US Senate Fails to Extend Patriot Act

Contrary to the prognostication of this author, the Patriot Act will be allowed to lapse, at least for a few days.  Three key provisions of the patriot act were not extended because the Senate was unable to get their act together.  Bulk collection of telephone data will expire at midnight tonight.  The 'lone wolf" provision of the bill will expire meaning -  - those individuals not connected with another country will have an easier time eluding the law.  And also targeted phone conversations- - like conversations held on disposable cell phones, will now be harder to track.  If you are against the Patriot Act in general you will find any reason to celebrate.  Here is other commentary from a few hours ago before all the facts were apparent.  The 77-to-17 vote on the "Freedom Act" passed by the house last week - - was a remarkable turnabout — grudgingly approved by the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentucky Republican — just a week after the Senate narrowly turned the bill away at his behest. Mr. McConnell, in a desperate attempt to keep the surveillance program going, encouraged senators to vote for a House bill that he still found deficient.  The US Senate is convening to debate about extending the Patriot Act.  It’s an odd “eleventh hour” time to be meeting.  Mitch Mc Connell is not the one presiding.  But he is setting the conversational agenda.  He wants the “roaving wiretap” and the “lone wolf” provisions passed for another two weeks.  Rand Paul was gaveled down as he attempted to turn the thing into a filibuster.  Mitch Mc Connel says there has not been “one incident of abuse” since the data collection provision has been in force.  Senator Mc Connell also stressed that “who who say more than just the meta-data is collected- - are telling you a lie”.  The “freedom act” isn’t even being discussed now.  People are saying that they don’t “trust” the phone companies to hang on to the data the government knows they’ll need.  Senator Mc Connel states “Clearly the way the House passed this bill, these corporations are not required to do that.”  I’ve heard that it’s a lie that the government only has the “meta data” and rather I’ve heard they have the means to store virtually every conversation that’s ever existed in their giant computers.  And I’ve also heard that the government doesn’t even “need” the patriot act to do their secret surveillance anyhow.  They have “secret interperetations” and sometimes even “secret laws” whatever that means.  This implies there are non public votes on laws that the US Citizens know nothing about.   Hopefully people like Rand Paul will be doing a lot of speaking today.  The funny thing of course is most any time you tune into C-Span they are never showing congress in action, but it’s more than ninety percent “filler material”, which wouldn’t even work for pet food these days.  I would like to turn President Obama’s words around and say that the world WON’T come to an end if we let the Patriot Act laps.  Somehow this country went over two hundred years without the Patriot act just fine.   Clearly when the act was written it was intended as an “emergency law” with sunset provisions, just as the Bush tax cuts were temporary provisions.  I think we just need to let nature take its course and allow the Patriot Act to sunset.  We can wave good-by fondly to it if we want to, as we watch it sink below the horizon.  The bottom line is- - the Senate voted to keep the debate thing going with the already House passed bill, which is an accomplishment.

“If You Are Scared, [the Terrorists]  Win. If You Refuse To Be Scared, They Lose”   This makes a nice slogan but it's not entirely true.  President Obama had no fear whatsoever he'd be known as a failure as a President, and because President Obama did not have this fear- - We All Lose.

Bob Sheefer did this real puff piece on Jeb Bush for about seventeen minutes of a one on one interview.  It was all “room service” softball questions tailor made to the sort of responses Jeb wanted to give.  It made it seem just “logical and natural” that Jeb Bush would take the hard right line on national security and the Iraq War and sending troops back to Iraq, and how heroic his brother was in the dark days after 9 – 11.  Jeb Bush claims not to be sure at this date if he’s even going to run or not, but when Sheefer asked for clarification, he got none.   On the democratic side, to learn from the Sports analogy “When you play not to lose- - that’s just what you’ll end up doing”.  Hillary Clinton is playing as if she’s so far ahead all she has to do is run out the clock.  She takes no questions and offers no hard opinions on controversial issues.  It seems even this O Mally guy is attacking both Hillary and Obama on the big money and Wall Street and Trade issues- - though from what I heard of O Mally myself he seemed a little trite and dry.  Hillary now says she’s going to “make a statement” on June 13^th.  She’s as bad as Steve Jobs.  They get us all primed for these big announcements, and it’s a big bunch of nothing.

