Proclamation: The Era of Dwarfed Government Is Over

As you know I used to be a fan of Washington’s blog but since Trump’s election they have been pretty much out to lunch.  They defend Trump and continue to advocate some of these hysterical economic policies reminiscent of some alarmist far right group.  The National Debt is not a problem.  I would like to propose a slogan.  The era of dwarfed government is over.   Unemployment is down and the deficit is down and economic performance and the stock market continue to rise despite all of the doom and gloom of Washington’s blog.   It has been said on the Shawn Hannity show that it wouldn’t take that much to get the economy really cranking even better than it is now.  But it’s not by getting rid of pollution regulations.  Instead we need the right kind of fiscle stimulus and get the infrastructure rebuilt.  Trump said he wanted to spend money on the infrastructure but then we learned he wants to facilitate the whole thing by tax credits to business to spend money on public works.  I say public works should be public.  There are certain areas such as roads, bridges, and water works, that are part of the public domain.   It’s a mistake to trust the whims of private business to accomplish it.  All we need to do is to NOT cut taxes on the rich, and keep military expences in check.  Even President Eisenhower extolled the values of peace time spending being much more productive than big item military hardware items.   We as a nation need to get over our fear of normalcy, which is to say expansion.  I know this is a difficult concept for the people at Washington’s blog.  Governor Swartzenegger did an about face in January of 2006 when three of his far right measures went down in the polls the previous November.  Now it was the era of expansive government reminiscent of the era of Pat Brown.  There comes a time when we need to get over this economic phobia of big government.   Probably the statement Clinton regrets most is that of “The era of big government is over”.   Instead since then everything seems to be in constant crisis and short supply regardless of what the economy is actually doing.  It doesn’t make sense.  In terms of economic agreements suck as the Trans Pacific Partnership, I’m glad Trump has pulled out of this one.  This agreement along with others strips US courts of their constitutional sovereignty in ways we have elaborated to in the past.  Another area that is proven to stimulate a demand economy is to get the minimum wage up to a livable wage.  I think we should start with twelve dollars an hour and then play it by ear from there.   Clearly the $7.50 minimum wage level isn’t adequate for a living wage.  We know about all of those Wall Mart employees on welfare.  Then there is the matter of wage theft and working “off the clock” or else you’ll get fired.  Once again we need to emplwer workers to give then a means of support a family man needs.   This is what Thom Hartman has always talked about.  Roosevelt’s policies worked for over forty years and there is no reason why Kaynesian ideas can’t continue to serve us well.  

The Federation announced today that they released a Trumpless version of that album which first was announced on Sunday February 26^th, which is “Relics from a Different Age” with the same cover.   Five songs will fill out the remainder of the album but one of them is really short.   We need to think positive thoughts if we can.  Some day it may be that Trump is either successfully impeached or resigns for office, for some excuse of a reason Trump will say is brilliant reasoning.   I looked in the Wikipedia under “hyperbolic geometry”, which was a topic that was suggested to me.  This is their longest article but they also have “saddle plains” and hyperbolic space, and other technical stuff.  I don’t have the mental capacity to understand the concept either, despite their helpful graphs and designs.   If you are talking about a saddle shaped plane this would fall under the general umbrella of curved plains, and this no doubt is a big field with lots of complex math.  Spherical surfaces like with a globe would be a science in its own right.  If you extend a saddle plane to its logical conclusion you would get a donut shaped universe.  It would be the inner side of the innertube or whatever.   But they spoke of circles as if they actually existed in hyperbolic space, but they wouldn’t.  They would all be replaces by hyperbolas, and hyperbolas seen from the outside of the curve.  There is also crystal ball geometry like you get with a fish-eye camera.  All of these kinds of geometry would have their own laws.   But the bottom line thing is that hyperbolic trig doesn’t have degrees as we know them.  So all their theories seem to me to be thrown into a cocked hat.  They aren’t even possible, as I see it.  Instead you could have to base your “geometry” if at all, on some sort of time or “incident” based geometry.  After this I went for snacks in the courtyard and just missed them but then Rene said he was going upstairs to the music class so I went up in the elevator with him and a few others.  I got my lemonade and graham cracker but then Karen tapped me on the shoulder and asked for my name to write down.  As long as I was showing up in her class I had to participate, she said.  But I went back to the computer and caught their radio phone call at ten to eleven.   There no predicted Santa Ana winds today.  

Now this album is available completely Trump-free.  We had to switch out the "Adam and the Ants" track because the previous track was discovered on "Metal Melitia".

RELICS FROM A DIFFERENT AGE Revised and Rel February 29th 2017

Are You Ready To Rock? (Blue Oyster Cult)
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed (Almon Brothers)
Prelude / The Temples of Sphyrinx (Rush)
The Last In Line (Ron Dio)
No More Mr. Nice Guy (Alice Cooper)
Silver Spoon (Grace Slick) from a solo album
Fireworks (Blue Oyster Cult)
The Seven Deadly Words (George Carlen)
Julia Dream (Pink Floyd)
Rock and Roll Radio (Billion Dollar Babies)
Ma, Ma, Ma Belle (Electric Light Orchestra)*
The Deadly Yellow Snow (Frank Zappa)
Another One Bites the Dust (Queen)
Love Hungry Man (AC – DC)
King of the World (Steely Dan)

Disk two

Hell Bound Train (George Thorogood)
Midnight Cruiser (Steely Dan)
Am I Going Insane? (Black Sabbath)
Our House (Madness)
Keep Me In Your Mind (Scorpions)
Passion Play (Jethro Tull) (radio edit)
Pretty Penny (Stone Temple Pilots)
Muscle of Love (Alice Cooper)
Ant Music (Adam and the Ants)
Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie (Bob Dylan)
Little Wing (Derek and the Dominoes)
TV Caesar (Procol Herum)

Walking On The Moon (Police)

The Lying's Over (Asia)

Paradise City (Guns and Roses)

The Art of Dying (George Harrison.  

