This is a blue Monday, Mexican Independence Day September 16, 2013 – and in 1981 it was the last time we took Toby on an outing to any park. Melinda Lee last Saturday is sponsoring a luxury cruise next year that goes all around the Baltic like to Copenhagen and Stockholm, and St Petersburg. They keep talking about how the latest power ball win pays off 250 million dollars if you take it in a lump cash settlement. This cruise is really luxurious- - and a whole lot of expenses are included in the fare- - so it's a good deal if you have the money. My heart really isn't in this posting but we might as well do the news of the day. Since it's the seventh blog in this run - I guess we'll be switching to another blog for the next posting. There are only two weeks remaining for the Republicans to stop Obama Care before it kicks in on October first. Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune have their season premiers tonight. We can predict one thing for the coming year. It will be a year where scientific progress exceeds that of people in Society learning to be civil to each other.
Well, there has been
another mass shooting. So what else is
new? It seems like there have been more
than enough “hints” that society as we know it is falling apart. Aaron Alexis is the shooter’s name, and yes
he is a Black guy. He’s 34 and from Ft
Worth, Texas - - and he used to be in the navy but got a “general discharge’
rather than an honorable one, which comment-ators say is indicative of a
“checkered past”. Aaron Alexis used an
AR 15 semi-automatic rifle. The shooting
occurred in a Naval yard southeast of Washington, DC near the Ronald Reagan
airport. Twelve people are dead and the
shooter is dead being gunned down by authorities. The problem is while killing the perpetrator
does save the tax payers a lot of needless formality of a court trial- - I
imagine it really doesn’t help with the pain of the loss all the loved ones of
the victims feel. But congress is never
going to pass gun control legislation.
The authorities thought there were two other gunmen involved – but that
notion didn’t pan out. Governor Jerry
Brown, in contrast, has been continuing with his aggressive progressive agenda
in the Legislature. Now a bunch of
ambitious and restrictive gun bills are on the verge of being passed- - which
the NRA plans to use as a constitutional test – if I read them right – on
having the whole California assault weapons ban thrown out in California. Feel free to pray about this issue if you
want to.
In soap land it was a
depressing and sobering day. E J was
“found out’ as far as that bank deposit scam he tried to pull. “We” had all been led to believe it would
take weeks for the FBI to investigate the thing. But lo and behold- - they put the FBI expert
on the stand as a surprise witness. I
wish they could do that in real life. It
violates this dumb rule called “discovery” that they have now. So after this guy testified in great detail
exactly how the scam was pulled off- - and what the truth actually WAS that
they were trying so hard to disguise- - Samantha and company were dead in the
water, seemingly without a prayer of escaping prison. But someone gave Samantha a lucky charm from
Mrs Brady. So Elvis decided to throw
himself on the mercy of the - - DA. He
offered to tell the lady District Attorney he would do anything he could to
help her in the taking down of his
father, Stephano. He stands at
considerable risk himself, so his actions at least in this- - are an honorable
attempt at atonement. But you can’t say
this for Jack Junior. His heart must be
made of stone. He turned down spirited
pleas for reason from his sister and his mother, and even from Hope. The only people he trusts now are his doper
friends. But clearly the guy is headed
for more trouble. Even an eighteen year
old should realize that.
Yesterday afternoon it
was “Face the Nation” and I was less diligent in searching out each and every
clip than usual. But I got the gist of
it, and based my lead blogger paragraph on this Bob Sheefer and co
commentary. I didn’t see a bit of the
Raiders and Jacksonville (?) game played in Oakland, but the Raiders
prevailed. We had beef Strogenoff for
dinner, which was good, but there wasn’t that much of it. I had seconds on the stroganoff and also the cornflour with cheese sauce- - but even so I was hungry because the portions
were so small both times. We had bread
pudding for desert. We had to go down
for a cheese sandwich from Donnie. I had
on ABC network news and also Sixty Minutes.
This program had a little bit of Assad, a little bit of President of
Obama, and a little bit of the CIA chief.
All three were basically losers, in my opinion. Johnny Wendell has stated that the American
People have completely tuned out on the whole idea of war. They are is “resolved” in their decision as
Jack Deveroux is in his. And no amount
of persuasion will change their mind.
The Simpson’s had that “Assistant Pastor” rerun, where he relates every
crisis not to God or the Bible, but to a TV show plot. Bart was the hero of sorts bringing in a
plague of frogs, based on something from the opening scenes. I watched a good deal of Sunday Night
Football with Al Michaels. Seattle
creamed and pureed San Francisco up north.
That bummed me out. I may have
done dial twirling after this.
Johnny Wendell covered
the two other issues that are up for debate here in California and he was
pretty convincing, too. He said that the
minimum wage will have none of the economic drag effects people predict. People won’t suddenly stop eating Big Macs,
even is many think that wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Of course they are going to pay another twenty five cents for their
burger- - given the wealth out here.
Many people think at least a twelve dollar an hour would be equitable
for fast food workers, yet they are willing to settle for ten. Johnny states that all this will do is increase
the overall commerce and economic health of the state I pray that he’s right, because it’s coming,
but we won’t even see that ten dollars an hour for a couple years. The other issue is the drivers license thing
for illegal aliens. This issue is beginning
to look like a slam dunk for me now.
Because it will insure that everybody is legal and main stream these
illegal aliens as a responsible part of society. It won’t be the “inducement not to return to
their hom country” because economic factors have much more sway in these sort
of decisions rather than whether one is driving legal or not. Even Utah has more liberal driving laws than
we have.
Perhaps Johnny’s finest
hour today was his major theme about the intransigence of Republicans in
congress. They refused to vote funds for
Hurricane Sandy relief, but at the same time nobody from the northeast would
consider voting down funds for either the current Boulder Colorado disaster, or
the tornado that wiped out Moore, Oklahoma.
But in Colorado they deliberately let their flood control system of dams
and such - - fall into disrepair because they figured in part “well there is a
drought now, so who has to worry about stuff like that. But the rich want to make sure that the Koch
Brothers in Oklahoma and the Coors family and others, get their big tax refunds
in Colorado. One question I’ve always
had if that if these people are so strapped for money that they can’t hire on
new workers or lend money, or engage in whatever business they are supposed to
be in, how come they keep giving their chief executive officers such large pay
raises. Maybe Mitt Romney or somebody
can explain this one to me. There is
apparently a town in northern Texas where there has been an outbreak of the
measles and the reason why is that one of the members of this particular
church, visited Indonesia recently and came back with it and spread the virus
to others. Of course these are among the
school of right wing nuts who say that vaccine with primarisol gives your kids
autism or whatever, a theory that’s been discredited multiple times. They keep invoking the name of God, but as
Johnny Wendell points out, they never contemplate one time that perhaps God is
the one who gave man brains to think with.
Johnny admits that no matter how sure footed your logic and reason is
with these people- - they are intransigent and won’t budge on their political
positions. But if we believe the stories
in the Bible - - God has always had problems with stubborn people, who
seemingly have to be hit over the head with a two by four for God to get their attention.
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