Will the Republican Congress Be Politically Embarrassed by a Gigantic Economic Crash?

My one question about this lead article is just one.  "What will be the triggering event?" Because from where I stand, it seems like this Fed policy of Free Money for the Rich Bankers could go on literally till the cows come home.  In short this strange conduct of the Federal Reserve Banks appears entirely sustainable, just as surely as buying elections by the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Addelson appears entirely sustainable.  It almost seems as if "They have everything covered" with no loose ends.  After all of the people who are victims of government's policies ever rise and protest in the streets, they'd just be mowed down by tanks and guns - - so, what would be the point?

Anyone who looks at central bankers speak can sense the fear behind their absurd bravado, and the dishonesty of their public confidence.

The extraordinary disconnect between soaring stock markets and stagnating real economies has been gleefully embraced by all who benefit from the disconnect:

The financial media, brokerages, investment banks, politicos who have made stocks the barometer of “prosperity” and of course the top 5% who own roughly 3/4 of the financial assets of the nation.

Even more extraordinary is the rise in central bank fear that has unleashed extremes of monetary policy. If the real economy is as great as advertised, then why are central banks dropping monetary neutron bombs on a nearly weekly basis?

What are they so afraid of? And if they’re not afraid of something, then why are they constantly hyping their threadbare commitment to “do whatever it takes,” pushing real interest rates into negative territory and buying stocks and bonds hand over fist?

I’ve prepared a chart depicting central bank fear, the stock market and the real economy. As central bank fear/panic pushes higher, the banks have unleashed a torrent of PR and monetary programs that have dragged stocks higher with every phony pronouncement and every new free money for financiers chumming of the stock market.

No wonder the feeding frenzy never stops–the central banks are clearly terrified of what will happen should they stop dumping monetary chum in the waters.

We're not showing you the actual Chart but take my word, you're not missing much.

What is equally extraordinary is the abject failure of all the central banks’ free money for financiers to move the needle of the real economy. Virtually every bright spot in the economy results not from organic growth but from the expansion of a new credit bubble: for example, subprime auto loans.

After tens of trillions of dollars in stimulus and trillions squandered on asset purchases to suppress interest rates and prop up the stock market, the real economies are drifting into recession or stagnation.

The central bank response to this abject failure? More free money for financiers.   A dark thought just occurred to me.  God lets poor people starve but trusts the Church in Rome with "all his worldly goods". That's an unsettling thought, isn't it?

Anyone who looks at central bankers speak can sense the fear behind their absurd bravado, and the dishonesty of their public confidence. They’re not just afraid–they’re in a panic. Every press conference and every announcement is supposed to express confidence, but what they really express is terror: terror that doing more of what failed spectacularly will not just stop working–it will trigger the collapse of the entire rotten, corrupt system of central banks and free money for financiers. 

And now for what paultry news there is.  Mal Evans is not his own man these days, as communacations minister of the Federation.  I have deduced this point on my own by the way he's been acting lately.  But here is some news to celebrate the day that "Jesus alias Judas" was really crucified.  The Federation will be doing a re-rerelease of two Beatle albums.   Tomorrow, November 24^th is the release date.  IF YOU REMEMBER we listed two suggested Vinyl versions of the way "Mystery Tour' and "Pepper" SHOULD have been released AT THE TIME.  Strangely four songs ended up getting the axe entirely in this little opperation.  Now CD versions of these two albums will be out.  Let's take "Magical Mystery Tour" first.  Side one is identical.  In terms of Side two - - - we are adding one track and changing one track. That is DIFFERING FROM the version we listed a few months back.  "All You Need Is Love" is tacked on the end of this album (really?) after the track, "It's All Too Much" just as it follows that song on "Yellow Submarine".   Also "Strawberry Fields" is changed after extensive coonsultation between me and Mal Evans and John Lennon.  By the way Mal Evans had an avatar today - - which is strange conduct for him.  It's very rare to have Mal Evans and John Lennon in the same room.  Unlike our vinyl version of this track "SFFE" - - we are reverting "mostly" to the original release.  Except for the end.  You know the final refrain of "Strawberry Fields Forever" and then there is a slight pause and there is that famous lead guitar riff leading into the funeral dirge.  That part is gone.  Instead the ending of "Version Seven" is tacked on the end.  John Lennon explains that "The original ending needs to be heard", and now it will be, i e the end of "version seven".   So MMT will be a little longer with one additional track, and "Strawberry Fields" also having an increased playing time.  We now move to "Pepper".   Here we will just list our strange Side Two of that album.  As you know the ORDER OF SONGS on this album was Scrambled by us with the vinyl re-release.  Now we're adding three tracks.  Follow the sequence.  Side Two in our strange world begins with - - - - "Good Morning", then "Penny Lane" in this case the version on the American Rareties version.  Mal and I agreed on this choice.  Then it's "When I'm 64", "Lovely Rita",  "Within You and Without You" - - - - "Baby, You're a Rich Man"   Sgt Peppers Represe - - and "A Day in the Life" from a dead start.  Keep in mind the final two bars of the represe are faded COMPLETELY out - - at the request of John Lennon saying "That's where the song ends".  Here is our other brief news.  Did we ever tell you that the entities that produced Dire Straits’ first two albums were call the “Alleans”.  They are an entity that resides in large part on the southeast shore of Lake Erie in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.  There is "some big midwestern city" they are also in - - and I'm guessing that is Pittsburgh, though it could be Youngstown.  Did I tell you that FH knew about the Alleans - - and there is also a colony of them “somewhere in Seattle” at least as of over sixty years ago.   

