The Element of the Demonic

Democracy is on the line just like Stephanie and the Mooks say.   2020 is the year we either save or lose our democracy.   Democracy and fair voting seem to be completely alien terms to President Trump, just as law and justice are.   He got rid of Vitman and his twin brother and also Sonland.  He pardons the law breakers and he disparages honorable people who do things on principle like Romney.  People are blinded by the glair of Trump’s bigotry because it appeals to the inner ID of some of them.  Some people are genuinely deluded.   Yesterday for the first time in a long time that there might be an element of the demonic in president Trump.  I am hesident now to raise the possibility of the demonic element because it implies a demonic “realm”, and then the question also arises of a “supernatural” element.   I see this as the coward’s way out of a very human failing, that people can be genuinely fooled and deluded on their own, out of the disfunction of their own minds, with no necessity of the element of the demonic.  Ruth Montgomery used to talk about “Walk ins” back in the ‘eighties, where people just took over other people’s lives.  These “souls” that took over weren’t necessarily demonic or supernatural, at least as far as my understanding is concerned.  Democrats said for months that Donald Trump had no intention of assuming the office of President even if he won.  They said he was doing it just for the publicity.  It could be that the “old Trump” they knew had no ambition that way.  He was content just to be a gad fly and puntster.   He had his women and his money after all to keep him warm at night.  But for those who was the situation from the point of view of the book of Revelation- - - are, or were, looking for some Messiah figure to take over and run the world.  We have spoken of dominion theology where this idea is front and center.  Nobody is talking about any antichrist figure now, and fundamentalists haven’t raised the issue for a long time.  The further aspect of my conspiracy theory is that some of THEM are ALSO “walk ins” or perhaps out and out demonic.  It’s a lot easier to get a job done if you’ve greased the skids a little with some “help from the inside” or maybe that’s “outside”.  Outside the natural realm.  But like I say the question arises, where does this “outside realm” or “supernatural realm” fall in as far as being an original part of Creation otherwise known as the Big Bang.  I had this all mapped out in my mind but this supernatural hocus pocus doesn’t seem to fit in with any of it.  We see demons as people who are at least a little bit insane and highly charismatic with a “demonic” aura about them.  But they don’t necessarily have to be hanging on the slim edge of sanity or talking gibberish or even backwards or vomiting up pea soup every few minutes.  The Exorcist should not be our model.  These people can and do appear perfectly normal.  On the soap opera I watch, Days of our Lives, you have just two, two people who are not who they appear to be.  If you have two people in the right sensitive position they are in a place where they can do a lot of damage they could not otherwise possibly cause.   Gina and Stephano occupied other bodies and we are supposed to assume that “Dr Rolf” has the technology to do that.  Maybe Satan has the technology to pull it off.  Insert well placed people in key positions of influence.  Then logically you have to assume a couple of other things.  That Satan has “a master plan” and the ability, we know not how, to actually pull it off.   When it comes to Born Again Christianity I will quote you the proverb, “You shall know the tree by its fruit”.  You don’t see the fruit of a tree for years and years.  Yet the seeds of the bad fruit were always there.  We just didn’t see it.  (Selah)

Question:  Will the meek really inheret the earth?  This raises all sorts of questions.
Below we discuss "But what kind of a heavenly body will we have?

We used to talk ages ago about the Sea of Green, which was sort of a demonic realm where thoughts were things and you could “see” people’s auras, their “life force”.  This “life force” or soul or whatever, would not be something that you can measure but rather something that continually eludes science as far as pinning it down to any lab experiment.  This demonic realm does not fit into my multi fifth dimensional model of the Big Bang, because no matter how many Universes were created under this model, they all have a common Architect or creator.    Many people believe there is traditional physicality in Heaven.  The book of Revelation implies this.  Walter Martin believed that Jesus was in his newly resurrected physical body when he appeared to his disciples on Easter night.  It was a body of flash and bone.  According to Walter Martin “Flesh and blood cannot inheret the kingdom of heaven, but flesh and bone can”.   We talked a month or so ago about a possible sixth dimensional universe that could be divided into three demonsions of one “space” and three dimensions of another “space” without overlapping any of the dimensions.   If you had just five dimensions these realms would overlap on one dimension like a line.  If you had just four dimensions they would overlap in two dimensions like a giant plane.   Psychics are always talking about “planes” after all.   But if you had merely a three dimensional body, to take Walter Martin literally at this point, then you could only occupy three dimensions at once, and not six.  That would be impossible.  It would be like a two dimensional photograph of yourself occupying the space in a whole room.  Walter says that Jesus “did not go through walls” when he appeared to his disciples but rather he “switched dimensions on them”.    Could a plane be what they call a “portal” in Science Fiction?  Was Jesus near such a “portal” or did he have the ability to generate a portal wherever he wanted to?  These are questions to think about. 

