ONLY A PAWN IN THEIR GAME

You know upon the death of President Kennedy I looked upon him as sort of a Christ figure, who died for the sins of the country, or at least the sins of the South. In the second year at a church my parents would be members of for almost thirty years, we had a congragational dinner at Peter Marshal Elementry School, because they had the facilities for it. They don't do congragational or "Stewardship" dinners now, because they're too tight. But even before JFK's assasenation, in mid November of 1963 I watched the Christian propaganda film, "The Gift". Actually there had been a sneak previewing of it ahead of time at my house with friends of my Father, so I got to see the film twice. It kind of covered the structure of the Apostle's Creed and talked much about Christ's dying for the sins of mankind. The memory of Medger Evers would not have been far from my mind as I watched the thing. Bob Dylan wrote a song about Medger Evers called "Only a Pawn in their Game". The title refers not to Medger Evers himself but rather those guy gunned him down as he was returning to his own house, shot in the back. You see the racists who shot him thought it was their own idea but they were only a pawn in the hands of the shaddowy people who really run the country behind a veiled curtain. And so it is today. People, and most troubling of all, young people are taught to hate, and ignorance of the past seems to be the trait those behind the Veil seem most want to instill in our young people. So if you have lost your job or don't get the pay you used to, blame integration and the Negroes or else the wet backs coming in over the border. Don't you know that the gays out there are out to destroy your marriage? I listened to both the Presidential address, and the republican response the old fashioned way this morning, over the radio on KNX at 7:05 and 8:05. The Oregon congressman spoke for the republicans. He says the Obama administration is out to kill job growth by big spending of thousand page bills, and hiking taxes. He would have you to believe that taxes somehow have ALREADY been hiked lo these past ten years of stagnation (with only the briefest of economic respits from mid 2004 to mid 2007). He uses the old chessnut about "You have to cut back expenses. Therefore your government needs to cut back expenses too, and if you would just let the Republicans have an up or down vote on these vital economic issues, all your economic problems would be solved". Of course the problem is that these Republicans DON'T allow up or down votes on these issues and that's the problem with getting needed measures passed. As to President Obama's speech, I thought this mornings was one of his better ones, because he came out swinging. He issued a "Clarion Call" (and yes I know that's also an O Henry novel) to action to oppose the Citizens United ruling. Our President warned us against the unleashing of the propaganda machine and political adds for which we don't have a clue who is really behind them. The President didn't quite come out and say the big moneyed corporate interests are running the country, but he came pretty close. Since that supreme court decision - - all sorts of evils have been unleashed over the air waves in this fall campaign. That's why we have been seeing such screwy election results. But now even people like Scott Brown are under attack by Rush Limbaugh as not toeing the line on the conservative agenda. Even Karl Rove is said to be uncomfortable with certain election results last week. It is said that perhaps when all these tea party people actually get into Washington that the beltway will change them. Others invision them floundering around not knowing the ropes and "all they will do is be able to make a lot of noise but get nothing done". I wouldn't count on this. If you liberals didn't like the lurch to the right in the 'nineties when Newt Gingrich took power, you are positively going to be climbing the walls these next two years. That's why it is essential for Democrats to unite and tell all their friends to get out and vote on election day.

You know the whole thing about "When to pull the plug" on a dying relative in a hospital bed is a tough moral issue for anybody. How much more so if you have been left with the sole responsability of that awesome decision and you are the estranged wife of the dying man, with whom you have had two children. But you also are the one who put him in that hospital bed by firing a .22 at his brain and leaving him for dead. You certainly must have conflicting emotions. On the one hand if you opt to save him and keep him on the machines he may come around, and you may get the sympathy of the jury if they see your remorse. On the other hand you're not sure how drunk he was when you shot him, and whether he can identify you at all. On the other hand if you let him die, you know he won't live to finger you. But you also know that now it's Murder One and you'll lose the sympathy of the jury if they know you also pulled the plug on him. The victim's father made a poinient remark. "Despite what he said when he was healthy about not wanting extrordenary measures being taken, you have to ask yourself what he would do now if he could rise up out of that bed. What if he were listening to our conversation right now, what would he say?" You know it's all a question of choices. If it's a choice between being a vegetable and being in some paradise on a balmy day sailing down a river of champaign in a canoe being fanned by young virgins- - well that's a choice. But what if you see it as being a choice between Life - - and permanent non existance, period. What would your choice be then? In the Bible there is a saying, "What would a man give in exchange for his life?" Luckily this situation never came up with my own father in a hospital. The hospital screwed up in so many other ways he was already as good as dead. It was never a case of "to pull the plug or not to pull the plug". I would not presume to offer anybody advice on this subject.

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C O N S T I T U T I O N – D A Y

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Today is the anniversary of the ratification of the U S Constitution on September 17th 1787. You would think it would be a day that conservatives would venerate, though I'm not sure about these days. The last big wave of amendments occured in the 1960's with the passage of the 23rd amendment giving DC residents the vote. The 24th amendment abolishes the poll tax. The 25th amendment straightens up some loose ends as far as Vice Presidents assuming the roles of President in a crisis. The 26th amendment gives eighteen year olds the vote. That went into effect at the end of 1970 when it was too late for me to have voted in that off year election. Some people point out that nothing in the amendment rules out sixteen year olds from voting. Though as I have said, I don't believe that is a good idea because teenager's brains aren't fully formulated and they are too vulnerable to far out or extreme ideas they regret later. Finally is the 27th amendment insuring that Congressmen get paid enough. I hardly see why they needed an amendment for that. Today there are no constitutional amendments looming on the horizon. Those half baked ideas about the fourteenth amendment won't go any where. Some people want to chuck the whole document and start over, you know - like the health care plan - "just start over with a blank piece of paper". Conservatives today seem to have little respect for the constitution. The constitution places the legeslative branch first and when you read it, you get the sense this branch has the most power. After all they even have the power to impeach Presidents and Supreme Court judges. I guess it was Ben Franklin who said "You have a republic, madaam, if you can keep it". We didn't have a monarchy. And the people who live here are "citizens" and not "subjects" as Thomas Jefferson crossed out in an early draft. As citizens we have both rights and responsabilities. Thomas Jefferson highly valued an educated man, a jack of all trades. This would be a much better country if more people had a proper liberal arts education. There are certain aspects of US history you about have to go to college for because they no longer teach them in High School. Perhaps you readers can come up with a list of new Constitutional amendments that would prove usefull. We have been in a decades long lull period but if some of you people collaborate perhaps you can come up with some good ones.

I plan to investigate further this rally that will be taking place in Washington DC on Saturday October 2nd in just a few weeks. You know the conservatives had their shot. Now it's our turn. Apparently there is going to be some comedy radio face off or something. I hope there is substance to this rally. My hope is that we could quadrupple their attendance numbers. Perhaps if it gets favorible media coverage (and that's assuming a lot) perhaps we can start a ground swell of opinion and get a progressive tide going on November 2nd. It is my hope that we get our colorization back on this posting so you can see the heading in red, white, and blue.

