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.