The New Hampshire Primary

It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to get numbers on New Hampshire.  Last night they broke in at eight but said little.  Then they had the Conner’s on.   In the early results Bernie was the clear winner and Budagieg and Klovichar were tied for second and third.  But Budajieg advanced and Klovichar fell back.  The final results were Bernie Sanders 25% and Budagieg was 24%.  So Sanders was denied a decisive victory like he had four years ago.  Any Klovichar was in a respectable third at nineteen percent.   Elizabeth Warren was in at nine and something percent and Biden came in fifty place at eight percent.   He didn’t stick around to see the disaster but headed for South Carolina where the Blacks will presumable bail him out.  Nevada has its caucus in February 22^nd and South Carolina votes on February 29^th, only a few days before super Tuesday, which is on March third, which will give us a much clearer picture as to the way things will shape up.  It could be that Klovichar and Budagieg will combine to give a solid moderate vote, as the agrigage progressive vote of Warren and Sanders appears to be fading.  Last night they had the BBC covering the race but they wouldn’t give us hard numbers at six PM but instead flapped their lips in commentary.   They wouldn’t cover live speeches and I’m still trying to get Sanders’ speech, or even Pete’s speech.   Blacks don’t like Pete because of his mayoral record in firing a Black police chief and also because of the gay thing.  Blacks go to church, after all and still have “traditional American values” in this one area.  They’re social conservatives.  We really do need to listen to Bernie Sanders’ speech like we did in 2016, because that’s how he got so popular to begin with.  By far Bernie has the best "roots" of protest demonstrations going back to the sixties.  He has the credentials and the experiance.  There are times when you need to draw the battle lines clearly and spell them out to the American public.   I think once he is the nominee his momentum will only build.   Nobody listens to what the President says anyhow so I'm not worried on that count.  People know what Bernie means when he says that he's a democratic socialist.  He beat Donald Trump by more than Hillary did and we need to insure that Bernie still has the pulling power that he did back then.  He needs to remind us that he intends to go after the drug and insurance companies and break up the big Wall Street banks. 

Juaquin Phoenix kind of stole my thunder the other night when he began talking about exploitation of lesser groups of human beings and the exploitation of animals.   There are two things in my recent Jesus story that I report that Jesus never actually did.  One was to participate in a sabbath service and the other was to make a speech warning of exploitation of lesser groups of human beings and the exploitation of animals.  Nowhere in the Bible does it say Jesus did either of these things.  The closert we have is the parable of the good Sameritan, where rendering aid to the injured is praised.  Some say that Jesus was pro gay and pro abortion and anti capital punishment.  We have no basis to believe Jesus was any of these things.  But this exploitation by the strong over the weak seems an omission that a lot of us can't get past.  The idea of being a victim or being occupied militarily is simply not a concept that Jesus related to.   In terns of drinking milk or consuming dairy products, people thinking of becoming a vegetarian are going to lean on dairy products and eggs for the needed protien.  To give up in one fell swoop, meat, eggs and dairy products is simply a bridge too far.  But gradually with all of this fake plant based meat out there, the market will decide who wins in the end.  It could be that it may be no more morally fashionable to eat meat in fifty years than it is to smoke cigarettes now.  Only time will tell.  

Four Topics

“Doctor” Trump has now announced that the Corona virus will be gone by April because the weather gets warmer then and the virus can’t survive.  That’s a pretty big leap of faith.  But for now 97 people were killed by the virus in the past few days and now this virus is more deadly than the SARS virus that struck in 2002.  People at March Air Force base have been quarenined the last two weeks and no cases have shown up and they are scheduled to be released today after a final physician’s exam.  The virus has been the occasion for new regulations of governments around the world as far as procedure for quarantining is concerned.  We seem to be doing a pretty good job of keeping  the virus in check in this country and we’re pretty virus free here.  Even in the entire  country there are very few virus outbreaks, under twenty.  It could always get worse but maybe not.  

