Democrat Wins in Highly Contested Congressional Election

We Democrats finally have something to celebrate about today.  Conner Lamb, the democrat in that west Pennsylvania congressional election of yesterday to fill a vacant seat- - - won a special election beating the Republican who apparently hadn't been serving very long.  Trump campaigned heavily in that district because this race was important to his image.  It was a district that went for Trump by twenty points in the 2016 election.  The victory was a slim one but definite.  The margin was only 640 votes that’s awfully narrow.  The Republican hasn’t conceded defeat.   There is this Drew Miller fellow who is a Libertarian and he got a thousand votes, which is more than the margin of victory.  The danger would be if he could somehow ‘give his votes” to the Republican loser.  I don’t know if two democratic victories make a trend, but we can hope.     

This is Wednesday March 14, 2018, “Pi” day.  All the restaurants are selling pieces of pie for $3.14 or that much off a whole pie or something like that.  Stephen Hawking died in the early morning hours in England, so he died on “Pi” day.  I guess he was the greatest genious of our times.  So what was his greatest “lasting contribution” to science that would compete with the theory of relativity or others?  President Trump arrived in San Diego late yesterday morning and he went to the border to look at at least eight prototypes of “The Wall” that they still plan to build for nearly two thousand miles, mainly across desert.   Then the president went to Mirimar AFB in San Diego and delivered a speech around one.  Then he went by helicopter to Santa Monica and then by motorcade to Beverly Hills where he raises money from donors.  Then he spent the night in a hotel downtown. The latest copy of “The Week” came at lunch time today and it’s all about members of Trump’s cabinet bailing out.  President Trump has so many positions to fill now, mostly because people don’t want to be associated with him.

March 14^th is also student protest day.  At ten o clock all over the country all the students all over the country are going to walk out of their classes for seventeen minutes, to stand for the seventeen students that were killed.  It’s the one month anniversary of the Parkland high school shootings.  They have cops stationed all around campuses to make sure none of the students actually leave the campus or else they will be marked absent.  Meanwhile there’s this guy on the radio now on KFI and he denies there is a gun problem.  He says that long guns are responsible for hardly any deaths and more people are killed each month due to blows with a fist than with long guns.  I don’t believe that for a minute.  He also has a screwball view of why pedestrian deaths are on the rise, particularly here in LA County.  He says it’s because cars are so much quieter now that they sneak up on people.  Then he launches into this lecture about how there are no mass school shootings in the Los Angeles area.  “Look at all of the firearms in places like Compton, or Paccoima, or San Bernardino.  How come there are no mass shootings there?”  It’s a totally absurd line of reasoning.   I say “Just give it time”.   I don’t see why we have to just wait and sit around for the mass shooting to occur here so I can say “I told you so”. 

You know it could be that Abigail “needs” those other personalities at this time to help keep her stable and functional.  Otherwise she might commit suicide or something.  They are her emotional anchor.  Of course these personalities “protect her” from people like Kayla who want to research her disease and find out her awful secret, that she killed Andre.  Stephan fears the same thing and therefore wants to protect Abigail whereas his other Vivian just says to throw her in the looney bin and let her rot or let the doctors sort it all out.  Stephan rightly points out that she’d be confessing to the murder of Andre, and even being so closely tied in with the murder as Stephan and Vivian are would shine too bright a spotlight on the Di Mira household.  Of course I have announced before that John Lennon needed “Greenie” as I call him up until the fall of 1973 after doing “Mind Games” and then “Greenie” went bye-bye.  After this John became more psychological unstable and erratic and the insecurity showed up in his song lyrics.

In personal news things are in limbo.  I haven’t called Paul or Judy about the funeral, which still hasn’t happened.  Today started off overcast but now there are puffy clouds in the sky and it’s mostly sunny.  But two more storm fronts are predicted over the next two or three days and it’s doubtful we could have a graveside service because in Riverside they get storms after we do, and sometimes they’re stronger.  I still haven’t gotten a call from my dentist about approving that dental work.  It could be they’ve turned the funding down.  My tooth doesn’t bother me so maybe I should just forget it for now.

