BETWEEN HERE AND THERE

Well we finally got our rain early this morning. This is the first major rainstorm in the month of September I can remember since September of 1985. Summer is over. This file contains stuff from my personal files and you might run into a "summer rerun" here or there. But there is still a lot of stuff you haven't read before in this blog, at least from me.

Dan Rather has filed a lawsuit against CBS for seventy million or something. He says if he wins he’s going to donate the money to up and coming journalists. Rather appeared on the Larry King program last night. He says all his facts about George Bush’s military carrier were genuine and that there were no phoney documents, despite the factual type-set evidence. They didn’t have type like that back then. He says he’s firing was a massive Washington conspiracy to intimidate investigative reports, of which Rather is one of the last dying breed. I hope he prevails in court.

The Web amendment came up for a vote yesterday in congress. They failed to get the sixty votes needed for the bill. This bill would have merely required troops sent to Iraq on a tour to get as much time off between tours of duty as they do in actual service in Iraq. The practical effect would be to cut the military presence in Iraq by forced reduction. There can be little doubt the Republicans are controlling the agenda.

But they did have time to pass that resolution about the “Move-on.org” add in the New York Times referring to the general as “General Betray Us”. That’s merely a statement of fact. But the congressmen must be desperate to prove that they’re really patriotic these days. We’re sliding into another Joe Mc Carthy era if you ask me.

Yesterday Thom Hartman expressed his views on mega churches. I disagree with his views because until September 11^th. 2001 churches were not political. Maybe you had some of it in the Clinton administration on moral grounds but consistently I’ve heard pastors say you have to make up your own mind between you and God on election day. Some mega churches are actually liberal. Others are off the beaten path. For Hartman to say a church has to be small to be “spiritual” worries me. I’ve watched “The Dark Secret of Harvest Home”. I know what goes on in these so called “small” communities. What keeps the Calvary Chapels a “cultic” threat is not that they are now large, but that small pieces, like so much shrapnel, keep breaking off from the unit, and it’s these where you see “spiritual devolution”. They get more wigged out and more theologically and otherwise ignorant. Since few people know as much about the way Christianity as a religion really as I do, I don’t really blame Thom Hartman for his ignorance. It’s just that his concerns about complicity with corporate America are entirely misdirected.

Superman was not on last week for the second week in a row. They must have moved the time or something because I can’t imagine a “To Be Continued” episode just being cut off like that. KCET had a thing on “California at War”. California led the drum beat on things like internment of the Japanese and building planes and bombs and putting out propaganda. It must have been a really trippy time to have lived in.

Apparently there will be no decision in the Phil Specter murder trial this week, and that will make two weeks the jury has been deliberating. That has got to be approaching some kind of a record. I myself were I judge have accepted a mistrial merely because most of the jury, 9 our of 12, say they are deadlocked.

Randy Rhodes was talking about Blackwater Security in Iraq. I really haven’t been following that case but apparently there have been a lot of abuses with too many “cowboys” among the guard, and suspicious incidents have occurred.

I heard that tree where those nuces were hung to intimidate those Black students, the tree was cut down. Here’s an idea for a movie where earth first people team up with racist groups to form a “save the tree” campaign. What an idea for a TV movie!

NEWYEARS 2006

Yesterday afternoon I put on the “Phantom Menace” VCR tape that was in wide screen format, with the borders. I might have played a lot more of it had Judy not come by. If they had been making a documentary on the ZAC in 1999 that actor kid would have been a good choice to cast as Zachery. He has that certain quality to him.

I haven’t criticized “God” lately. We can’t really know who or what “God” is so how can we intelligently criticize him. We can’t. Perhaps the “life force” that is in every cell is programmed or itself programs the evolution the cell will take. There are those who say that plants have conscious awareness, and there are those that say that individual cells have conscious awareness. Those who say, “Either a supreme Being made the Universe and Life (of exact theological specifications) or else the Creation made itself. To me this is a bad case of either / or thinking. We weren’t there so we don’t know what physical forces were in play at the time, or for that matter are in play now. I have in the past “taken it on Faith” that all of Chuck Smith’s predicted mathematical odds are correct and deducted from them that life as we know it could not have evolved. But to say that life could not have evolved is kind of like saying that it isn’t here. After all all of those mathematical odds, if we are to believe them and Chuck, would lead to one inescapable conclusion. We can’t exist. Of course there are Bhudists who say that life is an illusion, and the Federation talks about the Fifth Dimension. Such people existentially think they are real but as viewed from the real world they aren’t because nothing about other areas of the fifth dimension can be measured. In the same way Christians offer themselves an “out” you could drive a Mack truck through by saying such things as “You can’t put God in a test tube” and “God can’t be measured”. We also have the saying “If you look at something differently; it changes in its very nature”. If we believe that we kind of have to throw five thousand years of science out the window. The problem with a “Christian” view is they regard thinking rationally as a lapse in Faith. When Chuck Smith decries the intellectual evils of existentialism, I am the first to agree with him. If he follows his own logic, therefore he will use objective criteria for proof of God, and not such terms as “I believe”, “I feel”, and “I decided”. I don’t see why we can’t talk about both evolution and creationism as theories. Science is a realm of theories. Back prior to the Greeks the mystics and “wise men” who probed scientific mysteries said “take what we say on Faith”. This is in large part I suspect because they (perhaps correctly) regarded the common people as too stupid to understand them even if they explained it. Were I writing scripture I’d say “Woe be to the man who tries to hide what he doesn’t know to begin with”. Chuck “knows” God the same say that Marlena “knows” Alex North. He knows because he’s been conditioned like a rat with operant conditioning to know. (Selah) If the forgoing be blasphemy against God then I’ll account for it on Judgement day. If what George Bush says about man yearning to be Free is true, then certainly a bit part of that freedom is intellectually freeing his own mind to discover the Truth, whatever it is.