According to the Thom Hartman school of economics if they suddenly cut the payroll tax to zero and you owed nothing in either FICA or wages, that employers would cut your salary by that much.  So if you worked for Mc Donald’s for twelve dollars an hour they might but it to nine or something.  Hartman says it’s all a question of what the employee is willing to work for.   I submit rather that it’s all how much am employer is willing to pay you.  If you regularly had your lawn mowed for twenty dollars each week you wouldn’t cut it to seventeen simply because your taxes went down by fifteen percent.  I’ve done enough accounting to know that it’s gross pay that counts.  This is your salary expense.   So I actually agree with Norquist of all people.  But there was this guy with the southern twang who called the show.  And he said even if what Hartman claimed were true, there would be more money for the employer to work with and if he cut your pay he’d go out and create more job positions perhaps by expanding his hours or something, so his business could make more money.  That southern guy was right.   But let me explain where Thom Hartman may have gotten his idea.  During the Clinton administration we were on an economic up cycle.  The "market" for wages was going up as it does as an up cycle advances.  Clinton took advantage of this up cycle when he raised taxes to bring more money into the treasury.   There was a trend but the causal link isn't what Hartman thought it was.  Likewise during the early years of the "W" administration in the early two thousands, from mid 2001 in fact, we were into a "down" economic cycle.  Cutting taxes did no good because we were in a pre-set economic down cycle.  Who is to say what causes these  cycles?  Maybe it's astrology.  At any rate it appeared to Tom that people were willing to work for less because their taxes were being cut.  I will say that tax cuts benefit the rich a whole lot more because we're talking about usually a larger percentage cut for the rich and a whole lot more cash. 

Joe wanted to watch the entire academy awards.  Otherwise I would have had more news on.  I completely missed Sixty Minutes.   The academy awards began promptly at five with a Black woman singing “Will You Be My Neighbor?”   There appeared to be no growing trend for one particular Best Picture.  They wanted to go out of their way to honor women.  The conducter who did all of the movie scores for us was a woman.  Kobe Bryant’s name was mentioned.  The show lasted till just past eight thirty.   Juaquin Phoenix gave a long speech on the exploitation of lower classes of people and also the exploitation of dairy cows.   The other last two awards also took a lot of time.  Jane Fonda put in an appearance wearing some “old lady” wig.   Jane Fonda is still actively involved in protests.  I didn’t have reception problems with any television station yesterday.   That’s an accomplishment. There was no official host.  “1917” won for overall sound and also cinemicrography.  “Paracite” is a Korean language movie and it scored Best Picture as well as best foreign film.  Juaquin Phoenix was best actor or “Joker”.   The best director was for “Paracite”.     The best score was for “Joker”.   Elton John got the best song for Rocket Man.  “1917” won for best visual effects.  Sar Wars didn’t win anything.  The best actress was the one who did the Judy Garland movie, who didn’t even look like her. 

The debate came on right at five.  There was a lot of unity with the democratic candidates expressing support for each other when needed.  Joe Biden kept using the pronoun “I” a lot saying everything legislatively that he personally got accomplished.  Yang was among them and he wants to give Blacks a thousand dollars as reperations.  Stires was there and he was the most progressively outspoken defending Blacks and attacking Trump and he too talked about reperations for Black people because they have only a tenth of the household wealth of white people.  Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders held their own.  Amy Clovichar talked about how poor her upbringing was and she’s one of the few non millionaires up there.   Budajudge wasn’t very impressive, and one of these days I’ll spell his name right.  I watched the debate on KABC till ten after seven and  for their second break I went out and smoked and got my medication.  Then I turned on Two and a Half Men briefly.  I switched back and Stires was just wrapping up his summation statement and he was the last one.  It was seven thirty.  Then in time I watched CSI Miami till nine.  Joe said turn off the TV but I was already half asleep.