Today in class we talked about two attributes of God. There is transcendance. This is the attribute that says that God is beyond our space and time. Dr. Levy liked that definition. Of course this means that since God created space and time he is beyond space and time and is not bound by space and time. In Jewish thinking it is improper to suppose that God has a body or any "form" at all. Neither is it proper to say that God is "invisable". This would presuppose that God has some sort of body or form if we were only able to see it. I would carry that a step further to say that God is not Alive either. Neither would I say that "God is Dead" like many liberals used to. Being "Dead" presupposes that as some time God was "Alive". I don't think words such as Alive and Dead can be used in a realm where there is no time. Another aspect of God we talked about is Imminence. This word should not be confused with Eminence. This referrs to propriatory rights or somehow taking ownership or Lordship. We speak of eminent domain or so and so being the pre eminent authority in such and such a field. The term implies that this Professor or whoever pretty much "owns the field" or at least his realm of it. Neither should Imminence be confused with Intimate. If you said God is Intimate I would be the first one to stand up and object. As you know in my theology Intimacy is the last attribute I would attribute to God. The word is Imminence. This has to do with "immediacy" such as being in Imminent danger. I am not ready to dismiss this as an attribute of God. Although it would be more proper to say that God's WORKS are Imminent. This means that if God has willed it in the Master Script, he can manifest events in the next five minutes that you will never forget the rest of your life. That is, if He has willed that to happen. It's wrong to say that "Everything is God" or "The Divine is in everything". However it would NOT be wrong, in my oppinion, to say that we are surrounded by Everything that God caused. I think Dr. Levy has the idea when Mormons say that "God was once a man" and "God has a body" as meaning that Jesus Christ somehow "earned the right to call himself God in the resurrection". I did not bother to press the point. Dr. Levy pretty much made it clear that the Book of Revelation was out of bounds.

Some of you may be curious about my married life. Let me answer the question on everyone's mind in that once I got a divorce I did not immediately jump into a lot of sexual flings. In fact as measured on the callendar it was years I went without sex after my divorce. There are a number of reasons for this. First of all I was older. I was more introspective and circumspect. I tried to see the end of events before the beginning. In John Lennon's words, "I found out that Love was more than just holding hands". Also I went back initially to the Bosc house but with Henry Replacing Ron and Frank replacing Bobby and Pike replacing Pete- - it was a different and somewhat younger crowd I hung out with. If I thought I was better than my piers in the seventies, the situation was magnified now. It wasn't mainly the house mates but the people they hung around with. These were a bunch of immature teeny-boppers, right wing ones, I'll grant you. I saw most of them as flaky and imature. And Screwy Louie was a guy who I overtly clashed with. The two biggest occasions were in February of 1986 as the Bosc House, and the other was September of 1986 in class. This was the day that me and Frank were just standing around in the dark after class and there was this squeeling sound that Frank thought were bats. But I think they were swifts. It was kind of eery, anyhow. Frank was about the only person of any intellect I could still talk to. Neither Jim Cooper nor Pete Richards, people who knew me, were all that available to talk with about religious matters. Oddly, Laura was one of those people who like Randy Rhodes believe "Once you're married, that's it". I had gotten fired from my job (by her mother) as bookkeeper about a month after divorce proceedings were initiated. By the fall of 1986 things were going to hell in a handbasket. I had moved out of the Bosc house in early May into my own apartment. But I only lasted till about mid August because I had talked about throwing little kids off a second balcony ledge into a swimming pool. But I never did it. I did jump off myself quite often because the balcony was so tantelizingly close to the pool. At any rate I got kicked out and did the old richochet back to the Bosc House. I had thought Bill Gunderson would move in, too, but he made some excuse and backed out. There had been some talk of Pike moving out. (Pike is the guy I LEAST wanted to leave) At any rate things wern't going well in the fall of 1986. There was that UFO experiance I had in late September with "missing time" and all. I only wish I had been abducted. Things headed south. First the TV went out. (my parents had another) Then the dryer began smoking and conked out. Then the oven door fell off and nobody knew how to get it on. Also I lost my landscaping job in the fall. One wonders seeing things so adverse whether I thought of suicide. It never entered my mind. However just when things seemed worse- - Laura's mother called to say I could have my old job back at an increase in pay. I was overjoyed. Laura herself became more friendly and I had her over to the house several times, and she even showed up at a friends house with me a couple times in the summer (of 1987) But that rule she had about marriage applied even to me about "trying it once and never again". It was February or whenever that that "Russians" thing was on TV about the Soviets taking over America. The Bosc house was packed with people gathered around the tube. Henry had invited most of them. I was glad Laura was there. But also in January of 1987 parents decided to have the two big pepper trees removed. None of us four house mates liked that but we had no say in it. The roots wern't causing problems or anything. My mom just did it. From then on Frank would ask me, "Marcus, are your parents planning to sell the house?" That was a very apt question- - and they eventually did.

SMALL BUSINESS STIMULUS BILL PASSES SENATE

Let's pop the champaign corks. The small stimulus bill finally passed the senate fillibuster. The vote was 61 for and 38 against. Now the bill goes to the President's desk. The bill will cut taxes on new payrolls for small business and encourage banks to loan to businesses and contains investment tax credits. I feel a whole lot better about the "record" of the Obama administration with this particular piece of legeslation passed. As I said in the last blog, I think the President needs to somehow "appear" flexable, and yet still manage to get his agenda passed. I was just on the phone to my [Christian] brother and even he seems to agree with the provisions of this bill. He is concerned about all of our accrewed debt. However I'm not that worried if the economy continues to improve and Obama keeps his spending freeze promises.

Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law professor and chairman of the congressional oversight committee, will be named on Friday to the post of Consumer Czar who reports directly to the President on consumer fraud and other abuses. The thing with this appointment is that we have been hearing about it for months and I was beginning to think it would never happen. After all when was the last time this President appointed anybody "tough" in any position that wasn't a pawn of the corporations. At least we progressives have a chairman we can be proud of and can look forward to do productive accomplishments in consumer affairs.

But there is negative news still. Housing foreclosures for last month hit an all time high. This can't be good news. More and more people are feeling comfortable about walking away from their mortgages. On the Thom Hartman program they said the people get back only nine percent of the money they send to government in the form of taxes. This is opposed to 32% in France and 27% in Germany and even 14% in Canada. Indications are that if the people got more visable pay-backs in services, perhaps they'd be more comfortable paying a slightly higher rate. Of course the poverty level has risen to 14%. If John Mc Cain were president we could blame the Republicans. But I'm not sure we can do that now. They are now saying that we are pretty much doomed to see poverty rates this high or higher throughout this decade.

