When the Honeymoon Is Over

I have no romantic illusions about President Obama any more. The cold, hard reality is that he's going to raise all of our taxes, and you don't have to be the elite rich to feel it. This carbon tax he's so hot on is going to raise the price of everything we buy and use, perhaps by a drastic amount. One brand of cigarettes has gone from $2.85, a price it was at for years, to now selling according to one trust resident, for $5.00. That is a price increase of nearly one hundred percent. I have seen the prices of other more expensive brands than the one I bought today. Roomer has it that the price of a pack of cigarettes could end up selling for six dollars. The cold, hard reality is that a lot of us are going to feel the effects of Obama's taxes before we ever feel the effects, if any, of his monetary benevolence. Now Obama is playing some kind of a word game with Chrysler and GM. While on the surface praising them, he's also saying they won't get any more money because the needed changes, and who knows what they are, have not been made to his satisfaction. Rick Wagner was fired, presumably on Obama direct orders, but that only means another twenty million dollar Golden Parachute is unferling even as we speak. And all the while nobody is talking about the P word, "protectionism" as they refer to it. How did wanting to protect something become a bad thing? And we continue to do everything within our power to appease Red China no matter how repressively their country is run. You know how I have oft spoken of the horrors of "grace" or worshiping the whim of man rather than the equity of law. In Red China they have laws all right, that are seldom enforced but they still have them on the books. At any given moment a person could already be guilty in the eyes of the government of some crime worthy of a long imprisonment, or perhaps even death. The authorities use this power they have to manipulate events and people any way they want to. People talk about the prison population here, but in truth Red China is one giant prison of well over a billion people. They have no freedom, which used to be something we in America prized above all else. But that was in the old days. We here in America don't wage wars for freedom any more but for some mysterious rationalle dreamed up in some back room to promote this or that industry that someone is in bed with. There is talk that some "world court" will put our former Bushies on trial for torture and other war crimes. But no doubt we will do some shady back dealings to avoid this. I'm looking for some sort of "moral authority" in the Obama administration and it seems to be vanishing like sand from my hands. Mc Cain wanted to register protest against Russia for its occupation last August of a portion of Georgia. My guess is we've done nothing about this. I can't help but feel is Dr. Phil were conducting peace accords there- - we'd get to the heart of "the whole Palistinian problem" rather quickly. Even Europe is distrustful now of the deficits we will be running up here because they know it will end up affecting them. This country used to be a beacon of hope. Now we are just a "player" like an oil tycoon as some big Texas pow-wow. People (I think Howard Beale said it) say that the whole world is just one big business now. God only knows how things will end up.

My computer is informing me that I'm having some sort of transmission problems with blogger.com. I'd like to mention the soap opera I watch. This is the one where the wife, Nicole, lost her baby she was trying to trap her fiancee with. Then she made a quiet deal to adopt a baby that isn't exactly on the up and up. Then she switched babies with another woman who'd just had a baby and doesn't know the babies were switched at birth. Now she is having to give a deposition in a murder trial. Here is where she puts on her Mrs. Dietrichson act (from Double Indemnity) She's pretending to be inconsolable at the death of her husband's brother, who had been blackmailing her. She can't be anything but overjoyed at his death. Now she feels free to lie like a rug to the cops. Her behavior has already been so erratic so as to arouse the suspicions of a lot of hospital and police authorities. She has everything to lose from even the slightest slip-up. I don't know if there exists enough White House plumbers to save her. I think people who "do a moral melt-down" and lie so much they almost don't know they're doing it- - the psychological of such a life must be fascinating for psychologists who undertake it.

In the vein of "liar liar" we are going to again make reference to early Church history. Here I'm convinced one reason why nobody appears to know the Truth of how the "Catholic Church" got started is that the lying has been more rampant than even I dare imagine. Let's take Marcion for example. One story about his life says he was the son of a Catholic bishop. But what if the Catholic Church did not even exist till Marcion was well into adulthood? They say that Marcion showed signs of "deviance" early when he "seduced a virgin" when he was young. This story goes on to tell how Marcion fell under the sway of a Gnostic named "Credo" or "Cedro" or something like that. I Googled the word and got basically all foreign references. Google never heard of the guy. Had there actually been such an individual as Cedro, it would have gone a long way twords sheding light on this murky subject. In the whole chicken and egg saga we assume that the chicken came first. But what if it was the "egg" that came first. The "egg" in this case being Gnosticism. Historically, you can trace Gnosticism back about forty or fifty years further than you can trace Catholicism. And we're referring to the Roman variety of Gnosticism. This as you know, and this is key, that came up with the whole theology of the Redeemer, otherwise known as "The One". This was a mythical being who came into the world after an endless series of "devolution" by God where the Gods repeatedly begat other Gods inferior to themselves, till at last, somehow, this redeemer being came into existence. Understanding this "redeemer" theology helps you understand Marcion. Right now I've going to send you back to last Saturday where there is more in this.