The Butter Churn and the Coffee Grinder

Brother Bart made it here for Bible Study.  It was mostly old ladies in wheel chairs.  We sang a few hymns and Antwenette our prayer warrior opened with a prayer.  Bart talked about three stories.  The first was called “Pardoned” the second was called “Cool as a Cucumber” and the third was called “The Butter Churn and the Coffee Grinder”.   The first story was about a man that was going to be hanged for stealing Federal mail in 1831.   The man refused the pardon, seemingly on the moral principle of it.  I propose a new beattitude.  "Blessed is the man who refuses a pardon.  For he shall go down to his grave with a clear conscience.    Cucumbers really are ten degrees cooler on the inside than they are on the outside.   Coffee grinders are only good if you've got good coffee beans to begin with.  You know, hand raised by Juan Valdez that are cultivated and nurtured with care and then properly cured for peak flavor.  You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, which is what the story would have you believe.   You don't take a process in God's tootelage that was meant for another person and try to apply it to yourself.    As to the butter churn, this is to explain the whippings and beatings some of us appear to get from God.  Maybe a little bit of whipping will give you whipped cream, if you put sugar and vanilla flavoring in it to make it taste good.  But this story indicates that too much whipping (from God) can be self-defeating.  In my oppinion. The study ran till about twenty after three.  (It got a late start)  I was the first to leave.  I went for a smoke and to watch the ABC network news.   We had a hot dog with all of the trimmings for dinner including coleslaw.  Then I got in line for seconds along with Patty, but the line wasn’t moving.  Then a lady with extra plates came and gave me a whole new plate so I got to the table ahead of Patty. 

At 6:03 already President Trump was in the Capitol building shaking hands.  He decided to be on time.  The speech itself lasted an hour and twenty minutes.  It began at six after six and went to about 7:26.  The speech would be a “ten” given the caviat that any of it is true.  I know a lot of things weren’t true, but the media pointed very few things out.  The one was that we’ve been in a steady economic recovery since mid 2009 but you’d think from listening to the president that we only had a good economy after he took office.  His administration has seen the lowest average unemployment of any presidential administration in history.  And in this he may be correct.  I don’t know about Calvin Coolege.  He got the loudest applause when he talked about deporting immigrants at the border and kicking people off food stamps and welfare.  He got quitter applause when he talked about how economically well the lower classes are doing now.  I don’t believe the increase in the lower fifty percent income salaries is greater than for the one percent.  He bragged about so much you lost track of it.  He had so many guests.  It was like a reality show, like an episode of Oprah Winfrey.  He had Rush Limbaugh on and mentioned his virtual death sentence with his lung cancer.  He gave him the medal of freedom award.  It took him a long time to get to Mideast affairs.  He ended his speech with some lofty lines.  He spoke of health care as though he were all for it.  He spoke of private school vouchers as a good thing and “failed government schools” as something children should seek to avoid.  The democratic response was weak.  It was already underway when I got back from my cigarette.  Coverage ended right at eight.  Then I had  KTLA on.  I guess it was an episode of the Flash.  It was one of these shows where they have multiple universes and there is massive death.   I started to doze off and roused at 9:07 and then went to bed.   Trump spoke of freedom of religion. . 

They broke in at two minutes to two to talk about the Iowa caucus results they had been having trouble with compiling.  It was a computer coding error in an application.  The results are that Budajudge came in first at 27% and Bernie Sanders was close behind at 25%.  Then there was Elizabeth Warren in at eighteen and Joe Biden coming in fourth at sixteen.  And finally we have Amy Clovichar in at thirteen percent, with 62% of the votes counted.   All Monday night I kept checking the TV stations to see is any votes were in and there weren’t.  The demise of Joe Biden is something I’m making note of.  Because I had thought of voting for Joe Biden but clearly the voters have indicated he isn’t as electable as we all thought.   [late note]   The democratic debate is tonight in New Hampshire with seven candidates.   Budajudge is still first by a small margin and Sanders is in at second in New Hampshire as well as Iowa.  Now we know who the chief leaders in the race are.  