 It was Meet the Press.  First up was Senator Bernie Sanders discussing some pornographic novel he wrote in 1972 about a sex fantasy of a woman being raped by three men.  None of the three candidates had a lot of time but Sanders was especially pressed for times trying to get his main economic agenda out there.  Then it was Santorum, who is more progressive on labor issues than the other candidates in the clown car.  Santorum at least acted as if he cared.  Then there is John Kasich- - - who is important because he is ‘a Midwestern governor”.  Rand Paul does not even place in the top five candidates these days.  Walker places first in the Iowa caucus.  I continue to think Scott Walker is the odds on candidate the Republicans will decide on.  He seems to have all of those anti democratic and anti union credentials the republicans consider so important.  As far as foreign policy goes, Scott Walker will vote however the Koch Brothers tell him to vote.   Neither Kasich nor Walker nor Bush have even officially entered the race, but when they do they’ll dominate it, I fear.  At that point Rand Paul will have a decision to make on whether to go Independent.

The Chicago Blackhawks defeated the Anaheim Ducks in Anaheim, to get into the Stanley Cup finals.  The Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the New York Rangers to be the team they play.   The Cleveland Cavileers will be playing the Golden State Warriers in a game I thought started today, but apparently doesn’t.  Once again they had the Detroit Grand Prix on Belle Island and once again it was alternate rain and dry times and deciding which tires to use.  Today is Sunday May 31, 2015 and there are a number of “lasts” lately.  Bob Sheefer’s last day of Face the Nation is today.  You it was Tom Vergeron’s last Sunday on AFV a couple of weeks ago.  And David Letterman is retiring.  Bo Byden, son of Joe Byden- -  is dead of a resurgent brain tumor the doctors thought they had under control.  Joe Byden lost his first wife and daughter tragically as you know decades ago.   In general it seems as if there have been an inordinate number of major chances in the late night TV hosts line up in the past few years.

It was a very “dystopian” piece I posted last night, but I don’t think unduly so.  I think you’ve been shown to be safe if you predict a steadily gloomier scenario for all things liberal and progressive.  Everybody has twenty - twenty hindsight but much fewer have the foresight to make the right decisions in time.  Here's a random thought.  The Rev Fred Price used to have a closing slogan of "We walk by faith and not by sight".  I have a vivid imagination.  Imagine all those thousands of people driving to the Faith Done in their cars with blindfolds on.  And all they have to guide them is their kids shouting out scripture at them all at once, kind of like your brain works when you're trying to "weigh" scripture.  It dawned on me it's one thing to believe God is speaking to you.  How much better to KNOW whether or not it's God speaking to you.  Even Fred Price says that "Knowing" is a whole lot surer class of "knowledge" than is mere Belief.  (Selah)  But to generalize the principle- how much better to "see where you are going" rather than be buffeted to and fro by every wind of scriptural quotation out of context.  I put my own credibility on the line with a predicted sharp stock market dip.  Some of you long time readers may have Deja Vu of mid 2007 when I began accurately predicting dips in the stock market.  Breakfast with the Beatles started off with Sergeant Pepper’s in mono.  I prefer the mono for “Lucy in the Sky” but I prefer the stereo for “Being for the Benefit”.   “I Found Out” by John Lennon may have been replicated in “You Shook Me Cold” by David Bowie, or maybe the cross polinization went the other way. And also it was copied in the end part of “Cheap Sun Glasses” by ZZ Top.  Chris Carter doesn’t like “Temporary Secretary” so today is the first time that track has been played in years.  I got coffee in the courtyard for the next to the last time in the morning.  At two I got two cups of coffee from Rico for the last time- - at least for the foreseeable future.  It’s only a half a day till ATM withdrawal.

The Next Recession Begins Monday

This may be sticking my neck out but I'm pretty sure the next big stock market crash will begin either Monday or Thursday of next week, based on stronger astrological indications than I thought a few days ago.  This panic and virtual free fall of the stock markets for he next six weeks or so will have a lot of people talking to themselves.  There will be a second major downward thrust in January of 2016 right about the time the political campaign is heating up, and that won't help the democrats one bit.  The first half of next year (concidental with the primary season) will be dominated by several sharp downward thrusts with only an occasional breather indicated.  The first quarter of this year the economy lost grown with the GDP being down seven tenths of one percent.  So president Obama will no longer be able to talk about his 'sixty straight months of growth" or whatever.  I don't know the specific causes for all this downward stock activity except the declines will be broad in every category including gold.  You know that if the Federal Reserve ever decides to "pull the plug' on this market they have the power to crash it at any time.  Judy used to believe this three and a half years ago, but now she's backed off from that stance.  If you've read blogs on the Federal Reserve and know specifically what they've been doing you already know WHY people have been pouring money into the stock market.  And once the psychology turns negative it's Katie bar the door!