Donald Trump Is Morally Unfit to be President

Today is March 28, 2017.   You know when I think of Donald Trump I can’t help but how much Christians have compromised their principles.  As you know one of my own seven cardinal virtues is Fidelity to moral principles, and moral people.  They used to pride themselves on how strict they were with Bible teachers.   I remember the time David wanted me to be a Bible study leader and Judy interjected and said “I’m just not a loving person” and hence unqualified.  It used to be that someone guilty of even the appearance of evil was disqualified.  Needless to say the person had to be sexually pure, as far as that is possible.  And in the Bible spirit he had to be “Well thought of by his piers in the faith”.   Clearly Donald Trump wasn’t “well thought of” in the Christian community before he was nominated.  Ted Cruz at the convention gave an empassioned speech and concluded it by saying “Therefore I say to vote your conscience”.  Certainly from a Christian point of view, Cruz said exactly the correct thing.  Clearly you want to lift up your hands to God and ask him for guidance in making important decisions.  But now all that has gone by the wayside.  Judy explained it as “Well maybe Trump looks bad but you have to realize it’s just the package it comes in.  You don’t disqualify the contents of the package because you don’t like the way the box is wrapped.  She wasn’t saying that when it came to me.  Judy also regarded my prophecy book as “unloving”.   What it was was honest, which is another Christian virtue.  I wasn’t going to put up kind of a fluff front or allude to emotions that I didn’t feel.  People would see through that.  I thought the important thing was to get God’s message out.  Judy didn't always feel this way.  She used to hate Trump more than I did.  Back about a year ago I was still holding hope for Trump, not knowing everything about him and knowing a whole lot more now.  Judy regarded Trump as a demagogue and a potential dictator.  He wasn't "constitutional" like Cruz was.  But someone cast a spell and a veil was cast over Paul and Judy's consciousness.  Tom Hartman said a year ago that there was this tiny group of rich elite that was going to "audition" and select the next president.  It was "whoever best got their message out".  (Selah) Well in like manner Donald Trump has gotten the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson’s message out.  Trump is a conduit for these right wingers such as his chief sponsor and chief, Shawn Hannity.  I respect Shawn Hannity because he gave everybody a heads up on our side about Trump.  Shawn saw before any of us did that Trump wasn’t going to keep his campaign promises when it came to things like not diminishing people’s health care, but would give them something better and it wouldn’t cost as much.   I am reminded of FDR’s mocking jab at the Republicans around 1936 where he pretended to quote them.  “Oh, we republicans want all those things the democrats want.  We really care.  Truly and cross my heart!  But we can do it cheaper and more efficiently, and the best part of it all is under our system, it won’t cost anybody anything”.   (laughter)  Some things Christians see as virtues are not on my list such as “having even the appearance of evil”.  Certainly all of this Russian connection stuff has “the appearance of evil” written all over it.  Also there is such a thing as humility.   While I don’t regard humility as a cardinal virtue, there is a certain virtue in being a little humble about yourself.  The world hates a blow hard, or a why who’s a show-off, ever craving attention.  We regard people who “play to the headlines” like this as inwardly insecure.  The Bible speaks against such behavior.  I remember while we still had the Bible study at Leslie’s apartment there was a place in Romans 12 where is says “One should not think more highly of oneself than they ought to”.  I would certainly agree with this.  Certainly integrity for me is a cardinal virtue.  How many people believe Donald Trump has total integrity in his business and personal affairs?  I rest my case.  Not that Trump is totally devoid of virtue.   I believe he may be a good deal maker and there are roles in business I’m sure where his particular set of talents could come in handy.  But not as President.  Not as the leader of the Free World.  (Selah) 

This republican leader who does all of these covert visits to the White House ought to be fired from his House investigative position.  Clearly the man is not qualified or any reasonable expectation of an unbiased investigation of Trump’s Russian connection.  What is obvious to the American public with the barest sprinkling of facts, seems obscure to the Republican head haunchos who regard everything as politics.  Once again Mark Bove hated politics.  People didn’t even like my prophecy book because some said it was too political, and politics and religion didn’t mix.  Politics and religion never used to mix in classic Calvary Chapel Christianity.  Politics was seen as “dirty” and hopelessly worldly, and something good Christians were supposed to withdraw from because they were “above it all”.   We have swung around 180 degrees from those days.  Today we have lowered ourselves to the lowest form of tit for tat communication in kind of a “nya – nya” rhetoric that’s worthy of a grammar school playground, but certainly didn’t go on in adult society.  The worst thing about President Trump is that he is hopelessly petty about everything.   Of course throwing your political liabilities to the wolves is something Governor Christie did all the time.   I almost admire the fact that Trump is a little loyal to his friends but he’s carrying it too far. 