Anthropologists say now that we and Neanderthol man have a comon ancestor in a creature called "Heidelburg man", which shows up in Spain, of all places. They say that the differences in Neanderthol man is not in the frontal lobe, as you would expect, but rather in the temporal and periatal lobes, because the skull king of slants back and down, rather than the modern "dome" shape. There is this cave with thirty partiall or complete skeletons. Apparently the last vestages of Neanderthol man was about 140,000 years ago. That isn't that long considering Neanderthols were around nearly a million years. Neanderthols were almost exclusively hunters of big game, and seemed unable to adopt to new methods, or fishing, as their plentiful game subsided. The waves of the ice age in Europe became increasingly severe. People like to say that adversity makes man better. While it's true that "survival goes to the fittest" still something can be said for diversity. You never know where the next genious idea will come from. The Semaritans of the Bible clung jealously to their Jewish sacrificial laws, and also laws on race and intermarrying. Today the Semaritans are so inbred they will soon become extinct. One can say, as Christians are wont to, "adversity is good". But the same could be said of Evil, too. Evil overcomes its adversity and refines its evil. Bacterial strains that survive disinfectants become even stronger than they were before, and harder to erridicate. (Selah)

I would like at this time to do a first draft of my piece on John Lennon that I plan to submit to Dr. Levy for next month’s newspaper. No doubt I’ll be changing it around a little to accomidate his biases and my own faulty sense of taste. As you may know, John Lennon and I share the trademark of low self-esteem. In Lennon’s case it was because of the loss of his Mother at an early age. He was constantly seeking out some superior to tell him what do do, some guru. You saw this in the case of the Maharishi, and after this it was Magic Alex, whom he was captivated with for a while as some electronic genious. But in both cases he became highly disillusioned and disenchanted. In my own case I haven’t caught my own pastor fooling around with women, however there are the cases of Ted Haggard and Larry Craig and others where you are somehow supposed to reconcile their wanton behavior with the policy of Calvary Anaheim, where if you mess up you’re pretty much “gone”. There is no place for you in the church. The two artists the Beatles most emulated were Chuck Berry and Freddy Cannon. Many will acknowledge the first but I seem to be the only one who sees the obvious Freddy Cannon connection in the Beatles’ early music. As to Lennon’s writing, Jealousy is an underlying theme. John Lennon I see as kind of a male Leslie Gore, who wrote all these “romantic soap opera” songs in the ‘sixties, each one with a whole story line. These are songs like “You “Can’t Do That”, “I’ll Cry Instead”, “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party” and “No Reply”. Other songs in this vein are "When I Get Home", "I'll Be Back", "Baby's in Black", "Yes it is", "You're Gona Lose That Girl" and "Run for your Life", which has the classic line in it, "You know that I'm a wicked guy and I was born with a jealous mind". In my own case when I was married I did accuse my wife of playing around behind my back. Of course, particularly in the first couple years, I had a few sexual flings myself. But being a man I saw these as not indicative of anything. But when a woman even hints at it, well that's another matter. I’m just that type of personality. But you can divide the life of John Lennon into three basic section. There are the early rocker years, the Psychedelic Lennon, and the “House Husband” era. Oddly the two worst albums did in the ‘seventies were “Rock and Roll” and “Walls and Bridges”. These two albums have in common that they were done during Lennon’s “Lost weekend” that lasted a whole year and a half. He spend much of that time right here in L A. My favorite Lennon is the psychedelic Lennon. Here is a John who is constantly curious about everything and was always seeking new sound effects and things the Beatles could do to push the envelope, electronicly. I do the same thing both in my BASIC programs and in my programs in Google Sketch. I’m always pushing the envelope and doing something I haven’t done before. John would take inspiration from anything that was going on, just as my writings are influenced from often very recent news from off the wall sources. Lennon liked to incorporate inspirations from a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes to a poster on the wall, to various radio broadcasts. But most importantly John Lennon and I had the same approach to religion. We were open minded and would listen to any source that seemed to offer some spiritual truth I hadn’t been exposed to, as long as they made some kind of sense. But the minute they cease to make sense I, like Lennon, would turn and attack. Both Lennon and I were fans of Bob Dylan. He is eminently quotable. But after Bob Dylan got saved as a Born Again Christian, the trouble was we could not be sure whether the songs still came from Dylan’s heart or whether they were just regurtitations of Church doctrine on obscure things like “spiritual warfare”. The lyrics had a form of Dylanism but the music no longer seemed to come from the heart but took on a parodied, synthesized quality. Lennon picked up on this, perhaps quicker than I did. He wrote vicious songs attacking Dylan’s Christianity mocking the idea of a person “finding Jesus” (as though he were missing) Lennon of course was all about “Love”. I admire Lennon’s love and peace stands although there are times where he would do things I wouldn’t. I would not pose nude on a record album that people actually buy, with my wife. I wouldn’t have a “bed in for peace” on my honeymoon. One detractor who shall go nameless says “John Lennon only was as famous as he was because he was cut down in his prime. Had he been allowed to live he might well have become old and boring just like every other has been from the “sixties”. In a perverse defense of this line of thinking, after 1972 John’s subsequent albums did become rather stale and predictable, and they all had this trade-mark re-virb engeneering. But it wasn’t the high tech ‘eighties re-virb but the old pase ‘seventies style of vocal revert. Often the chords became quite predictable, to the point of being almost trite. I would like to conclude by saying that if I had had a better self image I never would have become a Born Again Christian, because basically it had nothing to offer to me in a positive way. The difference between myself and John Lennon is that John already had this “Image” of peace and love and all when the Jesus Movement hint. I was still searching for my identity so was more vulnerable to it. But we both had in common that we were willing to try new things and accept input from a wide variety of sources.

