S A Spurs Surprise Miami Heat in Game One

The unemployment rate is now 7.6 ticking up from 7.5.  175,000 jobs were added last month, which is actually higher than the average for the year.  However more people are looking for work.  And to the Republicans’ delight, we are destined to see more slowing in the economy as the Sequester continues to exact its deadly toll.  Of course more people are looking for jobs now, which is a good thing- - so I hope Newt Gingrich notes that, with no more talking about how if we used the same standards as we did in 2008 that unemployment would be at 11%.

The San Antonio Spurs surprised the Miami Heat last night in Miami by “stealing game one” winning 92 to 88 or something.  Miami was in white and San Antonio was in black.  San Antonio was ahead the majority of the game, but the game remained in doubt up to the last five seconds.  This mature twelve year old girl sang the Star Spangled Banner, which was a few minutes before six.  I had NBC network news on for the first fifteen minutes.  If I were smart I’d opt for the NBC news all the time since ABC has really been falling down on the job lately.  Cosmically - - San Antonio isn’t that bad of a city, but the Spurs don’t reflect the cosmic vibes of the rest of the city.   The same thing could be said in Houston - - only in reverse.  In that case the team has good cosmic vibes- - - but the rest of the city sucks.

President Obama will be meeting with the new Chinese leader today when he arrives here.  They play to discuss Chinese computer spying espianage that is running rampent now.  It's like that saying "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it".   But now President Obama has fresh caused to be really pissed off at the Chinese government.  It seems both the John Mc Cain and the Obama Presidential campaigns were hacked in 2008 and the Chinese government has access to information they couldn't have gotten any other way.  The question is whether President Obama is too bis a whoos to ever stand up for anything that takes any kind of moral backbone or fortitude.  I can think of so many, many areas where one would hope that the Democratic Presidential Candidate in 2016 would be completely different.  So many people say "It's just like having a third term of George Bush when you review the President's foreign policy and his position on surveilance of the American People, as well as such things as Chinese industrial espianage.  It's like somehow since they're lending us money, that somehow we have the obligation to let the Chinese walk all over us.

Last night I woke at one and knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep without smoking a cigarette.  Keith was out there.  I had a strange dream last night.  Not that so many of my dreams aren’t strange.  We have moved on to page six.  They are retiring the nuclear reactor.  I hope they give it a gold watch.  Anyhow I dreamed that me and Dad and Tim and perhaps Mom were at this church dinner where we were guests of somebody else.  It was a sizable church.  But the evening was jinxed for me and most every conversation I was in proved awkward and people took offense at the things I would say.  They had sort of an open bar at this gathering.  You would go up and ask and they would serve you drinks.  But we got the main course which was spaghetti.  One time there was this water that kept squirting out of the end of the spaghetti into my mouth and I’d have to spit because there was so much.  Another time there was this one long piece of spaghetti that was endless and the whole thing kept unwraveling and went down, down, on to the floor and I guess at some point I thought “I’d better cut it”.  Dad said “You look hot.  Why don’t you unbutton your suit coat.  (I was wearing a suit and tie)  But for some strange reason I took everything off and was shirtless and holding my clothes in my hand.  “Now I feel cold”.   The more weird stuff kept happening the more self conscious I felt, and I would get another drink.  At some point I spilled plain water on my pants- - and looked and noticed there was a hole in my pants where the threadbare fabric had worn clear through.  I looked at other places and the fabric was very worn and in places seams had pulled away and left holes.  I said “This suit is trash - - and it isn’t that old of a suit.  Tim would say mocking things to me but after a time when I had presumably sobered up Tim admitted that they were all playing a joke on me and the servers had been instructed to spike my drinks with extra alcohol.  I went outside to this courtyard area.  And I looked at the back (front) of their main sanctuary.  It was a solid white concrete wall with a design of some big Mickey Mouse insignia with the ears and such.  But the thing looked plum ugly and I remarked about it to someone- - how looming and high over us it was.  And what were those metal piping things that are part of it.  The other person said, “Oh those are for the gas flames and at night they torch the whole thing up.”   Then someone else said, “Actually they built that thing so they would have an aestheticly pleasing way or burning people at the stake”.  The thing is- - I honestly didn’t know whether the person was joking, or dead serious.