THE WORLD AT WAR

As you know the first in the trilogy of Bob Woodward books was called "Bush as War". Who would have guessed that designation would apply not only to the entirety of Bush' eight years but also years into the following President's term? Last night on 28 they had a thing called "California at War". It's sometimes hard to remember that World War II only lasted three years and just over eight months from start to finish. The way people talk about it you'd think it went on for twenty years or something. Basically three years and eight months is nothing in today's time reconing. That's less time than it took to bring Phil Specter to justice after the murder. Windows 95 came out and the bugs in it wern't fixed till Windows 98. There's three years. But at the time there were tremendous invoations in military attack strategy and the aircraft that were used and vast improvements in aeronautic dezign. Of course at Berkley they were working on the Bomb. You had all these blacks coming to California and they say the black population increased 300 percent during the time of the war as Blacks sought a better life out here. Of course the army was segregated. There was still all sorts of racial bigotry in the air. They used Blacks to load the most dangerous explosives. One day there was a horrible explosion in Richmond that killed three hundred. There were the zoot suit riots as chicanos were routinely beaten up by sailors stationed here. They were saying how subversive bee-bop and jazz were and hos it led to marijuana usage and illicit sex. There was that roomer that marijuana gave Blacks the courage to stair down a White man, and this was unacceptable. You had persecution of Italian Americans, even Joe DiMaggio's parents living here. And you had the Japanese internment camps in the Owens valley and elsewhere. The government would only allow to be shown pictures of Japanese smiling. J. Edger Hoover with his reputation for paranoia didn't come up with this scheme. That was a home grown idea right here in California, home of the bigot. I always thought any reports of Japanese subs sinking ships off shore around here were just wild roomers but apparently it really happened. They even had "Black-outs" and one night there was the Battle of LA where they shot off all this amunition at nothing. It kind of makes police prohibitions against firing guns on new years eve seem rather silly compared with the stuff they must have fired that night. You had the Hollywood propaganda industry gearing up to appeal to racist sentaments. But at least even in a segregated military a Black or a Chicano could "feel like a man" of equal value to a White during the short time of the war. Women got a major boost in self estteem. According to the thing last night health car and day care got started at that time. But all in all it wasn't a good time for so many racial minorities. I think I would have gone nuts living in that era with all the propaganda blairing everywhere. I would have thought I was in North Korea or some place like that. In that Clark Gable movie "The Misfits" there was a line about what sort of activities are "acceptable" now in today's society to prove yourself a man. In those days all you had to do is join up upon graduation from high school, be handed a gun and start wasting the enemy. They tought math cources for the guys so they would know how to plot missile trajectories for bombs and aircraft navigation and stuff, and of course in high school all the woman took cources on first aid and tending to wounds. But apparently the bars stayed open all night and you could get drunk any time you wanted.

Now we jump to the present. You still have "stuff" going on today. Yesterday congress took the time to vote on condeming and add about general Petrayas put out by Move-on.org. O Bama wisely said he wasn't going to dignify the move with a vote. Hillary apparently voted not to condemn the add. George Bush condemned the add in his press conference I didn't even know he had yesterday. It would seem proving you're "Patriotic" still is important today. People might draw inferences about your patriotism if you voted the wrong way on that issue. We could well have the whole World at war soon. George Bush talked about some deal between North Korea and Syria where Syria would obtain all of North Korea's nuclear technology. We don't know what kind of deals were made and Bush regarded the topic as Top Secret and not to be commented upon. And we hear Israel has been making raids into Syria that are hush hush. And you can add to this witch's brew the feeling everybody has that we are about to bomb Iran and expand and inflame the war over there. But if we do bomb Iran- - we don't know whether the whole Shiite block of nations- - Iran, Syria and the PLO might not declare war on us. Also Russia, who is somewhat allied or sympathetic to Iran, has this thing called the "vacuum bomb". This is a device for making a nuclear sized explosion without the radiation. The Russians might decide to use it because it's a "clean" bomb. There are reports the bomb may be a dud, but there are also other reports. The bomb uses ultra-sonic shock waves to generate first a small explosion, which in turn sets off a much bigger explosion. Extraordenary heat is generated and the interaction actually sucks all the air out of the area making things even worse. It kind of reminds me of that Star Trek device where Captain Piccard had the option of using this device to burn or melt away some of the excess gas on a planet that was blocking the sun and driving down temperatures, but if there was an even minor error, every bit of atnosphere on the planet would be burned up. I don't know how much of this technology parrells the "vacuum bomb". People seem to think that the United States has no enemies today worth worrying about and this really isn't the case. Many people want to relive World War II because of the fantastic progress we made on so many fronts back then and the gigantic boost in self esteem people had back then. Back then war was "wonderful" and "glorious" and all that stuff. War made a man out of you. I'm reminded of that incident on "The Cain Mutiny" where Captain Queeg was talking about his crusade in 1939 to recover some stolen cheese aboard ship, and someone had made a key to the refrigerator and stolen the cheese, and Queeg exposed them and got a comendation for it. It would seem everybody is for some "Crusade" by this nation against the Moslem world is seeking to "relive the cheese incident" in Captain Queeg's life. Personally I wish we made the sort of space progress we did in the sixties where we set a goal and stuck to it. Back during WW II times for building a battleship were dramatically reduced as the War progressed and we got more efficient. Today it seems R & D takes longer and longer. To release even a new version of Windows takes years and years of testing. Back then we just didn't HAVE "years and years" to waste piddeling around. We got things done. I guess what our next American President has to do is let us regain a sense of moving foreward. I think liberalism today is in trouble is because people look at men like Roosevelt and Churchill and then look at John Kerry and John Edwards, and these men just don't measure up in their eyes. Too much of liberalism is telling us we CAN'T do things, and I think we need to change our message.

THE SELL-OUT OF THE MEDIA TO THE RIGHT WING

It's been pretty much proven that the media no longer has any left wing bias that Spiro Agnew accused it of. That was a long time ago. But increasingly the media has more and more come to accept anything the White House feeds them. Investigative reporting is dead. Ronald Reagan started to undo the Watergate oriented media. Today the thing is to be palsey-walsey with the White House. Despite doing inferior work salaries for network reporters are way up. They know that if they don't "play ball" and ask any hard questions, they will never get "access" to their "inside source" again. John Dean has spoken of the first three branches of government being destroyed but indeed it is the fourth branch, the Press, that has suffered the most adversely. News is now part of the "entertainment division". You see things like this obsession with celebreties such as Brittany Speers and Martha Stewart and Anna Nicole Smith. What's not being reported on are the changes that have taken place in Congress in the way bills are passed, which is different from what it used to be. Instead of a vote taking fifteen minutes votes can be "open" for hours as various congressmen are bribed. Congressmen often don't even read legeslation. The Republicans are still in "control" of congress, despite losing the election. The democrats have refused, basically, to take the reins of power. There are some 84 bills pending that could be passed but the Republicans won't let them be. Of course most of what you hear about the war is sentamentality. They will focus on a single trooper's life or how much time he has spent with his wife and children. They won't tell you about all the people there who are fed up and disillusioned with the War. They won't tell you about all the Iraqis who want us gone.

