THE SATANIC SAILS AT DAWN (mid January 1982)

Once there was a church with a Pastor named Charles Smith. And Smith thought it would be nice if he organized a cruise to take members of the church on a fourteen day excoursion to the Caribean Islands. So he immediately began selling tickets which members of his congragation paid cash for months in advance. But the deal to charter a ship fell through. Smith prayed. Apparently church donations weren't near to the level that Rev Smith imagined them to be. And if there was one thing he wasn't going to do as Pastor it was to go before the congragation and grovel for money. Then there was a ship that came on the market at dirt cheap prices called the Satanic. It seems that the government had recently passed laws against Satanism and suddenly this vessel was useless. Smith took it to be a sign from the Lord. His view is "Why should the Devil have all the good music- - or lands or boats or anything else?" Anyhow they painted the ship white and gave it some really tasteless name such as the Holy Roller or the S S Azlin or something. Formerly the vessel had been done up in impressive black with gold trim and covering it all up took a lot of paint. At last the morning came when the ship was to sail. Jack Johnson was among the many who went right up to the ticket booth and got a ticket and went right up the gang plank. At nine AM sharp they pulled up the gang plank and the ship was unmoored and sailed out of the harbor. People noted that Johnson was Black. They asked him "What do you do for a living?" and he responded "I'm a pugelist". One lady looked at him a little strangely and disdainful. He said "Yeah, that's how I make my money". She said "Shame on you. I bought a book written by a pugelist once. He pugelized an unpublished Mark Train novel, God rest his soul, and passed it off as his own. Things went well till a later on when the ship's captain came over and asked Johnson how he ever got on board. Johnson told him. And the captain said, "But you're Black" and Johnson said, "But I have money" and the Captain said, "Yeah, but you're Black" and to make it legal and everything the Captain read a proclamation how this ship doesn't allow Blacks on board as passengers. So Johnson was taken to one of the life boats and compelled to board it, and take off alone. There was another guy on board, with long curly light brown hair and wore his shirt open. People asked him "Are you one of the deck hands?" And he said, "No, my name is Frankie Lee." By now the water was starting to get a little rough and one man was kind of hanging over the edge feeling sick. And Frankie Lee came up to him and said "You look like a man who's not doing anything now. How would you like to read this book?" It was a paperback that read "A Brief Summary of the Theology of Karl "Barf". And the man looked at it and said, "Where'd you get it?" And Frankie Lee said "The last cruise I was on there was a man named Guy Owens who was reading it but he got bored and tossed the book on the ship's deck, and I picked it up. Then Owens said "This ship is going way too slow" so he looked out into the sea and saw a passing whale and said "I'm going to hook a ride from him". Another passenger said, "You don't suppose a storm is coming, do you?" He was greeted with a chorus of "NO" s from several other passengers. Frankie Lee said "You know we are violating Mother Earth in riding on her Ocean and getting free transportation from it. The sea is for fishes and other sea life dezigned by the Creator for the water, and not for these iron artifacts of man." He got a lot of strange looks from the other passengers but nobody really gave him much of an argument. Frankie Lee went below to the engine room. There were a couple of Black guys working down there and Frankie Lee pulls out a roll of tens. He said "A fellow named Judas gave these to me but I have no use for them so I want you to have them". The first deck hand showed it to his Black companion and the second Black said "Hot damn. These bills are REAL. " And the first guy said "how can you be so sure?" And the second guy said "Hell all the time I have spent in crap and poker games in my life, believe me in that business you come to know what a real bill looks like and what is a fake". And the first guy says "I have counted the bills twice and there is exactly a hundred dollars there and I'll split it with you fifty-fifty. " So he began counting out the bills, ten, twenty, thirty, forty- - and then the engine made a steam discharge. And someone said "Are you workers in any danger of the engine exploding? And they said "Oh, they are only thinking of us. If anything bad happens we'll die first whereas the others on deck will die a slow death as the ship sinks". The first deck hand then continued counting, "Where was I?" "Twenty" the other guy says. So he continued - - thirty - - forty - - fifty. The second guy walked away smugly. The first guy counted his bills and was amazed and pleasently surprised to see that he had seventy dollars. Frankie Lee went back top side and decided to get something out of the vending machine. And was puzzled at what he received. It was a bag gull of these puff like orange things that left bright orange residew on his hands. Lee said "I can't eat this kind of garbage. No natural substance is that color orange". Then the ship's captain showed up and said he was here to arrest Frankie Lee and take him to the brig. Frankie Lee asked why and the Captain said "There have been roomers that you gave one of our black boys a substantial ammount of counterfeit money, and we don't like people taking advantage of our Black people, just because they aren't as smart as the rest of us. " Lee was insensed but went with them. "What are you doing to do with that money?" and the captain just grinned and said "Oh don't you worry about that. I'm going to take real good care of it personally myself. But while Lee was in custody being escorted he managed to get free and made his way to a portion of the boat where a power boat was, and he got in it and sped away from the ship. Since the ship had no TV or movies to entertain themselves they passed the time having theological arguments with each other. They also had debates as to how much gold was on the islands where they were going or the size of the breasts of the maidens. They didn't notice that there was now a strange agitation in the water and the ocean was glowing with an odd greenish hew. The ship then sank to the bottom of the sea due to a mysterious whirlpool that had arisen seemingly out of nowhere.