TEA PARTY CANDIDATES CONTINUE ON A ROLL

Among the Romulans if you are

going green it means you're

going militent

Carl Paligrino won in New York beating Rick Lazzio for New York republican nomination for governor. He is a tea bagger with a few political skeletons ratteling around in his closet. Christine ODonald - a tea bagger from Deleware, whom Randy Rhodes wanted to vote eighteen times for yesterday, won beating out Mike Castle. O Donald's claim to fame comes from the fact that she is the anti masturbation candidate. Abstenence is not enough. The key is to rid yourself of all lust, and there is always lust with masturbation. She is also a creationist, who believes that God created the world in six days. I would not get too happy over all of this. Let me tell you a story from the Bible to illustrate my point. Once there were some tennents in a vinyard who would not pay the owner of the plantation his due. Time passed and the owner would send his servents to the vinyard to collect the payment. The tennents verbally abused and mocked, ridiculed these people and beat them up sending them away with nothing. With each new representative the vinyard squatters would become increasingly hostile. Finally the owner of the plantation reasoned "I will send my own dear son to collect payment. Surely they will reverence him". But when he sent the son the vinyard squatters reasoned among themselves seeing him coming, "This is the owner's son. Let us kill him that we may inheret the land". People get this idea that if something becomes too outrageous that people will somehow be shocked into their senses. It's kind of the theory of making your son smoke a whole pack of cigarettes, one after the other, to break him of smoking. A similar psychology exists among those who distain war and believe if we instituted the draft then mothers and fathers accross the nation would arise in protest. My word is "Don't count on it". You wouldn't give a dope addict all the dope he wanted just to keep him quiet. And you don't give an avericious Defense Department all the lives of men they care to expend- -whatever suits their fancy. And if tea baggers are winning don't assume it's a good thing. It just might be a really, really BAD thing, because it indicates just how utterly sick our society has become. I have heard roomers of others that indicate some sort of democratic counter-tide rising. I wouldn't place too much stock in these- yet. I would want to see more evidence. You and I know that Carley Feurina and Meg Whitman are poster children for bad corporate management and exporting jobs to China. But the people of California don't know that. They are in some hypnotic trance and sleepwalking through this election, and the only voice they respond to in their state is the voice of their programmer who whispers things in their ears and tells them how to respond to everything. People for instance see these commercials about "All Jerry Brown does is sit around with his vast hordes of attorneys walking in lock step waiting on their next instructions of whom they are going to sue today". What they forget is Jerry Brown's job is the elected post of Attorney General and suing people is his job, for heaven's sake! The immediate electoral future looks pretty dim and barring some meracle, I just don't see any way out of it.

There are areas where I would be willing to compromise with the Republicans because I agree with them. I would postpone indefinitely any "value added tax" or any tax that would discourage comsumer purchasses, and this means the dreaded Carbon tax. I would also be open to repealing the entire health care bill as though it never happened. Also, if it hasn't already been done, I would drop any notion of this "Card check" thing they want to do for recruiting new members to form a labor union. It's my belief this option swings the pendulum too far in favor of the unions. I would drop any references at all that could be constrewed as favorible to homosexual activities. I would drop plans to close Guantanamo Bay. To me this is such an ovious way to defuse the right. If the Republicans want me to fire Larry Summers and Timothy Geitner, I'll be happy to oblige. I've heard these two are regarded as "socialist" by the right. Having done these things I would stand firm on everything else and not budge but make it full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes!

CONGRESS IS BACK IN SESSION

One bit of news over the weekend snuck up on me. It seems having a Boner in congress isn’t such a bad thing after all. John Boehner has stated, apparently on Face the Nation, that he would “go along with a tax cut of people below $250,000 if he had to”. The implication went right by me. It means he is saying that yes, he is prepared to think about legitimizing Obama’s bifurcation of the tax law so that the rich people get a tax hike in January. This is just the break the Democrats have been looking for. This week Congress goes back in session. There are many bills according to Victoria Jones, that are before the House in the next four weeks and there is no possible way they could get to them all even if they went into a lame duck session after the election. Basically I think it’s a good thing that the President is singling out John Boehner by name and identifying him is the next real threat to economic bliss in America. People need a face to hate, even if it’s an orange one. The lone bill in the Senate, or the one that’s currently continually been on the table, is the one about aid to small business by cutting their taxes, which strangely the Republicans are against. Of course we know they play their games and once a filibuster is broken, often seventy or eighty percent passage rates of said bill is guaranteed. I am still not completely happy with the way the Democrats are running against Republicans. John Kerry’s saying seems ironically apt that “They don’t have a record they want to run on; they have a record they want to run from”. (Selah)

Dr. Levy had a thing on Faith for us today as the soul trait of the week. I checked in twice. That’s because I moved at his request, by the way. Then he makes an issue of it using that peculiar humor he has. Of all the soul traits, I’d get an F in Faith because I don’t have it. Right off it says Faith is not a thing of intelligence or rational or deductive thing. Rather it’s a thing of emotion and experience and a sense of “Awe” when one looks at the works of nature. We talked about Free Will and Dr. Levy says we need evil in the world because if evil were removed from the world it would somehow rob us of our free will. That’s an utterly illogical conclusion. Does he believe if evil were removed from the world we would all turn into spineless marshmallows? In terms of God testing us- - I got Dr. Levy to admit that God knows the results of any possible tests in advance, so what’s the point. One thing I did not say but is just as germain is that I personally have failed all of my “tests” and am the worse man for having been confronted with them. I also said that Satan is a lot more intelligent and cleaver person than we think. I raised the issue of one percent of the people “passing” these tests and the other 99% failing and going to hell, probably because their theological creed isn’t pure enough. Dr. Levy in the page said many times that faith comes from a God who plays games and sometimes revealing himself but usually hiding himself. He asked me what I would do if I were God and I said “I’d do anything but that. I would either make my presence plain so they knew who I was, if I thought the beings were intelligent enough to deal with it, or I would keep my identity entirely hidden from them and expect nothing from my creation”, any more than you’d expect ants on an ant farm to worship you. I seemed to be the only one asking relevant questions. I was reading in an early posting of Rocca Rolla last week and I spoke of the sixth dimension “containing many portals on this planet”. I also said that “in the sixth dimension they relate in radial identity and the race is associated generally with a planet”. But you could come back and say to me “Is the Orion Federation a place where the Dead go, or is it a place inhabited by the living in the here and now, or is it some kind of a Metaphor?” It’s easy not to answer these questions calling them “unanswerable” just as Dr. Levy calls questions of Faith “unanswerable”. I also said that when you speak of the Faith of a child that children are curious and want to grow and learn. I can get behind that. But if you mean that children go off half cocked believing in foolishness living in a perpetual dream land- - then I have to take exception. I asked Dr. Levy that all of the creeds of the Catholic Church seem pretty cock sure of themselves, to the extent that they are willing to go to war over issues of doctrinal correctness. Marcia says that God has a body. This is Mormon doctrine. She would not own up to the doctrine that Jehovah was once a man as we were and went off to found his own planet, as we will do when we die, and have a harem of wives. Dr. Levy said he had to leave early today, but not very. We broke up a little after one after starting a little before twelve. I watched the soap opera. Samantha told son Will exactly what she did and why she shot E J. But she warned that Stephano might kill anyone he thinks betrayed him including Grandma Kate for making that phone call to Sammy that Elvis was going to take the kids and disappear and she’d never find him.

Robert Kennedy School has opened for business as of yesterday, September 13th. This is the high school that is the most expensive in the nation and could be said to be sort of a white elephant with needless extravagance. However I suggest they bring back caning like they have in Singapore for those who would mark graffiti on the walls. Wendy used to always speak of discipline problems when she was a teacher. I think these students need to be instilled with just how privileged they are, and I’m not sure all will know how fortunate they all are to go there. In general if they had less glitz in the schools and more paddelings we would turn out better students. This is one reporter’s opinion.