"Poisoning the Well" -Over-used Phrase of the Week

Last April John Boehner mockingly said “Don’t make me do it!  It’s too Hard!”   Well that sentiment was short lived.  When Eric Cantor lost the primary contest he was in, John Boehner came to the President and announced matter of factly that it was now just impossible to get an immigration bill passed.  In Boehner’s mind, by whatever convoluted mental process he used to come to his conclusion, passing an immigration bill was now impossible.  Cantor lost a primary bid.  He didn’t just keel over from a heart attack!   But then John Boehner and Mitch Mc Connell tell the president that he has “poisoned the well’ by issuing his executive order on immigration.  Clearly the action was legal.  But three members of the Mc Laughlin group used the metaphor of “Poisoning the well” but as Eleanor Clift points out “That well was poisoned a long time ago” or at least since the second half of June.  Right around the mid year period – my life turned for the worse and whatever mis aligned stars them have pretty much defined the course of not only my life but the immigration bill, and E J Di Mira didn’t know it but the soap gods had turned against him, too.  We then come to the killing of those four people praying in a Jewish synagogue.  Nobody condones death like this in any form.  However I don’t see Netenyahoo bothered in the least by the slaughter of two thousand Palestinians in Gaza last summer.  The Media gods have not treated Islam at all kindly in the past few months either.  I think Pat is right in that it’s NOT “anti semetic” to want a Palestinian State, and indeed it has been on Israel’s agenda.  It’s one of the things they claim to be for just as John Boehner claimed for the longest time he was for immigration reform.  This afternoon I watched George Bush’s speech on his own immigration reform plan in the spring of 2006.   None of the right wing nuts were having hysterics over President Bush’s speech back then.  In terms of persecution of Jewish people in European nations- - I am disturbed that is on the rise.  It’s wrong, of course.  But if God himself were to weigh in on this issue I’d say he’d think “You shouldn’t stoke the fires of hatred and then ask why you have an inquenchable inferno on your hands”.   We kill Islamic peoples with the casualness of a skeet shooter blowing up clay pigeons.  In terms of our old friend Gruber - - the guy who was so instrumental in getting the Affordable Care Act passed- - once again President Obama screwed up in his response.  His mama never told him, I guess, that one should always be frank and own up to his misdeeds.  And clearly the President made a sad misjudgement of character in even hiring this guy in the first place.  But the right doesn’t exactly have clean hands on this issue.  Sean Hannity and company have said “Gruber counted on the American people being stupid” and “If you pass this bill knowing what’s in it, the bill will die”.  This is patently false.  This was perhaps the most highly debated bill both in congress and in the general media, of just about any bill put before congress.  We all knew the bill and its many shortcomings, which is why I was not happy when the bill passed.  The affordable care act was trouble from the lowering of the starting pennant.  It spawned the disaster of 2010.  Back then you actually needed an excuse to vote “tea party”.  This year you didn’t.  In fact it was my theory for this year “All the damage that’s been by the right wing was done in 2010 so assuming the right wing fury is EQUAL to what it was then, it CAN’T get any worse but only equal or be status quo to 2010.  Needless to say I was proven wrong.

In unpleasant news UCLA is winning over USC.   I don’t have any readings on the cosmic forces but I would imagine that when UCLA is on the ascendant, things bode poorly for me and visa versa with USC.   It seems a little unusual that both teams are wearing the same color of gold pants.  Also UCLA announced that they would never issue the number 42 in any sport.  As you know I don’t like retiring of any number in sports.  I figure if the guy isn’t noteworthy enough to be remembered or honored on his own merit- - then he doesn’t need taking numbers out of circulation as if conferring some kind of holy icon with magic powers or something on an inamimate object like a number.

I watched that talk on the medical examinations of President Kennedy on November 22^nd.  What struck me is that they performed backward recoil tests on melons but not firmer objects such as cocanuts, pineapples, or plastic jugs filled with water, and apparently they used some special kind of bullet for these faked up backward recoil tests.  Also when shooting a goat in the head all four limbs flay out in a neuro-reactive convulsion.  However in the Zapruder film we know that first the head flies back – and then the body follows.  Also I was astounded to learn that the people who did the original autopsy were “told” that the President fell forward and not backward and you saw “confirmation bias” in action.  Also in this piece neutron analysis tests were debunked as a way of isolating a bullet to a gun because so many bullets have mixtures of lead and antimony in them.   Many of the original examiners had no experience in diagnosing gun shot wounds.  It’s strange that the original Parkland Hospital doctors, who worked on the President while he was still alive, are in universal disagreement with the men who ended up doing the autopsy.  One of the prime examples showed an entry wound that was ten centameters off- but this gay kept calling them “sonta-meters”.  It’s a pretty large amount.  They picked out one Zapruter photo that was fuzzy and supposed the President was in this position when the bullet was going through his brain.  However their diagram shows a more pronounced downward tilt than the Zapruder photo shows.  One should keep in mind that with distance and taking Newtonian gravitational acceleration and the downward parabola action - - with the great distance involved- - the fired bullet would be traveling progressively slower through the air.

Buffalo got six feet of “lake effects” snow, later revised down to 65 inches, but if anything Grand Rapids, MI got it worse - - but there is that swath of land downwind from the respective lakes- - where the snow really piles up.  Then Buffalo was predicted to get an additional three feet of snow, which would make nine feet if we were being literal.  I think they said they have seven feet now.  But the thing is the respective lakes of Michigan and Erie were unusually warm before the snow at fifty degrees.  Now of course the danger is in flooding, which is virtually certain now as temperatures will heat right up again.  However they got so much snow in Rich Stadium in Buffalo that the Buffalo Bills are playing in Detroit this weekend.  But all of this can pretty directly be traced back to global warming, but many people will never accept this because they’ve been programmed by FOX news not to think this.

[extranious tape fragment]  Then I looked at Finance and noted that the stockmarket is continuing to make new highs- as of last Friday.  I also looked at a lot of the varied sports categories.  Then it was Chris Matthews and that show talked about immigration and we were reminded that the President only had 38% approval for the action even though in the abstract – 74% approve of the actual measures the President enacted, with no reference to the circumstance of them.  Once again the Republic is being scitzophrenic.  It's just like Norman Goldman says.  If you put a label on it- people will go after the label "Like putting a red flag in front of a bull".  But if you don't put the red flag out- - - the rats will go for the bait every time (in a rather poorly worded mixed metaphor)  After snack break it was Melinda Lee- - who says not to use an egg in turkey stuffing because the mixture will be too gloppy.  One lady spoke of  “stuffing” dates with blue cheese and bacon and maybe walnuts. 

Not Much to Say These Days

Last night (meaning Wednesday) I read a review of the immense damage done to the Alberta forests and other nature preserves and rivers and what have you, with all of this strip mining and defacing the land.  This Alberta tar sands issue was a non starter for me ever since I first heard about it on Sixty Minutes years and years ago.  Nature is being raped and she must “resist to the utmost” to use a legal term.  Any measure to block development of this land to exploit should be blocked no matter what form it takes.  FOX is concerned about terrorists coming across the border.  However this is a natural target with a bull’s eye on its back- - because the media has played up this pipeline as a big thing, for national security among other things and energy production to counter Arab and Russian oil.  Al Qaeda may argue that their whole way of life is threatened by this pipeline.  I read a lot of items in Washington’s blog going into the past and 2008 and how America needs a continued “war on terror” when charts show that only seven percent of “terrorist organizations” are put down and abolished by military force.  Sometimes (ten percent of the time) the terrorists win everything.  Often political accomidations are made with them.  A lot of the time it’s old fashioned police action which ends a groups influence.  We were repeatedly told “Terrorism is not a police action but- - some kind of a Holy Crusade - - of war that we should wage”.   In essence we are giving terrorists the status they have long sought.  One person made the statement “Being the object of terrorist attacks is a small price to pay for being a Super Power”.   There was talk of President Bush “allowing” 9 – 11 to happen.  How often have we heard that “God isn’t the author of evil; he just allows it”.   But when someone with unquestioned absolute power “allows something” it says a lot about the moral compass of that individual be he the President of the United States or God Himself.   I’ve been afraid this computer was going to crash any minute so have been saving frequently.