Trump has done a massive roll-back of Obama’s executive orders.  Trump promised us that in his first one hundred days he was going to transform America.  He has till April 29^th, or just over a month from now- - to complete his complete Obama purge of America.   We told you how Trump wants to roll back industrial safety regulations and worker’s rights.  He also wants to invade our privacy by selling information corporations get.  Now he’s undoing all of Obama’s environmental and global warming regulations.   But this tag line of Trump is that “These are job killing regulations” wears a little thin.   Clearly market forces have made West Virginia and Kentucky coal less valuable.  People prefer natural gas, which is more abundant now do to all the fracking that’s going on.  If you blow off a mountain top or use giant drills to mine, you don’t need the man power you did when you sent man down a dark shaft with picks and shovels.  Clearly cleaning up the environment will create new jobs, and probably well paying ones, too.  There is not a “jobs crisis” now.  The unemployment rate is almost at a historic low of 4.7% and we are obsessed with “creating jobs”.  In like manner we are obsessed with aliens and terrorists coming across the border, and yet the net immigration rate has been a big fat ZERO for years now.  Trump plays on our darkest fears.  And yet areas where we should have real fears, such as polar ice melting- -  Trump is not afraid of that.  There is a blog called arctic-news.blogspot.com, where they run article after article about polar ice and ocean methane outgassing and acidity, and all that good stuff.  You know that ice reflects sunlight and ocean water absorbs it.  Clearly there is a tripping point where global warming will soon be out of control.  

The medication line was long so I watched Jeopardy and then got back in line. I got my peanut butter and jelly sandwich from Ida. I had gotten a butt from Phyllis Green earlier and on this 7:30 outing I got a whole white cigarette from Glenda. I think it’s only the fourth whole cigarette I’ve had all day. Then it was the second half of “Wheel of Fortune” and then it was “24”. I slept OK but I woke a little early with itching. John gave me a white short but Mario conned me out of some of it. But I later got two more butts from John and Mario ended up giving me two butts in a change of heart. I had the Stephanie Miller show on and there was no line at the medication window. I always get milk in the morning- - - from Ricardo today. That rock compilation with Bernie Sanders called “Keys to the Kingdom” has been changed as of today to begin with “Prelude” and “Tyrant” by Judas Priest. This album has been a “Victim of Changes” because we keep having to switch out songs. The post heading is “Making America Think Again” and it’s under “For the Record”. The people in the Federation took care of this weeks ago. I went out at five to seven and the sun was just up and I saw the sun shining on the north side of the building in the morning for the first time. I went into the dining room early.  We had brown sugar in our oatmeal from Aden. Our main course was scrambled eggs with cheese in it, and a whole English muffin- - with butter and jelly. Judy gave me half of her extra coffee because she knew I couldn’t get it from the store today. Louise offered me a lit white rollie that was lying on the ground. There are glimmers of stories about massive new investigations of the Trump administration on ABC network news.

You remember FORMER ACTING ATT GENERAL, SALLY YATES. She was the deputy Attorney General under Obama who became acting Attorney General in the first days of the Trump administration, while the new White House was waiting for Jeff Sessions to be confirmed. After Trump signed his first travel-ban executive order, Yates put out the word to the DOJ that they were not to enforce it. And that was the end of Sally Yates’s tenure as acting Attorney General.

Yates was in the news for another reason in January, though. According to WaPo, as acting AG, she was briefed on Mike Flynn’s now infamous phone call with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, in late December in which the topic of sanctions came up. Yates allegedly thought Flynn might have violated the Logan Act; she was also alarmed that White House officials, up to and including Mike Pence, were publicly denying that Flynn had talked sanctions with Kislyak, either because they were deliberately lying or because Flynn had misled them. Yates reportedly worried that if the truth wasn’t publicly known, the Russians would be able to blackmail Flynn by threatening to reveal the sanctions talk themselves — a dangerous predicament for the president’s national security advisor. So Yates went to the White House counsel, Don McGahn, and apparently told him what Flynn had actually said to Kislyak. A few weeks later, Flynn resigned for having misled Pence about the phone call.

Now the House Intelligence Committee wants Yates to testify. Yates is willing. The White House is not. Can they block her on grounds that her communications with the White House were privileged presidential communications? Yates’s lawyer says no:

All About Jered Cushner

BUT FIRST HERE'S MORE STUFF ON 9 - 11

Evidence will be presented here that will explain, in a comprehensive and internally consistent way — and fully in accord with all of the existing evidence that has been published thus far — many key questions regarding 9/11. Also explained here will be why some of this evidence has been suppressed — such as the crucial testimony of Osama bin Laden’s bag-man who personally collected all of the million-dollar-plus cash donations into Al Qaeda. Also suppressed has been the reason why no persons have been prosecuted for their massive funding of the 9/11 terrorists, including of their training for this complex international terrorist act. In other words: the reasons, and the funders, of the 9/11 attacks, have both been suppressed, until now. But all of these matters are actually part of a broader picture, which also will be explained and documented here:

Why did U.S. President Barack Obama, who bowed down to King Saud (a tyrant in a brutal hereditary dictatorship, and the world’s largest buyer of U.S.-made weaponry), veto the bill that would allow the evidence regarding who financed the 9/11 operation to be presented and judged in a court of law?

Why did U.S. President George W. Bush, during the month before 9/11, refuse to allow his CIA Director, George Tenet, to speak with him alone in private, even when Tenet frantically urged Bush’s gatekeeper Condoleezza Rice to allow him to, or else something terrible, which he couldn’t discuss with anyone but the President, would (not could — would) happen very soon?

