican candidates as "just not Presidential" you're basically left with Bernie Sanders as the last man standing.

At ten after six I tuned in 640 KFI and the Democratic debate was on.  Apparently KFI is making a habit of carrying these debates.  It was a spirited debate but they stayed on respectable topics.   One can only contrast the difference in topics.  It's a case of "never the twane shall meet" because you'd think it was a different country with the issues the Republicans bring up, if they even ARE real issues.  Someone today said the Republican debate was more like an episode of planet of the apes.  At least the democrats argued on substance and "How BEST to solve the problems that face Americans".  There was no praising of Governor Snyder the way Marco Rubio did at his last debate.  There is absolutely nothing praiseworthy about ANYTHING Michigan Governor Snyder does.  I think Bernie Sanders' remarks were more "engaging" than Hillary's and seemed more likely to be the sort of remarks Black ghetto people could identify with.  It seemed to me that Bernie Sanders won that debate and he gave a better closing speech.  Others said that Sanders was kind of over-bearing in this debate.  I wouldn’t say that.  But the debate wrapped up just after seven with closing statements.  Then I watched “Once upon a Time” till a quarter to nine.  It was a special two hour segment of the problem, with all their usual stories.  

There were four contested states among the Republicans on Saturday.  Trump appears to have won in Kentucky and Louisiana was apparently a draw where they split the delegates down the middle.  Ted Cruz won outright in Kansas and Maine so basically it was kind of a Ted Cruz day since he won outright in two states and split another.  Bernie Sanders won in Kansas and in Nebraska.  But Hillary won in Louisiana and got more delegates than Sanders.  I don’t know how powerful Judy’s prayers are but maybe Cruz can pull it off if Trump loses on the Ides of March in Ohio and Florida.  March 15^th is the first “winner take all” Tuesday so that’s why this day is so important.  Washington’s blog stated that after the fifteenth Sanders will find it a whole lot easier to win states and his delegate count will draw even with Hillary eventually, if he’s lucky.  At any rate Sanders had pledged to stay in the race till June or convention time.  I just feel the progressive cause could be better served by having a candidate without skeletons in his or her closet the way Hillary does.  This whole Honduras coup thing is just one more strike against Hillary.  They had Lindsey Graham on “Meet the Press”.  Graham has gotten over his disgust for Ted Cruz long enough to endorse him for President, though he’d prefer either Kasech or Rubio if he had the choice.  They also had Mittens on.  Romney has come out of the obscurity of post candidacy and roared into the spotlight again and the voters are listening to his words. 

Nancy Reagan died today.  Don’t ask me to say anything nice about her because my heart’s just not in it.  The best thing I can say is they were truly in love and remained so for the rest of their lives.  I think Nancy led Ronnie around by the snout in the early days and also when he was President.  I’ve read Kitty Kelly’s book and I know about all of the skeletons and sketchy areas in Nancy’s closet.  I didn’t like her “taking over” and firing Don Reagan as Chief of Staff.  I thought the astrology stuff was questionable.  If she is destined to be with Ronald in the afterlife she’s had about a 25 year wait since Ronald was last lucid.  It was about the time of Iran Contra that Ronald Reagan first began having his memory lapses.

(Saturday) Rhapsody in Black was back today and they had a good crop of songs ranging from late spring to early fall of 1963.  There was an obscure Mary Wells song I thought was called “Nevermore”.   They played “El Watuci” by Ray Baretto, “If You Want to be Happy” by Jimmy Soul and “Walking the Dog” by Rufis Thomas.   I remember the Olympics song they played.  They played the original versions of “The Bird is the Word” and “Land of a Thousand Dances”.  They played “Fingertips” and a rather Carebean version of “Que Sarah Sarah”.   There was “Pride and Joy” and “Monkey Time” and “Just One Look” by Doris Troy.  There was a song I thought was called “Lonely Surfer”.  They played “I’m Busted” by Ray Charles and “Sally Go Round the Roses” and “Shake Your Tail Feathers” (Not sure I remember that)  I remember the tag line from “Ruby Baby” (not to be confused with Ruby Ruby)  The final track I had it on for was another Mary Wells song.  Then I went out to buy John Blacks at the liquor store.