This is our Opus Magnum paragraph on Morality.  Both liberals and conservatives believe they have a monopoly on Morality.  Indeed it is important - - to treat our fellow man and woman with kindness and consideration.  It could be argued that Evil can be summed up all in the idea of harming our fellow man and transgressing the rights of our Neighbor.  Certainly Compassion is a key moral virtue which conservatives severely lack.  But there are other things which determine morality - - such as how one conducts his Own affairs independant of others.  There are things such as one's mental processes being rational and those etherial qualities of personal Character.  Other than compassion I would like to pose two key other qualities that are not - except by inference - on my official list of Seven Virtues.  These are Integrety - -  or what one might call "moral wholeness" in the same way that a well built product would have "structural integrety" and the other one is Dilligence.  In other words it's doing your job or "being dependable" - not flaking out - - in personal endeavors both public and personal. It all boils down to Responsability.  A person of Integrety is more than just honest- - in that he has a certain Pride in himself that he can look himself in the mirror each morning.  Dilligence is another quality I wish congress had.  There are three vices of the Tea Party.  First of all there is the Dante top of the pops term - - Huberous, or Wrathful Pride.  The tea party has this quality in spades.  No one will dispute that.  However there are two other glairing vices that right wingers are inclined to overlook and are not on Dante's list.  One is just your garden variety Cowardess.  So much of what the tea party does or doesn't do is a result of moral Cowardess.  The other one is Treachery - - which the right doesn't seem to care about it- - and I suppose this "tradition" goes all the way back to Judas.  But I'd like to raise the topic of "Responsability by Proxy" or this third party morality.  Let me give you examples.  Nobody will argue in favor of Selling Stolen Goods.  Because you are vicariously stealing these goods over again even if originally you didn't steel the goods yourself.  But now let's change it up a little.  If your trash that you throw out - Yours- - or is it "trash".  What items that are thrown out by a Supermarket and are in a dumpster now?  How about three day old pastry goods?  Again people have talked about how we "over wrap" food, so there is no question it's still good.  And how about lettuce or other produce items that would be most useful to feed the poor.  How about "stealing" milk that was slated by a Dairy Company to be thrown out, in conformance to some price support Government Contract?  How about ratting out a fellow employee because he's an illegal alien.  I wouldn't do it.  Neil S would but I wouldn't.  And there is this whole area of stolen corporate computer programs.  I'm not going to be the one to rat the company out on that one.  I want to keep my job.  Nobody cares, at least, it doesn't personally bother Me.  Then we have even vaguer morality rationalizations of the Political Right.  Nancy Warwick around here never pays back cigarettes she borrows- and she will never lend anybody any.  She is the most imaculately selfish person in this entire place.  Yet she says she does so "because my brother told me never to give out cigarettes".  But her brother isn't here.  And her brother wasn't the one that gave her the cigarettes. Then we have people like Judy who will in third party style interference- - discourage a third party from lending me money when I need it.  She will say she's "sticking up" for Bill Gunderson or whoever "because he doesn't have a lot of money".   That's none of HER business whether he does or doesn't.  It's HIS business and the thing is between him and me.  Besides he just bought one of these monster truck things a few months ago.  He's not hurting financially.  Rather it seems that the Right doesn't really care about some "rights" that are violated by - - causing people the indignity of paying four percent more income taxes.  Sometimes I think they just want to HURT the poor.  I think they want to black ball the poor to KEEP the government- - or anybody from helping them.   It's kind of like J J Deveroux on Days of our Lives.  Dr. Daniel Jonas never did anything to him personally - -but there is some mentally abberated thinking that causes JJ to want to HURT Dr. Jonas any way he can, and he feels absolutely no moral compuction about it.  Then we come to the most abberated "third party" rationalization at all.  And this one is "God told me to do it'.  They may go so far as to say, "Well if it were up to me I'd be compassionate and generous to you - - but God tells me thus and so".   So they admit that they use God as a rationalization for doing things they in their heart of hearts know are morally wrong.  This is why I defend Atheists so spiritedly.  Because of the way Christians use "God" as their all around Whipping Boy.  Suddenly Capitalism is so sacrisanct that - - other considerations such as giving into personal Greed and letting Greed rule your lives - - - this to them is a "small price to pay" in order to keep this sacrosanct Value of U S Capitalism.

This is an overcast Friday morning June 7, 2013 and in our seemingly endless series of anniversaries, today is the 42^nd anniversary of my speech on audio tape, where I first felt it necessary to broach the topic of “Jesus Freaks”.    Stephanie Miller was doing that screechy “Get off my phone!” fifth symphony.  I had ideas for a new blog posting but when I first got up I felt maybe I should give blogging a rest for a while.  I had in my mind last night a whole thing on morality planned out - -   but sometimes politics are just too depressing to think about. The whole government spying thing is being roomanated about and I imagine it will continue to be on all the weekend news talk shows.  I got up at 6:15 and when I got out of the shower I was surprised how chilly the room was.  I put on that navy blue sweat shirt, which is softer and fluffier than the straight black one.  But for some reason they got swapped and the nice one is harder to get to.  I noticed there was that gray sweater with the big stripes on it that I got from this place for Christmas and forgot about.  Once out on the patio I noticed that it was physically cold outside- - perhaps the lowest temperatures we’ve seen around here in over a month. I reran the old coffee grounds before breakfast.  We had a half a banana with our Rice Krispies this morning, and they were using some different kind of oil to do the hashed browns today, like peanut oil or something, and you could smell it.  We had a fried egg and the coffee was decent.  Larry paid me another fifty cents for coffee last night - - and my cigarette supply for the week is assured.  I went out and bought a pack of John Black grapes right after breakfast.