I watched Harry Reid, Chuck Schummer, Dick Derbin and that blond haired lady up on the platform advocating for the President’s immigration plan.  Later after dinner I watched the five governors on the Republican side speak on the matter.  John Kassech of Ohio was the most conciliatory of the five.  Walker, Perry, and Jendell were strident- - and the Indiana governor was a tad more moderate than those three.  The President spoke from the White House at five in a well delivered fifteen minute speech they announced ahead of time would not be on any over the air television stations.  Right now I turned on the TV.  That hiss from these speakers continues to get louder and I’m wondering why.  Those muffins gave me a vaguely sick feeling even though I ate fewer than usual when Terry brings them.  I feel feverish.  Tonight for dinner we had spaghetti and a green salad and cauliflour.  We had vanilla ice cream for dessert.  I made coffee just before five.  Even so I am not now up to doing any sort of blog post now.  The rate of blog posting had declined- - and I’m getting the feeling the rate will continue to decline further.

Keystone XL Pipeline Bill Is Successfully Blocked

Concerning this map - - green shades are good - - blue is average and purple is bad and hot pink is the worst.  As you can see- - China is one of the few places on the planet where inequity of income is as BAD as it is in the United States.  Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin must be turning over in their graves.  Michelle Bachman is famous for praising the fact that "We should pattern our employment environment more like Red China because there the workers don't have the sort of rights we have in this country".   How ironic it is that the most "True Red" communist country- - should have one of the most inequitable of economies.  As bad as people say that India is- - the United States is qualitatively WORSE than India is, with its cast system.

 The United States Senate successfully blocked the Keystone XL pipeline, and Senator Boxer tells us that the XL stands for extra lethal.  The final vote which I watched on C-Span was 59 to 41.  However most of the votes at the end were all “Ayes” and the last NO pushing it to 41 came significantly before the end.  This is a great victory for President Obama and the American people.  John Boehner was saying “It would be suicide for the President to veto such a popular piece of legislation.”   Unfortunately for John Boehner, he never got a chance to gloat over this.  Some of the advocates for the pipeline contradicted themselves.  In one breath they are saying “This oil will get to market regardless of the vote today”.  This is not true.  The tar sands people of Alberta need an outlet for their product, either west, south, or east.  They have none now.  They say they need this pipeline because “pipelines are safer than the railroad” and yet they unfurled a map showing all sorts of pipelines so I say “Why don’t they just use one of those many others”.  But they tipped their hand saying “The refineries of Port Arthur really NEED this oil to make big profits.”  But you don’t jeopardize the health of the American people for fifty permanent jobs and to generate profits for a smaller number of people than that, such as the Koch Brothers.  Of course the new senate will construct new legislation next year, but that will take time.  They complain that too much time has elapsed already since the first permit filing Sept of 2008.

The American people are Clueless according to Washington’s blog.  What are they clueless about?  Just how much income inequality there is in the world.  How much more do CEO’s make for example, than the average American worker?  Many people think it is thirty to one or forty to one at most.  And across all political lines they say that income inequality as extreme as what we have not is a bad thing.  But it isn’t 40 to 1 for executive CEO salaries but instead it’s 350 to one.  Of course this figure, along with gross income, gets more extreme all the time in terms of its inequity.  And yet people like Judy have trouble saying the words “equity” or “equality” thinking the whole concept is some socialist “redistribution of income” ploy thought up by Marx and Lenin.  But as you and I know, income and salary inequality has become more extreme throughout the six years of the Obama administration.  It’s gotten so bad that now some republicansx try a switcheroo in order to secure the “bub-bah” vote or something, saying that it’s due to the President’s own actions that the inequity is as bad as it is, just as President Romney (ha – ha) kept saying during the 2012 debate that if you had trouble paying back your student loan, it was all the President’s fault for “getting you into this mess” or whatever.  The American people are not only clueless about their own economic status- - but they are just as clueless about the workings of government.  Perhaps now with BOTH houses of congress AND the courts now clearly in the Republican corner- - whatever befalls them now- - they will have to just accept as the will of their own party, the Republicans.  So one would logically assume that in the next survey about “is America headed the right or wrong direction” they will jump at the opportunity to vote in the affirmative that “since we voted in November 2014 our will is being carried out.

One thing I myself was nearly clueless about was the extent to which American oil production has increased over the course of the Obama administration.  Among the states, Texas is still first in production but North Dakota is second.  But they don’t talk about jobs in Texas or opportunities there even though they are still number one - - because Texas is still a really economically messed up state with more crime, and uninsured, and people below the poverty line.  Saudi Arabia is still first in production but Russia is a close second and closing fast.  And the United States is third ahead of such countries as Mexico and Iraq.  I sure didn’t know that.  The biggest reason for the drop in oil prices now is that OPEC has been “broken” thanks in large measure to Vladimir Putin and his vast oil he uses to leverage advantage over other nations.  But also Saudi Arabia and OPEC is cutting prices in order to undercut production of our shale and natural gas obtained through hydraulic fracturing because THESE petroleum products require the base price of oil to be above eighty dollars a barrel in order to be profitable.  So it’s only logical that the Saudis being the good capitalists they are- - endeavor to drive our domestic producers out of business.  Now suddenly Rush is turning anti capitalist and accuse the Saudis of fighting dirty.  They are only engaging in the prime directive of capitalists of “Look out for number one” so he who espouses by the rhetoric of greed, will now suffer at the hands of others.  I don’t think Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity feel at all comfortable about whether their pet projects succeed or fail is in the hands of the Saudis.  I hope you all know that domestic producers are also just as greedy however.  Do you think THEY will sell the oil they produce for what their cost is plus a twenty percent profit?  Hell no!  They immediately put their products on the world market because they too profit- - from the past exploitations of OPEC.  They know that OPEC in the past has driven up petroleum prices way over what market value should be, and their aim is to cash in on it.  I hope nobody in North Dakota had fantasies of buying gasoline for two dollars a gallon or anything.  It’s never “OUR oil”.  They put it on the international market immediately.