One of the most disgusting aspects of the media is the way they cover protests. Often they will portray the protestors as being without an cause and disruptive and inept. John Kerry is a coward. We know this now. In retrospective he never should have been the Democratic Nominee in 2004. His words have always struck me as plastic and over rehearsed, and to be frank, I didn't vote for him. His words on the Iraq War were cautious to the point of being meaningless. But the way he handled the Swift Boat people case was most telling. He did not refute anything they said but let them have their way in the media. His reaction and handling of the event may have lost his party the election. But now we have the case of the protestor who was Tazed. And that's all you saw of it on TV. You didn't see Kerry's speech or the question this college student journalism student asked. He was armed- - with a book. The book was on how the democrats lost Ohio due to election fraud. He asked Kerry if he had read the book and Kerry said he had and he'd be glad to answer the guy's question. Then the cops came and got him after his microphone was shut off. (?) Clearly he was being given the equiveland of "the hook" on stage plays. Clearly the cops had express instructions as to what sort of people he wanted "dealt with" as Montgomary Burnes would say. The student asked Kerry, 'Just think, you could have won the election of 2004. How do you feel about that. When the student was grabbed by the police but before he was tased, his fellow students began applauding his apprehension. Clearly "something funny is going on around here". What's wrong with the young people today? Them are such minions of the establishment they actually applaud the police. Clearly the student did not to be tased, but they have the equipment so they might as well use it. And what was John Kerry doing all this time? He sat there mute, watching, no doubt in approval. At any time had he disagreed with anything he could have said "This is not the action I had in mind when I instructed you on how to act. Let him ask his question". You know on one of my "pages" back in 1968 I wrote down the slogan "Blessed are the miek, for they have someone to do their dirty work for them". Something like that. John Kerry disgusts me.

Something else that disgusts me is the Phil Specter trial. Now they are reporting a hung jury but they aren't comeing out with that. They're playing to the media milking the suspense for everything it's worth. Now they are going to "reinstruct the jury" tomorrow, with all of us clutching the arms of our chairs in anticipation. Anything for ratings. From what I heard few in the jury think their minds will change. It could even get worse. They might go for all out acquital. Well, pumpkin pie" did the prosecution in. This was one of many witnesses who was pressured into defaming Lana Clarkson. This murder happened twice. It happened once in 2003 and it happened again in the court room as the case was being tried. I guess the question is can a poor man get the sort of justice a rich person can buy?

Two strange events then occurred. I went out and noticed the three day olf crescent moon in the sky and I saw Gary coming my way and I know he was about to do a major hassle job on me. I said “Yeah, what?” somewhat surly to him when he spoke. Suddenly he just turned around and walked away. I wonder what made him do that. While watching the Halifax crusade a pain began shooting down my left arm and I feared it might be a prelude to a heart attack. It wasn’t.

On this whole racial case in Louisiana the facts are clear. There was this bushy shade tree that white boys liked to hang out under. Then some black kids showed up there and the next day there were nuces hanging from the tree. Then six Black teenagers beat up this White boy with the intent to kill him. One of them was convicted for 2^nd. degree murder being tried as an adult but the conviction was overturned. To me this is a miscarriage of justice by racial discrimination in reverse. Al Sharpton’s sympathies are misplaced in this case defending a potential murderer.

A week or more ago the Federation told me they would give me a sign at the appropriate phase of the new crescent moon with in BOC terminology is the 3^rd day of the moon, or usually the 2^nd. day the moon is visible. If there are any other signs out there I’m not aware of, I’d like to know what they are.

The South Wasn't Defeated in the War;
they were Overcome

-My Great Grandmother
"I Didn't Lose- - I Just Ran Out of Time"
-GOD
Therapist: What does the expression
"The Nail that Sticks Out - Is the One that gets nailed down"
mean to you?
God: I'm not sure what you're driving at
Therapist: Does the expression remind you of your Son?
God: "Ummm - - ?"
Therapist: That was a rhetorical question.
God: "Whoever works for World Peace is my Son"
- - - - - - -

It's been a while since our last blog, not that you would know it by the news because we seem to continually get recycled news day after day. That Mukasey guy was picked by Bush as the next Attorney General. He worked for the mayor of New York as D A or something prosecuting terrorist cases. The only thing new now if that they are talking about the big cool-down in the eastern part of the nation, which has been dramatic, and also right here in S C where I am typing. They are even predicting a major September rain storm. Perhaps we could cue up "September in the Rain" by the Beatles. Around here rain storms in September are as rare as hen's teeth. Also in the news is Brittany Speers. She is under attack for public nudity or something and proving an adverse environment for her two young boys. Stewart Sutcliffe has taken to defending her and the Federation has suggested they will try and help her. Of course as you know the Federation is on a protect the Sharks campaign. Stewart is incensed that in China they have shark's fin soup for a hundred dollars a bowl where the treatment of the sharks is barberous. They cut off the fins of the shark while it's still alive and then throw it alive back in the water where it drowns, because you will know from the Kenny the shark cartoon, if a shark ever stops moving, he dies. Stewart has pronounced a coming divine judgement on Communist China sometime in the future. So far that hasn't happened.

In these days it's Justice, Bought and Paid for. The Los Angeles district attorney wants to get at least one conviction against celebreties. They screwed up in the Mac Martin case. They screwed up in the Twilight Zone helicopter deaths, they screwed up in the O J Simpson double murder case, they screwed up in the Michal Jackson sex case, they screwed up with Robert Blake, and it looks like they're in trouble getting a conviction with Phil Specter. The jury has been out eight days and that can't be a good sign. Normally the longer a murder jury is out the more likely it will vote to acquit. Even if it's a hung jury that will be a major loss for the L A County DA because they may not retry the case. Of course there is the OJ book that is out now to which Fred Goldman has publishing rights called "I Did It". Actually I like the title "How I Did It" myself. And now of course Simpson is arrested and in jail on an armed robbery charge for which he could get thirty years if convicted on all counts. That's a pretty good idea. They are inclined to deny him bail. After all O J is supposed to be broke. Of course OJ is an extreme flight risk and they have to be aware of this. Charges haven't been filed yet. For O J saying it's his property to begin with I say "If you had any problem you should have long since given it to the browns and the Goldmans". How can OJ make bail when he's supposed to be penniless and therefore unable to pay off the wrongful death legal judgement against him. I think we're all fed up with celebreties having bought and paid for justice, who hire all these same science and forensic people, who say anything the defense wants them to say.

Allan Greenspan is putting in his two cents when it comes to all the Presidents he's worked for. He said that Richard Nixon was the strangest. He would go on obscene rants and use words even a sailor wouldn't use. He went on diatribes against Slavs, Italians and Jews. Ford was the most moral president we've had. He was the least intelligent but the most moral saying "What economic policy is right for America?" Greenspan regarded Reagan as a genious in his own way. Clinton described the relation with Greenspan as "The Odd Couple". Greenspan spent a lot of time closely coordenating with Clinton. Greenspan said Hillary was well able to assume the office of President. Greenspan said the democrats deserved to win in 2006 because the Republicans betrayed their roots because they passed all these high deficet budgets. Greenspan said that we went to war in Iraq for Oil, and Rush Limbaugh is quick to agree with that. Rush doesn't like the expression "No blood for oil" because Rush says "Oil is the life's blood of this economy" and we need to "fight for the free flow of oil at market prices". Right now the "market price" is at an all time high of eighty bucks a barrel. Greenspan is blamed for the mortgage crisis but he left office a year & a half ago before it began. The crisis was caused by investor stupidity and there is no policy that can guard against that. Greenspan says he is long term gloomy about the economy and fears the return of inflation. Greenspan also said that short turm things will get worst before they get better. This author can only agree with that.