Why did U.S. President Donald Trump, in his supposed anti-terrorist ban, choose to target the seven muslim-majority nations that he did, which hadn’t done terrorism against the U.S. (and not much international terrorism at all, really), and not target at all the world’s leading nation in both financing terrorism, and producing suicide-bombers — Saudi Arabia — not even include that country?

It’s not just about money — although the Saud King has a net worth higher than a trillion dollars, but Forbes and Bloomberg don’t even include any heads-of-state in their “billionaires” lists, though the world’s few richest people happen to be also royals (and therefore not listed).

It’s also, and even more, about power. We’re not supposed to learn about the manners of functioning of money and power at the very top, but nobody can understand 9/11 without addressing this issue, unless it’s being addressed as mythology rather than as history, which — in the case of 9/11 at least — it has.

Zacarias Moussaoui is the man who knew too much, and so he’s spending six life sentences without parole, at the Federal ADX Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. That prison is designed for heads of dangerous gangs, who have, at other Supermax prisons, been able to communicate (usually in codes) to their subordinates outside (basically continuing to run the gang, from prison), and so this prison is the best one of all, for prohibiting Moussaoui from ever being able to communicate, to anyone on the outside, not only not to other members of Al Qaeda, but to anyone at all. Nonetheless, the 9/11 survivors and victim-families were finally able, in October 2014 (13 years after the enormous crime that had been committed against them on 9/11), to obtain the sworn testimony (sworn upon a Quran) in the legal case that they have been pursuing for over a decade in order to get to the bottom — or, really, to the top — of this crime, which has so diminished their own lives.  The great unanswered question in this paragraph is how is this hardened criminal connected with suits of the 9 - 11 victims?  WHY he is regarded as so dangerous is not answered here.  This article is good at asking questions but most other articles on 9 - 11 are far more definitive as far as laying out the three M's of means, motive and opportunity.

DONALD TRUMP'S RIGHT HAND MAN

Previously it was said of him. Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President-elect Donald Trump and one of his closest confidants, will join the White House as a senior adviser to the president, Trump announced Monday, while a lawyer assisting the family said that Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, will not immediately take on a formal role.

Kushner, who will not take a salary, is expected to have a broad portfolio that includes government operations, trade deals and Middle East policy, according to a member of Trump’s transition team. In a statement, the transition office said Kushner would work closely with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon to execute Trump’s agenda.

Trump said he wanted to explore the possibilities for making what he has called “the ultimate deal,” a peace pact between Israel and the Palestinians. He is deploying his son-in-law — and now senior adviser on the Middle East — Jared Kushner to the task.

So, if you’re keeping track, Jared Kushner, who comes to Washington with no government experience, no policy experience, no diplomatic experience, and business experience limited to his family’s real estate development firm, a brief stint as a newspaper publisher, and briefly bidding to acquire the Los Angeles Dodgers, will be working on trade, Middle East policy in general, an Israel-Palestine peace deal more specifically, reforming the Veterans Administration, and solving the opioid crisis. Oh wait, that’s not all! Apparently, this new office will also be responsible for “modernizing the technology and data infrastructure of every federal department and agency; remodeling workforce-training programs; and developing “transformative projects” under the banner of Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, such as providing broadband internet service to every American.” We have certainly come a long way from “I alone can fix it.” How is Jared Kushner going to do all of these things? Simply “modernizing the technology and data infrastructure of every federal department and agency” is an enormous undertaking. In the United Kingdom, they had to create a whole new cabinet agency just to surmount that challenge. It would be great if Kushner would simply work on that one thing, or any one of these things. Instead, Kushner has now basically been saddled with several full-time jobs, in which he is responsible for fulfilling many, if not all, of his father-in-law’s campaign promises. Just imagine what Kushner’s daily schedule is going to be like:

You know the government is forbidden to record research on firearms or their mental health implications.  Now the Trump administration via 50 to 48 vote had stopped the reporting of unexplained deaths on the job so there won’t be those danger alerts any more of problems.  Also by a 50 to 48 Senate vote the Trump administration made it OK for companies to sell personal information about you to anybody.  It could be your future father in law or your neighbors or even the newspaper.  They not only know your entire browsing history but can know just how long you spent reading each site.  So if you looked up a disease involving itching, for instance, they would know it just like that.  Tim said that Consumer Reports was running a thing on privacy on the internet and that he sent me a copy of that article.  The other troubling item nobody talks about is the surrendering of Internet Neutrality, something that has existed since 1989.  We all take it for granted knowing that with Obama’s FCC chairman gone, things are uncertain.

Mick Mulvaney is Trump’s head of the budget. He says it’s not realistic to think you can pass a major Health Care reform bill from start to finish in just seventeen days. You really can’t count the seven years the Republicans passed repeal after repeal of Obama Care. In that seven years they never drew up an alternative bill. According to Norman Goldman it was unrealistic for Trump to blame the Democrats for the bill’s failure since the Trump people never reached out to the Democrats for their input. Now you have people from the Freedom Caucus and the Club for Growth sticking to their guns and refusing to compromise in the least, although huge concessions were offered them.