President Trump Fires Sec of State Rex Tillerson

Rex Tillerson got fired today.  I heard this on the Stephanie Miller show before seven.  Tillerson received no notice at all.  Under-secretary Goldstein pointed this out and he got fired along with him.  A third guy named Mc Kinsee lost his security standing and got transferred to the 2020 campaign.  That sounds like a Beach Boy album.  Tillerson is the guy who called Trump a fucking moron.  I doubt Trump ever got over that.  They also disagree sharply on implementing foreign policy.  Trump wants to blow up the Iran nuclear treaty while Tillerson wants to uphold it.  Now this Pompeo guy from the CIA is moving into the Secretary of State slot.  He is a hard right conservative who believes in the CIA using torture.  He is a Koch brothers protogee.  In addition to all of this also during the first hour of Stephanie’s show the Republican Intelligence Committee of the House announced that they had concluded their work and that there was no Russian collusion.  It’s funny how they all like to use that word.

Norman Goldman talked about Stormy Daniels.  Donald Trump never signed that non disclosure contract.  Therefore the contract is inoperative because it was never put in force.  Both parties didn’t agree to it so there was no deal.  There was an offer but no acceptance.  If you offer your friend seven thousand dollars for his car and he doesn’t accept it, there is no contract.  But Goldman kept talking about arbitration.  But you can’t “arbitrate” where there IS a contract to begin with.  I doubt if one or both parties were incompetent or the contract stipulated the commission of illegal acts the contract would be enforceable.  Stormy Daniels wants to “tell all” but now the Trump administration says she is legally bound to keep quiet.

If four democratic US senators want to send a letter to try and improve relations with Russia, I’m for that.  The original headline states that four senators wrote a letter to the now former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson calling for arms control.  In a sad commentary on the parlous state of the U.S. media, a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson from four United States Senators dated March 8 calling for opening arms control talks with the Kremlin ASAP is nowhere to be found in mainstream newspapers a day after its release on the Senate home page of one of the authors, Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). Nothing in the New York Times.  Nothing in the Washington Post.  And so, it is left to alternative media to bring to the attention of its readership a major development in domestic politics, a significant change in what its own senior politicians are saying should be done about Russia that was brought to our attention by …..the Russian mainstream media including the agency RIA Novosti, RBK, Tass within hours of initial posting.  What we have is, first, a genuine man bites dog story.  Two of the senators who penned the letter, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), have in recent months been among the most vociferous promoters of the unproven allegations of Trump collusion with the Russians. Now they are putting aside for the moment their attacks on Trump and members of his entourage who dared shake hands or share a joke with a Russian ambassador. They are openly calling upon the Secretary of State to send U.S. personnel to negotiate with Putin’s minions over our survival on this planet.  Does Trump have anything against this?  

Rhapsody in Black featured March of 1959.  They played the original “Bad Boy” and a different version of “Big Boy Pete” (not the Olympics) and “Charlie Brown” and “You’re So Fine” (XERB) and “I’ve Had It” from the KRTH hit parade.  They played “The Cha Cha Cha” by Sam Cooke and an updated version of that “Wine, Wine, Wine” song.  They played the Hank Ballard version of “The Twist” and they played “The Happy Organ”.  There were a lot of obscure songs.  I had it on till four.  I never turned the TV on till after dinner.  We had two pieces of pepperoni pizza for dinner with a green salad.  We had a banana, and not banana pudding for dessert.  I went to the liquor store and got a small thing of instant coffee and vanilla Clippers.  Once again I declined getting rolls, but I still have a dollar left to spend.  

"Free Trade" Is a Pure Corporate Con-job!

Stripped of lofty-sounding abstractions such as comparative advantage, trade boils down to four Darwinian goals:

1. Find foreign markets to absorb excess production, i.e. where excess production can be dumped.

2. Extract foreign resources at low prices.

3. Deny geopolitical rivals access to these resources.

4. Open foreign markets to domestic capital and credit so domestic capital can buy up all the productive assets and resources, a dynamic I explained last week in Forget “Free Trade”–It’s All About Capital Flows.

All the blather about “free trade” is window dressing and propaganda. Nobody believes in risking completely free trade; to do so would be to open the doors to foreign domination of key resources, assets and markets.

Trade is all about securing advantages in a Darwinian struggle to achieve or maintain dominance. As I pointed out back in 2005, the savings accrued by consumers due to opening trade with China were estimated at $100 billion over 27 years (1978 to 2005), while corporate profits expanded by trillions of dollars.