Bush's speech last Thursday night was nonsensical. He only told us what we were all expecting to hear. Basically he's going to hand off the whole Iraq mess to the next president. Conservatives like Larry Elder and Rush Limbaugh are saying we'll be in Iraq for the next ten years. It's funny how people who want peace in Iraq are NOT seen as Christian. The "Christian" view a la Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani seems to be "War now war forever". People like Larry Elder want this country in a perpetual state of war. I think such a state is mentally as well as physically unhealthy. Clearly the problems over in Iraq cannot be solved by further military action by the US, and that our presence in Iraq has exaserbated the situation over there. I don't see why we can't ever learn from our mistakes.

If you ask John Kerry too many questions
you get grabbed by police and tased.
He said, "Don't taze me, Bro"

People wonder what I think of Christianity. I do have a few questions. Ask your pastor this one: If Christianity is all about the abolition of Sin and Death in the world, then how come sin and death has continued in the world for the past two thousand years unabaited? Ask your pastor this one? Is the old testament law abolished or not? In an epistle to Timothy, Paul says "We know that the law is good" but in Galations, Paul says that "The law is dead". I maintain that the law can't be both "good" and "dead". I'll give you the analogy of a telephone line. Which would you least want to have? A good line, a bad line, or a Dead line? Some people say that "first use" of a word in the Bible is key to its understanding. Clearly Death is used in the context of "The wages of sin is death". So did the Law sin? Of course the first use of the word Love is Abraham loving his son Isac. What does the scripture "God so loved his only son that whoever believes in him might not die but have everlasting life" mean to you? Well on a Bewitched show there was a rich older man out with a young hotty brunette and one day he gave her a valuable piece of jewelery. And she asked him the occasion and he said, "Well you talked me out of living up to my pledge to give the poor children in India". "And this is my comission?" "Sort of", he says. Is God's love of the World so blinding that he's willing to sacrifice that of greater inherent value, just to impress this new "Object of his love", the World. As for me I would gladly go to hell if it meant God didn't have to sell out his morality by turning on his Son and having him killed. You don't do that to someone you love. It would seemed he loved the world More. I have one more observation to make. Many people have questions when they hear their pastor or some radio program and are told it's a sign of piety to shove your questions and doubts under the rug and pretend they don't exist and one day "It will all suddenly make sense". That's what they promise you. But when I was in business collage and some students had to repeat Accounting I it is because they didn't have a firm foundation. They didn't "get it". They didn't ask the right questions but played along and let it slide over their head. And one teacher says, "If they don't go back and redo the course, one of these days their knowledge is all going to come crashaing down on them like a house of cards". So it is when many poorly taught Christians.

My Political Platform: Phrases in this posting are borrowed from Ralph Nader's web site. I give this site full credit for all quotes. These are 25 issues I'd like to run on. I'd like to apologize for the screwy numbering system. I hope and pray there are no repetitions or omissions.

0. Oppose means you believe: The fetus is a human being who has rights independent of its mother's rights. You are "pro-life." While abortion under certain circumstances might be tolerated, the basic rights belong to the fetus, not the mother.

1. Support means you believe: Under-represented groups should be favored, but perhaps basing results on formal quotas goes too far. Nevertheless, the government should prosecute companies which discriminate against women and minorities.

2. Oppose means you believe: Homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, and therefore those who choose it should live by the consequences of their choice. Marriage between a man and a woman is the central institution of American society - we shouldn't do anything that perverts that concept or threatens that ideal.

3. Support means you believe: We need to teach values in our schools. The more our children are exposed to prayer, the Ten Commandments, and other traditional values, the better off they are.

4. Strongly Oppose means you believe: Nationalized health care would entail a government takeover of a large portion of the economy and undue intrusions into our personal medical histories. Remove the federal government from the health care industry.

5. Support means you believe: The Trust Fund might be invested in the stock market or via some other private investment vehicle. Individuals should be given at least some control over how their retirement funds are invested.

6. Support means you believe: School choice helps the poor who would otherwise be stuck in failing schools. Why should only the elite be able to afford private school? Subsidize parents' school choices to foster equality, as long as the school respects separation of church and state, and meets basic state standards. Charter schools are a good compromise.

7. Support means you believe: The death penalty and other strict forms of law enforcement will reduce the crime rate by removing criminals from the streets and by deterring others from criminal acts. Capital punishment laws should be enforced, although perhaps adjusted to ensure a fair process and to avoid mistakes.

8. Oppose means you believe: Strict enforcement of pre-determined sentencing threatens civil rights and should be used cautiously. Police, courts and prisons should focus on effective enforcement rather than strict enforcement. Addendum: I thought this article was in reference to the Three Strikes Law. My position is to only draw laws that you can enforce with vigor.

9. Support means you believe: It's not the instrument, it's the morality. Gun ownership should not be restricted - most gun owners use them safely and responsibly. To reduce gun-related crimes, address the moral problems of society and other issues.

10. Oppose means you believe: Flatter taxes benefit the wealthy more than the lower and middle class. We should focus tax relief on the majority of taxpayers instead of on the richest few percent, while preserving important deductions like mortgage interest and charitable donations.

11. Support means you believe: The government should make few restrictions on immigration. If the number of immigrants is too high, establish an immigration fee and raise it until the number of immigrants is acceptable. Or change the immigration quotas by some other method.

12. Oppose means you believe: Free Trade should be replaced by Fair Trade. Free trade is not in our national interest when it poses a risk to job security, causes humanitarian problems overseas, or results in environmental damage. Globalization should focus on benefiting people instead of benefiting multinational corporations.

13. Strongly Support means you believe: The Patriot Act is unpatriotic. The terrorists are winning because they have forced us to limit our Constitutional civil rights. We should not give up our liberties in exchange for security, because if we do we will end up with neither.

14. Oppose means you believe: Build smart, not necessarily big. Money is often better spent on issues other than defense. We should cut back on troops stationed abroad and focus on quality of our troops instead of quantity.

15. Oppose means you believe: Politicians will always find loopholes in any campaign finance reform, so the best approach is just to monitor campaigns for lawbreaking and leave the rest to the press. Better reporting of donations would be useful.