Blast From The Past

CODA (1969 – 1972)

Games People Play (Joe South)  

Eli’s Coming (Three Dog Night)

All Right now (Free)

Do You Know What I Mean? (Lee Michaels)

Saturday At The Park  (Chicago) 

Cross Eyed Mary (Jethro Tull)

World In A Tangle (Canned Heat)

From Here To There Eventually (Steppenwolf)

Overture (Jesus Christ Superstar)

Friends (Led Zeppelin)

Mercedes Benz (Janis Joplin)

Wicked World (Black Sabbath)

Low Spark of Hi Heel Boys (Traffic)

The Night Time is the Right Time (Credence Clearwater)

We knocked two years off the later date.  The cover photo is of a chain link fence and a light shining on the fence lighting it up a little.  In the background are various buildings like warehouses and such with a sign that says “Private Property”.    All the tracks except seven and eight were played on the radio at the time.  This album is kind of a needed CODA to “Missing Links”.    Some might call it “A protest against whatever you want it to be a protest against.  It was an era when protest songs still reigned.   

I didn't vote for Obama but I didn't vote for Romney either.  I still don't like him.  So I voted for Jill Stein of the green party just to go completely off the reservation.  I woke up the night before the election restless and resolved then and there I could not vote for Obama.  Basically it breaks down to five reasons, but there might be more.  First of all of course is his "wrongful life' stand on Abortion, which is beyond extreme and even worse than partial birth abortion.  The next is his coming out in favor of gay marriages last June.  That move apalled me then and I was surprised it didn't blow his campaign out of the water then.  The third is this whole relation with Wall Street - - which kind of transcends left and right.  Michelle Bachman, Ron Paul, and Rick Perry took stands against wall street abuses, so I side with those three.  I don't know what the banks ever did with that bail out money but I'm sure the tax payers would like to know.  There were questions about Timothy Geitner's wall street background, and also questions about his Income taxes before he was approved.  Also I am concerned about "re-inflating the bubble" repeating the same disasterous cycle over.  The fourth is the area that Paul admitted to me he was concerned about, which is government snooping into our private lives without criminal cause.  It seems that Google and some others don't mind "marking a sight as politically dangerous" if it's too right wing or something.  We can't have that.  Ron Paul wouldn't stand for that.  Number five is obviously this whole Bengazi thing.  No I haven't ignored all those Fox News links you have sent me.  They bother me.  And now with the whole bit about Petrayas resigning the plot only thickens.  We'll have to stay tuned.  I kind of looked over the Green Party platform.  It seemed - - reasonable, if more left wing than you might vote.  It seemed less specific than the "Peace and Freedom" party platform- - which features more specific left wing goals.

Explanation of following paragraph.   There is a progression of number ratios carried out to infinity leading to the Golden Mean.  8 and 13 is the fourth such series.   At one time there was the belief that there were 22 levels of the afterlife.  8 are unreal or "dark" realms.  These are from 15 to 22.  Thus zero kind of begins at 14.  Realm 13 was held to be the worst form of Judgement and Hell that was actually "real".  12 and 10 were seen as mirror realms of each other in this universe.  11 was the Sea of Green  9 through 1 were seen as heavenly realms.  Hence for something to be valid or real it had to have at least 13 "light" or actual or real realms and 8 dark or strictly unreal realms.  It was believed that since 8 and 13 were the fourth degree then the error encountered here (variance with the Golden Mean) would be the Same error in sampling you would get from using our square root sampling formula.  The connection really isn't made at all in the following paragraph, which originally directly followed the foregoing one.

I'm been working on a lot of math theories lately.  There are two things I'd like to retract or amend in my letter to Paul.  One was the assertion that the hyperbolic tangent numbers are incorporated in Einsteins addition of volicities theory.  I read it in a Wickipedia article, but I can't find any mathematical connection myself.  I don't know where they got it.  The other is the whole thing about statistical sampeling.  I said "What I need ia a one percent number to use".  Well, I've been thinking about it and actually I have a more ingenious theory about "the right number to statistically sample".  It's kind of like the Four Degrees of the Golden Mean formula, the traditional version of which is itself based on "Sampeling" so I thought I could make use of it.  As you know the fourth in the series of number progressions for the Golden Mean is 8 and 13, which will only result in - - like less than a two decimal place error or just a couple percent sampeling error.  The other part of the theory is the squared theory.  For instance if you have four people you sample one person.  If you have nine people you sample a third of them and if you have sixteen you sample four, and for twenty five you sample five, or if you have a hundred you sample ten.  With  ten thousand you would sample a hundred - - so there is your one percent everyone talks about.  Of course for a million would have to sample ten thousand, but keep in mind these are RANDOM samples, not scientifically screened for variables.  if you screen the sample, you're going to get a lot smaller number anyhow, which will result in a bigger necessary percentage of sample.  Where the golden mean comes in is the Four Degrees.  So if you have say sixteen people and you only want to sample three perople rather than four your accuracy goes to down to the 5 and 8 ratio, which is not as close.  But you can run the risk.  If you want eight degrees of accurecy you can use that golden mean pair- - and sample eight out of sixteen or ten out of 25.  But that's too much work.  Anyhow I just came up with this formula today.

Obama Care Isn't Going to Self-destruct

President Trump had Paul Ryan pull the House bill so there will be no vote on it today or for the foreseeable future.  They were short ten to fifteen votes by President Trump’s admission.  No democrats crossed party lines to vote for it.  Trump called it “close”.   They just announced today’s high in Chicago was 77 degrees.  That’s a spring time indicator for sure.  They interrupted Days of our Lives for Paul Ryan’s interview and the picture took a while to come on.  But it did.  Paul Ryan didn’t try to varnish over the facts.  He had failed.  There’s no doubt about that.  Then they had the Trump interview in the Oval Office.  He spoke for longer.  He says that there are no plans to bring up another bill and we’ll just have to let Obama Care explode or self destruct or whatever they hope it’s going to do.   Both Trump and Shawn Hannity afterward said that democrats themselves would take the initiative and sponsor a bi-partisan bill with the Republicans saying that a bi-partisan bill would be better for everyone anyhow.  I’d have trouble disagreeing with that.   Trump says Chuck Schummer and Nancy Pelosi are the big losers because “They’ll own Obama Care”.