China Trade Surplus: Gusher Profits for U.S. Corporations (August 13, 2005)

In other words, consumers got a nickel of savings while corporations banked a dollar of pure profit as sticker prices barely budged while input costs plummeted. Corporations pocketed the difference, not consumers.

As longtime correspondent Chad D. noted in response to my essay on capital flows, restricting trade may be one of the few ways smaller nations have to avoid their resources and assets being swallowed up by mobile capital flowing out of nations with virtually unlimited credit (the US, the EU, China and Japan).

 After this I read more of “A Brief History of Time”.   I started in chapter four where I left off and I mused over the material.  Einstein thinks like me in that “God doesn’t play dice”.  God doesn’t leave things to chance.  Actually the main thing behind the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is that electrons are just too small for us to correctly measure them.  Chapter five was where the reading really got tough.  They began talking about quarks and “Up” and “Down” and “Spin”.  I still don’t understand “Spin”.  They spoke of quarks as coming in colors when they are too small to register color.  Chapter Six was “Black Holes” and I’m going to have to go more in depth there. 

I had Norman Goldman on today.  This is Monday March 12, 2018 after dinner.  Norman talked about voluntary contract rescission.  This is where both parties could agree not to go ahead with a contract.  Stormy Daniels wants to rescind her contract with Donald Trump and his attornies so is endeavoring to give back the hush money she paid to that guy, and then would be free to tell her story on Sixty Minutes.  Sixty Minutes has already taped the interview and apparently were going to show it last Sunday but didn’t.  Instead they had a thing on immigration and the border patrol.  It was a revealing look at how much mistreatment occurs with people being shipped in hot trucks to this country often forced to conceal drugs in their body cavities.  The drug cartels are apparently never stronger and no matter how many checkpoints they set up north of the border to stop them, they can only stop a small handful of the convoys.  Then they had a thing on the woman head of the department of Education.  She is against all of the basic functions of the Dept of Education and rationalizes why poor school districts should be denied government funding.  She didn’t say so but it appears to be a case of survival of the fittest.

Some people go out of their way to emphasize the Jewishness of Jesus.  For instance he was named and circumcised on the eighth day like a Jew.  He was “redeemed” as the first born with two turtle doves as the Law prescribes.  Jesus said “I came not to abolish but to fulfill the Law”.   Disciples and other teachers called him “Rabi” and some say “the hem of his garment” refers to a special robe that Jewish rabbis wore.   They go so far as to quote the scripture ‘He keeps all of his bones” in the chapter in John when it refers to his crucifixion because his legs weren’t broken like the other two thieves.  He was buried on the same day as his death as the Jewish law prescribes.  He attended the Jewish feasts.   Some say that he was a Nazarite, which meant that he drank no wine, didn’t cut his hair or his beard, only ate fish and not other meats, and also couldn’t touch a dead body.  As such he wasn’t that “Revolutionary” at all.  He also seemed to follow Romans 13 meaning he thought the Roman powers were appointed by God.  And as such he paid them all due deference.  

I watched Days of our Lives.  Eve called off the marriage with Brady because Victor tipped her off the marriage was only so Brady could get control of her money.  Victor loves to make a fool out of Brady every chance he gets.  Clearly Sonny is going to remain CEO of Titan.  Rather than grovel to Eve, which he should have known would do absolutely no good.  You can’t con a con like Eve.  Instead I would have engaged in blame shifting and blamed Victor even though he wasn’t there.  It’s like Victor was setting me up only to make a fool of me.

 I watched the thing on OJ Simpson on FOX.  This is 24 year old news.  It was a disgusting thing to watch.  I guess it could be summed up as “You only kill the ones you love”.  Nicole had the misfortune to be loved more than any of the other women OJ dated including Paula Barbiari.  In 1992 Nicole got a divorce from OJ but that didn’t stop his stalking.  For a period of eight or nine months they didn’t even see each other.  But then at Nicole’s instigation they got back together.  They talked at length of the Newyears Eve bashing of 1989.  They talked of OJ hitting Nicole’s car with a baseball bat in 1986, basically just to show her who was boss.  OJ seemed to be able to dissotiate his anger from his other human interactions.  He was thus able to say “Oh that was no big thing” as though normal people murdered their ex wives and lovers every day.  

