The Night of the Long Knives

 

Well I did manage to watch most of the Mc Laughlin group tonight.  The Christmas party started early but was beset with delays including the food- - and getting through the entire thing proved a major act of endurance, even though though I was holding seven raffle tickets, none of them won.   But let's talk a little more about John Boehner's lashing out against all of these right wing fringe PAC's.  Pat Buchanon said that John Boehner should have been "magnanamus in victory.  This would not have satisfied the right wing, and all of them from Mike Le Vin to Sean Hannity to Rush Limbaugh called him all sorts of unfortunate names.  It's unfortunate for these tea baggers because if there is one thing the voters hate it's a sore loser, and now for perhaps the first time in three years, the tea baggers are publicly exposed and shamed as losers.  So of course if they were some right wing military junta by now they'd be ordering the state executions of Boehner and Paul Ryan as traitors to the state.  Just like Kim Jung Un ordered the execution of his mentor and Uncle earlier in the week.  This shows not any kind of strength but political weakness and paranoia.  Combined with his forays into the Pacific as of late- - the whole world is watching Kim Jung Un with the greatest of suspicion about now.  As to the Budget Compromise bill- - clearly it does what John Boehner states it will.  It will cut the deficet, which used to be the avowed goal of these tea baggers, though nothing really shows for it in hard numbers.  The four pannelists on the program were Mort Zuckerman, Eleanor Clift (the only pannelist who dares not miss a single week on the show) and a new Black lady, plus Pat Buchannon, who increasingly often now is the Goat on the show, espousing political positions far out of synch with the others.  Of course in the Senate people like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio will vote against this budget, but there is a five to zip concencus of the Mc Laughlin group that the Budget as written will pass anyhow, perhaps as early as tomorrow.  All the Democrats need to do is to pick off five of the republican Senators, and this Budget will sail through and be signed by the President so fast it will make your head spin.  No longer will the right wing be able to say that this congress "hasn't passed a budget in three years" or whatever.

In computer news, Windows Nine will be called "Threshhold" and they will be bringing back the Start Menu because there were too many howels of protest from Microsoft traditionalists out there.  Leo states he's "not quite sure about how he feels about Microsoft taking a step backward".  I as of right now am still using Windows XP but Microsoft will stop update support as of the end of March of next year.  This will leave me technically open to virus attacks.  However I'm not sure how many virus writers are still gunning for XP users at this point.  I wanted to mention this topic to Judy but there never seemed a good time to bring it up.  Increasingly the movie industry is abandoning the traditional 24 frames per second in favor of 48.  I suppose they could compromise at 36 frames per second- - knowing how expensive 70 mm film is these days, which I guess they aren't using anyhow any more.  There was talk about screens with 4096 pixel dimensions, which seems to me to be beyond ultra sharp.  Leo continues to regard 3 D as just a distracting guimick which more often than not "takes him out of the movie plotline".

They said that this California high speed railway will cost multiplied Billions of dollars.  And the thing isn't even off the ground yet, and I don't believe so much as a square yard of land has acquired under emininent domain, which Judy regards as some kind of commie plot anyhow to "Channel us all into transportation corridors".   In other techy news- - Keith says they are coming out with a cell phone that "pulls electricity out of the air and never needs charging.  You just aim it at an electric outlet or transformer".   I don't know about that but it would seem logical that they find some way of recharging these phones without going through expensive batteries like hotcakes.  It would seem to me that light charging cells will become standard pretty soon to avoid this batterey nuicence.  On MSNBC they remind us that one gallon of gasoline is "energy entensive" and one gallon of gas would generate enough electricity to power a cell phone for three thousand days, or nine years of steady use.  Or so Exxon or whoever would have us to believe.

We have all these new terms including that Leo Le Port one for "computer work around", which you often have to resort to in 'Sketch" because there are things you wish the program allowed but doesn't make it easy for you.  Some techy coined a term back in 1962 that I've completely forgotten that sounds vaguely German.  But then we have all the terms with "man" in it, such as "man crush", "man boobs" and 'man cave", which if you'd used forty years ago people would have thought you were gay.  Now we have the term "Mantry" for a man's pantry.  And here is another term introduced by a very unpopular Texas jouvenile court judge called "Affluenza".  I suggest a good cure or "vaccination" for "Affluenza" is to spend several days in a drunk tank or a TB ward with people coughing their brains out- - or perhaps the worst part of a psycho ward. or maybe some "preventative time' in Juvenile Hall as a "vaccination" against coming down with "Affluenza".  This sixteen year old in the tradition of Michael Skakel just offed four people sitting in a parked car by crashing into them- - probably at a hundred and ten miles an hour or something- - killing all four occupants.  Congress for sure needs to receive the vaccination for "Affluenza" because there is an epidemic of that in Washington DC.  And uh- - - some things or "lessons" in life- - are best learned not as professorial abstractions taught in Sunday School- - but must be learned.  You must be exposed to them.  (Selah)

