AS A TRUE 'ROMANIC' - - I'M A LIBERAL

It was Harry Green who said in a lone sermon in November 1965 about the End Times, that "You know there is just as much a probability as retro-gression in our future as there is in continued advancement". In the light of the past thirty years of the governmental and economic mess his words have proved prophetic in a way that might surprise even him. You know, the most dreaded thing that progressives, who don't want to take us back to the stone age, the thing we have in common is the dreaded fear of being labeled with the "L" word- - - Liberal. And yet in truth, as Hartman says today, this country was founded by wise men of the liberal Enlightenment. George Washington said "I hope to ever see America in the forefront of liberality". Now we hear that from our first President, America granted charity to poor people in the DC district. This continued through James Madison. He being the one who actually wrote the constitution once said "I fail to lay my finger on the line of the Constitution by where we can do this". Madison didn't want government messing with the opperation of churches in any manner. Of course in Latin, as we learned on Jeopardy last night, "Liber" is the word for Liberal in Latin. The whole term of "Liberal Arts" is basically "an education that any free man ought to have". Of course Aristatle referred to slaves as "household implements". That's a nice euphamisum. But in the Spanish (and in Romulan) the word for "Free" is "Libre". Liberalism and Liberty mean Freedom. And since when were conservatives against Freedom? I don't know. Freedom or Liberty or "Liberality" is the founding hallmark of this Nation. Now of course courts are passing decisions granting police increased search and ceisure powers. But the revelations of this morning are not new to me. I've seen these Cops episodes where the PD gets some phone call there is a loud argument next door. And then the police come to the house and the husband approaches the door and says to the officer "Everything is fine", and refuses to let the officers in. In my own understanding of Law Enforcement- - police have to let you alone unless they have either some kind of a warrent, leagally granted- - or there is an "exigent situation" where they hear screaming and someone is being stabbed or something. But in the case of this Cops show the police officers said to each other "This man is under the erronious idea that we won't knock down the door if he doesn't let us in", which is just what they did.

Well the Republican list of Presidential candidates is still as clear as mud at this point. Michelle Bachman still hasn't decided. But Donald Trump said that he would not run. Of course Randy Rhodes must have some Romulan in her because Romulans use the tern "the" in front of a name in denotation of Respect. Anyhow, the Donald decided he would just stick with his TV show and not be incumbered by all the legal hassles he'd face if he ran for President. So in reality the whole candidicy really was a joke. And Mike Huckibee won't be running. He says "All of the facts tell me I should run- - but my Heart tells me otherwise". I suspect there are somehow more pragmatic considerations for his not running. Suddenly Sarah Palin, who didn't even place in the polls of nine or ten people a few months ago- - has almost moved into first place. She's so vain I think she just might run because she's so basically stupid she doesn't care what kind of an ass she'll look like. I'm sticking to my prediction that the gold bugs out there who think owning Gold will save them will be in for a nasty surprise in a few months. Knowing Boehner's propensity to pull a boner- - the republicans just might stall long enough on raising the debt ceiling that it could cause real credit and economic hassles. They say that they want a dollar for dollar deal where they'll raise the ceiling if Obama cuts a budget by the same amount- - and they would logically split the difference. Don't count on that happening. I don't know how much further the President is prepared to go to placate the republicans- - he's been pushed so far to the right already. He's opened up all these new oil fields for drilling- - and thrown progressive energy designs out the window. The way demographics work, if we aren't adding jobs fast enough we're really losing jobs. If we truely get into a deflationary spiral it won't save anything, and that includes Gold and Silver. As one seasoned investor once said "Sometimes you just have to buy when it hurts in the pit of your stomach". The same advice goes for selling.

Well, California's governator, Arnold Swartzenegger is a daddy again. He fathered a ten year old boy by his housekeeper, who worked in the home ten years in the shadow of of his wife all that time and she never knew. Well you know Marlon Brando fathered children in to the early nineties having several by his housekeeper. The calendar 'nineties that it. So some people are able to get it up at an advanced age. Of course now Randy Rhodes is wondering whether Newt Gingrich might have a few little unclaimed "nuticals" out there. I hope she knows that word usually refers to something else. The scandal the Governor finds himself in is what they call a "moderate" sexual scandal because he didn't proposition a man in the men's toilet or have sex with congressional boy pages. Of course as for me, I don't have the excuse of having undergone prostate surgery or anything for my own apparent lack of interest in sex. I've often said that around here you pretty much have to be into "sex with your mother' or else into pedophelia. And even if you do see a sexually attractive woman you think ahead, "What if I'm not able to perform when the moment arrives?" and so you end up thinking "why bother?" It's kind of like being hot and tired from walking around a theme park all day and someone hands you a Diet Coke, and you drink it and don't get the expected sugar buzz and somehow you feel cheated. It's the medication they give you, in part. Personally I could go for a major boost in testesterone, like they advertize. But they now say that artificial hormones for either man or woman increases your chance of getting cancer. It's like Dr. Dean Edell says, "Don't take mega vitamins, because you're just feeding the cancer cells". Judy takes strong exception to that. E W N just said that drinking a lot of coffee protects you from prostate cancer. Now I feel better. My doctor today just wanted to schedule a blood test. They aren't always forthcoming in what they test for.