Trump Agrees to Talks with Kim Jong Um

President Trump gave his tariff speech on the radio and television today.  KNBC also carried the coverage.  Moe Kelly wanted to stress that it all depends on how the various congressional elections play out on a district by district basis.  This tariff thing may not go over well at all with a lot of them and over a hundred Republicans wrote Trump a letter telling him not to do it.  The other question is how the stock markets feel about in the coming month or two.  I think the market may well be topping out anyhow.  But they’ll blame it on this.  I’ve been wrong before about the market topping out but it has to happen sometime.  Trump is doing this ten percent aluminum tariff and 25% steel tariff “for national security reasons” and because it was one of the chief issues he campaigned on in 2016 so I guess the people want it.  But the media doesn’t back the President on these Tariffs.  But I think Trump deserves a chance to see if they work.  After all, if it would have been good enough for Sanders, it’s good enough for Trump.  Throughout history, it’s something the Republican Party has traditionally supported.  

Kim Jong Um has agreed to talks with South Korea and even President Trump.  Trump agreed to talks.  This is quite a development for sure.  It could be that all of the tough, abrasive talk between the two of them, trading insults, has somehow “worked” to get Kin Jung Um to the negotiating table.  It’s almost as though Trump and Kim are communicating on the “same level” even if it’s an elementary school level of intellect.  My motto is “Hope springs eternal” and if Trump can somehow pull a rabbit out of a hat, more power to him.   All Kim seems to want is a non aggression pact saying we won’t invade North Korea.  Kim even understands that joint military exercises between South Korea and ourselves is necessary for security.

The economy added over three hundred thousand jobs in the past month but the unemployment rate stayed stuck at 4.1%   They were over a week late releasing these economic statistics.  Thee economy is still adding jobs and at a fast rate.  It's the President's hope that this continues.

Daylight Saving's Time will start this weekend.  I think we should go back to the first Sunday in April for this to happen because that way the sun will rise before six making it before seven once we make the change.  The change congress made in 2007 was a major mistake in my opinion.  News articles still say that Daylight Saving's time is "controversial" even after all these elapsed decades.

My view of what you could call “the psychic dimension” (which we refer to as the sixth dimension) stems from an idea I’m not even sure I believe in any more where Ideas are more real than Things.  Pastors have stated that “With God, words and things are the same thing”.  God gets an Idea and he “speaks it into existence” and that’s that.  For the rest of us I’m not sure the Idea is supreme.  For a composer or an artist it might be.  But the word “idea” comes from “imaginary” and that word is based on the word “image”.   In Greek thought the hierarchy first you have the Idea as “that which has the greatest ontological importance”.  It’s necessary (for God) to have the Idea before the Thing itself.  Then in Greek thinking you have the realm of Math and Geometry.  Then you have the Thing itself.  Then fourthly we have the Image of the thing.  In my way of thinking back twelve or so years ago, there were “portals” to the psychic dimension where travel was instantaneous and things were somehow more “real” than they are here on earth.  St Paul spoke of “Being taken up to the Third Heaven”.   (There seems to be no promise in the Bible that WE actually GO to heaven ourselves)  The first heaven is that of the air and sky.  Then there is an intermediate realm called “The heavenlies” and it’s ruled by “The Powers of the Air”, which seems to refer both to angels and demons.  To St Paul this is a dangerous realm.  St Paul also believed that both Angels and Demons were dangerous.  Indeed Demons often “disguised themselves as an Angel of Light”.   I guess we are to assume that the demons spoken of in our previous posting- - are from this realm.  It’s a real that is to a degree “not real” because there is no scientific way of proving its existence.  Supposedly this “realm six” as I referred to it a dozen years ago- - was a realm where understanding was instantaneous and sudden enlightenment occurs.  My problem with this whole idea of a “sixth dimension” is that how we know all of the “images” or “ideas” or whatever- - aren’t just abstractions of our own minds and brains.   The question is whether “the sixth dimension” has existence that is independent of our being there to “believe in it”.   This is where my objectivist training comes in.  If you have to “believe in it” for it to be Real, then it really isn’t real.  (Selah)

The following is a Blast from the Past - June 2007

LLEPS ETH ESREVER Volume Two

All I Really Want to Do (Cher)

Set Me Free (Kinks)

Stranger In Town (Del Shannon)

Go to Pieces (Peter & Gordon)

Saturday Night at the Movies (Drifters)

Maybe I Know (Leslie Gore)

Maybeline (Johnny Rivers)

Viva, Las Vegas (Elvis Presley)

Little Old Lady From Pasadena (Jan & Dean)

When I Get Home (Beatles)

I Get Around (Beach Boys)

Yesterday’s Gone (Chad & Jeremy)

Abigail Beecher (Freddy Cannon)

Glad All Over (Dave Clark V)

Ramrod (Dwane Eddie)

Lonley Bull (Tijuana Brass)

Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash)

Love of the Loved (Beatle rarety)

Dedicated to the One I Love (Cherrels)

Sway With Me (Bobby Rydel)

Hully Gully (Olympics) (?)