Sean Hannity is in love with the idea of whites having an excuse to kill Black people.  He’s privately hoping for anything that can be called “disorder” so white cops can go nuts shooting Black protestors like fish in a barrel.  Actually video footage reveals Wilson was lying about his face, because he’s in better condition on the tape than he was telling people.  I take exception to how Sean Hannity has almost been cheer leading for the white "race" (as if such a race as "white" existed)  He turns it into some kind of a sports match saying the President is zero for three.  The President accused that cop who hassled a Black professor about getting into his own house saying the police "acted stupidly", which is the mildest way I would characterized how the police officers acted in that case.  Then the President struck out again - - as the theory goes when he said "If I had a son - I bet he would look like Trayvon Martin".  Now Sean Hannity - just as the media wants us to - - is assuming that the Ferguson grand jury will NOT indict Officer Wilson, which is probably accurate.  This would make President Obama 0 for 3 in Hannity's mind.  It's NEVER wrong to take a moral stance on an issue- - even if you lose.  If Sean Hannity had half the moral character he claims to have- - he's know this and never even make the analogy.  In terms of Health Care and the new contraversy there- - I'm not going to comment on that.  I'll let the facts sort themselves out on their own.  I know Hannity would LIKE certain facts to be true, but at least now, the mainstream Media isn't backing him up.

Inequality in the U.S. has soared in the last couple of years, since the Gini Coefficient was last calculated, so it is undoubtedly currently much higher.
So why are Egyptians rioting, while the Americans are complacent?
Well, Americans – until recently – have been some of the wealthiest people in the world, with most having plenty of comforts (and/or entertainment) and more than enough to eat. But another reason is that – as Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School demonstrate – Americans consistently underestimate the amount of inequality in our nation.
As William Alden wrote last September:
Americans vastly underestimate the degree of wealth inequality in America, and we believe that the distribution should be far more equitable than it actually is, according to a new study. Or, as the study’s authors put it: “All demographic groups — even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy — desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.” The report … “Building a Better America — One Wealth Quintile At A Time” by Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School … shows that across ideological, economic and gender groups, Americans thought the richest 20 percent of our society controlled about 59 percent of the wealth, while the real number is closer to 84 percent.

Thumbs Down on the Obama China Deal

The Mc Laughlin group featured the China deal that the President was working on in China.  One questions why the President even went on a trip with all the negotiating he should be at least attempting with Mc Conell and Boehner according to Chris Matthews.  Matthews claims the President should have broken the immigration agreement down feature by feature and negotiated all of the terms in a face to face meeting.  This would make it harder for Boehner to claim that “He doesn’t really want the deal” when he claims that he does.  But this deal with China is bad on so many levels.  Apparently nothing will be done about the massive cyber theft that is going on with China, ripping off our programs.  And we are all sick of NAFTA, CAFTA, and SHAFTA, southern half of Asia free trade agreement.  Apparently- - judging from the past with Korea, we make all the hard concession and the other side gives a lick and a promise and continues to keep our goods out.  Pat Buchannon was the only one of the group with his head screwed on right.  He says “Of course China is nationalist, as we and Britain used to be”.   He pointed out all the ways that China will profit from the deal.  And in terms of air pollution- - apparently China conceded nothing despite the fact that marathon runners have to wear gas masks when they run to avoid the fumes.  In fact the Chinese government ordered a massive shutdown of factories and the cutting off of heat to people’s homes, just so the skies would be blue when the President showed up.  If I were the president I would have said “I am not impressed one bit by this”.   But our side has all these constrictions of the economy we have to live up to.  With all the other diplomatic fopahs like the Nicotine gum - - this visit did nothing to increase President Obama’s stature and the whole trip had negative value.  Chris Matthews continues to insist that the XP Canadian pipeline is destined to come about and it’s only a matter of when and not if it will be built.  I strongly disagree considering the pipeline is still tied up in court cases in Nebraska.  Matthews has this closet “republican” streak remaining in him.

I watched Meet the Press.  There was another ISIS beheading.  Today I was informed by my friends from the “other side” that it’s their belief that ISIS might be just a shadow “front organization” secretly doing United States bidding.  They are, shall we say, just a little obvious and propagandistic in prompting the American People to keep the Mideast war going – whatever the form.  Before we ever heard of ISIS (way back earlier this year) there was one blog entry I read that stipulated that “The United States will manufacture an incident in the Mideast to start another war.  This new guy on NBC asks better guestions than David Gregory ever did as far as nailing certain key issues to the wall.  Janet Nepolatano who is now the chandelor of the California University system was on at nine.  She made a good case for raising both the salaries of the reigents but also of the tuition Students pay.  Apparently there was some question about lowering academic standards for out of state students because they provide more revenue with higher out of state tuitions.  Janet denied this was going on, and I’m inclined to believe her and to distrust anything Jerry Brown says at this point.  Jerry Brown has turned into such a money skinflint I don’t know what to think about him anymore.   I did not post on Saturday and so the anti war thing on my blog has been the lead posting since Friday.  One motive in pirating someone elses’ posting is to get my own blogger reader numbers up, and then presumably after I have bagged the readers’ attention, they’ll go on to read my own ideas.