President Obama will not survive to the end of his Presidential term so discussing what the President will be doing after his term in office is a mute point.  You know of course that all this Patriot Act and NSA security stuff was all planned prior to 9 - 11.  One blog said our surveilance was already to thorough that we in the government actually listened to the hijackers plan their crime over phone lines- and did nothing about it.  It's a lie to say that we "woke up" after 9 - 11.  Because 9 - 11 was merely an excuse to go more public with their NSA and Patriot Act plans that were already in the pipeline.  You know of course that the Iraq War was planned prior to 9 - 11.  On a slightly different subject, the government will soon announce that the war against ISIS is unwinnable and Joe Byden's plans to partician the Mideast area of Iraq will be given serious consideration and fevered negotiations will be entered into.  The media will be flooding us with stories THAT the war with ISIS is unwinnable but they won't be too clear on why.  I believe the answer is that we were never serious about defeating ISIS to begin with but for political reasons we had to at last appear to be for a campaign against them.  I don't think it takes a fortune teller to tell you that these Nuclear negotiations with Iran will fall apart.  But the crystal fall is a little foggy on the subject between Israel and Iran.

Dennis Hastert was being blackmailed by another - - because if you withdraw more than ten thousand dollars in cash it’s considered “suspicious behavior”.  It stems back “to the time when he was a high school wrestling coach”.  Is there perhaps some homosexual affair being covered up?   Two law enforcement officers confirm that indeed it was hush money paid pertaining to sex with a teenage boy.  When you are a former speaker of the house you can really cash in working for lobbyists.   Dennis Haster must have served in congress from 1999 to 2007.   He must have taken over for Gingrich as majority leader and inventor of the Hastert rule, or what I now call the “John Boehner rule” where the speaker doesn’t even allow a bill to come up for a vote unless a majority of his own party supports that bill.  John Boehner blames it on the “Hastert rule”.   Dennis Hastert was speaker when the Patriot Act got passed through congress.

Shawn Hannity didn’t mention in his list of conservative requirements a guy who opposed all raises in minimum wage, or any union busting activities either government or private.  He didn’t mention being chummy with the Wall Street bankers and doing nothing by way of legislation that would offend them.  He did not make passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership a requirement, not did he mention term limits for congressmen.  We all know that “term limits” is nothing but a mandate to let the lobbyists completely take over. .  Whoever gets in office in 2-17 will turn the country into a military state.   Even while this process is taking place various main stream media people will say that it is not happening.  Not to dump more gloom and doom news on you but a powerful force in the liberal Media- - will be "taken out" and I don't mean on a date but assassinated- - by the government, who will take great pains to desguise it and blame another party.  My date for this is in mid April of 2010 between the 18th and the 21st just before Earth Day.  I don't want to venture whom but I have an idea.  It will be the individual that the "Powers that Be" believe to be the greatest threat to the status quo who is from the left wing media.

Sometimes I’ll write a really confusing, poorly written paragraph and look at it months later and wonder how I could be so inarticulate and scatter-brained.  This is the case in the current lead blog post in “Rocca Rolla” on the subject of the “event horizon” and the gravitational field.  Paul spoke of the necessity of my “gearing down” my remarks to that lest learned people can understand them.  The first couple of sentences are OK and the meaning "reasonably" straightforward.  But then I get off the track and tangled up in my words.  When I spoke of gravity having a “boundary line”  I left out an important reality.  When an object first appears (in the first split second) there IS a “boundary line” to gravy because it propagates out in concentric rings.  I hope that’s clearer.   But let me clarify further anyhow.  Gravity in its propigation properties behaves a lot like light.  So when in my previous blogs I talk about certain "optical effects" you have to begin translating sentences.  In area where for instance there is a "reversed image" this is reversed gravity.  In areas where you look out and see a telephoto effect- - this is strong gravity.  The last thing I want to do is to leave my readers with a hazy impression of just what the hell I'm talking about.