Perhaps I’ll call my next blog “The Machinations of a Hollywood Script Writer”. Take the writers of “Mama’s Family” making Betty White as Vicki Laurance’s daughter. That’s right out of the twilight zone. Sometimes writers just drop characters. In a way “Jesus” was relegated to a back seat position by those who Canonized scripture making Paul’s Epistles front and center with Jesus sort of as “Historical” and “deep background”, only to be interoperated in the light of Paul’s letters. You know in the OJ trial I think it was Chris Darden who kept asking OJ’s cab driver, “Did you see OJ at ten thirty?” “No””What about 10:35” - - “No” “And 10:40?” “No” “How about at a quarter to eleven did you see OJ or have any idea where he was?” “No”. Did anybody have any idea where OJ was at that moment?” “Objection!” OK but you get my point. We could do the same thing with the Apostle Paul through the first century and the turn of the second and we could go “Now in AD 125 what historical references were made about St. Paul at that time? - - None?” Again you see my point. We are immersed in the Apostle Paul when Marcion made him a part of his cannon. But again only ten of the letters that are considered “Historical” and not the especially Churchy, “Pastoral” ones.

You know, there a lot of things we all had never heard of twenty years ago. We had never heard of Lindsey Lohan, Britany Speers, or Paris Hilton, for starters. We had never heard of Google or Yahoo either. Most people hadn’t heard of the internet. They say its official 20^th Anniversary was just a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes the media foists terms and people on us so suddenly and precipitously we don’t know what hit us and our sense of time gets distorted. My guess is that this is what happened with Christianity. Christianity was like some new corporate product like tele-tubbies that suddenly foists itself on us all. It would be interesting to find a list of new words that have entered the English language in the past twenty years that we aren’t even conscious of because we use them so ubiquitously. Sometimes words change meanings. If we say today “He’s green now”, we don’t mean he had himself painted green. Do you suppose the word “Christian” changed meanings sometime in the second century to refer to an entirely different group of people? Have you ever pondered the notion that the belief we call Gnosticism became popular in Rome about 95 AD but nobody would have ever heard of the Apostle Paul for another fifty years? I’m kind of thinking for the supremacy of a religion whose favorite pastime is burning books, these are things to think about.

I would like to place the following text into the record here:

Christians like to tell us that Marcion changed the Bible to suit his theology. However it appeared to me from the beginning that before Marcion there was no documented history of Christianity as we know it. So for example there are no reliable historical contemporary accounts of Paul, Peter, Luke, Mark or even the Jesus that we think of today. Likewise archaeological New Testament fragments have been dated starting around 190 AD, again consistent with the first New Testament being written 140 AD.

In addition Bible scholars who actually question things have come to the conclusion that some of the Pauline epistles were added later than whoever wrote the first ones. Their conclusions are consistent with Marcion's Bible being the original text.

Isu Crestos as "That Egyptian"

Even more important than the fact that Marcion's Bible was very short are the number of radical political differences between Marcion's Bible and our modern day Bible. Firstly the hero of Marcion's Bible was called Isu Chrestos - not Jesus. An important point here is you don't see "Jesus Christ" in second century texts. So in the Bible of Marcion of Sinope "Isu Chrestos" appears instead of "Christ" and "Jesus". Also in the archaeological fragments mentioned earlier the scribes used the letters "IS" wherever Jesus Christ now appears. The inscription "Isu Chrestos" can still be seen on the oldest surviving Christian "Synagogue" in Syria.

The next difference is that Isu Chrestos was a ghost. The first three chapters of Luke where "Jesus" was born are missing. When you think about it they are missing in two of the synoptic Gospels too. There were no Gospels of Luke, Mark, Matthew or John in the second century. There was only "Euangelion" - the "Good News" of Marcion's single Gospel.

The fact is that Paul spoke of "my gospel" singular and warned us of other gospels. Read Marcion. It all takes on a whole new meaning!

More Governmental Scandals

There is reported widespread corruption in congress that people aren't even talking about. So many of these big financial institutions are in fact slipping large money to congressmen, including Bank of America and others, to people like John Boner (?) and others. Sean Hannity has expressed fears that the "wall of separation" between corporate affairs and government may be comming to an end and like with the AIG thing they want to say "Just you people get taxed and nobody else" there is a coming danger of a wheeler-dealer type relation between the financial institutions and congress where they will quietly agree to look the other way on some matters. There are also fears that government could get in the micro-managing business of deciding how many people corporations hire and what their salaries will be. Meanwhile Hannity also reports that yesterday the dollar dropped sharply in trading yesterday when Timothy Geitner announced that he is considering eliminating the US dollar as the "standard" for world currency. There is always talk of this sort of thing and "internationalizing" the US economy so that we are no longer sovreign.

President Obama has laid out his plans to increase the number of troops on Afghanistan. What we need to work on in that country and in Pakistan is public relations. If the people trust the Talliban more than they do the US government, we will never pervail. Of course Afghanistan was the USSR's "Viet Nam". They thought they could win in a land war in a spread out and sparcely populated country. I don't see why the President cant see that escalation only leads to more escalation down the line continuing on an ever diminishing cost-effective basis, and that eventually after we have sunk a lot of blood and money into the region, we will only have to admit defeat and get out. What I'm hoping that President Obama will do is to reform the CIA and "de-politicize" it so that we get straightforward, accurate reports as to what is really going on in this region. And hopefully we are engaging in some kind of quiet propaganda campaign that will actually have fruitful results.

There are times when this writer has "free floating anxiety". Nobody likes the idea of getting older and wonders where their life is headed in the next ten years or so. People like me who are on the dole worry about some as yet unannounced cut in funding either on the state or the national level. You just never know when something is going to come out of left field. People like myself are sucking up an enormous ammount of subsedy in various medications, many of which may not be necessary, and were I on my own I may decide t stop taking. People like myself wonder whether they are too old to again attempt to enter the employment market. Of course they have medications for "free floating anxiety" but I am not one who believes you can make your worries go away through chemistry. "Better living through chemistry is more a myth than it is a reality" as far as this writer is concerned.