Ko Ko Bop (Little Anthony & the Imperials)

Come On, Everybody (Eddie Cochrin)

Big Bopper’s Wedding (The Big Bopper)

Rave On (Buddy Holly)

Rock and Roll is Here to Stay (Danny & the Juniors)

26 is kind of the standard number for very short songs three minutes or just less in average running time. We're allowing up to 77 minutes per CD, which some CD's have. Many of these songs are here and have been kicked off of other compilations and sometimes more than once. This is the first "official" airing for groups such as Bobby Rydel or the Tijuana brass.

Life After Death? It Looks Dubious

Many people speak of Death as "The Other Side".  We have used that designation ourselves.  Not to get complicated or anything but we have spoken in the past of three realms.  There is the realm of Effects, which is natural life as we know it.  Then there is the engram wall.  And then there is the other side of the engram wall.  We speak of life as we know it as having positive mass and positive Time.  We speak of the engram wall as having both positive and negative Infinity at the same time.  And we speak of "The Other Side" as having negative mass and negative Time.  Picture the tangent equation in trig.  You start on the left side of the graph and the line starts out at almost zero and just a tad negative.  Then the line curves downward and reaches negative Infinity.  Then there is a vertical line straight up to positive Infinity.  Then the line curves back down in sort of a spike formation till there is very little mass at the far right.  We have also spoken of this natural realm we live in is the "realm of effects" and the "other side" as the realm of Cause.  People want to be in the realm of Cause, but it's only a pipe dream and I'll tell you why.  Fred Price has spoken as being the leader and not the follower or "the head and not the tail" (as if he were an earthworm)  But later on I got smart and figured it out.  And I came up with the following scenario.  "God" is the realm of pure Cause, and God is not "Affected" by anything, and I mean anything.  This means you can forget about prayer.  Then there is the real of pure Effect.  This is the realm of inanimate objects.  They have no Will of their own to be the "cause" of anything.  Then there is the realm of the Living.  Basically the Rich live in the realm of Cause because they have the power to do it.  The rest of us peons seem to be much more in the realm of Effects because we are in a "reactive" world (hence the "reactive mind")  We respond and react to everything and make adjustments trying to keep our head above water.  The problem of course is that that which we regard as the Soul or Self- - may be just a gigantic perceptual illusion.  You can't weigh the soul or track its progress after death.  Some have said that the Soul has Negative Mass, meaning if you weigh a body after it dies, it actually gets heavier.  This is a bit of intuitive logic theologians have been beguiled with by years.  Many say that if you pick up a living person it's not the same as "dead weight", which is heavier.  Some of you might ask me "Well then is there no realm where Cause follows Effect?"   Actually there is and we've all seen it.  It's running the movie film backwards.  So you see people leap out of the swimming pool and back on to the high diving board.  Or you see an expensive vase reassemble itself and leap back up on the table.  In this case what's "causing" these strange events is that Cause is indeed Following the Affects.  Things are being affected by a Cause which hasn't occurred yet.  Think about it.

So it would seem that once you die- - that's it.  There is no consciousness.  This is hard to imagine for us since we have never "experianced" not being there, not being conscious of anything, not existing.  Now Pastor Bob Howland came up with a theory.  When "The Age to Come" arrives- - - millions if not billions of years from now when the Universe has wound down- - - that God "remembers" us.  He remembers every milicule we were made of and he "re-creates" us.  Hopefully with all of our biologically programmed memories intact (though the pastor was vague about this)  Then since we have the same brain and DNA as we do now our consciousness will go on as before and we will pick up our lives right where we left off.  But there are some pastors out there while they also agree that there is no life after death per se, will also say that Demons are Immortal.  Of course you're back to the same problem.  Where do Demons come from and what are they made of?  Demons can even have reincarnation memories, so that if you have a reincarnation memory it's a Demonic memory.  This brings us to the saga of Abigail on Days of our Lives.  It always seems to be the Evil personality that is the dominent one.  The demonic personality remembers and knows all about the host body, but the natural soul seems to be unaware of the Demon.  Since the host body has all of the DNA and brain information, the demon is able to access all of your memories.  But time for you will black out when the demon takes over.  Anyhow this is a popular theory among movie producers.  Of course others more enlightened would just say that your subconscious brain produces these "other personalities" and so it's really just something wrong with your brain.  This theory makes the most sense.