President Obama was promoting the high speed rail line that will link northern and southern California. I think high speed rail is an excellent alternative for intermediate distance travel, as I have often said. Judy is always complaining about how high speed rail is wasteful spending and how we really ought to all revere the oil industry by continuing to stay in our cars. She is one of these people whom if she doesn’t use it personally, then it doesn’t need to exist. This is the meme that conservatives in general, buy into. You know what we really need is a revolution in the transportation industry like we’ve had in the computer and entertainment and music industries. We don’t have vinyl records or reel to reel tapes, or film any more, but we still commute the same way we did fifty years ago. Either we go there by car or we go to an airport and fly at sub sonic speeds in jets that consume huge amounts of fuel, just like we did fifty years ago. We need to perfect the Transporter like they have on Star Trek. Once we do it will seem silly that we would have traveled any other way. People like Judy believe in the power of negativity- - in areas of faith in God and about the viability of our national government and crime and a lot of other things. But some bright scientist, preferably not Born Again, will perfect the Transporter concept some day. In the real of Star Trek it’s technology that’s been around for generations.

It's kind of a given that talk show hosts don't take their mail seriously, no matter how well written with constructive suggestions. It's kind of a practice that these hosts blow off, mock, ridicule, or just ignore the personal letters they receive. The usual scenario goes that one morning they get up to go to their job and the station tells them they have been sumarily fired and they go "Gee, I can't imagine the slightest reason why", plaintifly. I have mixed feelings about hosts reading their mail on the air, as Stephanie Miller did this morning. It's because they add things like mention the five dead cats in the guy's apartment or the nine years back prescription of Stellizine, or orange cheetos stains on the letter. I will agree with Stephanie that asking about one's sexual practices is off limits be they homo or hetro-sexual. Personally, I would have felt a lot better if Stephanie kept her lezbianism to herself.

One of those hikers in Iran, Sarah Shourd, will be coming home today. Her release was first announced Thursday and then rescinded by Iranian officials on Friday and then the courts decreed bail for her current release. What is not yet determined is whether money was actually paid to Iran for her release. Sarah Shourd is the fiance of another of the hikers, Shane Bowers. If she doesn’t go back to Iran for her trial it may well adversely impact the fate of the other two male hikers and that wouldn’t be good. The three are charged with spying, which brings the death penalty.

"If You got to go, go now- -

Or else you'll have to stay for the Tribulation

You know, if you read the Koran you see it's striving after basically the same thing as the Bible Old Testament is. The underlying theme is of God's faithfulness and having faith, in turn, in God. The supremacy of justice is highlighted. The World has seen only a hand-full of truely great religious founders. There is Confucius and Krishna and Chaitanya from India in the 1500's. There is also "Crestus" whose real nationality is Egyptian, who was the object of worship of the early Christians, and his cult moved from Egypt to Rome. The upside down cross is based on the notion that Roman Guards were put to death instead of him by some sort of error in letting him escape in the night, as Roman justice demanded. There is the Buddha, and Mohamed, and some would argue that Shem, Noah's son is a founder, who lived in "Salem" under the alias of Melchidizeck. And there is King Hezekiah, who is described as "there was no greater kind after him. He cleansed the land in a way it had never been before. Temple worship was started again after some indetermanate period of idleness. Of course you know what the term "Early Exit" means. It's usually referred to by people contemplating suicide. However some birds, for instance, make an "early exit" of northern tundra areas while food is still plentiful. They do this so they don't get too over-stuffed to fly. In like manner sometimes nature calls and you're just not ready to go. King Hezekiah fell ill and a prophet told him to put his affairs in order for he was to die. Hezekiah prayed to God who prolonged his life fifteen years by turning back the shadow of the sun dial fifteen degrees. However Hezekiah's last years wern't that good. God was already done with him. But he let foreigners, the Babylonians in this case, see all of the temple treasures and some say this was a fatal mistake for from that day on they lusted after it. We don't know whether there will be a rapture here in a few weeks. My refined date, courtesy Glen Beck, if Thursday October 7th. Personally I'm waiting for the TV series to come out.

By way of post script I would note that we have had problems getting color in our font with this posting. I'm going to try it again today. There are other irregularities that have plagued blogger a long time including incostencies in the format depending on which IP address you access the blog by. These range from spacing to size irregularities. Still I am grateful for this medium of expression and only hope that I develop more readers.

NUMBER NINE ANNIVERSARY

It's time we again look at the tragedy that is 9 - 11. We know that the site of the building collapses was never treated as a crime scene. They cleared out all the debris and sent the metal beams to China to use for scrap. Of course you've all seen the videos and how the walls appear to be blown out as if by some explosion, rather than just collapsing. I'm just informed today is Rosh Hashana. OK. So - - I guess Adam and Eve have a birthday. Thom Hartman wants to have a whole new investigation starting from scratch interviewing people and examining evidence. I think that is a pretty good idea. We've had our Bush "Warren Comission" cover-up and now it's time to learn the Truth. We do know that George Bush was in the process of taking one of the most extended vacations ever, there in Crawford Texas, since there have been Presidents. We know Bush was told by at least three independant sources that Osama Bin Laden was out to attack the USA and Bush chose to ignore everything. It seems that since the start of the administration that Dick Chaney was in charge of some terrorism committee but before September of 2001 they never met, but instead Chaney was with Haliburten deciding how to divide up the oil fields of Iraq after the War that everyone knew was coming before 9 - 11 even occurred, because Bush had that as his goal in running for President in 1999. You will remember that Bush said how he wasn't going to squander political capital and once he had this war then "I shall have a successful presidency". According to Thom Hartman Bush was languishing in the polls prior to 9 - 11. We know that fifteen of the nineteen participents of the 9 - 11 tragedy were Saudi Arabians. We know about the Saudi - Bush connection. From here it seems to me a simple case of connecting the dots. We have all these indications something funny was going on. Nobody wants to interview witnesses to the Twin Towers colapse because they all make the government version look really bad and inaccurate. I wish when our side took over Congress in 2006 that we had launched a whole host of investigations of the Bush Administration and particularly their Saudi Arabian connections. But everybody wants to shove everything under the proverbial rug.

We know that Bin Laden was the mastermind of 9 - 11 but that the plane hijackings were planned in places as diverse as Germany and Miami. Bin Laden was born in 1957, which surprised the heck out of me, because it means he is younger than I am. He is of the Wahabiest sect of Saudi Arabia. They don't like to be called by that term. They formed two hundred years ago founded by Adbul Wahabi, or something. This group apparently believes Muslims should not venerate any historic site or revere any Islamic scollar from centuries past that woud take their focus off of "God". In a way the Wahabiests remind me a little of the Calvary Chapels, who run from Christian theologians from centuries past. You will remember Chuck Smith's favorite expression was "It's all gona burn". I sense a similar note of nehilism here. We know Bin Laden was funded by the CIA and fought on our side in Afghanistan's struggle against the Soviet Union. How do you spell Muhajadib? In 1988 he organized Al Qaeda, but in 1992 he was kicked out of Saudi Arabia and moved to Sudan, where his mother lived. People say that at best there are only about 150 members of Al Qaeda left now.