NEWS ROUND-UP FOR March 26th. 2009

British health care costs three percent of a person’s annual income for life. I suppose that’s fair. I can definitely think of times in my life when I have spent less than thirty dollars per month on doctor’s care, like most of my life. But considering what most people claim that health insurance costs these days, this three percent deal could be a real bargain if we can con all the basically healthy people to subsidize it even though the bulk of the benefits will go only to a relatively few people.

Apple I Phones are coming out with “Cut” and “Paste” finally. It is my belief that since most people believe the I Phone II has stood up so well against Blackberry encroachment that Apple may decide to let their profits ride, and not risk a good thing when some recent “improved” devices have spawned criticism.

This is after dinner. We had chicken Alfredo and cabbage. There were no seconds. We had two oatmeal cookies for desert. I went to the bakery for a large coffee that was actually hot from the pot. CBS treated us all to a fifteen minute marathon of commercials today a little after five, coming in three waves. UConn is beating Purdue at the moment, however Purdue is trailing by only a few points.

The special election for California is on May 19^th. However all the propositions the Governor wants passed to save our budget are trailing badly.

The swarm of earthquakes in or near the Salton Sea in the Imperial Valley are continuing. This area, of course, is right next to the San Andreas fault and people expect that “the big one” will be at least 7.0 on the rictor scale. That could shake things up.

The jury has the retrial case of the Phil Spector murder of Lana Clarkson. Reports are that the jury is going to acquit. There are two reasons for this. First is that they have really built up the case for Lana Clarkson’s having committed suicide to an even greater degree than the first trial two years ago. (and that was pretty bad) The other reason is that they have the options this time of second degree murder or even involuntary manslaughter. To my way of thinking this shows weakness on the part of the prosecution that they really don’t have a good case. Naturally, Specter didn’t testify.

Sean Hannity is upset because President Obama in his internet town meeting wasn’t more indignant about his opposition to the legalization of marijuana. He attempted to make light of the whole thing saying that marijuana legalization is not recommended for economic growth. We should legalize it anyhow.

The US Senate “in a rare display of unity” voted 78 to 20 for a 5.7 Billion public service bill. Sean Hannity alluded to some “Civilian citizens army” that he wants to institute that’s based on compulsory service of young people. According to Hannidy this outfit will have equal authority to the regular military. The whole thing seems highly far-fetched to me. Some have inferred that student loans would somehow be tied to national service for a year, but re-reading Obama’s speech, there isn’t much to base that on.

There are apparently new computer circuits that feed off “noise”. They work more efficiently when their surroundings are buzzing. The topic I was actually looking for was "Non-linear computer chips in the news", but apparently there was no news on this topic, even though supposedly this is the great break-through of the decade.

Apparently the era of Billionaires paying to go on a junket to the International Space Station may be coming to an end. This one guy is on his second trip. But no more. This is because NASA officials are doubling the number of “real astronauts” on the Station, so that there just won’t be accommodations.

There is a study on circumcision that claims it cuts a whole host of sexually transmitted diseases by 25%. There is one glairing thing wrong with the study however and that is all the whack-ees were volunteers! They were thus more “compliant” and probably more introspective about their sexual habits than the average African man.

Dogs have an inherent sense of “Not being Fair” just like kids do. When one dog is asked to do a trick and does it, then a second dog does the same trick but is given a reward. The first dog says “No Fair”. They say “Not only will he now refuse to do the trick, he may not even look at you”. It’s too bad God doesn’t realize this about humans.

We Don't Need False Heroes

In a mental health class the other day we were talking about a movie we had just watched that happened to star a famous Communist. (Bob Dylan's favorite occupation) One of the lessons we are supposed to have learned from the movie is the simple truth that Actions Speak Louder than Words. This is why silent movies were so big. People didn't talk, they "Acted". If a person says to you "Meet me at the pizza parlor at three PM today" and then never shows up each day he says he'll be there, his words will in time be worth very little. People want consistency between a man's words and actions. You know, they tell us that 75% of all communication is non verbal. A couple of very overrated phoney saviors come to mind- - Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ. Abraham Lincoln has the rap as the one who "freed the Black man". But the Black man wasn't freed but continued to live in oppression for another hundred years. Indeed the KKK did not even exist before the Civil War. You don't free someone by issuing an edict, especially when it was issued for "political reasons" in helps of ending the Civil War. I just learned today that "Maryland, My Maryland" lyrics contain a number of references to Abraham Lincoln describing him as a tyrand and as the scourge of the North, or whatever. People would have you believe that Lincoln was a popular President when a lot of this is manufactured history. Indeed one could have diffused the whole Cecessionist thing if the economic problems facing the South were addressed squarely so that grievences were taken care of. The south was a poor economic step child of the North. Another individual, Jesus Christ- - if one stripps away what he said or claimed from what he "did" a whole different picture emerges. He looked on an oppressed, down-trodden race and discouraged any sense of racial pride or self sufficiency. He discouraged Nationalism and Patriotism. He discouraged fairness in paying wages if the parable of the Workers in the Vinyard is to be trusted. He encouraged an atnosphere of elitism and secrecy among his desciples after Easter making them feel "special" and somehow "more worthy than everyone else". Like Abraham Lincoln he was a virtual nobody except for the last few years of his life. If the truth be known and "by his own words" on KFI radio station, Jesus lived an ideal "Leave It To Beaver" or Ozzy and Harriet kind of life prior to his last three years whose life went virtually perfectly. This is what we are enjoined to assume. Jesus encouraged a quality psychologists distrust of "Waiting for everything to be different tomorrow". Jesus made it a habbit of dressing down people publicly who outranked him in status. This is something that modern day theologians enjoin us peons NOT to do. What Jesus did NOT do is deliver mankind from the power of Sin and give us Everlasting Life. This is what I mean by separating words from actions. In my dealings with Christians I have gotten "words - words -words". But if you want to compare our virtues contrast my Actions with their Actions. I don't really have time to do that now. A lot of otherwise good Americans regarded Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant. Republicans in their never ending love of War for War's sake, hold Lincoln up to be their Saviour. Every President from Nixon to Bush 41 to Bush 43 see themselves as somehow re-enacting Lincoln's Presidency saying that they don't care that nobody likes or trusts them, but somehow, some way, their Adminestrations will be exhonorated in the History Books.