The rumor is going around that Donald Trump doesn’t care what’s actually in the Health Care bill just as long as he’s willing to “make the deal”.  Some have even proposed that if a democrat proposed a more liberal health care bill Trump might go for that because in a book that came out in 2000 Trump endorsed single payer health care.   The idea was put forth that the KOCH brothers would twist arms and dangle carrots to get those ten or fifteen republicans to vote for the Health Care bill.  In exchange Trump announced today officially that the XL pipeline is going through to Texas as originally planned.  Thom Hartman advanced this theory this morning.  But Norman Goldman states that you’re operating in a fish bowl with this bill and if there are ANY changes to the bill the hospital associations and drug companies and all the rest will take note of it and sound the alarm.  They could never pull off any sneak votes in the dead of night as proposed.   It’s been pointed out that we could “turn the whole thing over to the states” so that if California wants to have single payer health care like Massachusetts did back a dozen years ago, then nothing would prevent them from doing that.  After all “Covered California” is economically healthy.  It would be all those republican red states that would suffer the most.

(Media reflection on the failure)  Shortly after House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) unveiled the Republican health-care plan on March 6, President Trump sat in the Oval Office and queried his advisers: “Is this really a good bill?”  And over the next 18 days, until the bill collapsed in the House on Friday afternoon in a humiliating defeat — the sharpest rebuke yet of Trump’s young presidency and his negotiating skills — the question continued to nag at the president.  Even as he thrust himself and the trappings of his office into selling the health-care bill, Trump peppered his aides again and again with the same concern, usually after watching cable news reports chronicling the setbacks, according to two of his advisers: “Is this really a good bill?”  In the end, the answer was no — in part because the president himself seemed to doubt it.  “We were a little bit shy — very little, but it was still a little bit shy, so we pulled it,” Trump said Friday afternoon in an interview with The Washington Post.  For Trump, it was never supposed to be this hard. As a real estate mogul on the rise, he wrote “The Art of the Deal,” and as a political candidate, he boasted that nobody could make deals as beautifully as he could. Replacing Obamacare, a Republican bogeyman since the day it was enacted seven years ago, was Trump’s first chance to prove that he had the magic touch that he claimed eluded Washington.

The war in Syria is heating up yet again with signs that the conflict may soon be about to take greater international dimensions. This is all due to greater Israeli participation and aggression in Syria against the Syrian military and on the behalf of terrorist organizations fighting against the Syrian government. The questions that remain, however, are whether or not the Israelis are willing to tempt the resolve of the anti-terrorist coalition of Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia and how steadfast that resolve of those powers might actually be.  In the past week, we have seen an escalation in the Syrian conflict the likes of which we have not seen in decades in terms of Israeli-Syrian tensions as well as the potential for a clash of nuclear world powers in the Middle East as a combat theatre  After a mobilization of U.S. troops near Manbij – designed to prevent the Syrian military from retaking the city and as a means to stop combat between Turkish and Kurdish forces – Israel launched an air attack on Syrian targets near Palmyra, the Zionist settler state’s furthest penetration into Syria yet. Israel claimed it was bombing an Iranian-Hezbollah weapons convoy while the Syrian government claimed Israel had targeted Syrian military positions who were in the process of combating ISIS. Regardless, Israel clearly violated international law and the concept of national sovereignty.

Trump and Ryan Forces Fail to get Needed Votes

The big news of the day is that there will be no row-call vote in Congress for the Health Care measure.  This was the House vote.  The US Senate hasn't taken up this bill yet, but when it does it is expected to fail by an even greater margin.  The Trump and Ryan forces simply lack the votes.  They need to delay the vote some more so they can do the necessary arm twisting and deal making with individual congress-men.  The Freedom Caucus is making a whole bunch of fresh demands like eliminating caticlis-mic coverage and terminating policies.   The other news of the day is of course yesterday’s story about how perhaps Trump people in the campaign were overheard in conversations with Russia that our side captured.  They supposedly aren’t even supposed to listen to the American half of the conversation, which seems a strange request to make.  The congress chairman told Trump before he told his ranking member, which is against protocol.  I don’t see how this Trump administration can forever continue to sweep scandal after scandal under the rug, but so far he’s done a pretty good job of it.  There is so much of the government that is already in Trump administration hands that finding an independent prosecutor seems highly unlikely now.

Washington (CNN) The House hopes to vote on legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare Friday morning, following a day of drama and multiple high-level, tension-filled meetings, a White House official said.  President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan have been lobbying members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and also moderate Republicans in an attempt to reach the 216 votes they need to pass the bill.  Republicans can't lose more than 21 of their caucus and still pass the bill, since no Democrats are expected to support it. According to CNN's ongoing whip count, 26 House Republicans have said they will vote against the bill, and four more have indicated they are likely to oppose it, though negotiations were ongoing Thursday.  Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows said there are "30 to 40" votes against the bill at this point.  "We have not gotten enough of our members to get to yes at this point," Meadows said Thursday afternoon.  Meadows called the long-standing plan to vote on Thursday -- the seven-year anniversary of President Barack Obama signing the Affordable Care Act -- an "artificial deadline."