.   Augustine came to the table and said he would finally get to our room this morning.   It wasn’t that much later after that that Augustine showed up in the room while I was out smoking and was actually fixing the closet pole.  He needed a new pole beause he said that the other one was too short.  After he finished he mentioned the bag of clothes.  I fished out a plaid jacket thing and also a tan short but I threw in the frayed tan long sleeped heavy shirt.  I told the housekeeper to take it today but she didn’t.  Augustine mentioned the emergence of bugs in the bed, but the housekeeper didn’t mention it.  I was afraid she would.  [slight break in sentence flow].  I was worried that I might have a dental appointment today but I waited till after nine when the dentist’s office was open and then I called Autumn and asked her if my authorization had come through.  She said that it would be another two weeks.  They have been running a day ahead of schedule in their cleaning schedule.  Our housekeeper showed up about 9:25 and said right off that she’d be taking a break.  I came back later and she was still in the room so I went and sat in the big room.   Our black and white kitty has been having sex repeatedly with that ugly brown cat.  At one point Augustine ran them both off with a broom handle when they were copulating in the fenced in area.  Now the kitty will be history because they won’t allow a kitten litter around here.  We know that from experience.  I returned a little before lunch and he housekeeper put a thin bedspread on my bed.  I checked and the blanket is also thinner.  That’s what I need the blue blanket for.

Kansas City Chiefs beat the '49ers 31 to 20

I turned it to FOX TV at a quarter to three.  Right off the bat I was having antenna reception problems and finally got back where I started.  The one change I made some of the ting was to extend one of the ears out into the room, which seemed to help.  Then sang “America the Beautiful” and the Star Spangled Banner and had a lengthly coin toss.  San Francisco was the visiting team and picked tails and won and chose to defer until the second half.   The kick-off wasn’t till nearly a quarter to four.  It’s never been later.  It wasn’t much time at all before it was time for dinner.  But I went out to smoke.  That ugly brownish cat has been playing cat and mouse games with our black and white kitty.   I heard at the dinner table that San Francisco scored three points.  Then Kansas City scored seven.  Then they scored three more making it ten to three Chiefs.  Then San Francisco went on a scoring spree and scored two touchdowns making it seventeen to ten.  It was ten to ten at halftime.  I went out to smoke and returned just as Pepsi was making the halftime announcement.  It was a good half time show with Jennifer Lopez.  The thing is they had fragments of so many songs.   San Francisco’s scoring stopped at twenty.  I think at that point it was 20 to 17.   Anyhow I went out not too long before the end of the game and the ‘49ers led by three.  But when I returned Kansas City scored two more touchdowns and that was enough to win the game by eleven points and definitely beat the point spread.  The game ended at ten after seven but it kind of had a long, drawn-out ending.   I would have lost money big time if I had gambled beause I was very sure the ‘49ers were going to win. 

I went for medication.  The middle segment of Sixty Minutes was that “kook” and I think I will call this ecologist a kook.  He wants to chop down trees in Siberia and resurrect the wooly mammoth because they need to tread down the ground harder to bring back the perma-frost.  The thing wrong with Siberia now is that the perma-frost is melting and all of that carbon is being liberated into the atmosphere by de-thawing microbes.   We heed to chop down all the trees and “restore Syberia to its former appearance ten thousand years ago”.   I had no idea that Siberia was getting so warm.  This scientist loves the climate but his son would rather be a mathematician further south.  But he wants his son to continue his work.  After this there was an author of novels for teenagers, who has been around since 2008 or so.  After this I dozed off.  Then Joe suggested I turn off the TV at twenty after eight.  But instead I turned down the volume and went outside to think about what I was now going to do with the evening.

This final vote delay for impeachment is baffeling.   It's like Trump wants to see himself as a victim while making his state of the union address.  I hear he's going to talk about how great the economy is.  But as they said today, they've used up their tool box of stimulants to the economy already.  They've cut interest rates to the floor and we are running record budget deficits.  Trump wants it so the democrats have nowhere to turn when the economy finally heads downward, which it will invariably.  This March makes the end of year eleven that we've been in a bull market.  Now we hear that is Sanders wins in the caucus that the stock market indexes will plunge downward.   I had on the Kelly Clarkson show.  They preempted that to cover the vote of the calling of witnesses in congress.   This morning on Chris Matthews they are playing episodes from earlier in the week where reports were rampant that Mitch Mc Connell did NOT have the votes to block witnesses.  This is a strange one.  There is another rumor that the final impeachment vote would not be till Wednesday.  This one was borne out as fact.  They voted NOT to call any witnesses by a vote of 51 to 49, and for a while it was 50 to 49.   Chuck Schumer says it was a sad day in America.  The logical thing to do now would be immediately vote to acquit, which is what they want to do anyhow.  For some inexplicable reason though, they are holding off till Wednesday after the State of the Union and after the Iowa caucus.  I’m baffled.  I’m more baffled that Eye Witness news did not even cover the store as their lead on the three o clock news. 