16. Strongly Support means you believe: The United Nations is a force for good in the world. We should consult with the UN Security Council before any attacks abroad. Foreign aid fosters global cooperation and US foreign involvement should be focused on maintaining peace and stability.

17. Support means you believe: We should establish a market-based solution for excess carbon emissions, and the problem will be solved. The Kyoto Protocol should require developing countries' participation to make the solution work.

18. Oppose means you believe: We should have regulated decriminalization. Medical marijuana might be legalized, for example, as might clean hypodermic needles. Our drug policy should be reformed, with less criminal penalties and more drug abuse clinics.

19. Oppose means you believe: Support welfare reform like welfare-to-work and welfare block grants, as long as the basic system remains within the federal government.

20. Police must follow the law too

On police brutality: “Lawless behavior by the police encourages less respect for the law.” The show "Cops" has the twin virtues of proactive enforcement and also fairness and civility.

Source: Campaign Speech, Hartford Public Library, Hartford CT May 16, 2000

21. Product liability suits are a pillar of democracy

Most people will tell you that if they’re ripped off, defrauded or injured by someone’s negligence, they should be able to go into court, get compensation, get refunds, get justice against the wrong-doers-against the manufacturers of defective products or of untested pharmaceuticals’ side effects.

The insurance industry and its clients-the manufacturers and other companies-basically say, look, we don’t want to fight this out in the courts of law before a civil jury and the judge; we want to grease legislation in Washington and state capitols and take away these rights, make it very difficult for people to get adequate damages, to introduce evidence in court, to get a competent lawyer. And this is what’s called “tort reform.” We call it “Tort DeForm.”

This is an attack on a unique pillar of our democracy. This is the pride of the world. Only in America can a worker dying of asbestos file a lawsuit and bring the asbestos manufacturer to court for actions two decades ago.

22. Lawyers & victims need unlimited contingency fees

A: Corporate executives want to handicap the lawyers who represent injured and swindled consumers. So how do you do it? Well, these companies want full economic incentives for them to make profit; they want to reduce the contingent fee incentive for lawyers so they’re less likely to take these risky cases, because they only get paid when they win. So, it’s bad enough that they don’t get paid when they don’t win -- because all other professions, doctors and everyone else gets paid whether they win or lose -- but, even when they win, this would cut their contingent fee very substantially. And pressure their consumer clients to consider settlement offers whereby they -- not the defendant -- have to reveal all the evidence before they start the process of depositions and discovery. So, it’s a way to handicap both the victim / plaintiffs and their lawyers, to rig the playing field, make it more likely the corporations will win the lawsuit.

23. Regulatory agencies are needed to fight corporate crime

The other aspect is that most regulatory agencies have standards that either are obsolete or they’re so modest that they’re easily complied with. We need to give our laws teeth and make penalties for violating them so severe corporations won't want to do it.

24. A FOREWARD LOOKING ATTITUDE TWORDS SCIENTIFIC ENDEAVORS

We need to with the federal government encourage for promote stem cell research and also energy research, as well as vastly accelerating our languishing Space program.

ANOTHER 9 - 11 ANNIVERSARY

General Petrayas and the so called "Ambassador" finally put on a show before congress. I would not call it testimony because it was staged managed from start to finish and you can bet despite wyat the General espressly said, that Bush aids were in control of every phrase out of his mouth. He said that "The success in Anwar privance" is now spreading to other areas of Iraq. He says violence is way down all over Iraq. It's down from 170 to 120 incidents per week or something. But as Randi Rhodes points out they wern't counting Shiite on Shiite violence or Suni on Suni violence, and apparently you had to be hit in the back of the head and not from the front, because that didn't count. General Petrayas said that in July, that is, of 2008, we will be able to have reduced our troop levels to pre-surge levels. The General says he wern't at full Surge strength untill this past June. The general warns that if we cut our forces one man beyond what he recomended, that disaster will fall in all areas of the country. The general didn't speak right away. They had a lot of other people making speeches first talking about "the testimony we are about to receive", reminding me of a church offering invocation or something.

Joe Byden was on Meet the Press and John Kerry was on This Week last Sunday and he says that partitian is still the way to go in the country and both he and Kerry said
that politically the nation is a disaster area with no progress in the Meliki regiem. The general had first said that politics didn't matter until the nation was militarily secure. The general says that the Sunis im Anwar provance "finally accepted our offer of cooperation". Conversely, it's more like "WE finally decided to accept THEIR offer of cooperation and get our men out of the province so that they could take care of the Al Qaida forces that were troubling them. But this is not the same Al Qaida forces that attacked us, where Bin Laden is now hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, but this is a home grown Al Qaida of Iraq, an Al Qaida wanna-be. The General warned us about alliances with the Iranian Shiites, but they don't even have the same culture or the same language as the home grown Shiites of Iraq. Once again every relivant fact that could be distorted WAS distorted. But once again it looks as if the democrats are going to roll over and play dead and give the President anything he wants in the way of unlimited funding. The President vetoed the funding bill of last May of course, and were I congress I would have told the President, "It's either that bill or nothing, and YOU wouldn't want to be responsible for cutting off funding for the troops, would you?" Unfortunately there was talk on the Randi Rhodes show that the President might cut off funding and not give them the ability to get home.

Fred Thompson got into the Presidential race and on Thursday gave a half hour or so speech that was televised on station 4.4 and was even repeated. It's like a free campaign commercial for Thompson. It was to the tune of country hick music. There is no doubt about it; the Southern rednecks have their man. Thompson is going to do one thing and that is split off the vote that would normally go to Rudolph Giuliani. Because both of them were thumping the same security mellon. Fred spent half the time talking about how if we don't fight Al Qaida over there we'll have to fight them here. He spent the other half talking about the cutting of government services. Thom Hartman gave an interesting analogy today of what would happen if we ran this country like Iraq and there were for instance simotaniously a major tornado in Detroit and a major earthquake in San Francisco. If this were Iraq we'd cut out all but military and police govt. services. That would mean all the free medical care that Saddam Hussein provided would be gone. Therefore all the doctors would leave as well as other rich people able to do so. There would be fighting in the remaining ghettos and perhaps even genocide, and so we'd send in the national guard and kill more people. If the Churches, that is Synagogues, Mosques, and the like filled the power vacuum they might in time restore some order as clerics took charge. Bush would no doubt say "You see- - military force works". Of course the infre-structure would be gone and that would suit the Bush adminestration just fine. Of course all the business and home grown industry would be put out of work as Bush brought in corporations from Texas and Wyoming to do all the rebuilding construction work. Bush doesn't care a rat's ass about building up national economic pride. Some have even argued we shouldn't have engaged in de-bathification of the Iraqi army. Well, General Patton was against de-Nazification after World War II. I don't know who is right. There are arguments to be made on both sides. I don't want any part of this scenario to take over in the case of some unforseen disaster. If either Thompson or Giuliani were in charge, I think civil rights would go out the window in this country. Fred Thompson's vision of America isn't suitable for the 21st. Century. He needs to talk about energy research and global warming and cracking down on polluters. If Thompson were President, the clock would run backwards even faster than it is.