And now we come to our current President. Remember when I said in a posting months ago that the stock market will probably bottom out in early February and that we should begin to see real economic activity by June? Actually that projection wasn't too far off. But Obama and the media of every stripe have led us all in this hand wringing orgy of how this is a necer ending recession and will go on for years. Sixty Minutes has done program after program on the subject and a person can't but help being affected by it all. Today the Republicans are doing sort of an info-mertial on just how bloated this new Budget is. Deficets will range about four times as high as the worst Bush deficet. For President Obama to say "My goal is to cut the deficet in half in four years" is pure Alice in Wonderland. Who is he trying to kid?? The facts are rather than cure an economic crisis- - this gargantuin Budget may end up Causing a whole massive new currency crisis a few years down the line as all these bills come do. This is why I've been saying it's so important not to have "optional" budget items as this time, that aren't directly tied to getting us out of this recession. There will be plenty of time for that later. According to that chart, President Clinton ran up four surplusses in a row. I didn't know that. Obama's own budget projections say that we will double the CURRENT National Debt- - in the next Five Years. That's even faster than Reagan ran it up. I've heard so many Republicans say that the cost of each job created by this budget "just isn't worth it" and that we'd do better just to write every American citizen a check.

I suppose some of you may be wondering "What accounts for your change of heart about President Obama?" Well in the first place it's not a complete change of heart. A lot of it is a matter of knowing all the facts before you decide. And also those charts the Republicans show can illustrate the point pretty graphically. But I'll be straight with you. I have to ask myself "Just what will Obama's proposals have on me personally?" This is the very same question every Black slave should have asked about Abraham Lincoln and that I and others should ask about Christianity. Platitudes are one thing but what about the bottom line, where the rubber meets the road? Well, cigarette taxes have exploded with multiple price increases over the past couple of months, like I've never seen. And my income rather than going up has undergone a net drop over the past couple of years. You know that. But now taxes are a new threat. Some people want a "consumption tax". Some want a Utility tax to somehow mandate alternative sources of energy. Then there is that carbon tax, or so called "Cap and Trade" or whatever it's called. There is one company that wanted to put a steel plant right here in the old U S of A in Missouri, but now they are saying "If we have to contend with that carbon tax we'll build our plant in Brazil instead". How smart will the environmentalists feel then when our pollution is exported to Brazil along with all the jobs? In Germany they say that since the carbon tax, that pollution has actually risen. Corporations would rather just pay the damn tax rather than take steps to eliminate CO2 from the atnosphere, and from their point of view, this might just make sense. They said that they have a technology where they "harvest" the CO2 from the air and pump it back into the ground as a means of increasing oil well production. Technology like this seems the sort of thing we should more encourage. These industrialists openly admit that due to changing market forces and as markets adjust, that alternative energy will appear attractive. But that day hasn't arrived yet. They also say "If you're really concerned about CO2 and the carbon footprint, then why not go nuclear, which produces no carbon dioxide? That is an excellent question and I'l like to hear the environmentalist's answer. We know that the perils of nuclear technology are way over-stated. My guess is that a lot more people lose their lives in coal mines every year than ever lost their lives in a nuclear plant.

President Obama has stated that it isn't fair that people who are wealthy who contribute a hundred dollars to a cause get a bigger percent tax deduction than a person of modist means. But as I have stated- - we want to encourage contributions FROM the wealthy. After all, they have the money to give. Apparently charities are really worried about this tax provision becomming reality. Actually there is one behavior that would improve the environment that we actually penalize people for doing- - not having children. Why not eliminate tax deductions for dependants? I don't think the environment profits from people having large families. I'm not trying to cramp anybody's style, I'm just saying that having children is one area in which our government is not "revenue neutral". While we're talking about neutrality, how about all of these "Politically Correct" regulations they have on college campuses? Sean Hannity has stated that to be "pragmatic" any Christian should styfle his personal beliefs in his philosophical dissertations. My theory is that any time you disallow Free and Open Debate on any topic, that you forfeit moral ground. While we're at it, speaking of ending wars, how about the war on open religious expression? Sometimes I think Athiests (whoever) are afraid that someone is "exposed" to beliefs other than their own they will somehow "be unable to resist the lure of the new belief". Perhaps the President could speak on this topic sometime. My belief about Christianity as you know, is that the more it is openly debated, the more foolish Christianity will look. But some of my Atheist friends appear to be afraid to put this to the test. Barry Goldwater once said "You can't legeslate morality". Well, can you legeslate against Homophobia? Parents, and rightly so, are deathly afraid that the homosexual way of life is being "Evangalized" in our schools. Who has the- - balls- - to go up against the gay lobby? Don't get me started on smoking. What is the enormous amount of money spent advertizing against tobacco were spent on something actually productive, like inventing a better hybred car? They say on the stock exchange floor "You can't fight the tape". And yet Democrats are still, alas, seen as a party of these out there looney special intrests. Now they don't want wind turbines in the desert because it might adversely affect some animal desert species nobody heard of. I think certain environmentalists better wake up and smell the coffee and realize that certain forms of energy like nuclear production is far more the Saviour than arch villain. (Selah)