I refer to God now as "The Lord of this world".   This used to be a title for Satan but that was back when Christians wanted the second coming and the Kingdom of heaven to descend upon earth and we would finally have peace and brotherhood and all that good stuff.   It used to be if you didn't like Christianity all you had to do was leave the Church.  Now everything is Christian.   Trump  is supposedly a Christian and the leader to  whom Church leaders look for guidance and inspiration.  Back when I studied the Bible "The man on the white horse" was Satan, in the four horsemen of the apoocralipse.  Now this man on the white horse is Jesus.  Jesus doesn't do anything these days except sit in heaven on the right hand of God the Father.  But when he swings into action it will be to make war with "The nations" maybe the UN or something, I don't know.  You're supposed to talk about the Holy Spirit now.  It's all about what the Holy Spirit is doing and not Jesus.  It used to be Big Money was seen as an evil in the world economy.  Now they all worship Big Money.  The only difference between the God I talk about as "the lord of this world" than nature worship or being a wiccan or something, is that now God has Jesus Christ up there who has been given "all power", which he delegated to the Church, which means the Christian media, which means the Republicans and President Trump.  If you're looking for "something else" don't turn to Neil Savedra for help.  He says we shouldn't even think about anything else besides the status quo of right now.  (Selah)  In other words John Lennon's words are true "There ain't no Jesus gona come from the sky.  Now that I found out I know I can cry".

Killing the Lead Story

If there is one thing unusual about this past week it’s rare to find a pre-superbowl week where there has been so little mention of the Super Bowl.   It’s the lead story that’s gotten buried.  We had the impeachment hearings and the ongoing Kobe Bryant saga that never lets up.  There was a car chase preempting regular news.  The Carona virus has more victims but there are fewer deaths than with Saars and definitely fewer than your garden variety flu this winter.  The first person to person transfer in America occurred when a wife came back from China in Chicago and gave it to her husband.  We have the academy awards coming up a week from Sunday.  This also has hogged news space that would otherwise go to Superbowl coverage because never have the Academy Awards been close to being this early.  Usually they are only announcing the nominees this early.  Then we have another democratic debate on Friday February seventh, though I don't know who is in that one yet.   The prediction of a dryer new year has come to fruition.  All of last December's rain is a thing of the past. 

Paul called about twenty after ten this morning.  I told him about the Dentist and trying to get approval and he tooth extraction looming and Dr Levy and also the closet saga and the toilet paper dispenser saga.  Paul offered for me to go get a haircut with him this afternoon and perhaps this morning, which I turned down for lack of time.  I went out for a cigarette and then came back to shave.  Lunch wasn’t too late.  We had two enchiladas and white rice and green beans.  But we didn’t have either Picante sauce or guacamole.  Paul showed up just after eleven thirty and we had birthday cake for dessert.  The housekeeper showed up just before eleven.  I returned and took a dump in the bathroom and when I came out, she was gone.  Paul had gotten into a lengthly conversation with Patty about Patty’s church background growing up.  Everyone said how much alike we looked.  Paul shook hands with Tanya and Larry.   I went with Paul down to Chapman and the barber shop.  This was a big place with three barbers doing business and more waiting.  Then the Vietnamese lady showed up and we used the far left chair.  Originally she said that she was trying to cut my hair too long and the waviness of the hair prevented her from getting the look she wanted so I said “cut it shorter”.  It turned out pretty good.  Then it was Paul’s turn and I went out to the parking lot toward the street to smoke.  You don’t find many smokers these days.  They were working on the asphalt.  Paul had texted Tim about taking the records on Saturday.  Tim called on the way home. (down Gilbert)  Tim is still in South Carolina and won’t be back here till late Sunday night.  We won’t b e able to transfer the records on Saturday.  Paul isn’t sure he can do it a week later because he works till three that day.  He dropped me off and I turned on Gary and Shannon.  I went for snacks at two and got amberosia with nothing to drink.  I also made instant coffee.   Paul and I talked about the impeachment hearings.  I didn’t know Paul had so many pre-set news stations that got preempted with the hearings.  Other than that, the conversation did not get political. 