There are a lot of myths and facts concerning the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, which USA Today outlines quite well.  Yet there are countless myths about the promises the President made that don’t appear in his acceptance speech.   First of all the speech was shorter than normal.  It was 45 minutes but that includes marathon applause and music at the beginning and the president primping - - before he goes on to remind people of his humility.  There were endless adulations to family members and the Clintons and Joe Byden - - and then he launches into an endless series of personal examples of people who got fired from their job or students in trouble or talks more about his own past.  A list of the promises NOT made in this speech is downright staggering.  At no time does he say “We must end the Iraq War now”.  At no time does he propose ANY timetable for ending that war.  At no times does he discuss the torturing or our prisoners of war or the closing of Guantanamo Bay.  At no time does he talk about personal rights to privacy being violated by the government, or secrecy or war crimes committed by the Bush administration.  At no time does the President discuss global warming or the measures that have to be taken.  At no time does he propose an end to fossile fuel addiction.  On the contrary the Presidential nominee talks about “clean coal” and increased drilling for natural gas, alluding to fracking, no doubt.  At no time does he say we shouldn’t have more oil refineries or new massive oil pipelines to those refineries.  At no time does he criticize ANY supreme court decision or talk about a woman’s rights being scaled back in the case of abortion.  At no time does he mention abortion doctors who were murdered.  At no time does the President pledge to either raise the taxes on the rich, or to scale back the deficit.  He never criticizes the Bush Administration for medicare part D not paid for or funding two wars “off the books”.   At no time does he say these international trade agreements such as NAFTA or CAFTA are bad for American jobs or American business.   He certainly never talks about working vigerously to maintain the voting rights of minorities.  He never specifies what shovel ready government public works products he will do.  He offers no specifics of any health care plan at all.  At no time does he pledge to insure every American.  At no time does he speak of either single payer or a “public option” to keep the private insurance companies honest.  He never speaks of the Dream act- - or any real immigration reform at all.  He never talks about ending these massive subsedies to big energy and big agri business.  He never comes out against genetically modified organisms.  He never speaks of patent reform in drug laws or going after drug company profits.  So what DOES the president talk about?  He speaks of the cynicism of Washington and restoring trust.  He spends a whole lot of time attacking his yet to be opponent nominee John Mc Cain.  He spends a lot of time talking about the “Spirit of America”.   Look how long it took me to give a bare bones outline of all the things the President never promised in that Convention Speech.

 Chris Matthews criticized President Obama for developing a spine- - perhaps.  He says he’s going to take action in immigration, but of course- - hasn’t done that yet.  So has anything really changed?  Is this yet something else the Republicans are going to talk or bully him out of doing?  In like manner the President delivered a speech indicating a sympathy tword not signing the XL Canadian pipeline bill.  But the President never said that he either would or wouldn’t sign the thing.  So once again we’re in the dark.  The issues where the President has taken a clear “moral” stance are few and far between and tend to center on women’s rights and gay rights.   On no other issues does the President have any firm principles at all.  I still view events prior to 2008 as "The good old days" because I associate such a drop in my own "outlook" since then, and this roughly corresponds to the period when Dad has been dead.  Last night I did ruminate about those “Dad” references I read from 2007 in Google Desktop.  Perhaps Dad was sicker than I was willing to admit because there was incident after incident or a diverse nature indicating all was not well.  It was “Not something we would all laugh about a year from now after the crisis passed” any more than this crisis with the tea party controlling virtually all aspects of the national government now is something that will “pass” any time soon.  

I had Leo Le Port on - - and he says that some slow DSL is only one and a half million BPS.  Mine is two and a half MBPS.  Yesterday Leo reminded us that cable is more prone to slow downs than is DSL because the more people using the pipeline the more congested it is.  Last night on the Mc Laughlin group- - everybody seemed to be weighing in AGAINST net neutrality, and I don’t remember Eleanor Clift saying otherwise.  Of course if you have to pay to get “Proper service” it’s kind of like a roadside shakedown like the cops or the mafia in the old days in the big city.   My point is that even though it isn’t a problem now, that the point of declaring the internet to be a common carrier is to PREVENT stuff from happening of an “untword nature”.  I thought we were all on the same team as our President here, but apparently not.  You know if the people eighty years ago were as lacking in foresight as we are today- - America would be a lot less nicer place to live in today.

I wanted to just a little make reference to Bill Clinton’s daytime TV program interview of yesterday.  Clinton says that apart from age- - all of the differences we see in people in terms of their intelligence or temperament or hair color or thickness, or body build, or eye shape or color or skin color or body build- - all of this is a half of one percent of Human DNA.  With such a tiny percent of DNA changing making such physical alterations- - such as tigers evolving into house cats or wolves evolving into Collies or what have you - - it is easy to see that basically what unites the human race is far more pervaisive, the 99.5% as opposed to the traits that divide us.  We won’t even speak of the vast differences that are due to strictly geography, or the linquistics and culture of a locality.  We spoke of creation in our last posting.  The Bible says “We are all of one blood”.  There is that 99.5% that unite us, that declare us to be created in the image of God.  Those are all the traits that HAVEN’T changed in a million years or so.  But just to set some of your minds at ease- - it's more a commmonolity of the Design, rather than the Designer that I'm talking about.  I'm talking about carbon based life forms that for the most part consume water and have at least molicules recognizable as DNA even if they are vastly different from ours.  It's this comonality of design and "nature" which unites us as a people.

America's Continued Addiction to Unjust Wars

RE-POSTED WITHOUT PERMISSION BECAUSE IT'S TOO IMPORTANT NOT TO ENDORSE

Having been on the road, I have these two altered brilliant insights to report.

1. No matter what sort of fascist state were ever established in this part of the world, Amtrak would never get the trains to run on time.

2. Respecting people and giving them the benefit of the doubt for being smarter than the television depicts them is vastly easier when when your worst fears aren't confirmed by research.

The well-known line is that people get the governments they deserve.  Of course nobody should be abused the way the U.S. and many other governments abuse them, no matter what their intellectual deficiencies.  If anything, stupid people should have better, kinder governments. But my common response to that well-known line is to point out the bribery and gerrymandering and limited choices and relentless propaganda. Surely the clown show in Washington is not the people’s fault. Some of my best friends are people and they often display signs of intelligence.

But the primary thing the U.S. government does is wage wars, and it wages them against other people who had no say in the matter. Of course I don’t want wars waged against Americans either, but the general impression one gets from traveling around and speaking and answering questions at public events in the United States is not so much that people are indifferent to the destruction of the globe as long as they don’t miss their favorite television show, as that people are unclear on what destruction means and can’t identify a globe when it’s placed in a lineup with six watermelons.

War and peace are concepts people have heard of, but ask them which they favor and you’ll get blank stares. “Do you support all wars, some wars, or no wars?” I ask to get a sense of the crowd, but a fourth answer takes the majority: “Uhhh, I dunno.”

A few people want to end war by having a bunch of anti-war wars, but they all work in the State Department and I haven’t been invited to speak there.

A few elderly people believe we simply must have wars, and every last one of them has the identical reason: Pearl Harbor. You can explain to them the stupid vindictive conclusion of World War I, the decades of militarization, of antagonization of Japan (protested for many years by U.S. peace activists), of Wall Street funding the Nazis. You can point out the madness of a rogue nation waging hundreds of disastrous wars all over the world for 70 years and getting people to support this project by finding a single example of a supposedly justifiable war 70 years ago. You can challenge them to find any other major public project that has to go back that far to justify itself. You can quote them the wisdom of peace activists from the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s. They’ll simply say that Pearl Harbor justified saving the Jews. You can show them how Pearl Harbor was intentionally provoked, how actions that might have saved the Jews were avoided, how the Jews became a justification for the war only long after it was over, and they’ll just grunt at you. You can recount successful nonviolent resistance to the Nazis and the growth and development of nonviolent resistance in the decades since, and they’ll drool, scratch their heads, or ask if you’re going to vote for Hillary.