Keep The Secret Ballot for Employees

This whole card check thing they want to do now with putting unions in companies where they aren't now unionized is an issue that needs to be addressed. This is a bad bill that people like Thom Hartman are for. They call it the "employee free choice" act but in reality it denies free choice of the workers in any company to freely choose or not to choose a union. The way it works is that you are pressured by union bosses that come into a place of work to "sign off" on the idea of a union. Employees who sign these cards may think they are signing some sort of petetion or that the cards are so that they can have some subsequent election. Workers may well be cajoled and pressured by their fellow workers to sign the cards. But if 51% of the cards come back in the affirmative then a Union has been established. If the 51% figure is not achieved, then they can hold an election but no Union wants to go on record as having been voted down by a popular vote so that this will never happen. It so happens that neither people already in a union or those vast majorities that have not been unionized are in favor of this bill. Some have even said that this bill will dangerously skew the ballance that has existed for seventy years in favor of unions. This bill will take away collective bargaining rules that have existed since the days of Roosevelt and Justice Frankfurter, who ruled on all these issues way back when. Normally if the unions and the company can't reach an agreement then you invoke the Taft Hartley law "ninety day cooling off period" and they try again. This bill forces government arbitration on any agreement that hasn't been arrived at within 120 days, and they are throwing out the traditional rules of arbitration and putting arbitrary new ones. Some say this bill could lead either to rampent inflation, or else unemployment. Let's keep things as they are. This is what Oren Hatch and all those witnesses say from yesterday. Market forces are a wonderful thing. If unions are declining perhaps of people think real hard they will come up with a logical explanation for this. Unions as a rule are intrusive anyhow and inherently interfer with the relation of trust between a corporation and their workers.

Many people say that barring corporations from campaign contributions is a good idea. I dislike the whole idea of bills like Mc Cain - Feingold, that restrict campaign contributions. They say that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Now there is a movie about Hillary Clinton that the courts stepped in and barred from ever being shown. The reasoning was that it was a "campaign propaganda" piece. People should be free to produce whatever campaign pieces they want to on either the democratic or republican sides of the aisle. You've heard the expression. If campaigns are regulated, then who shall regulate the regulators. We can't have these sort of intrusions into our sacred freedom of speech.

Some people say that Obama is not all that liberal anyhow. In general and in keeping with my libertarian leanings, I believe Obama is too far to the left when it comes to regulation and government spending, and he's too far to the right when it comes to properly safeguarding our civil liberties. Sean Hannity alledgedly said recently that Christianity as a religion is inherently NOT opposed to torture. Perhaps if we roll back the clock five hundred years this is true. Does Hannity really want to do that? Anne Coulter and Hannity have both said that really Obama is "one of us" when it comes to things like "safeguarding our national security". Meaning that Obama has not stopped the "rendering" of terror suspects. This means that anybody can be picked up and shipped by the CIA off to some prison camp in a third world nation and be tortured indefinitely. I think we need to prosecute war crimes of the Bush Administration. I think President Obama needs to expressly state what he does and does not believe about Civil Liberties. There are apparently new supreme court rulings that hold up the idea of "Presidential perogatives". This is a buzz-word for freedom to torture and hold indefinitely. We need to be vigellent in searching out cases like they do on Sixty Minutes, where abuses of civil liberties have occurred. Of course some conservatives like Tammy Bruce just lash out in general against this president and the first lady. Though Obama has been in office two months, the media treats him still with a highly adverse, combative stance as though Obama were just some nobody candidate, and not the President. The media still treats obama like an outsider and is skeptical tword almost anything he says, in a way they never were with Bush. Talk radio even now is still dominated with right wingers. Some people like David Horowitz and Tammy Bruce are right-winders now when they never used to be. Others like Rush Limbaugh are far more strident to the point of irraticness, than they ever were twenty years ago.

One area where I believe spending always pays off it in research, be it medical research with embryonic stem cells, or else researching new, efficient energy sources. But I'd like to clarify something I said earlier. I am not for at this time any "carbon tax" or any other tax that could be dreamed up like hiking bridge tolls, or perhaps a water tax or hikes in gasoline taxes. I think that mandating "alternative energy sources" at this time is a bad idea. Republicans have vivid imaginations and it's easy to envision a world where there are all sorts of new "consumption taxes" that would raise the price of everything we buy and use. Let's not do that.