A lot of what I do as far as reconstructing early Church history is just deductive logic of the sort a good card player might use, or a good Wheel of Fortune player would use.  Now for some "mysteries" they telegraph the answer to showing you a rustling curtain or a certain person in the room, or a particular object the camera lingers on.  In "Wheel" good players use their logical deductive skills.  There are really just a few simple things to look out for.  First of all you know the Game show uses only common phrases that are if anything cliches in the English language.  Keep in mind the category.  Count the letters in each word and note where the long and short words fall.  There are give aways like T-- is most likely "The", and you can call a free H.  Like you know you can get a G when the -----N- is the next to the last letter in something like a verb.  And they already let you know the six most called letters to begin with.  Most likely when you see -N- it's an "And" unless A's have been called.  Look for other tricky stuff like -N- most likely is the word ONE, and -C- is more likely ICE.  Don't let vowels in strange places throw you.  Keep in mind if a letter is called that ALL occurrances of the letter in that word are on the board.  Don't have a phrase in mind and CALL a letter you "think" the phrase needs if so much as ONE letter like that is already showing.  You of course are given help with dashes and "&" symbols and apostrophes.  So you can take this logic with you and apply it to Church History in the early days where there are a lot of gaps in the recorded history.  Look for trends in which "books" are included and when, and references and quotations of these books in other known contemporary sources of the Era.   Look for strange details which are there seemingly for no reason.  Try and find the reason and some historic connection.  In the case of a guy like Pilate the Judean Governor - - if history says that Pilate never offered any prisoner a "get out of jail free" card- - - and all four mention this event - - ask yourself why it's so important to the author to bring up a Prisoner who appears in the narritive suddenly and just as suddenly disappears without another word about him in the New Testament.  There is some kind of a "message" here.  Some would say "There is NO evidence at all that Pilate ever issued vox populai pardons such as this where - - whether a prisoner lives or dies was left up to the whim of the crowd.  After all this isn't the Colosseum- - which by the way wasn't built till over ten years after Nero departed the scene.  Let me flesh out the image for you.  My point is that IF - - such a strange event IS reported by ALL FOUR gospels- - the report alludes to SOMETHING - - some reality that the writer wants to desguise.  Some cult figure with the support of the people - - - verses - - Someone Else - - - whom these same people hated as much as they loved their champion and leader.  Just Think.  Did Jesus tell ANYONE - - other than Governor Pilate (in private) that "My Kingdom is not of this world".  No he did not.  Check the gospels.  Also here is something.  Chuck Smith makes much out of soldiers "putting a paper bag over his head and then asking 'Who hit you" pointing out how "cruel" this was "because you wouldn't see the punch coming and couldn't defend yourself".  I want Chuckie poo to just sit there and contemplate the folly of that statement for one minute.  And Picture this.  It wouldn't look good for someone a "secular historian" to include in his journal - - "There was once a man who claimed to be the Messiah but the people en mass rose up against him and even his closest disciples ran away and denied ever knowing him, such was the ill repute of this man's ministry.  When you see things in a text such as "Jesus while dying on the cross was surrounded by friends and loved ones who had been with him from the first" ask yourself- - what about the OT prophecy in Zachariah that "All of you will run away" to fulfill the scripture "strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered".  For such a "humble man" as "acquainted with grief" as Jesus was said to be- - how come there are virtually NO references to Jesus ever being "humbled" in his day to day life.  Few if any people "had it in for him" or ever gave him a hard time.  Indeed he was eminently popular everywhere he went.  Maybe there was the odd pissant pharicee now and then.  But if Jesus had all these friends- - where were they on Good Friday?   And "Where did the angry mob of avowed enemies come from- - and vanish just as quickly?  As I noted first in April of 1991 there is not one Gospel reference to Jesus "ever taking orders from anyone".  But he sure knew how to give them to others.  If Jesus healed and cured of demons as many people as it's claimed he did- - where did all of those people go.  It's just another case of the "fast Exit from history".  Josephus says "Jesus had many Jews and Greeks as followers".  Name me five "Greeks"?  I'm not saying he didn't have them but how come we aren't told about them.  And if Jesus' brother James was reigning head hauncho in the Jerusalem Church for thirty years- - why is James invariably spoken of as only a shadow of another man named Jesus?  And if Jesus was THAT important- - why doesn't Josephus tell us more about him rather than just quote the Apostles Creed to us?