A few young people believe we simply must have wars, and every last one of them has the identical reason: ISIS. Because ISIS is something evil, there must be war. “Should we attack ISIS or do nothing?” they all ask.

I imagine I’d laugh if I weren’t trembling for our future. Iraq III: The Return of the Decider is becoming the worst parody of a humanitarian war in history. First George W. Obama gave himself a waiver from his own dumb rules against killing unlimited civilians. Then he asked for a special waiver in order to arm lots of really good people who happen to torture some folks and murder some folks and rape some folks and genocide some folks. This after he asked the CIA if arming rebels has ever worked out, and the CIA said “No, but we do it as a matter of principle,” and he said “Let’s roll!”

Just as nobody supposes World War II the Just and Noble could have arisen without World War I the Futile and Pointless, no serious analysis of ISIS can explain its birth without Iraq II: The Liberation. ISIS is made up of people tortured in U.S. prison camps and thrown out of the Iraqi Army by U.S. occupiers and driven into desperation by the hell the U.S. and its allies created. ISIS brutally murders just like, but on a smaller scale than, the U.S. and its new allies in fighting ISIS. The helpless-people-on-a-mountaintop story remains permanently present outside of time for Americans, even though the U.S. is now killing so many civilians that it needs laws changed (or simply ignored; anyone remember the UN Charter?), even though the story was a gross distortion at the time, and even though the bombing protected the oil contractors in Erbil, not the mountain.

People nod their heads and ask, “So, should we attack ISIS or do nothing?”

You can explain to them that ISIS explicitly said it wanted to be attacked. You can show them how ISIS is growing as a result. You can explain to them how hated the United States is now in that region. You can read them a RAND Corporation report showing that most terrorist organizations are ended through negotiations, virtually none through war. You can fill them in on how 80 percent of the weapons shipped into the Middle-East, not counting U.S. weapons or weapons the U.S. gives to groups like ISIS and its allies, come from the United States. You can describe how the region could be demilitarized rather than further armed. You can discuss diplomatic possibilities, local cease-fires, aid and restitution. You can graphically make clear how a fraction of what’s spent on bombing Iraq to fix the disaster created by bombing Iraq could pay for transforming the whole region into a healthier happier place to live with food, water, agriculture, clean energy, etc. You can detail emergency measures that are available, including peaceworkers, aid workers, doctors, journalists — measures that risk fewer lives than war.

And they’ll blink their eyes and ask “So, should we attack ISIS or do nothing?”

Do you recall, you can say, that last year the White House wanted you to support attacking Syria, and wanted to attack the opposite side in that war? And people said no, remember? And now they want to attack the opposite side, while arming it, and this makes sense to you? They have no goal in mind, no plan, no estimated end-date or price-tag or body-count, and this makes sense to you?

Well, they’ll say, it’s that or do nothing.

But do you recall the year 2006 in which everybody said they’d elected Democrats in order to end the war, and the Democrats said they’d keep it going in order to run against it again in 2008? At that time, in 2006, as the big marches were just ending, having begun with the biggest marches ever on February 15, 2003, if you’d told anyone that in 2014 the war would be over and a new president would propose starting it up again, and nobody would protest, you’d have been laughed at. The America of 2006 would never have stood for this for a minute, at least not if the President were a Republican.

“Oh,” they’ll say, “I’ve heard of Republicans. They’re the ones who like war, right? Do you think the military is letting women participate enough?”

It happened that while I was touring and talking, NATO claimed for something like the 89th time this year that Russia had invaded Ukraine. If it were ever true, I asked, would anyone believe it? The answer I got: Nobody cares.

Nobody with the easy ability to do something about it cares. The people under the bombs care. The world gets the wars Americans deserve.

Having All the Facts in a Case Helps

People have developed an amazing habit of misinterpereting the signs.  I once may have mentioned about being at a gathering where I heard only the audio of what was going on outside.  It was a graduation party for my brother and people were giving him gifts.  Then one person said "We need to go outside and bring our gift here".   Later I heard scuffling feet along the side of the house and the sound of a gate opening and closing and the sound of the barking of a fairly sizable dog.  Naturally I assumed that a dog was being brought around to the back yard, which was where this room was looking out.  It was just a neighbor's dog barking because a big potted plant was being carried there.   There is that Valerie Bertenneli movie where she was accused of being an unfit single mother- - and as "evidence" of this was the little girl's reaction to some doll that was presented to her.  As it turns out there was a whole other scenario going on with her and the doll that the authorities got completely wrong.  You have Page on today's Days of our Lives.  She learns her mother had a horrible disappointment - - and the mother was with a man who wore the the same coat as Dr Jonas, whom they all knew, and later she learned Dr Jonas had just had a "final" breakup with his long time girlfriend.  The daughter of the mother naturally assumed that the good Doctor and Eve, her mother, were having an affair.  This was untrue.   Some pastors quote the scriptural quotation of "God" saying "My ways are not your ways" and are struck with awe and reverence (one suspects more for the Pastor speaking than actually for God)   Yet is you change this sentense just a little you see my point here.  Suppose it's one of those green aliens from the planet Xenu (from the Simpson's) and it's one of these beings who states "Our ways"   Clearly one would not expect a space alien to have the same "ways" as we do.  And yet God by all testimony is completely "alien" to human life.  There is no aspect of human life that is indigionous to God's nature.  Here is another misreading of the Signs.  Bones was in a jury trial on that program once, and a key witness "backed out of testifying in this case".  As a juror Bones was made keenly aware of this.  Well later after the verdict was rendered it turns out this witness has been Murdered - - into silence.  This bit of information would have been most helpful in rendering a decision on the case.  People "don't have all the facts - either about God or Ferguson Missouri- - and yet they make these glib pronouncements as though they knew everything.  One side is not supposed to make statements to the media during a trial.  And yet we in the Ferguson Missouri case have had nothing but a one sided of propagandistic statements from the authorities point to Officer Wilson's innocence.  So if a race riot develops - - - just don't presume to say "Gee I had absolutely no idea such a thing would occur".