Tonight Obama has his press conference. Sure he has gotten his stimulus budget passed and closed down Guantanamo and accomplished a lot of other things. But the president is still "on trial" as far as the media is concerned. And in some cases, rightly so. Obama believes that somehow you have to "lay a foundation" for the future and jobs growth by spending and more spending in areas like education, energy, and health care. If it were me in the office I'd look at what the stock market has done and say, "You know- - maybe things will turn around after all before all these massive spending bills take effect". And yet there are simple things that Obama is not doing such as modifying these trade treaties like NAFTA and mandating the buying of American goods. Obama is still too concerned about offending nations like China, just as the Bush Adminestration was. In terms of the economy I don't entirely like the influence of Wall Streeters like Timothy Geitner in this adminestration. Obama is turning into a "Bush Lite". As I have said before Obama needs to set a bolder more decisive "pro American" economic direction. I'd like to hear more talk about controling immigration and cracking down on employers who hire them, and less talk about "what our trading partners will think if we raise terrifs". It's not a matter of how much is spent but how intelligently, and in this many republican critics have an excellent point. We need targeted measures that actually produce jobs. It was David Stockman who came up with a "starve the beast" approach for government. The idea is that if we bankrupt the country we won't have funding for things we actually need. But the theory behind this statement is "When the Democrats get into power they will be forced to be fiscally responsable" (like Clinton was) Obama is kind of between the devil and the deep blue sea. He wants "stimulation" but he is like Bush in his belief that deficets don't matter, and we are concerned about these mounting deficets. The dollar is strengthened now and this is a good thing. Housing sales are up and confidence is returning. But let's not blow it by instituting a lot of new programs that won't produce jobs but will produce a new layer of beaurocracy.

Join the "Thirty Plus" Political Movement

A new study out today is more pessimistic about our overall fiscal situation. With new numbers out today Republicans feel more confident in attacking this bloated budget. The President speaks of going “line by line” through this budget knowing full well that he lacks that crucial tool all governors have of the Line Item Veto. Now Congress wants to ban all bail-out bonuses. Clearly we all feel the need to so “Something”. The House as we said passed a law saying that the AIG bonuses would be taxed at ninety percent of that income accrued. Apparently the senate is going to delay this house bill that was passed, and the buzz is that even the President will let the bill slowly die. But there is a question whether such retro-active and overly specific acts of congress are even Constitutional. Now we hear that these new punitive laws will “discourage private investors” who might possibly bail us out of this economic mess. Of course the President can’t even make a joke about his 129 bowling score on the Tonight Show without the Special Olympics people being mad at him. I don’t know if President Obama has the sheer balls to take on the corrupt higher corporate structure in this country the way that Franklin Roosevelt did. People talk about conserving “Energy” but people tell us that Thrift in hard times such as these is not always the best remedy. Just how many “counter intuitive” measures can the US electorate stomach? Personally I think I’d stare down these CEO’s that even Gordon Gecko lectured against for looting their companies. To me, it seems if the people say “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more” things will begin to really get done like they’ve never gotten done before. Your parents always told you “Do the right thing and follow your conscience and the rest will take care of itself”. I pray this would be true about the National Economy.

What we need is a new Reactionary political party I’d like to call the Thirty Plus party. As a sort of guimic I’d like initially to restrict membership in this party to those who are over thirty. The hook is that I’d like to go back to what Thom Hartman and other lefties refer to as that golden age of Jimmy Carter, when this country was concerned about energy. Just to refresh your memory as to what I was doing thirty years ago, I was having dental work done, having a crown put in. I had just finished up my novel I called “For What It’s Worth” about the world coming to an end as we know it in November of 1973. I have a lot of interesting religious Cult stuff in there, too. I sent the thing off to a Publisher keeping photocopies for myself. It was rejected. And I lacked the intestinal fortitude necessary to make the improvements the Publisher had suggested. Also at just about this time I took an occupational aptitude test at the local CETA office. Most of the task were office duty related. The one area I didn’t totally suck at was an exercise putting various sized bolts on various sized nuts. That’s one test I did half way decent on. But in reality even then Jimmy Carter was in trouble and there were even then rumblings of discontent in Iran that would soon lead to his demise. Back then our total national debt was under a trillion dollars. Today we are running nearly double that for the deficit in just one year. Back then I was still “a young man” in my late twenties. Apple II computers were around and Lotus 1-2-3 was around, not that it was considered kosher for a real accountant to use that. On no. We had to do it the old fashioned way with a chizzel and a stone tablet. I think the reason why “That Seventies Show” was so successful is that many people remember the period as a happier period of their lives. I don’t know but it seems to me people were just more polite and “decent” back then. But if you think thirty years ago, otherwise knows as “The Star Wars Era” as Eric Forman constantly reminds us- - is a little dated, consider Bob Dylan. One gets the idea he considers the ‘Thirties as his golden era. His idea of a good time is getting arrested by corporation goons for holding a union rally. He seems at time to see the Communist party back then as some sort of a utopian organization that would lead us into a Brave New World. The whole concept of “Modern design” seems to have begun then.