Dr. Levy showed the film "Awakenings" in class a week or so ago and apparently the movie is a true story about events that occurred in a hospital ward for victims of an encephelitus epidemic that occured back in the 'thirties. By 1969 some of them had been in a vegetative state on that ward for thirty years. The nurses referred to it as the "feed and water" section. But then the doctor came up with the link to their condition by examining their reflexes- - to Parkinson's disease. So he proscribed first one patient named Lennard be given the L-dopa compound. And he recovered. So he gave it to the whole ward, and they recovered. And they were again able to experiance the joys of life and even went out dancing and things. At this point I left the room figuring the movie was almost over. I figured the next move would be to testify before congresss or the FDA or something to get the drug approved for this condition on a nation wide basics, and then perhaps at the end of the film to announce that this disease had been eradicated from the land. That didn't happen. Rose told me the sad truth during coffee break that afternoon. I was stunned. All of the patients, starting with Lennard, began regressing, and in the end - - ended up just as they had started, in a virtual Terry Shivo vegetative state. Many patients had frozen expressions as if they had been zapped in the middle of a sentense. I just happened to think there is some lesson here about gaining Freedom, if only for a short time, kind of like Prague Spring in 1968, or the whole Hippy phenominon in general. It kind of makes you think about - -what if God pulled you out of this life to experiance a brief while in Heaven, having total enlightenment, and again you went back into this life and forgot it had ever been any other way. One would hope some remnent of memory of the moment would somehow linger.

We now come to this while "end of the world" thing on May 22nd, which comes this Sunday that doomsters on the right have been predicting these past couple of years. I've told you that for me death is "something I don't want to risk" if I've got the choice. This separates me from a lot of Christians who say they are "prepared to go when the Lord calls them". There was this Ozzie and Harriet episode where Ozzie was in this play where he had to play the front end of a mule in this play, and someone offered to swap parts with him sight unseen- - and Ozzie thought about it and he thought about the guy playing the donkey's ass, and said "I don't want to chance it". You could end up as some peasent in Africa in some disease ridden nation in the middle of some national strife or genocide. You could be in Iraq with warring factions from both sides shooting at you, and each suspecting you are secretly in cahoots with the other. You could be some alien blob organism from another planet where the laws of physics may not even appear to apply. Or as Stephen Hawking says "You could be like an expired computer circuit and once you go- - that's it. There is no more". It dawned on me that I don't even know God. How could I? We've never met. I thought of the Raphael Hernandez thing on Days of our Lives. The real Raphael is jealous because Samantha had sex with the phoney Raphael. How could Sammy know? I got to thinking, "Is it a defense to say I DIDN'T KNOW"? It didn't work for the Germans at Nurremburg. But I got to thinking about it, and like Jethro Bodine got my giant brain and six years of education working on it and I came to the conclusion. NO. No, you are not responsible for what you had no way of suspecting. (And even if you did suspect, your so-called loved ones are telling you it's all in your mind) If God says at the Judgement "No, Marcus, I'm not that Asshole personage you imagined that I was. You should have trusted me, you should have known" then I will say "You know- - you like the fake Raphael want me to go from A, where someone said they think you exist, to Z. when you ask the question, "Will you Die for me?", and somehow skip all the steps inbetween, when (pardon the metaphor) -all you're looking for is a piece of ass". You are trying to suspend the rules of normal human conduct, just like the fake Raphael, thinking you can cheat and somehow not pay the price. And I would quote the Bible saying "The Holy Spirit is a down payment in kind, of what is to come" and conclude "The Holy Spirit has done nothing but treat me like Crap there on earth. Not to put too fine of a point on it but it resembles the treatment Bob Dylans's girlfriend in the song "Long Time Gone" gave him. So what expectation did I have really of things being fundamentally different here?" You know if I've never met God, then we should be introduced. "I should say, Hello- - What's your name? How old are you. Where did you go to school. What University did you get your degree from?" And after we've gotten to know each other a little better we can decide if we want to have a relationship. And then like E J and Nicole we can work out the details of the obligations of what each party has the right to expect from the other."And For God to tell me "You should have known" begs the logical conclusion. I DIDN'T know- - and if God knows all about me already he KNOWS that I didn't know, and it would be an insult to his intelligence to suppose I did. Ergo, maybe I'm still not talking to God. Well this is all rather interesting but it's academic, because there will be no rapture on Sunday. Some people believe the world will end in a firey, horrific manner that don't necessarily believe you can quantify that belief or set up a time-table for it by using the verses from the Bible, or Astrology. I know at least one person who thinks this way. "The future's uncertain and the End is always near". They're ringing the dinner bell. I gotta go.