We all know about the Rev Terry Jones who planed to burn over two hundred Korans this Saturday that were donated by perisheners. And has advertized the event extensively and shown us all the field where the books were to be burned and the wood to stoke the fire. We know God told him to do it and he won't relent unless God gives him a specific message not to do it. We know that people from General Petrayas to Sarah Palin to Franklin Graham have urged him not to burn the Korans. Pat Robertson doesn't want him doing anything that would endanger the troops. Late word this afternoon is that Rev Jones is meeting with the leader of this "rumpus room" building plan- - and so he will be in New York on Saturday. We also hear that Donald Trump plans to buy the property at 25% over market value if he will relocate another three blocks over. You don't know what is roomer. We wouldn't like it is some Islamic super-power invaded the US and Canada and then talked about burning Bibles. But somehow we are incapable of putting ourselves in their place, even for one moment. It was pointed out that their whackos are worse than our whackos. And even our whackos are "moderate" by their standards. What came to light yesterday morning was that Terry Jones was kicked out of an eight hundred member church in Cologne, Germany because of Jim Jones style cultic activity. He was accused of mind control and spiritual domination and oppression. He began making unreasonable demands for money. The people had finally had enough and kicked him out. Now he is just a Jim Jones wanna be. My guess if that somehow some way he will be stopped because of the serious international implications. But of course if he reads poll numbers in this country, we are so whacked out as a citizenry that we will believe just about anything Sean Hannity tells us. It could be an eventful next two days.

What can we learn from a speed boat going accross the water in a lake? This is a possible picture of what hyper-light speed matter does in relation to the ether of space. This is a substance I believe is in all regular space. As you know if you throw a rock into a swimming pool the waves radiate out in a circular manner. But the waves from a speed boat form a hyperbola type V shape that only extends behind. But what happens should a hyper-light speed object, for instance, bop you on the head as you walk down the street? It is my contention that in the process of displacing the ether, a sort of hyperbolic shield is set up. Just like the sound waves can't keep up with the forward speed of the boat going forward, so light is unable to go forward because the ether- - just as in the case of a ship's "wake" propells the light waves seemingly "backwards" with respect to the ship, or hyper-light speed object. Some people say that as you approach light speeds "something happens to the matter". Among other things they claim that it converts to pure energy. That's the E = MC squared formula. I guess I have a problem that matter can be converted to "pure energy". I wouldn't venture to even imagine what "pure energy" consists of. If my theory is right the matter doesn't change at all by the mere acceleration of it. Not in size, not in mass, not time dialation. Only your perception of it changes. As such - - I think it's the same matter that is "protected" from colission, due to this hyperbolic shield thing I talked about, which, again, is like the pattern of water waves from a speedboat.

Nothing to do to save his Life

Call his Wife in

This is Tuesday September 7, 2010. You know the substitutes for Stephanie Miller were energetic this morning in their coming out with apt political barbs. Such as the supposition that if they found oil at ground zero we would soon see how quickly that ground was no longer considered “sacred”. After all there is a lot of sleazy sex in the area. And whatever they build on the site will feature “money changing” I bet you. And as to Korans being burned, I bet a Koran or two got burned in the Twin Towers collapse along with the deaths of quite a few Muslims. People got excited about yesterday’s speech by the President in Milwaukee. But the conservatives are tiring of that same old line about the Republicans running the car into the ditch and now wanting the keys back. Also growing tiresome is the line about “When you want to go forward you put it in D and when you want to go backwards you put it in R for Republican”. You know, they pay add agencies millions of dollars to come up with cute and innovative political approaches no one had thought of before. Perhaps President Obama can avail himself of one of these. If I could do it myself then I’d be hired out for millions of dollars. But I can’t even get people to read my blogs. The numbers don’t look rosy. We as democrats have to downgrade our estimation of the mental capacity of the American Public. It’s perhaps because of our shoddy educational system in this country now where much of “liberal” US history has been edited out of the history books. Perhaps it’s because they don’t teach people how to think for themselves. But approaches like “9 – 11” equals terrorist = Moslem is something people can’t get out of their minds. Also the Meg Whitman campaign has come up with the equation of “debt” = “joblessness”. They say when Jerry Brown left office the jobless rate in California was at eleven percent. Keep in mind that this was the worst recession in fifty years and Jerry Brown left office about one month past the absolute bottom in December of 1982. But they won’t tell you what the unemployment rate was when Jerry Brown first became governor. That is because that too was at the trough of a recession in January of 1975. My guess is the unemployment rate was pretty high then because of all the closures in defense plants that were going on then in California, and in the Northwest. Barbra Boxer is doing little better in her Senate campaign against Carley Feurina. Here the superiority of Boxer as a candidate is even more apparent. This whole corperateness = good government meme stems from the days when Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, decided to run for governor of California. Nobody thought he had a prayer. After he got in he accused Pat Brown of “looting the state” and then doubled everyone’s taxes and cut back services. Even if the Republicans win in the 2010 congressional election, and all the indicators are that they will, still the long term demographics are against them. It could be that this election will be a noted chapter in later History books when the intellect of the American People sunk to an all time low. Were in one of these political debates I doubt I could resist using terms like “Ignoramus” or “Troglodite” to characterize the audience, which are terms that real nerds use. Also working against the democrats is they remember things I’m not sure really happened. I have heard the term “Summer of Recovery” a hundred times as much from the Republicans as I ever did from the Obama Administrations. Ditto for that famed “unemployment won’t rise above eight percent”. It’s like you see it once Live, and a couple dozen times on re-run. Just like the TV season. As to burning the Koran, I’m not sure how many tea baggers are for that one. David Petrayas said that such an action might well endanger our troops in the field. They say that pastor who is organizing the book burning only has eighty people in his congregation. This is quite a windfall for him, or as Barbra Bush might say “This worked out rather well for him”. But it was pointed out that since so many republicans are gays or have committed other acts of marital infidelity, that they really don’t themselves “hate the sinner” as much as they would let on but rather they pander to all the hicks and rubes out there in middle America, and will tickle their ears with anything that will put votes in the Republican column on election day. I can’t help but wonder what ghastly responses of amazement would eminate from the lips of Dead Politicians come back to life. What would Adele Stevenson or Hubert Humphrey or Pat Brown say about the politics of our day? I scarcely think they would believe it. They would think surely they had resurrected into a bad novel. And they wouldn’t be wrong. But if you are looking to me for advice, sorry, I’m fresh out. Just read the previous posting and it will give you all the so called causes for the demise of Democratic chances this fall. Some have offered the ray of hope that just like in 1936. the polls are all wrong because they use line lines only and not cell phones, and so are only reaching an older crop of voters, of which I would include myself. Some have gone so far as to say that President Obama deliberately wants the Republicans to take over in congress so people can hate them for a while. Life will still go on. Just as with the great depression of the 1930’s, people are getting used to “getting by with less” and I imagine they will get a lot more “practice” at “getting by with less” in the years to come.