Me and my Mom are different.  It's not as if my Mom has "doubts" about the afterlife.  She doesn't worry about it.  It's not that she has doubts about Religion.  She just doesn't think about it at all and couldn't understand it if she did.  To her the whole subject is irrelivant.  The funeral has been delayed and I'm waiting for the phone call as to when it will be.  We know it will be in Riverside.  The following took place Tuesday morning.

I called Judy at a quarter to nine but she and Paul were talking to an insurance agent.  Nora came by but then left and I called up Judy’s again and the phone kept ringing.  I had told Judy for Paul to pick me up at any time.  I went and sat in the front room for some time.  At 9:25 I left and had a smoke and the phone was ringing when I got back here.  Nora had come and gone.  She gave me another thick bedspread.  Paul was out front.  It was now past nine thirty.  We got to Paul’s and Elizabeth was working in the kitchen and Judy had speaker phone and was on the computer.  Elizabeth greeted me.  The house looked “lived in” as if nothing had been straightened up in a long time.  The stuff with Mom’s books and photos really didn’t take that much space.  But that is a humungus desk Paul has now that takes up a lot of space.  Mom didn’t have many photos of us kids like in the ‘fifties or early ‘sixties I was expecting.  There were a lot of photos of relatives I didn’t know.  There was one of the French family and one of Daisy and her second husband, Mr. Pennoch.  There were photos of Paul’s graduation from Fuller Bible School.  There were some shots of the fiftieth anniversary celebration.  There was a whole photo album of the four primary houses that Mom had invested in.  The pictures were badly faded in their color and the contrast was way high.  I knew we had to rush the morning if I was going to make it back in time for lunch.  I looked over Mom’s books and took three of them.  These are “Jesus – A Revolutionary Biography” and “A Brief History of Time” and I claimed back “The Internet for Dummies”.  I got back here in ample time for lunch.  

Waiting for it to all Come Together

This is Wednesday March 7, 2018.  More so than usual we’ve been hearing in the left wing media that the month of March is going to be the major turning point in the Trump administration we’ve all been waiting for when massive indictments come down from Muller and everybody has to resign including President Trump himself.  The media has been saying that the Trump administration is in chaos ever since Trump increased the terrifs on aluminum and steel late last week.  Many think Trump is a flip-flopper because after meeting with the democrats in congress on gun legislation the next day he turns around and says he loves the NRA and how none of that legislation that was just talked about will get done.  Apparently Senator Mitch Mc Connell had stated that there will be no gun legislation but the next item on the agenda is the repeal of the Dodd-Frank law, which pertains to banking and consumer protections.  We’ve also heard that the interior department is reversing their position on Big Game trophies such as bring in a moose’s head or something.  The latest news is that Trump’s economic advisor Koehn or however you spell it- - has resigned over the terriffs issue.  Meanwhile President Trump says there is nothing wrong with his administration.  He as much says he thrives on the “disagreements” or what the rest of the media just calls general chaos. 

Here’s a blast from the past.  While Tom Hartman’s prediction of “The Stock Market Crash of 2016” is intriguing, it plays right into the hands of far right nuts like Judy and Glen Beck, who have maintained all along that the whole purpose of Obama’s economic policy is “to crash the economy big time, so that the American people rise up and demand a radical change in the way our government does business”.  While I think that wouldn’t be a bad idea myself- - - and at some point we are as a nation going to make radical (meaning “root”) economic changes - - - I guess this scenario is such a “pipe dream” in its own sense, it will never happen. “They” won’t allow it to happen.  (Now is this passage prophetic or not?  From November of 2013.