John Boehner has been making threatening statements to the President about this new ten point program to reform the immigration system.  I've looked at these ten points the President outlined yesterday.  Sure there is a declining to prosecute either the children of illegals themselves or their parents - - but there are other things involving criminal records and law enforcement that I take exception to.  For John Boehner to say "Well if the president is going to do this thing with executive action, he'll find that he may need something from us and he won't get it".   Since the Republicans in the house and senate - - Boehner and Mc Conell- - have since the first day Obama took office a "take no prisoners" give the president "No quarter" - - once this threat has been carried out, which it has, what is left to threaten this President with?  Nothing.  They could try impeaching him but they know ahead of time they won't succeed.  And this is one time the media would be on the side of the people saying "The people elected this congress to end the log jam and get bills passed, and not to either impeach the president or hold endless hearings on Bengazi".   Mc Conell and Boehner have unleashed their totality of fire power already over the course of the past six years.  They have tried everything on this president even shutting down the government- - and proven nothing but only made asses of themselves in the eyes of the American public.  Therefore even though I may not agree with certain points in the President's ten point plan- - I would support him in his endeavor to implement his plan.

I downloaded a file yesterday on "The similarity between prisons and war", and I should have given you the link for it in Washington's blog.  There were 27 points of similarity.   They are both ways to control things they are afraid of but neither ends up solving the real problem but both only in the long run - - looking back on it - - only made the situation worse.  There was another article on "We are now in a state of perpetual war" and this is so highly contrary to what Jefferson and Madison wanted when they formed the constitution, it's pathetic.  The founders did not even want a Standing Army, which is why the second amendment came into being.  It regulated militias - - and specific laws were passed by George Washington regarding the arming of militias.  "Foreign wars" were considered particularly odius- - as are wars with "mercenary armies" that will literally go on fighting a war forever.  I wonder with Neil Savedra alias Jesus Christ thinks of the idea of 'Perpetual War".   From all I've heard from Neil - - - of all the faults of mankind, two that are routinely overlooked by Neil are homosexuality - - and War.  I would prefer a society with very little of either.

Of course it pays to listen to details.  For instance Washington's blog had another hour long video containing a composite of items- - but one key phrase was their talking about this Ukrainian celebration and march on Newyears Eve - - and they said that "this one leader was a Nazi during World War II but as the war progressed he then zhzhihuh iwthsazw - - "   And you go "could you please repeat that- - a little louder and slower" and then they say "And then they broke with the Nazi party later in the war".   Oh- - and finally you're going to point that out.  It's like Larry Elder and friends saying they dislike Senator Robert Byrd because he used to be in the Ku Klux Klan sixty years ago.  Well- - here's a news flash for you - - this is not sixty years ago.   Many things become out of date.  For instance - - up till now it was not necessary to declare the internet a "Public utility" or a common carrier- - because up till now we haven't had any real problems.  But it's like the FCC in the twenties.  There came a time when it was realized we had a huge potential for chaos and abuse if we didn't regulate the air waves to be in the public interest.  Also many point out that though the constitutional authors were wise men- - they were not infallible.  They "didn't work tirelessly to end slavery" as Sarah Palin stated.  They compromised with it.  Also back 225 years ago- - there was not nearly the disparity of state populations as there are today.  It was more important back then that a US Senator be a representative of "A State".  His state, your state, my state, and all that.  Today people like Ted Cruise represent less their "State" but rather a particularly idiology.  So when it comes to political rhetoric we're all from Kansas, because that's where the Koch Brothers are from.

All Things Must Pass

Without intelligence in the electorate, the results have no meaning.  The appeal to the voters is almost on the most primal of emotions such as fear where the voters "default" as Norman Goldman puts it, to the Republicans.  Many have marveled at how all talk of the Ebola epidemic and ISIS and children crossing the border, came to an abrupt end a day or two before the elections were held last week.  The worst thing about the tea party is that it is completely dumb.  The thing was born out of an "astro turf" movement as Hartman described it.  There was nothing spontanious or truly "grass roots" about it.  It was all systematically organized.  What the voters of this past election don't realize is that they are like marionettes having their strings pulled and the thoughts they think THEY are having are not "theirs" at all but thoughts, falsehood after falsehood, that has been cleverly emplanted there just as surely as Christine's baby on DL is not her own.  The classic trait of a con artist of old is to get you to deny the obvious and make you think you are being really smart FOR denying the obvious.  We are told that you voters are saying 'America is on the wrong path now".  So are we to presume that come January after you voters have "fixed" that problem that now America IS on the right course?   A con artist will argue about anything and put nonsensical things up for debate, like these networks being able to have any Truth up for debate such as gravity or anything else which has been scientifically documented as true.   And if there is a division of opinion on a topic such as the existence of gravity - - or of Global Warming then the FOX or CNN will say “My this is certainly a divisive topic!”   Idiots are given at least parody with normal people.  Someone said that only thirteen percent of the population under thirty voted in the last election.  I find this a highly disturbing truth, with major implications about the fairness of the representation of “The Will of the American People” in politics generally.  “Ring of Fire” had their show up from November 9^th today.   First of all nothing is changed as far as both houses of congress going Republican is concerned.  This is because when both houses of congress were democratic we STILL were hamstrung by the Republicans with their filibusters- - so only doing highly watered down consumer protection bills or a completely dysfunctional health care bill.  Countless bills passed by the House back then were never ratified by the senate if they didn’t fall within that magic 74 day period between when Al Franken was elected and Ted Kennedy died back in the summer of 2009.  But the voters are just too stupid to be voting in many cases.  There is wide spread belief among voters that - - big foot exists, or that Saddam Hussein is responsible for 9 – 11.  42% of American voters don’t know who the current Supreme Court Chief justice is.  About thdiat same number believe that English is the officially mandated language of the constitution and that the constitution is an explicitly Christian document.   As such even I would not believe a figure like in Ukraine that 96% of the electorate turned out to vote on some secession issue or something.   I would say we should shoot for perhaps a 75% voter turn-out rate, but not a 95% one.  Some have suggested that since we make such a big thing out of Veterans day now, that we should have our national elections on veteran’s day.  Run it up the flag pole, and see - - .