I was just watching that Energy meeting in C-Span and they were talking about the Carbon tax and trading carbon credits making it economically viable to be green because it makes being “ecological” as just another economic commodity as something you can buy and sell like Indulgences were by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. One sees the appeal of making forces of the free market work for energy conservation rather than against it. But first in my opinion we have to insure that were are truly out of the economic crisis we are in. Otherwise anything we contemplate won’t be worth a dime. Jimmy Carter saw energy conservation as “doable” rather than as the pure burden and nothing more, that Rush Limbaugh sees it as. We considering it oppressive now but the more people hear about “carbon footprints” the more conscious and self-conscious about it they will be, just as smokers are now about their habit. A utilitarian would say it’s a good then when people who engage in undesirable behavior are defensive about justifying their own activities. But it’s not all bleak. There are the plusses of new energy we don’t even think about. Take harnessing the ocean tides to generate electricity. This is truly a case of a gravity operated turbine. I speak of lunar gravity now, pulling the tides to and fro, first in and then out. Of course if you live in Iceland, then geo-thermal energy may be your vehicle of choice due to geographic proximity. In the southwest of course it’s solar power, as T Boone Pickens talks about. On the western plains and up into Canada it’s wind power. My Uncle used to be stationed in Omaha, and one thing he told me was that there, unlike here, the wind is blowing all the time.

But also there is this thing called “clean coal” and Carbon Sequestration. You know what I think of when I hear the word “Sequestration”, I think of this one Quincy episode thirty years ago. It’s about a guy who deliberately killed somebody by mowing them down with his car. But then he covered up his crime by getting drunk on hard liquor and when the cops caught up with him he was stoned drunk. Quincy had a theory. Because in the “accident” he suffered a nasty crack on his knee, which caused it to swell up and the hospital drew off the fluid. Quincy asked if the hospital still had the fluid in the lab and they said yes so they tested it. This was “sequestered material” and there it was found that the guy was cold sober when the accident first occurred. But of course we know that the more forests we have the more carbon dioxide is filtered out of the air. And healthy trees filter more than sickly trees and dead trees are actually a liability. So what we need in addition to everything else is good forest management to cut down on the likelihood of forest fires. I’ve heard about “clean coal” and it seems like a panacea, and I’m just concerned that we may spend more energy processing the coal than the coal will produce. Once again T Boone Pickens says we need to as a stopgap measure to switch to natural gasses- - methane and propane - - which burn more cleanly than other hydrocarbons. If we do these things and convince the rest of the world to do these things we will again get down below that 350 parts per million they say is crucial to reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere. I hope our President is up to the task.

Reverse Engineering

President Obama is lamenting how he can force AIG to not pay those contractual bonuses to people. The President is also under criticisum for his treasure secretary Timothy Geitner's performance in this whole financial mess we are in and many people of both perties say that Geitner should be replaced. The whole thing with all of these banks is a thing you've heard a lot about lately, Toxic Assets. These come basically in two varieties. There are bad debts. On the old days of double entry bookkeeping, an accounts receivable should show up in the debit collum. The way this would be "settled" would either be to credit accounts receivable and debit cash upon payment, or else to credit accounts receivable and debit "Bed debt expence", which is what makes these assets toxic. Just for those of you who aren't fermiliar, in double entry bookkeeping, every entry has both a credit and a debit entry. The other thing we've heard so much about that is a toxic asset is these "derivitives". These are bets on events in the true Casino sense of the word, that should be illegal but were legalized by the Clinton adminestration in 1998 after previously being banned since the 1907 deboccle. As a subset of derivitives are insurance swaps. These would seem to be attractive investments. After all they are "insurance" against "bad debt expense". But in this case the insurer can't cover the loss. It's a case of betting against the house and the house can't pay. In sunnier times, such "insurance swaps" would be a good deal because you'd almost never be called upon to pay out on the insurance. But these are not good times. Now we are told that the problem is solved. If you saw Sixty Minutes you were told that through the expert helmsmanship of the Federal Reserve we have steered the ship of state through these treacherous icy waters to an eventual safe harbor of renued prosperity. We are told that due to the intervention of the Bush Adminestration last fall that a major melt-down of the economy was averted. Now we are being greeted with daily news of a continual rise in the stock market. We are told that consumer confidence is up along with housing construction and home sales figures. We are told that the Federal Reserve is going to do whatever it can to pump up the money supply. But I just might warn you of what I call "falling into the Arlo Gruthrie fallocy". You may remember this from Alice's Resturant where he said "There wasn't but two things that officer could have done- - -". But later on he says "but there was a third possibility we hadn't counted upon". I'm here to talk about that third possability. You all remember that Homer Simpson cartoon where Homer's car with Homer inside is dangeling off the precipous of a cliff. And Bart is in the back toying with him alternately lifting the car to shove it over the cliff, or else to pull it back from disaster - depending on the things Homer was saying. The question now as many see it is that the Federal Reserve and the whole weight of the Federal Government is working to pull the car back from the precipus of disaster. But there is a third possibility that exists here. What if in pulling the car back from the precipus, the ground under the car gives way from the weight of the car, and the whole cliff collapses, sending the car over? In other words, what if the whole apperatus of the Federal Government itself goes bankrupt and fails because it has assumed so many "toxic assets"? It wouldn't matter how many bad mortgages the Feds buy if the Federal Government itself goes under. This has always been a possibility in the back of my mind, and something that every American should think about.