We need ti impeach President Bush. We only need a majority vote and we don't need to do any more "investigations" or hearings. We can file charges and then take all the time we want to investigate the details after he's indicted, if we need to. We only need a majority vote and not a veto proof two thirds or clochure proof sixty percent. The argument can no longer made, "We need to get on with the Democratic agenda". As Rush Limbaugh says, "Roosevelt is Dead. His policies live on but we're doing something about that". The democratic message isn't getting out. The media seems much more interested in having the republicans define the democrats rather than visa versa. We need to take back posession of the partizan football.

This democratic congress needs to start another investigation. They need to start an investigation of the events surrounding 9 - 11. I suggest three topics to begin with. First NORAD or whoever is in control of air traffic. The next area is the asbestos and other particulate pollution in the area around Ground Zero. We need to haul Christeen Todd Whitman up there and also the Mayor. What was Guiliani doing at that time and how come he didn't warn about the particulate pollution and foresee all those people who came down with serious lung ailments. The third is the buildings themselves. It's a known fact that there just wasn't enough fire to take down those two buildings in the space of a half hour. High-rise buildings that are much more of an inferno than those two were have been known to burn for twenty hours without collapsing. We need to investigate the possability of deliberate detonations causing the loss of so many human lives. Sure it will be embarrassing to the Mayor and some will say the investigation may be political, but at least it will be congress that is calling the tune and setting the terms of debate. Getting people up there and watching them squirm of one of the supreme powers that congress has. It wouldn't be the first time somebody did something politically oppertunistic. You all will remember last year's made for TV ABC movie. Since nobody is dropping the topic of 9 - 11 anyhow we might as well get everything out in the open and all the facts on the table.

SIX MENTAL LEAPS TO BECOMING A CHRISTIAN

Fred Thompson has announced that he's running for President on the Tonight Show. This is what he was expected to do. In the process he missed a New Hampshire debate with eight of his other Republican rivals, who criticized him for not being there. I don't know anything about Fred Thompson that you don't. My one hope is that some candidate will come to knock Guiliani off his front-runner pedistal so I don't have to vote for him. It would seem that Mit Romney is more to my liking on issues such as the Iraq War, but we'll have to see.

Larry Craig has become a poster boy hero of the left wing now because people like Randi Rhodes dug into his voting record and discovered that he was on record against the civil rights abuses of the Attorney General and wants to put a curb on the policies of Gonsolez. Also many democrats feel that he is being unduly persecuted for his sexual proclivities, which they point out are a private matter and that other congressmen have been found guilty of such things as running a call girl ring, which are more serious. Arlen Specter came out in support of Craig when Craig wanted to revoke his plea of guilty to "disorderly conduct", which is a misdomeaner. But now all the republicans are lining up to say that Larry Craig must go. We have to wonder why?

Apple has come out with their new I Pod and I guess it's a good one, but I haven't yet looked at Google or Cnet news to read about it. You ZAC people know that Zachery is known to be a fan of Apple computers. Apparently they're also planning to drop the price of their I phone.

If one were a defense attorney one would want to do a good job for his client even if the facts didn't look promicing. Even the Luis Lopeses of the world need a competent defence. O J and Phil Specter have the best defence money can buy. These attorneys aren't above paying scientientists thousands of dollars for their "expert" oppinions, even of the science involved is bogus. Clearly any jury needs to be reasonably intelligent enough to do some comon sense reasoning for themselves. Of course the question is suppose you ask your client, "Did you really do it?" and he grabs you from behind and points a knife to your throat and tells you "If you ask that question again it will be the last you ever breathe", well, that is just another incident you won't happen to mention in your client's defense. Christians are in the business of defending God and I imagine there are "things you just don't bring up" if in your oppinion it will make your client look bad. The fact is a chief reason for being a Christian is "because you get to escape going to Hell" and J C of K F I defines hell as "A place of constant frustrated and unfufilled desires". So basically, Hell is just an extention of life as we know it. The pleasant alternative is heaven, which is sort of a place where you can reach that state of emotional "blotto" where the pain of life is drowned out, presumably in the Blood of Christ. Christianity will not help you deal with your problems, but Christianity can change your mental state so that you just don't care any more. As such Christianity can be seen as that example from the book "Misery" where the "wood pilings to the pier" are still there but they just seem to disappear in the rising tide of - - forgetfulness- - -or dope- - -or religion. Christianity can't offer anything positive. It can only offer a negative. Hence a Christian does not become more loving and concerned about others, such as family members- - unless you're Homer Simpson in heaven. You're not normally concerned about family members or friends once you "pass on" according to Jesus Christ of KFI, but instead "the things of earth will grow strangely dim", to quote a church hymn. Once you die the hopes and fears and values of this life appearently pass away in a sea of forgetfullness. Right now we are going to join yesterday's Word file and take it from there.

In soap land Jeremy plans to skip to another country as soon as their plane lands in Las Vegas, even as the cops are laying a dragnet for him. If I were Stephany I would not have said a word to Chelsea about it. As his girlfriend my philosophy would be, “We’ve had a lot of good times. It’s been fun but now it’s come time for a parting of the ways. I’ll respect any decision you make about your life as long as you respect my decision not to come with you”. I switched to the Phil Specter summation statement just after two when “Passions” showed signs of being a bomb. The D A refuted ten scientific claims that the defense had made, one by one. He also summarized the gun evidence and talked about Lana Clarkson’s hopeful, eager mental state during that day. It’s clear to me if there was ever doubt before that Phil Specter did it. Dr. Lee was scheduled to talk about 72 inch blood back-spatter, but they know that’s a myth because the evidence is clear that the blood didn’t travel more than two feet. There was not blood on the carpet so the gun couldn’t have gotten smeared (as if wiped) by being “kicked across the carpet”. Perhaps the most damning scene of all was all the woman witnesses testifying in a row in clips that (a) Phil Spectrer drank a lot and (b) Specter liked to control women and he got the maddest when they wanted to leave and he’d threaten them with a gun. There was also testimony about sprained wrists and impact blows to the mouth and various bruises suffered. Specter couldn’t have had all that blood on his jacket from spatter unless he had been inside a two foot radius of the killing.