The murder in Honduras on March 3rd of the global prize-winning environmental activist Berta Cáceres is one of the current achievements (though indirect) of Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s decision in 2009 to allow the newly-installed coup-regime in that country to solidify and remain in power.  As the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton resisted and ultimately overcame the virtually unanimous efforts of other Western Hemispheric and European leaders to oust the coup-regime. She was backed-up in this retrograde decision by U.S. President Barack Obama. Without her efforts, and President Obama’s passive acceptance of her decision, the coup-installed regime wouldn’t have remained in power, and the freely elected President would have been restored to power to complete his term.  The results of this for both the U.S. and Honduras have been disastrous: the world’s highest murder-rate, soaring drug-trafficking, and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Honduran children who don’t want to spend their lives drug-trafficking, and who have left Honduras because the gangs kill children who refuse. Then, U.S. Republicans, whose representatives in Congress were passionate supporters of the coup-installed regime, complain about the influx of those children into the U.S. and demand they be sent back to die there.  The democratically elected progressive President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was overthrown by Honduras’s aristocracy, in a coup on 28 June 2009, organized by that country’s nearly dozen aristocratic families, whose suffocating control over Honduras was being threatened by the entirely lawful and progressive democratic policies and actions by Zelayas’s government, including land-reform and workers’ rights — two things that aristocracies everywhere oppose. 

Just A Few Random Thoughts

It occurs to me that some words can be taken out of context.  I stated that the Federal Reserve needs to "establish more honest interest rates" from the rediculously low ones we have now.  I hope no one thought I was advocating for lower rates, because T bills are only a half a percent now.  Mom is making all sorts of money right now even with the half percent rates.  But what if T Bills paid four or five percent?  Sure Mom would be paying a lot more taxes but she's also be making boucoups bucks.  Yes this would increase interest on our national debt, but only NEW debt as of post March 2016.  All the OLD debt rates would remain intact.  I am not as concerned as Judy is about being in debt or beholden to China.  If China were going to pull the plug on our loans they would have done it by now.  Judy was silent when I raised this point to here on the phone. One area that might be to your liking, Judy, is that if I were President I would push to abolish this "quarterly estamated income" tax payment you have to send in every three months.  This is a lot of money and a lot of unnecessary paperwork.  It's giving the government free use of your money for from three to nine months.  If you end up owing the government or are deliquent in payments, you pay a tax penalty.  But if the government owes YOU money, you don't get squat in terms of interest rates.  I don't agree with the idea that there should be Zero tax on stock dividends.  This is a Larry Elder pipe dream.  I agree with Thom Hartman's statement that "Those who do back breaking work for a living such as in construction or industrial production- - shouldn't pay a HIGHER tax rate than those rich people who sit around in their mansions by the swimming pool waiting for the dividend checks to arrive.  It it were me I'd also allow tax deductions on credit cards for the average American.  Judy would no doubt tell me "Well if these people didn't go into debt they wouldn't have to pay the interest".  But I believe in an economy that is Demand deficient- - anything we can do to spur demand is a good thing.  

 I watched Mitt Romney’s speech and it’s better and more substantive and balanced than I would have supposed.  The same can’t be said for Dennis Prager’s CPAC speech however.  He said “The American Revolution is in danger of being undone?”  Does he mean the India Tea company is going to be reinstated and we will once again become British subjects?   He spoke of Christianity being a trinity even though he claims to be a Jew.  As you know in the past Dennis has had questionable views on abortion, prostitution and is just wrong as to Church teaching on the policy of Forgiveness.  Anyhow he says we as Americans list under a Trinity of ideas.  One of them is a belief in God.  In God we trust.  He also talks about how you can’t have both Liberty and Equality.  One of them has got to go, and Prager seems to side with the Southern plantation owners here.  Finally there is the notion of E Plurabus Unim.  The problem here is it’s the Republicans who repeatedly mention all these minorities they want isolated from the American main stream of opportunity such as women, gays, Blacks, Moslems, and other minorities.  He managed to pack an awful lot into a five minute speech.  Then I watched the John Kasech speech on C-Span.  He is known as “The Story Teller”.  He won against sitting democrats in the Reagan recession of 1982 and all that.  He talked about budget battles with his colligues in congress.  He then repeated this oft spoken mantra by Newt Gingrich and other republicans that “We cut the capital gains tax rate and this is responsible for the booming economy from late 1994 to late 2000 in the Clinton era.  It’s the “Newt Gingrich affect” where just the mere news the Republicans had been elected caused the stock market to take off and the economy to explode.  The cut of the capital gains tax (I looked it up) took place in 1997 nearly three years into this economic boom.  And it was cut from 28% to twenty percent.  So if you want to “repeat that tax adjustment” then I presume you now want to raise the tax rate back up to twenty percent.  Keep in mind that the income tax rates on a whole host of fronts were RAISED just before this economic boom began.  Finally I played this tape of a guy with a guitar talking about how Jesus was born of a Virgin and heralded by angels and died on a cross for our sins.   Then there was the latter we could call “The little girl and the homeless guy outside the supermarket”.   Nobody disputes that we need to bring the jobs to where the people are who need jobs.