In terms of the Banks- - keep in mind that a big reason I’d forgotten about that Banks don’t lend out money any more is because risky investments in derivitives or things that used to be patently illegal- - are more attractive than a six percent loan to a student for college.   Smaller local banks would like to lend money to the community but play by “a different set of rules” than the Wall Street banks”.   Don’t ask me what that means or why it’s that way.   Sean Hannity loves North Dakota and how their communities have thrived financially with small business opportunities, which may have less to do with the oil boom there and more because North Dakota has a whole different system from the rest of the country with banks that are state run and hence a whole lot fairer with their financial dealings with the public.   We move to the subject of medical malpractice.   Texas or “Tex-ass-istan’ as Norman Goldman says- - has the $250,000 cap in payments like California has.  At that price trial lawyers cannot stay in business because it costs them more than that to successfully research and prosecute the cases for their clients.  But I didn’t know was the whole idea of going after “The Trial Lawers” through “Tort Reform”  (two key buzz words the Republicans have drummed into us) is because Trial Lawyers used to be among the chief funders of the democratic party.  Of course they would use other catch phrases such as “frivolous lawsuits” and speak of “You need to pass tort reform to keep doctors from leaving your state, so you won’t be able to find a doctor when you need one”.   Or they will talk about “defensive medical practice” where unnecessary medical test procedures are run on patients.  Or they will talk about malpractice insurance rates for physicians going up, as if that should be any of our concern as patients.   They said that malpractice deaths are the third biggest single cause of death nationally behind cancer and heart disease.  They claim this death rate is $440,000 deaths per year sharply up from the 98,000 per year back before we had “tort reform”.  But tort reform has NOT lowered health care costs for us one bit!

We learn from the Stephanie Miller show this morning that fresh Russian tanks are again rolling into Ukraine, and NATO doesn’t like it.  This is an area where me and Washington’s Blog will never see eye to eye.  The rest of the world knows that Putin is one of the world’s leading agressors.  In terms of the leaders of China being offended when Putin put a shawl on that guy’s wife, I think perhaps we should learn the proper protocol of other countries prior to visiting there.  And President Obama’s chewing gum at an official function is definitely out of line.  Did Obama never get in trouble for chewing gum in class?  Nickerette was apparently what it was, which reminds us that President Obama used to be a smoker, and tomorrow it could be me.  Meanwhile Chris Matthews has come under fire by our side for advocating that the Trans-Canadian pipeline be voted on through.  I had C-Span on yesterday and it was a House hearing and all of the speakers were pro pipeline, and we are informed there that Harry Reid is the latest Judas, and now has opened the door to approval of the pipeline in the Senate.

And now out of sequence here’s Jackie.  The Supreme Court is going to hear a case on whether anything other than State Exchanges are valid with the Affordable Care act.  Basically it’s millions of Americans could lose their health care over what is basically a semantic glitch that should have been fixed before the bill was passed.  “The states wanted the autonomy to set up their own exchanges” but then given that “autonomy” these same states opted NOT to open their own state exchange.  Hence the way things look now with the Koch brothers in firm control of the Supreme Court, the leading five justices will rule that any benefits coming through anything other than the state exchanges is null in voice, which is most of the red states.  Due to the whole “reconciliation” glitch- - congress was powerless to change the wording of this bill at any time after Ted Kennedy died.  Now of course Mitch Mc Connell wants to dismember the affordable care act piece by piece, and asking the President to oversee the destruction of his own bill.  It’s like ordering a hostage to blow his own brains out.

In terms of evolution Stephanie and company are saying “We all came from one common ancestor”.    If you’re into the math - - and understand the problems in methodology - - and design and coordinated “working together”, you like me will have major problems with evolution.  But the people who espouse “Creationism” are NOT just saying that there are proceses we don’t understand and are currently unexplained.   As I have said (last July) these people on the religious right lack the mental capacity to even understand the logic NECESSARY to support creationism, as I now view it.  No the ONLY reason why these psuco-scientists even CARE at all about this academic subject is to get religion’s “foot in the door” and establish the United States as a “Christian nation” along the same lines of History where “Instilling patriotism and respect for authority and good citizenship” are the hallmarks of a good history curriculum.  In other words, the goals of creationism is not science but propaganda.  As such the proponets of creationism should be fought at every term.   I highly doubt that people memorizing the answers to one of these state “diagnostic” tests- - have any logical grasp of certain math problems.

I did not type in Word yesterday and I haven’t done a blog entry since Monday, not that there has been anything I’ve had to say but I’ve generally been preoccupied with other things.  Last night I slept better than I have the past several nights and it was actually 6:08 when I first woke up and got up.  The computer has been problematic because it stalled while installing the Microsoft updates, which they are still putting out.  Pulling the plug, so to speak, is dangerous when a computer is downloading but in this case the thing was already not functioning so I was less concerned about damaging the hard drive.  “Don’t shove a fish up your ass”.  I wish I had thought of those lyrics as a parody of “Don’t you go breaking my heart”.   If you shove a Christian fish up your ass your heart will be broken.   Stephanie lost the DVR, which vanishes occasionally.  I went out and got a large coffee at the liquor store for $1.25.  This morning we had oatmeal followed by a well done fried egg and toast and butter and jelly.   I’m wearing the heavy red jacket for the first time this season.   The night chill is more pronounced now.  Last night it was drowsing during the ABC news and early Jeopardy.  Then I roused.  I was attentive during “Wheel of Fortune” and then it was “Arrow”.    Again I drowsed during “The 100”.  It’s a good show and several weeks I’ve been too drowsy to enjoy it.

We cheated one place alphabetically to get the songs to come out in a better order on the disks.  But here it is - - 42 songs by George Harrison and friends.  OK as of nightfall we added a track on Disk two, which means we also had to eliminate one.

BEST OF GEORGE HARRISON (updated)

All Those Years Ago

Any Road Will Take You There

Apple Scruffs  (demo recording)

Beware of Darkness

Blow Away

Bongla Desh

Brainwashed

Cheer Down
Cloud Nine

Cocamame Business

Cracker Box Palace

Dark Horse

Ding Dong Ding Dong (Ring in the New)

Deep Blue

- - - disk two - - -

Devil’s Radio

Far East Man

Give Me Peace on Earth - -

Hear Me, Lord

Here Comes the Moon

I Dig Love

If Not For You
It Don't Come Easy (demo version)

Isn’t It a Pity

It’s Johnny’s Birthday
Let It Down
Living in the Material World

Mama, You've Been On My Mind
Not Guilty

- - - disk three- - -

Run of the Mill
Simply Shady

Soft Hearted Hanna

Sue Me, Sue You Blues

The Art of Dying

The Light that has Lighted the World

The Lord Loves those that Love the Lord

This Guitar Can’t Keep from Crying

This is Love

This Song

Try Some, Buy Some

Wah Wah (Bongla Desh Concert)

When We Was Fab

You Can Lead A Horse to Water