One thing about the Gospel stories in the Bible is that the final week of Jesus’ life is just chocked with irregularities.   First the Hosanah scene coming into Jerusalem.  The crowd had never been allowed to be so vocal before.  This was to fulfill scripture.  Then there is the cleansing of the Temple without Jesus having laid hands on him by the authorities.  This was to fulfill scripture.  Then there is the crowd turning against him on Good Friday and all of the disciples fleeing from him on Thursday night.  This was to fulfill scripture.  The question arises then if there were no disciples around to report it, how is it we get such detailed information about events, especially Jesus’ rather long dissertation with Pilate.   Jesus was betrayed by Judas for thirty pieces of silver.  This was to fulfill scripture.  The money was cast to the “potter’s field” for the poor, to fulfill scripture.  Jesus suggested that two disciples take swords with them.  This was to fulfill scripture.  His garments were divided and cast lots for.  This was to fulfill scripture.  The question arises here is why in the world Roman soldiers would want a robe badly stained with the blood of a victim?  But the most amazing thing of all couldn’t be predicted.  This was Jesus himself deciding on “suicide by Roman soldier”.   He even made an institution of it before it happened with the bread and the wine at the Last Supper.   In fact the gospels contain predictions of Jesus that he’ll die just as it happened to the disciples, but they paid no attention to it.   You have a sentence carried out on the same day that the verdict was given out.  This is illegal under Jewish law, but it happened to fulfill scripture.  Another thing that is “unusual” is that Jesus would be considered an enemy of Rome at all.  He had bent over backwards to preach submission to the Roman Government.  But once again we have this line about how the Jews had no law to put a man to death anymore.  This isn’t even true because James was convicted by the Sanhedrin and sentenced to be stoned.  The adulterous woman was sentenced to be stoned.   All four gospels mention Barrabus, which is an odd thing.  Because supposedly Judas and the troops had to catch Jesus by surprise when he was alone, so that a riot wouldn’t break out.  But the people were willing to riot to save Barrabus.  For scripture says “When Pilate saw that a riot was about to break out, he let the crowd have its way”.   And we are expected to believe scripture when he says the crowd shouted “We have no king but Caesar” when they had just freed a revolutionary who killed a man in a riot.  Clearly when you read the gospels you have to make a lot of mental leaps in logic for the thing to make sense. 

After “Wheel” it was “Lucifer”.   Abel is just as guilty of murder according to this story as Cain because Cain and Abel got into a fight and Abel won.  Abel was thus the first person to descend into hell and he relives over and over again the nightmare of Cain killing him.  Cain was cursed with wandering the earth and immortality.  He can’t die.  But then by a medical procedure Abel occupied the body of a woman.  I went to bed a little after nine.  I slept well I guess.  The tooth pain went away.   I still haven’t received any phone calls from the dentist’s office.  

 I watched Days of our Lives and today Abigail was forgetting “missing pieces” of her life when she was someone else and she knows that something is wrong.  In that other area, Gabriel, Eli, Lani and J J should swap lovers because of that paternity thing with Lani and Eli.  Clearly Eli is still a liar and a coward for not telling Gabriel that he is the father of Lani’s baby.  Gabriel said if she caught Eli telling one more lie that would end their relationship.  Before this it was the Gary and Shannon show with stand-ins.  Nothing much happened. 

Clearly exhaustive phrase search in Blogger is defective.  I’m proven that with a repeatable experiment.  I was predicting as far back of November of 2013 that “The Crash of 2016” is a Thom Hartman pipe dream.  This turned out to be very correct.  There are still no solid signs that the economy is weakening.  Perhaps there will be a crash in 2019 but by then of course the republicans will have won yet another round of national and local elections.  Right now I have “The Sultans of Swing” in that new slot that opened up on our compilation update.  I guess the problem is that I can’t trust Blogger to give me proper feedback.  

The Grass Is Greener in Other Countries

As Bon Scott might say, “Cuba ain’t a bad place to be”.  Of course you know they have good medical schools there and education and medical care are both free.  Sixty percent of the students in medical schools are women.  96% of the power was soon back from Hurricane Maria, as opposed to Puerto Rico, which is still having problems six months later.  Thom Hartman spent time in Cuba and the people are friendly and speak English and like the American people.  You’ve heard that one before.  They don’t sensor the press there and you can get CNN and other American outlets.  Hartman had no problem encrypting text to send to America.  He says it was harder to do that in an Orlando airport than it was in Cuba.  He had one lady caller who disputed what he said saying the people don’t have enough to eat.  Most of the people own their own homes in Cuba unlike here, where almost half of the people rest.  (I thought over half rented)  It would seem the people in Cuba are better off in a lot of ways and the crime rate is low, yet you don’t see a lot of police presence, according to Hartman.  It would appear that President Obama was wise in wanting to ease relations with Cuba and now Trump wants to reverse all of that.