In terms of this drive to say ‘Anybody but Trump” Donald Trump has kind of out maneuvered them in a power play.  He got all three of his rivals to endorse him should he win.  This makes all three of them look stupid.  But it wards of something worse such as an all out Republican civil war where everybody loses.  They can’t stand Donald Trump.  I honestly believe that now, and Romney’s speech is ripe with examples.  But as much as they detest him now they’ll need Trump’s constituency (voters) for their own ranks if they’re going to win in the fall, so not even Cruz the purest and fight the Trump tide.  It should be noted that with open primaries so the rage now, that droves of democrats have abandoned their own party to vote for Trump.  This explains why for every five people voting democratic now, there are eight people voting Republican.  Some of these newfound democratic voters may genuinely LIKE Trump’s policies.  He promises a lot for everybody.  But there are those who just see it as an opportunity to torpedo the Republican Party system- - - and undermine the political process and gumming up the works.  Having said that they may (strangely) be doing the Party a favor because it will prevent a brokered convention.  If any of the other three candidates remaining have any prayer of getting their party’s nomination, it will be through making a deal in formerly smoke filled back rooms.  It’s hard for me to envision any scenario where a brokered Republican Party convention could be a good thing for any political party in this modern day and age.  

Let's talk about Event Horizons.  This isn't a neon sign advertising a rock concert that can be seen from way down the freeway.  Event Horizons are "Your universe" and these overlap like the Ven diagrams Lisa Simpson is so fond of.  They are like Free Calling Zones.  Yours may encompass more area to the southwest than mine does.  A third Area Code may overlap partially with yours and mine but may encompass areas where yours or mine doesn't go.  Each of us has a slightly different Universe.  By "us" I mean a group of us who live on different stars but keep in touch.  Capish?  This "Free Calling Zone" view of viewing Universes or Event Horizons may seem strange.  Because no one locality can be said to be either truely IN or OUT of this Universe.  There is no great sign that states "You are now leaving the Universe" any more than there is when you are leaving a certain Toll Free Zone.  It took me a long time to get over this 'Absolute speed limit" thing of Einstein.  First of all if we went with the physics of Isaac Newton- one might almost suppose that light travel is instantanious, meaning - - there is NO difference between the speed of light and that of gravity.  This is the "What you see is what you get" principle.  That is if you see a distant planet around another star- - the LIGHT and the GRAVITY from that planet- - are coming from the identical place.  There is no need to recalculate, which makes things a whole lot easier for Astronomers.  Since there is no "absolutely stationary place" in the Universe (it's all relative) than no such speed limit for inter-planetary travel can be established.  Some may question whether "Event Horizon" differs from "The Universe as we know it".   Technically the question is there IS no difference here because "The Universe as we know it" is contingent on what we can measure with our instruments, and THAT is contingent on the speed of light or time for those images to get to us.  So it can be argued that - - - MOST of the universe as it NOW EXISTS is something we are ignorant of because we have no way of "getting to it".  Therefore any travel- - - of something approaching "instantanous" would necessarly denote "leaving the Universe as we know it" at least temporarily.  Better people than me have said "psychic travel is instantanious".  But suppose you don't settle for "psychic" travel but you want to get there both Body and Soul.  Well - - - Supposedly this guy who talks about magnetic pulses caused by "Cryogenic supercondivity and super magnets" can speed travel.  I can't help thinking of that Cartoon that had super magnets where it was cranked up and fire hydrants, lamp posts, and then things like cars and suspension bridges and Naval Vessles and eventually the Eifel Tower got sucked into this magnet and final UFO crafts.  This only goes to illustrate the absurdity of power by "super magnets".  We are told there are only four FORCES in the universe.  There is gravity, electro-magnetism, the Strong Force, and the Weak Force.  Strangely the Atomic Bomb is a manifestation of the Weak Force.  Those who subscribe to this theory ignore a lot of energy sources- - such as the gasoline in their cars.  If if you take that car and crash it into a brick wall- - that Impact Force is yet another form of Energy!  I think it is unwise to use words like CAN"T and IMPOSSIBLE to limit what energy sources we may develop in the future.