I guess we all know about Natasha Richardson, or whoever, who fell in the snow skiing on a bunny slope with apparently no harm. She was up and talking and later died of brain damage. It's kind of like that Mark guy friend of Damien in "The Omen" who died of a brain thing. You just never know when death will come. With death the question I guess is, "Who owns your soul"? You'll become the posession of whoever owns your soul when you die. Keep in mind that God will not because of his Holiness take posession of any "toxic assets". God doesn't allow "bad debt expense". God never "eats a loss". Indeed in Classic theology- - God never actually forgives anything- - no, not the slightest thing. This sets up a logical cunundrum of course because it means that unless you die in a perfect state, then someone else owns your Soul. In "Dante" theology that is the Devil. Some teach you can "pay it forward" and carry any debts and assets into the next life. That's always a logical possability. But for those who believe that when you die you leave this time-space continuium alltogether which is is this material universe when you die- - and you go somewhere out beyond time and space as we know it- - one can state with almost metaphysical certitude that there will at that time be a Past as well as a Future. You will at that time become aware of this Past and just who owns your soul. It could be some space alien culture we know nothing of, or haven't yet conceived. Of course enlightened people believe that the secret to life is to live in the present, in the moment. Harry Green spoke of those "who are either captive to the past held either by naustalgia or guilt, or else they are captive to the future beset either by idle hope, or anxiety". People want to know what "The Answer" is. But in reality what we need in our lives is a case of Reverse Engineering. You see, we already know what "The Answer" is. We are living "The Answer". This is what our lives consist of. What we are looking for are the questions. We know the mathematical answer to the formula, what we lack is knowledge of how we got here or the Formula itself. Engrams are really "toxic assets". They are things we "Own". God won't "Own" us if we "Own" toxic assets. Our goal should be to purge our life of these. We too wrap things up in little bundles not product testing our merchandise and we exchange them with others, swapping our toxic assets. These are known as engrams in scientology. It's best to live your life free of worry. Being free of worry doesn't guarentee anything about the future because few if any of us can predict what might be looming on the horizon tomorrow. I only ask you to bear in mind "There is always that third possability you hadn't counted upon". But on the other hand if you do have any anxieties, you should root out their sources and purge your soul of them, because somewhere you are in posession of toxic assets, that will be a drag on your karma untill the day that you divest yourself of them. Capish?

And now it's time to dip into Max Brady's vault and see what is in there. A few months ago I fished out a formula from Max's vault and used it in an Excel program. I hope Melanie is taking notes because this is informative. I want to throw some math at you and have you guess what formula I'm using. In example one consider the following sequence of problems. One half plus one half equals four fifths. OK? This next example really had me flumixed. Two thirds plus two thirds equals 12/13ths. How do you get thirteenths out of thirds??? Finally we have 3/4ths plus 3/4ths equals one/25th. I'll tell you right now these are additive vollicities in einstein's theory of relativity. I have the formula in Excell, but I'm also not looking in the formula square in Excell because I want to give my brain a work-out. I've been a little flabby lately and I don't like showing my age. I'm losing skin tone. I have to keep my brain in shape and so should you. Do you see a pattern in these problems? OK here is the answer. Normally if you were using "ordenary" logerithmic math you sould suppose that 1/2 plus 1/2 would be 3/4 and 2/3 plus 2/3 would be 8/9ths. Etcetra. But that's not the formula. Here's the guimick. You times the numerators, and what you do is add that number to the denominator. For instance, one times one is one and you add it to 1/4 and get 1/5th. Let me just say at this time there are what you call complementary numbers like 4/5ths and 1/5th. for example. OK? Now with the 2/3 one you times the twos and get four and add the 4 to the 9th.s and get 13ths. You see? And on the 3/4ths one you times the threes and get nine and add it to the normal 1/16th deniminator and it becomes one/25th. And that's the relativity formula in a nut shell. Now share with all your friends. For 4/5 plus 4/5ths you would take the fours making sixteen and add it to the 25th. and get 40/41sts. Or your rocket launched from another rocket each travelint 4/5ths the speed of light would in reality be traveling 40/41sts the speed of light. Yipee!

Here are other formulas I have deconstructed. The DMS one I needed help with. This stands for degrees, minutes, seconds. This button on calculator whacks down numbers to the right of the decimal to 3/5ths their previous value. There is also a reverse function to get them to go the other way. Then there is the N! function. This one is pretty easy. It just times everything by declining numbers. This function is good for computing the odds of any scrambled alphebetical inscription of 26!. It's also good in calculating the "pizza slice" formula known as the Choose formula in Google opperative words. Choose involving the number two is also the same as the triangulation formula. the Choose formula is derivitive in that you can figure out what the 3 and 4 and 5 ect. collums are from looking at the 2 collum and deriving the addition pattern, and so forth. Then there is the LSH key, or is it the ISH key? Here's the pattern for this one - one becomes two - - 2 becomes 8. 3 becomes 24. 4 becomes 64 and five becomes 160. Is that clear to you? It took me maybe a half hour to figure out what was happening here. You take two to a power and then times two times that very same number. That's the LSH key. Finally I believe there should be a DIM key on calculators. Consider the following progression one is zero. two is one, three is six, four is eighteen and five is forty. A one dimensional entity has no plane surfaces. I speak here as plane sides to a ninety degree cube on all corners. Two has one, three had six, four had eighteen and five has forty. Now here is the answer. I'm not sure how long it took me to figure out this one. You know the triangulation formula (the Campbell soup cans one) this goes 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 etcetra. Now for the sides of a cube in any given dimension take this number and times it by one less than where you are at. So you do one times zero, three times one, three times two, and six times three, and four times ten. Don't you feel smarter now?