The future is shaping up.  Today is Wednesday January 29, 2020 and they went back to their schedule of preempting the soap opera but then going to Kelly Clarkson at two on KNBC.   Today was question asking day for Justice Roberts starting just after twn our time.  They gave themselves sixteen hours for these questions sessions.  That means today and tomorrow.   On Friday that means they will have the long awaited vote to exclude witnesses, which the democrats will go along with because they don’t want witnesses either.  They want to wrap up the impeachment thing so they can get back to last minute campaigning in Iowa because the Iowa caucus is Monday.  It’s getting closer all the time.  I think Trump’s state of the union address is Tuesday evening.  For the super bowl Trump is running a one minute ad that will be seen by millions.  Two issues came up today that I find alarming.  It seems beyond dispute now that President Obama didn’t give “lethal aid” to Ukraine even though congress had approved it.  I need to talk to President Obama about that.  That fact along kind of completely takes the wind out of their sails as far as “denying Ukraine needed military security”.   It doesn’t make the Republicans so bad.  The other charge is related to that one.  There seems to be strong evidence that Ukraine didn’t even find out aid had been interrupt till August 28^th of last year when a political magazine ran an article that started an E mail fire storm.  Most of the questions were just repeating stuff we already knew.  Toward the end of the session I saw, Camille Harris and others asked a question for Justice Roberts that asked if the Trump administration barred publication of the new manuscript of John Boulton on the grounds the manuscript contains classified information.  It seems that the book isn’t Kosher for publication and that it indeed does contain classified material that needs to be redacted, possibly drastically. 

Senator Ross of Kansas, who was a good Republican in 1868 had at the last minute changed his mind and voted not to impeach President Andrew Johnson- - was bribed with a hundred thousand dollars, which was a lot more money back then than it is now.  Back then you could buy a nice house with just a few thousand dollars.   I am slow to believe everything I’ve Supposedly known for fifty years is a lie and a concealment.  I’m reserving judgement.  However it’s a more “satisfying” theory for the democrats right now that say that abuse of power IS grounds for impeachment.   Of course on a recent posting we let slip that maybe in New Testament times that Governor Pilate was bribed by Joseph of Arithmea, a rich man, to get the body of Jesus or whoever was crucified that day before he was actually dead.  The trouble with this is that it's not just the resurrection we worship.  In fact the resurrection is almost incidental to basic theology.  The important thing is that Jesus went to heaven and sits on the right hand of God the Father and he was given "all power"..    This is code speak for the Church alias the Pope was given "all power" over this present world.   It's almost less important whether Jesus actually survived crucifixion but rather that he announced his death ahead of time "according to scripture" and that his ministry is the final Word of God, which precludes any other prophets for the ensuing two thousand years.  All revelation of God stopped two thousand years ago and all power is in Rome, where Jesus personally said it would reside by saying that Peter was the Rock and also legend that says St Peter went to Rome and became the first Pope.   