NY Senator Chuck Schummer in a speech today said that he would vote to filibuster the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court.  He said that all of Obama’s picks for the High Court met the sixty vote standard as did some of Bush’s nominees.  Chuck says if this candidate cannot meet the bar of sixty votes in the senate the solution is not to change the rules, as Mitch Mc Connell has threatened to do, but to change candidates.  I agree. 

(Last Sunday morning) I went to the store after cereal and got my dollar coffee.  In the morning here I got coffee with milk, and got a second such coffee from Paul, which woke me up.  The good thing is I was done with breakfast before “Meet the Press” came on the air.  I had a lot of ideas for blogging about the Trump administration.  The big news is that Supreme Court justice candidate will be testifying tomorrow.  Also FBI head James Comey will be testifying tomorrow.  He’s the mole in the Trump administration.  If I were congress I’d be grilling him extra intensely to get the truth out of him.

(Tuesday March 14th.)  I watched Days of our Lives and today could be called ethics and evaluation day.  Bill had to leave to see Dr Kim at one thirty.  I went and smoked my remaining butt in the pack and then headed to the snack line.  It was four after two but I was still late.  I got in the money draw line.  Gabby was weaving in and out among the people.  It was Glenda and then Luan and then Muffin, and all three of those took a long time.  Then it was that other Ron.  I got in there just past 2:20.  I got my fifteen dollars from Jennifer and took too chocolates. Gabby was watching me count my money but she wanted the chocolates I was holding.  I ate them and got in the reasonably short line to see Dr Saran.  When I had been in the Tess line I had heart palpitations.  I was afraid I’d have more of them now and the doctor would think I was really sick.  Silva engaged me in conversation.  Right off I told the doctor that I had been sick with the flu for two weeks.  Also that I had been coughing all that time and nasal clogging and tiredness and tightness in the stomach area. I told Dr Saran that often when I ate I felt better despite not feeling hungry beforehand.   Dr Saran wasn’t going to prescribe anti-biotics, which I’m sure I need.  My temperature was below normal and my blood pressure was on the low end despite the fact I could feel my veins throbbing.  He prescribed cough medicine and nasal spray.  That will help me get more needed oxygen.  I returned to the room and Nora told me not to go in because she had just mopped.  I went out for a smoke.   She doesn’t seem to have dusted and the corner of the desk still feels dirty. 

Police have identified Khalid Masood as the man who carried out the Westminster attack, as the death toll rose to five.   Al Qaeda has taken credit for this car attack.  Kent-born Masood, who was shot dead by police, had not been the subject of any current police investigations, but had a range of previous convictions.

The 52-year-old was believed to have been living in the West Midlands.  PC Keith Palmer, 48, Aysha Frade and US tourist Kurt Cochran, 54, were killed on Wednesday, while a 75-year-old man died on Thursday evening.  The man had been receiving medical treatment in hospital but his life support was withdrawn.

The so-called Islamic State group has said it was behind the attack.

Three women and five men were arrested in London and Birmingham on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts following Wednesday's attack.

• A woman aged 39 was arrested in east London
• A 21-year-old woman and a 23-year-old man were arrested in Birmingham
• A 26-year-old woman and three men aged 28, 27 and 26 were arrested at another address in Birmingham
• A man aged 58 was arrested at an address in Birmingham
• Bullets keep coming

Comey and Gorsuch Testify Before Congress

FBI Director James Comey confirmed the bureau is probing potential ties between President Donald Trump’s associates and Russia during the 2016 campaign and said there’s no evidence to support the president’s allegation that his predecessor “wiretapped” Trump Tower last year.  “I have no information that supports those tweets and we have looked carefully inside the FBI," Comey told the House Intelligence Committee on Monday.  Comey said the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a broad inquiry into Moscow’s efforts to “interfere” in the presidential election, an effort he said began in late July of last year.  “I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” Comey said. “And that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”  Comey cautioned he wouldn’t be able to discuss many details of what remains a classified probe and said that his refusal to answer a question shouldn’t be taken as a tacit confirmation. “Please don’t draw any conclusions from the fact that I may not be able to comment on certain topics,” he said, adding it “really isn’t fair to draw conclusions.”  Nonetheless, Trump tweeted during the hearing: “FBI Director Comey refuses to deny he briefed President Obama on calls made by Michael Flynn to Russia.” It was a reference to Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor, who was fired for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the content of phone calls with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, a few weeks before Trump’s inauguration. Media reports at the time, based on anonymous sources, said the subject of U.S. sanctions against Russia was discussed.

The confirmation hearings of President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, began with Senate Judiciary Republicans praising his qualifications and legal philosophy.  "His grasp on the separation of powers — including judicial independence —enlivens his body of work," committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said of the federal appeals court judge during his opening remarks on Monday.  Demo-crats, however, wanted to talk about the man they believed should have been sitting there instead: former President Barack Obama's nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, who was denied a hearing by Senate Republicans during an election year. Garland and Gorsuch were nominated to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away suddenly in February 2016.  "I am deeply disappointed that it is under these circumstances that we begin these hearings," said Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.  She went on to say that Democrats would give Gorsuch a courtesy that Senate Republicans did not give Garland: a fair hearing.  "Our job is to determine whether Judge Gorsuch is a reasonable mainstream conservative or is he not,"  The outset of the first day of testimony underscored that the hearings would remain sharply divided along party lines, with each senator accusing the opposing side of political posturing.  Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, argued that the Senate owes a president discretion in picking his judicial nominees and pointed out that Gorsuch had received the highest rating possible from the American Bar Association, the "gold standard" in vetting judicial nominees.  Hatch blasted Democrats for wanting Gorsuch to outline how he would vote on certain cases, saying that to them, "judicial independence requires he be beholden to them and [their] political agenda" on issues like abortion.  But Democrats kept pushing back against the so-called Republican obstructionism that they believe caused Scalia's seat to remain vacant for more than a year.  "The Judiciary Committee once stood against a court-packing scheme that would have eroded judicial independence. That was a proud moment. Now, Republicans on this committee are guilty of their own 'court un-packing scheme,' " said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "The blockade of Chief Judge Merrick Garland was never grounded in principle or precedent."  Gorsuch will give his own opening 