I would now like to talk about the six mental hurdles you have to undergo before you can be a Christian. The first is that it is an article of Faith with these people that physical evidence will never “prove” Christianity, such as the shroud. World Net Daily was talking about a wall from Solomon’s temple being demolished by the Moslems with Israel’s permissions and pious Jews are asking the Christians to intervene. If you’re looking for some secret texts or something you’re likely not to find it with all the book burning and heresy hunting that went on. Another hurtle is the notion that St. Paul seems to be unfamiliar with practically all the basic teachings of Jesus. He refers to “the gospel” but there is some assumption all his readers have heard about it from another source because if you had to rely on what Paul said you’d know almost nothing. The next hurdle was you have to believe that people got Jesus’ message wrong when he said and they assumed that He was coming back within their lifetime so don’t write anything down. This explains why there is no historical record in the first sixty or seventy years of its existence. There is also another “liberal” hurdle of the fact that “The gospels appear biased twords Rome because they had to be politically correct to please the Romans. The gospels were written to “accommodate” the Romans. Next you have to buy into the belief that none of the miracles or manifestations of the Spirit mentioned in the Bible are for our day because of the doctrine of dyspensationalism and as such anything that happened was “done to make a theological point” and “after the Bible was written there was and is no further need for any divine manifestation of any sort”. Next is the notion that not any manifestation or positive result of Christianity can be proved. There is no physical evidence of the soul or spirit. Not only this but if anybody comes up with actual evidence of either seeing God or of angels or of surviving death- - it is considered a false doctrine. I had Sylvia Browne on at three for a while while Specter was on a break. None of this stuff about seeing ghosts or spirits or getting any kind of message from beyond the grave is admissible evidence. Think about these things.

In summery you can conclude that asking questions or showing any kind of natural curiosity about anything you’re told is a waste of time. Here are a few questions. It is said that Jesus preached to five hundred people after his resurrection. What sort of topics did he talk about in this post mortem sermon? Why aren’t there five hundred reporters writing down his precious words? How come Philo of Alexandria had perfect Aryan Christian theology in 50 AD? How can there not be some connection? There is that Italian guy who makes a half way credible case that Jesus never existed because none of the prominent people in the first century had ever heard of him. There is the confusing of the placement of the city of Nazareth with another sea side city. Three of Jesus’ brother’s names just happen to be the same as the names of the son of Judas of Galilee. There is the confusing of the sequence of events in the book of Acts when it came to listing of the false messiahs. There is the almost apology for being “wrong” about the death of John even though presumably John wrote the gospel and was presumably still alive so there would be nothing to argue about. How come with all this emphasis on soul sleep and the word “resurrection” meaning “awaken” how come the martyr Stephen says he saw Jesus coming to meet him before he died? With all this emphasis on “staying alive till Jesus comes” how come the deaths of people like Peter and Paul are not recorded in the Bible? One would think their deaths would be a traumatic milestone and their funerals major events and their graves major landmarks from the moment they were laid.. How come the emperor Nero is referred to often but never named in the Bible nor any of his bad works referred to? How come there is no historical record of either St. Paul or many of his numerous other “characters” such as Luke and Sylus and Timothy? What did St. Peter do for thirty years other than an occasional appearance in the book of Acts only to be rebuked by Paul? What was St. John doing all this time? Was John of Ephesus in the year 100 AD the same as the disciple of Jesus. Was that friend of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlow right? Did Jesus “bed down John”? Why is John portrayed with feminine features in the Di Vinci “Last Supper”? Why did nobody before about the year 110 AD or even later seem to have even heard of such basic inventions of pen and paper and writing? Why do all the other “eastern denominations” of Christianity appear to have no evidence for their existence in the first century- - either. I’m not saying Christianity isn’t true, but there are all of these mental hurdles that you have to overcome first, before you can begin to consider it.

A Really Smart Politician

This is Sunday September 2, 2007 and Leo Le Port is talking about digital radios and now they’re not cheap and they by dezign don’t have any provision for recording directly from them because that’s the way the industry wants it. Apple is having some big announcement on Wednesday September 5^th. Zachery’s birthday. He’s be 32, but I doubt he’s the “expected attraction” to this big event. The roomer is that since all of the individual Beatles already have their stuff computerized, they’re going to announce that the Beatles music is available now at I Tunes. Paul and Ringo are even roomered to be there to perform live. There is also a mystery third Beatles song recorded by the three surviving Beatles in 1993 but that the song was never finished but they didn’t use it to kick off record three as they had planned. The song is called “Now and Then” and of course they didn’t play it. They had Patty Boyd Harrison in an interview, and she has a new book out. George and The Clapper continued to be friends.

You know, George Bush has to be about the smartest politician around. He’s not as dumb as he looks. Here is a guy who’s got it all wired. He’s pretty much “Set” for the rest of his administration with all that “political capitol” he got from his 51% victory in the election of 2004. Even though his party lost both houses of congress there is no way the opposition can pull a sixty percent plurality, let along a two-thirds majority to override any presidential Veto. There is no way this congress can put a stop to the war. Bush is stubborn and everyone on Chris Matthews states this, but he can afford to be. He can pursue the war to the last hour of the last day of the last month January 2009. He doesn’t have to run again. He can do what he likes. I don’t suppose he’s even concerned much about the republican candidates or whether or not Hillary wins. He knows he’s gone in January 2009 and what happens after that doesn’t matter. It’s stated that Bush has been lobbing “unanswered baskets” to use an NBA metaphor. He’s trickled out to the media who repeats it, all the minor successes the troops have had in Iraq The whole Chris Matthews crew believes it doesn’t matter what the General Petrayas report will say. But the report has been leaked already. Of the eighteen “critical benchmarks” the administration has failed on all except three. That doesn’t matter. Of course all of these political sex scandals to hit the Republican party will no doubt take their toll on next years Republican election hopes. The senate demographics look good for the democrats with over double the current seats in Republican hands and hence as risk. It will be a piece of cake for the democrats to pick up five or six senate seats. It doesn’t matter how morally outraged the Republican leadership pretends to be now because the American public have already made up their minds that (a) the republicans are corrupt hypocrites and (b) that the Iraq War is lost, no matter what the general Petrayas report says in a couple of weeks. I guess some could compare Bush to Adolph Hitler in the waning days of World War II. He knows he’s done for and that all is lost but it doesn’t matter; he’s safe and secure in his bunker. He’s long ago been afraid to go out to the public and interact with them in any non rigged setting. He says he’s shooting for his place in the History books. Hitler said the same thing. But even people appealing to History have to have SOME facts out on their side. The situation in Iraq is actually getting worse because now not only the Sunnis but the Shiites are fighting amongst themselves. Meliki’s government is weaker and more impotent than ever as any glue to hold everything together. More and more people are talking about a mandentory year of compulsory national service in one for or another, not necessarily in the military. I bet even Hillary would not turn that idea down if a bill showed up on her desk. They had lots of political stuff on ‘Meet the Press” and “This Week” also but most of that stuff was a yawner. But Chris Matthews was the show to watch last night. during the surge.