emoc ot nav eht rof gnitiaw - ekalf nroc a no gnittis

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn

look out your window and I'll be gone

I'VE GOT NOTHING TO SAY BUT IT'S OK

TIME TO FACE THE REAPER

There are certain political grim facts that everyone has to face sooner or later because those in the know agree that the evidence is overwhelming and to deny them is futility. I was just watching a C-Span thing on the outlook for Democrats verses Republicans in the next Congress, notably the House. Of the four speakers I listened to three of them were very partisan in favor of the Republicans. This last guy says that it’s political suicide for Democrats to attack the tea baggers just as it was suicide in 1994 for Democrats to attack Born Again Christians. Clinton is noted to have remarked after the 1994 loss “The Nazis are coming”. In the first segment there were four key swing years pointed out 1894, 1994, 1930 and 1946. In the latter two cases, time-wise, the party threatened by the turn around hung on to the presidency. In the first two cases, a la Cleveland and Hoover, these two men appeared to rigid to fight the landslide tide. The numbers for Democrats are grim. Virtually every survey in every state except D C shows that more people call themselves Conservative. Only in the northeast if the ground even vaguely neutral. Also when you are doing the probability numbers a few months ago when Obama was more popular the probabilities for a Republican takeover was 39% and that rose to 62% a few months ago and now the probability is 75% that the Republicans will take the House. Numbers for taking the Senate aren’t as bad, but they’re getting there and it’s forty percent probability now. It was pointed out that when Obama’s popularity numbers were at seventy percent many Republicans wanted to get on the band wagon and join the democrats in a stimulus package for the economy so together they could take credit for it. That isn’t happening now. The Democrats, by this line of reasoning “went for broke” and in the next election they are going to pay. These people say that for a long time liberal meant forward progress with new measures passed whereas contervatism ment stagnation and little done. That has all changed. We haven’t seen a real liberal wave of legislation since Clinton’s first year in office. This faulty assumption that progress was inexorably forward- - was and will be the democrats’ undoing this year. Many people in the know saw the landslide of 1994 coming. And in many ways the situation is even more bleak now for the Democrats than they were in 1994 and the economy is Exhibit A on that accord. One is tempted to dismiss all this as republican froth and hype. However these are thoughtful people who have devoted study to the matter and I am forced to defer to their opinion. I’ve already talked to Born Again Christians who say “Even if the republicans win it won’t be enough” to suit them. That’s how far to the right some people are. The whole idea of the “size of government” and “debt” even being viable issues is a relatively new thing. For most of the past sixty or seventy years- - these issues have been considered almost passé and irrelevant. No more. Now we are living in that upside down Planet of the Apes world of our worst nightmares.

The unemployment rate has risen to 9.6% and 54,000 additional jobs were lost. This is the news Republicans today are popping champaign corks over, and may well be the news that seals Obama’s fate. There have been now sixteen consecutive months in which unemployment has exceeded nine percent. The recent record is nineteen months during Reagan’s first term and he managed to recover. President Obama has been much poorer at maintaining a positive leadership image than Reagan was. This president is an idiot because he has surrounded himself with all of the wrong people. In September of 1994 by contrast the unemployment rate was only 6.1% and the deficit was nowhere today’s number in terms of being a percentage of the G N P. Clinton had the media on his side back then, but since then there has been a conservative C change in the media that had and will continue to work against the democrats. This conservative revival is something a lot of people, including me, have prayed would come about. It only proves the adage “Be careful what you wish for – it just may come about”. Live and learn. President Obama in his weekly address wanted to encourage Congress to pass the aid too small business bill. But that won’t happen unless the Republicans decide not to be political. And that means failure to pass needed stimulus bills for the economy because the Republicans want to see this economy crash and burn the same way Rush Limbaugh wants this President to be a colossal failure for these four years. This is the reality we are facing now.

Craig’s list will stop advertising certain “adult sites” for escort services, etcetra to aid men in their pursuit of a good woman. But the world at large is not as sexophobic as we are here so the sites will continue internationally. They had a story about a teenage girl with Downs sindrone and we all got déjà vu of the plot of “Carrie” because she was invited to the senior prom by a nice boy who is well spoken of. But the father called the boy’s family to “check him out” and make sure the offer was on the up and up with no strange alterior motives like being covered in a bucket of pig’s blood. I could picture Neil Savedra as that father calling up and saying “You know she really is retarded. She isn’t just a little slow, she’s in Forrest Gump territory with an IQ of 75. So I wouldn’t blame you a bit if you reconsidered and decided you really didn’t want to take her. I really wouldn’t”. Of course you know that the nerd population looks upon anybody who doesn’t score at least 130 in an IQ test as “kind of slow”. But a lot of people don’t apply themselves on these tests. They don’t want to be intelligent. They rather enjoy being dumb, because if gives them the carefree attitude of life going through life acting like a cosmic retard. So if a liberal comes up with a theory about life and wants them to listen they will kill the person with phony praise and say “Well that’s OK for you but not me. I'm just not into any activities that require any thinking or interruption of my usual routine”.

Well now we hear because of this math-o-phobia that Stephen Hawking is dumbing down his latest book and deleting any reference to complex mathematical formulas that would scare people off. It’s like someone quoting the Bible to someone who doesn’t attend church. The alarms go off in their brain “Danger - - Danger” and they shut down and don’t listen at all. It was the Ionian Greeks who were early proposers of the idea that natural laws existed apart from the will of the Gods. But now Stephen Hawking is going to take us all one giant leap for mankind backwards by proposing, if I understand correctly, a realm where ALL laws of physics are out the window and that Universes can form with no regard to any natural laws as we know them. That’s a world of difference from the Stewart Sutcliffe model where time goes out in all directions in that “porcupine model” of ours- - and where there may be great diversity in “what happens next” after the big bang, still other Universes have to obey the same basic laws of physics that ours does. But as I say if there are literally Millions of universes out there then all the Christians who say evolution can’t happen- - have to go back and refigure their math. Maybe Mom will buy Hawking’s book, and I can borrow it.