Chuck Barry Died at Age Ninety

Chuck Berry, rock and roll legend is dead at ninety.  That's older than I imagined he was and sure makes him older than Elvis.  This is the headline that greeted me.  They said he had had a recent bout with pneumonia and his recovery was a little slow.  There was talk of “they tried to revive him but couldn’t”.   Nobody knows the cause of death. It has been our belief that Chuck Berry is a native of Sirius O but there has been no confirmation of that since his death.  Of course the Rolling Stones and the Beatles owe a lot of their respective musical styles to Chuck.   

This is Sunday at a quarter to two and Kentucky and Wichita State are playing on KNXT right now in a close game.  This is later and Kentucky won the game and so advances to the Sweet Sixteen.  There is still no sign of rain.  Today is March 19, 2017, the day the swallows used to return to Capistrano.   Last night I went toward Glen’s room seeking coffee and I met Glen at the back door and he said he was almost out.  This is why I’m going to buy instant coffee today.  Nancy agrees with me that Nestcafe used to be twice as strong in the same sized jar but they pump air into it.  Last night the LA Clippers easily defeated the Cleveland Cavileers at the Staples center before a disappointed audience who shouted “We want Lebran”.  Lebran James and two other Cleveland players decided to take the night off.  The lead of the Clippers grew and grew throughout the game and the final score was 108 to 78 or something like that.  The ABC sports commentators were pissed at the end of the game saying ABC didn’t get their money’s worth and the fans sure didn’t get what they paid good money to see.  This is kind of the new scandal of sports.  In the old days players would play injured and they would hardly miss a game.  But today it’s routine for big time players to skip off games.  They get paid so much they don’t care.  The medication line for Ricardo was still kind of long after seven thirty but a few people had already gotten their meds and Ricardo called me forward.  I got cough medicine and have been coughing less.  But I think to a degree my throat is healing on its own.  I didn’t expect to see Bill by the elevator but figured he’d be in the hospital at least all night.

Breakfast with the Beatles was at nine o clock and naturally they paid tribute to Chuck Berry’s death.  We at the Federation are paying our token tribute too by expanding that Valentine’s Day album out last month.  The revised version was out this morning.  They work quickly.  "Something Stupid" and "Down in Mexico" obviously aren't Chuck Berry songs.  You’ll hear more about that when we get to it.  Chris Carter played nine songs written by Chuck Berry and eight of them were by the Beatles and the ninth was “I’m So Glad to be Living in the USA”.  My personal favorite of the Beatles BBC Chuck Berry songs is “Gotta Find My Baby” with John Lennon’s little introduction.  I didn’t hear them play “Sweet Little Sixteen”, which is a BBC song.  They played “Distractions” by Paul, without saying what album it’s from.  In “Who’s Playing that Chuck Berry song” they played “Just Gotta Get a Message To you” and I successfully guessed that it was performed by the Hollies.  I went out for snacks in the courtyard and got two grape drinks and a graham cracker.

A LOVER’S QUESTION revised and released February 18th. 2017 and after Chuck Berry's death revised and released March 19th.

Disk one

Shake Rattle and Roll (Bill Haley & the Comets)
Bullweevel (Fats Domino)
So Glad You’re Mine (Elvis Presley)
See You Later, Alligator (Bill Haley & the Comets)
No Money Down (Chuck Berry)
Down in Mexico (Coasters)
Sitting in the Balcony (Eddy Cochrin) (?)
Short Shorts (Royal Teens) (?)
Let’s Go –Cha-cha-cha! (Feb 1958 artist)
Lover’s Question (Clyde Mc Phatter)
Whole Lot Of Kissing To Do (Fats Domino)
Almost Grown (Chuck Berry)
Say Man (Bo Didley)
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow (Cherells)
Stand By Me (Ben E King)
Let Me In (Sensations)
I Want To Know If You’ll - - (Bruce Shennel)

Disk two

Bossanoba (Elvis Presley)
When I Grow Up To Be A Man (Beach Boys)
Man, Ain't That News (Sam Cooke)
Eve of Destruction (Barry Mc Guire)
Mystic Eyes (Them)
Strangers In the Night (Frank Sinatra)
Good Thing (Paul Revere & the Raiders)
Mary Mary (Monkees)
Look What Loving You Has Done To Me (Supremes) *
Lonely Is A Man Without Love (Engelberg Humperdink)
Something Stupid (Frank and Nancy Sinatra)
Is It Him or Me? (Paul Revers & the Raiders)
I Know She’d Rather Be With Me (Turtles)
I Think We’re Alone Now (Tommy James & the Shandels)
Within You and Without You -TNK mash-up (Circ de Solee)
Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite mash-up (Circ de Solee)
Sgt Pepper inner groove