Pressure Mounts to Have John Boulton Testify

I watched the Republican response to impeachment charges today.  When two went off the air at noon I dozed off a little and the soap opera was on.  I changed it to channel four.  The defense team made three major arguments.  First they said that the quid pro quo never happened because the guy, Summerland, I guess, who clamed it was only second hand information, but the guy he claimed to have gotten the information from says it never happened.  There was also the statement that Ukraine never fared so well as it did under Trump, as opposed to the Obama administration.  I don’t agree with any of this but this is what they are saying.  Next they say that Joe Biden was involved in a really shady enterprise along with his son, Hunter, with a thoroughly corrupt energy company.  I want this investigated further because I have my doubts.  But even if all of these alaborate alligations are true, it’s still pretty much a separate issue from the one at hand.  It looks to me like Hunter profited a lot from being on that board from April of 2014 to Octover or something of 2015.  I myself would be open to a witness deal at this point but I don’t think any Republican wants ANY witness or anything that draws attention to the whole impeachment issue.  Finally the argument is advanced that executive privilege has been honored in the courts for over forty years.  They see executive privilege as settled law.  There is another issue that was covered.  They say that it would be a briech of protocol for the senate to do their own investigating of the case.  Because this is the job of the House and they should have done it last fall while they had the chance.  It would fundamentally disturb the balance of government for the senate to get involved calling new witnesses at this point.  Finally we have the issue of the two incidents of new evidence.  One was that April of 2018 dinner where Trump told that guy he says he didn’t know, that he wanted the Ukrainian ambassador fired because according to the other guy,  the ambassador wanted Trump impeached even back then.  And then we come to John Boulton and maybe I should have led with this topic.  Boulton has a new book out and it alledges that Trump told national security secretary that he wanted a quid pro quo with Ukraine and he didn’t want the military ade released till Ukraine promised to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. 

I was sitting out back when I heard Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash.  We know now he died at age 41 and Kobe left a wife and - - three daughters (alive).   I later learned the crash was into a mountain near Calabasus and Lost Hills.  There were nine people aboard though originally they thought there was only five.  That would be Kobe, his thirteen year old daughter, Gigi, and a friend of hers and her parent, and the pilot.  But there are four more victims including the Orange Coast College baseball coach.  They went out to this Mamba center in Thousand Oaks, a training center Kobe purchased.   I went to turn on Leo Le Port after lunch and realized that he wasn’t on.  KFI had preempted everything because of Kobe Bryant’s death.   Not only that but channels four and seven had cleared their entire program schedule and devoted the entire afternoon and early evening to Kobe’s death.  It was more than excessive.   They didn’t even tell us the Grammy’s were being carried live on KNXT.  It wasn’t till after six that I turned to that station.  First I had to sit through five minutes of commercials.   The emotions ran high on Kobe’s death.  People talk about the gigantic hole in their lives now, and Kobe was just like a family member and they feel as if they personally knew him.  They talked about his twenty year carrier exclusively with one team, the LA Lakers.  And they talked about his maturing into a family man who is concerned about women’s athletics.   But from my perspective I don’t recall even the most famous people dying getting such wall to wall blanket coverage.  

It was shortly after lunch that I finally got around to writing Dr Levy that letter saying it’s time to move my vynal records of his garage.  I complained of all of the other distractions in my life and I wasn’t sure what the scheduling would be.  It turns out that Dr Levy has free time on the weekends.  Sunday would be out because of the Super Bowl but I guess Saturday would be OK, if Paul can squeeze it into his schedule  to take me before he goes to work and we can get them.  Dr Levy said everything was safe and sound and said to give him a call when I’m ready.  I was able to look up his number because he’s a professional man and it’s listed on the internet.   All of the early entries seemed to be about him.  He’s a clinical psychologist with a PhD.  That makes him sound really smart but he.    does a good job of concealing his intelligence in conversation.   Now he’ll get a bunch of hits if I post this in a blog.  Maybe he can get some new clients, but I think all of his time is booked up already.  I’m glad it won’t be during  the week because between trying to get a haircut and dental appointments that pop up out of the blue, and the impeachment hearings, I’m not sure what I’d be willing to sacrifice to go get my records.   Dr Levy responded to my mailing with a mailing.   I’m glad it was still a good E mail address.  

.   The other day Chris turned sixty-nine.  You know what sixty-nine is associated with.  That’s the only kind of sex you can have now because you’re so old you lack the physical stamina for anything else.  I bet Chris doesn’t think that joke is funny.  In gym class there was this guy with a 69 Union T shirt like Union Oil and he says “Oh, didn’t you hear; they changed the name”.    Life is “inconvenient” now.  My vision is worse and I still haven’t seen an eye doctor about my cateracts I’m sure I have.  It takes longer to recognize people in the halls as they approach me.   For you blog readers my drivers license expired in 2007 and that ought to tell you something.   I have this busted tooth that looks horrible and the dentist won’t fix it without specific prior approval.   Then there is this whole closet thing that Joe and I are sort of getting used to by now.  It’s been a week and a half since the hanger pole collapsed.   So I feel like I’m walking around in a state of complete disorganization.