There is still no guarantee that Fred Thompson’s campaign will catch fire. He may well have waited too long and next year it will be a Rudy – Hillary all New York election campaign. It’s hard to imagine is that happens there won’t be some third party developing whose consequences are unforeseen. Huckabee wants to stress how different he is from Hillary and to my way of thinking that’s an excellent approach. Hillary will be the most polarizing candidate to run for President since Richard Nixon in 1960. He was never able to overcome all the imbred hatred for him out there in the grass roots. He had sewn too many bad karmic seeds over the years, just as Hillary has. All someone needs to say is Johnny Chung, or Travelgate, or Whitewater, and the pavlovian response will be in progress as scads of republicans turn out at the polls like never before to vote against Hillary in November. I haven’t positively made up my mind about Fred Thompson. I’m inclined not to like him, but he just might change my mind with a good campaign.

A lot of people say the way to solve personal conflicts is “to look at the question from another angle”. Well I could see my house on fire and go outside and look at it from the front, and then go around to the left side and the right side and the back yard and say, “Yep, it’s on fire alright”. My teenage years were like a house on fire while parents argued over the brand of olives to use at the next cocktail party. There are certain problems where you can actually invest more time in “trying to look at the situation from a different angle” than just rolling up your sleves and starting to solve the problem. I think the “defining moments” were January 1964, late summer 1965, late November of 1966, early 1973 and two more: the summer of 1980 and June of 1991. I once told Eileen that therapist “I’d be prepared to forgive everything my parents said and did up to the start of the decade of the nineties”. Her response was “Why not forgive them for EVERYTHING?” The word “forgiveness” has suffered a lot of abuse in meaning lately. The word isn’t the Jesus Christ definition of, “You can forgive them but forgiveness does not mean reconsiliation and once you have forgiven you cut them out of your Life for good”. In my view of forgiveness, it IS reconciliation. But that requires communication. In many ways Christianity has gotten mixed up with people wanting to define it in strange ways. Like Jesus Christ on KFI says “all that stuff about giving in helping out your neighbor are null and void if your neighbor is a “Swine”. There are two phraises that linger in my mind. One is “You make void the Word of God by your traditions” and you can substitute “screwy ideas” there. The other is, “They have a form of spiritual authority but deny the power of God”. They want to divorce themselves from any accountability to God and what God does doesn’t matter to them, just as what the American people think no longer matters to George Bush. (Selah) That’s the problem

I don't know why the print looks different with the last paragraph just above than the others do. I'd now like to take you back to the waning days of August, last month, for some more commentary. Part of my own personal problem with Christianity is that people from both my family and the church have used it as a weapon to screw me over, devoid of any Biblical authority, of course. I think we're all smart enough to know Christian conduct when we see it, and are also able to spot actions and attitudes which clearly are NOT Christian.

There is one more dream I’d like to discuss only this one is sort of a waking psychic revelation I may have mentioned before but it’s worth repeating if I have. It dates back to the Green Harbor days when we played bingo. And they had this one announcer who talked of doing the B, N, and O collums. Hearing his voice I flashed on a scene at a time like early November in the early evening just after or just before a Santa Ana wind when the air had that dryness to it. The almost full moon was out in the sign of Aries or something. There was this amusement park like Nu-pike or something where things were laid out east-west, only with a big parking lot to the north and no bluff. There were all the usual carnival attractions and rides and everything such as a ducks shooting gallery, and spill the milk bottles and basketball hoops that are too small. There was also a guy in the distance calling Bingo and his amplified voice resonated and he was talking about B, N, and O. The housekeeper was in here briefly just now.

Breakfast was uneventful. I went to the bakery for coffee but at nine. But at eight I tried to get Drive radio on, which I finally did only the computer was slow to boot, and the play control kept reverting back to stop position when I hit play. The year was 1973 and I heard the whole thing. 1973 was the last year that your typical “pop hit” was respectable with songs like “Frankenstein” and “Angie”. The artists that hit it big were main stream “classic rock” artists to a large extent. This is the first year I really started making a lot of trips to the record store to buy albums to a large degree. 1973 was a first for a lot of things. I grew a mustache for the August 1973 Church Directory family photograph. This was the first year the OCTD was in business. Early in the year and according to my writings, I and my family argued about money issues a lot and we all know how those were resolved. It was the year I inherited all of grandpa’s suits but I suspect I wore the ones that he never did. Every Sunday at church it was like I was trying out for a part on the Sunny and Cher show. This is the first year I began drinking alcohol regularly. This started in late August on that trip to the northwest and Reno. I believe it’s also my first drivers license, although this is hard to believe. It’s the oldest one I still have a copy of, that’s for sure. I remember I went to the DMV in March of 1971 and I mused whether it would be a good idea to cheat on the eye test. In November 1972 I got new glasses from Dr. Ebee, which is the last time I ever saw him. I remembered I didn’t like the glasses I had gotten in April 1968 at that other place and as late as December of 1970 wore the ones I’d gotten from Dr. Ebee in 1965 till they broke, and I was furious at parents for not getting me new ones then but said I should wear the ones from April 1968 I didn’t feel confortable with. I found out Becky was getting married to that convice in late February of 1973. I think the fact she was connecting with him was something she kept from me but I don’t know how long. Relations with parents in late February were so tense they could snap like a twig. I felt like they were out to rob me of my happiness any way they could. Thom Hartman had Bernie Sanders on his first hour. Basically there isn’t a lot of news. Randy Rhodes played her usual Friday anthem at noon.

Larry Craig is resigning today. Fred Thompson says he’s going to declaire his candidicy for the Presidency on the Tonight Show or something on Wednesday. I have predicted that one candidate we don’t expect will suddenly withdraw under strange and premature circumstances. I don’t see the Thompson campaign going anywhere.

It’s funny but of couse 1973 was not the last church photo featuring all five family members. That was in early 1977. Our family gets an A in family unity even when all three kids have left home and one of them is already divorced.

Richard gave me the dollar he owed me without my even having to ask today. In that chess game I second guessed myself a lot in my moves and there were times when I’d see my move and take two minutes to think about making sure I wasn’t making some horrible mistake. Tune in tonight for the conclusion at seven. Bill is watching his TV.

If I were Sean I’d definitely worry about Belle shaking up with Philip. There’s enough attraction there that it could blaze into a raging forest fire before you know it. I don’t know how they’re going to fake Stephano’s death. I have an idea. Let’s tell everyone we’re faking his death and do it for real! On Passions we still don’t know who Gwen’s mystery boyfriend is. I bet the answer will turn out to be bizarre in some way.