Sixty Minutes had a thing on German prisons.  There is less crime in Germany and the prison sentences are not only shorter but they are more pleasurably sent.  They don’t have gang or racial warfare and they don’t have either crooked or sadistic guards.  All of the guards are well versed in counseling and sensitivity to each person’s needs.  They have basket weaving and crochet as well as useful occupations.  The prisoners spend the majority of their time outside enjoying the fresh air and sunshine.  But their cells are decorated however they want to and get this.  They have the key to their own cells.  That’s what they said.  People from Pennsylvania have gone over there to look at their prisons in Germany and see if they can borrow any of their innovations.  Not likely.  After this they had a segment on a prisoner who not only wrote his own legal briefs to get a release, but petitioned the Supreme Court and they accepted his case.  Then he went to law school in Washington and easily passed the bar.  The biggest hurdle of all was begging a license to practice with a felony on his record.  I don’t know how he did that.

I have accused the Christian Church of lying to us all these centuries.  My theories on how the Christian Church got going may not be correct.  I wasn't there.  There are certainly a lot of puzzle pieces missing.  All I can say is that both Justin Martyr and St Paul refer to it as "The Gospel" singular.  There was no conception in the mind of Justin of four gospels.  They say he quoted from Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  These are the synoptic gospels meaning they in so many cases appear to be working off the same set of documents.  Their choice of incidents to cover is very similar.  None of the three gospels seems interested about what Jesus did and said prior to the age of thirty.  Only the last three years appear to count.  All three agree on a lot of fundamental principles.  Interestingly the only areas where they divert significantly is in the birth stories and also Jesus' post death ressurection.  Here a lot of original material is added.  One source on the internet argued that when St Paul referrs to the resurrection he is refering not to coming back to life from physical death, as we think of it in English, but rather an "inner awakening".  In other words "You have Eternal Life if you think you do".  You have it by Faith.  Justin Martyr speaks of "The resurrection and the Life being a "spiritual" thing.  There is no talk of tombs or "rolling away the stone".   We could pick up on the hint that at one time there was just one gospel - - or story.  People speak of the gospel writers as four historians each going back to do their own research.  This doesn't appear to be the case.  Clearly there was an established tradition in the time of Justin Martyr around 150 AD.  But at this time we didn't have the gospel names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  This is just something to think about.

Today the “Kicking Over the Bar” compilation was re-released in the Federation just to make one change.  We’re dropping “How do you Sleep at Night’ and replacing it with "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits as you can see.   This album was so close to the album that preceded it and followed it there wasn’t much time for a lot of sales.   But this album “Has finally made the bar”.  Doubts were expressed about these songs at the time.  Mal Evans and many others didn’t like “How do you Sleep” on a rock compilation because it foments Beatle disunity as some say “No Words for my Love” which is a Paul song trashing John, some say.   

KICKING THE BAR OVER  re-released March 5th.

Make It (Aerosmith)

My City Was Gone (Pretenders)

Who Can It Be Now?  (Men at Work)

I’m the Greatest (Lennon demo recording)

Fools In Love (Joe Jackson)

Rock This Joint (Stray Cats)

In Cars (Gary Newman)

Girl’s School  (Mc Cartney and Wings)

Goody Two Shoes (Adam Ant)

Brand New Key (Melanie)

Some Girls (Rolling Stones)

The Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits)

Rock Show (Wings demo recording)
To Live Is To Die  (Metallica)

The front photo is of an old man like Mike Pence trying to jump the high jump and kicking the bar off the holder and both falling into the sawdust.  The liner notes are similar reflections as this paragraph.  Of course the title listings are on the back.   These song elections aren’t considered canonized yet.  They haven’t officially met the bar.  And when they do it will be on an all rock compilation.   But it won’t be this album – yet.  We decided that political tracks suck and they get boring but we kept liner notes references.  We decided to substitute one song and substitute "How Do You Sleep" and this is being typed just after six on October 25th.