Yesterday I heard a cosmic roomer that is that- - "If the Ionians formed that alliance with the Romulans they were talking about- - - then We (the Cassiopian Eagle group, we I’m calling them now), would be toast." But they say that the Romulans are too lilly livered to go for it because they’re too used to losing. As to the fear of disclosing military secrets, (the sharing with the Ionians of all the vast military mapping they have done) the Romulans have one of the more open governments (like the US) where everything that happens seems to become public knowledge anyhow. Among Cassiopians there are the “Allied Forces” as we tagged them back in the summer of 1991 when they invaded certain leadership sectors of the Federation. Though this is a line from a “Triumph” song, that group is Aries Mu (and 13^th and not 12^th brightest star in Aries) the term Allied Forces was just a name someone came up with from somewhere. In World War I we referred to the enemy as “The triple alliance”. There is also the “Phil Collins” group that is another Cassiopian group. The Crestorians is another Cassiopian group. But the one I’m talking about is the “Eagle” group. That term has been around before but only lately have I heard it pegged to the “United States of America” in terms of our national war prowess. And that, as Paul Harvey would say, ‘Is the rest of the news”.

MAKING DEMOGRAPHICS WORK FOR US

Well now there is a new book out called “The American Talliban” saying that the clerics in this country are no better than the extremist clerics in the Islamic nations. I don’t see how it takes a whole book to say that. I said it in one sentence. To me it doesn’t seem as if there are nearly the number of progressive minded books coming out as there were, say, four or five years ago. Am I right? If you look at the democraphics of America you see more young people coming of age to vote Democratic. You see more people coming out of the closet. You see increased representation of minorities. These tea party people are mostly old, white, protestant, and not real urban. Catholics tend to be more liberal than your average denomination. Still with all these fact there does seem to be cause to fear “The American Talliban”. Because those people are the “them” that we’re all afraid of and cower from. Baroch Obama is afraid of them. When Bill Clinton didn’t see enough money coming in from the dwindeling Unions in 1992, he formed this American Democratic Council thing to raise corporate money without unions. These were people like Larry Summers and Ron Emanuel. These are the people whom the President surrounds himself with. On the radio they said that President Obama never wanted any sort of “public option” in health care. Apparently the idea was never even on the table, so Obama lied to everyone who supported him to whom he said it was. Now we are hearing that the original intent of the medi-care bill of 1965 was to lower the age requirement every few years until everyone was covered. If the democrats are going to win, they can still do so. All they do is pretend it’s 2008 and go out on a massive voter registration drive, and also be willing to drive shut-ins to the polls on election day. As Jim Morrison said, “They have the guns, but we have the numbers”. They have their “second amendment remedy” they talk about so fondly. We have so many cold, hard facts on our side is we used all of our potential we could easily be victorious.

One hundred years ago yesterday ex President Teddy Roosevelt gave a message in Kansas to a bunch of Civil War veterans from someone’s kitchen table. I think he held the rally out on some farm and they were worried about people having to travel on muddy roads. The ex president made the key statement, as I say above, that labor is the prime, moving force in America. All capitol would not be possible without labor. Capital derives from labor. In the Civil it was forced labor of other men that we fought that war over. And yet the victors failed to carry on that worth ethic. Teddy spoke much of the American work ethic and how every man deserves an equal shot at the brass ring. But now the system had become corrupt. He said he had hopes for President Taft but now he clearly sees that Taft was not up to the job. I had heard that in a head to head contest, Teddy Roosevelt won every Primary that was held. Unfortunately they were not considered important in that age. If the American people were willing to vote for a progressive, crusader administration then, why not now? Huh?

Well now they have discovered that the last reason to allow for the existence of God has been taken away. Stephen Hawking has a new book out in which he states that God is a redundancy as far as the Big Bang and the creation of the Universe is concerned. Some like Bill Handel say “Oh he’s still around- - he should have been deat twenty years ago”. I remember nearly 25 years ago in early 1987 that Chuck Smith was cutting back the hours of his Sunday night service and now he was ended by 8:30 when he used to go to 9:30. And the talk was “Oh, he’s getting old. He’ll be retiring soon”. For the past thirty years, at least, I’ve heard Chuck Smith complain about getting old and wanting to move out of “this tent, which is my body”. Stephen Hawking may not be much on body but he’s sure keeping his mind active, and we need to keep geniouses like him around as we can. I hope his writings are thoroughly studied after he’s gone. On the Simpson’s they had one episode where a professor had mathematically proved that God didn’t exist. According to Hawking “we would still have all the scientific laws” even if there were no Universe. Some like at Astronomy Café may take issue with that, however, saying that without matter we would have chaos. I have one question I would like to address to Stephen Hawking. If it’s true we can see ancient galaxies ten billion years ago through our telescope I’d like to ask “Where do you look to find the center of where the Big Bang came from”. No astronomer seems to be able to answer that question in a way that doesn’t make me think they’ve been smoking something they shouldn’t. Here’s another case where you don’t seem to need to read the whole book to get the gist of it. You can say that “God has been ruled unnecessary to the creation of the Universe” in just a sentence or two. I doubt I’d understand any of the complex math anyway.

Steve Jobs yesterday announced that 4.1 would begin shipping soon. He says bugs in the latest I phone will be fixed and it will have a proximity sensor to handle signal cut-outs. He also announced Apple TV you can hold in your hand. All this news didn't make much of a splash yesterday when it was announced. He's big on fanfare but sometimes short on substance when the actual announcement comes along. People have these grandiose expectation of some bold new leap forward by Apple by which their competetion will be crushed.

In soap opera news Samantha Brady has done about as professional "hit" on Elvis Di Mira as you could ask for. She came upon him passed out drunk, with the gun, already out anticipating suicide, was already convieniently in his hand. All she had to do was to pick it up and fire at his head. The gun had a silencer on it. She then stood there a minute. Then she left, unseen by anybody and rather methodically tosses the gun into the Salem River as if she were used to this sort of thing all the time. She then tip toes back into her lover's bed and crawls up next to him as if nothing had happen. When he gets woken up by a phone call he is none the wiser. At the present time her deed of convienience remains undiscovered.

Now another oil platform rig has exploded, and as far as we know it is still on fire. It is some eighty miles southwest of the Lost Horizons one or whatever it’s called. Thirteen people were aboard the platform and they all survived though one man was injured. They were all picked up safely by a boat. I imagine they will have a lot more to tell us. We don’t know if oil leaked. They said possibly this was not even an active platform. We just need to pray that nothing worse happens to the people of the Gulf.

Hurricane Earl is on its way up the Atlantic coastline. They say it will hit Capt Cod and might hit the cape of North Carolina. They come out with wavering reports saying the storm has drifted this way or that. Right now Early is a category three storm and has hurricane force winds one hundred miles out from the wall of the eye, and I’m told this radius is expanding. Of course you know about the big surf in the Atlantic now. We Californians are familiar with that sort of thing with the off shore storms we get here but these east coast people have more of a propensity to drown in unfamiliar waters.