THE DEAD ZONE -The Sequel of Indeterminate Ordenal

This story is part of a whole "Death Series" starting on April first 1996. Once upon a time Guy Owens was planning to commit suicide. He had a jar of mixed Amyltal and Secconal pills, blues and reds in a jar, and more available. He thought first he'd dissolve an Anytal in a glass of water to see how that affected him. Then he didn't like the bitter taste so decided to wash that down with some Burgandy. But then at this point he had a sudden mental flash. This wasn't real. It already happened. I was actually living in an apartment in 1996 on my own. "I remember now. Somebody told me that if I stayed alive me and Becky would be having sex by the following February." Since Owens was a virgin he held such news at a high premium. "Gee - am I being given a second chance or something now?" Hell, he didn't know but decided perhaps the whole suicide thing was way too premature. Instead he made his three o clock appointment that afternoon to see Dr. Glidden, his Psychiatrist. He didn't see his parents till the next day because they had gone out to dinner. Then his Mom yelled at him for drinking someone's wine without permission. But what struck him now was all the bad stuff he'd forgotten about his parents came back to him in stark reminders. How they belittled him and insulted him, and threatened him, and in general made life with them miserable. For Sunday dinner - four days later - Pete Richards came over, oddly without his girlfriend, Margie. The idea of getting rid of their two cats was brought up and now Guy Owens was the only one who seemed to be opposed to the idea, and anything he said on the subject would be deemed "irrational". They then tossed barbs at him for volenteering to do a project with a church group. He reminded them "That is tonight". They said "Well - - you're just LUCKY this time!" They were being downright surly bringing up petty stuff. Guy then thought he'd have fun with them and begin predicting things that hadn't happened yet. So he mentioned Nixon's mining of the port of Hai Pong, that would be announced the next day, or the shooting of George Wallace that would take place a week from tomorrow. And he mentioned the Watergate break-in. When they heard these things their eyes bulged in their heads almost as if they KNEW what he was saying was TRUE and were MAD about it. So Pete Richards began taunting Guy and said "Anyhow, why aren't you dead yet? I've done nothing but play mind games on you in the name of Jesus for the full year and had you doubt yourself and running around in circles." Owens said "Are you admitting something" and Pete says "Don't try to put words in my mouth". Oh yeah you and your predictions. You fool! You think somehow if you TRY hard enough you can PROVE that you are somehow a worthy person. It doesn't work that way in God's economy. Owen's Dad kicks in and says "You know if you open your mouth you're the only one that ends up getting hurt". Suddenly OWENS was transported back to Heaven and he knew it was true. Maybe it was the future but he wasn't at all sure When NOW was at this point. An angel guide said to him "I had to get you out of there. You were learning too much". Guy laughed loud and nervously. "You know I've learned more than enough. You DO know that. That horse had long ago left the barn!"

THE REPLICATORS ARE HERE Well now tool replicators are not just for the crew of the Next Generation. Now you can put any tool like a wrench under a 3 D scanner and apparently it's X Ray also or something because it replicates moving parts that can't even be seen. You can also instruct the printer how to color each part. Then you start the printer. It uses a powder that disolves into a solid plastic formed in the shape of the object that was scanned, hidden moving parts and all, and you "can use it to perform a task just like you'd use any other wrench". You just fish the object out of the powder and blow off the dust and you're all set. So if you're in space and you lose a tool, it's no problem. You just print out and replicate another tool. They also have something called magnetic fluid that seems to spontaniously form artistic shapes, don't even ask me how. I hope that video was on the level. Clearly, the Future has Arrived.

It has been noted that big business seems surprisingly uncerned about the looming debt default of the United States government. Do they know something we don't? Or is perhaps the crisis less momentus than what we have led to believe? Somehow big business has found a way to insulate itself from the problem, perhaps because they have so much money they've stockpiled now without giving any out, that they can ride out this credit crunch. After all they are already used to not making new investments or hiring new people. So that won't change. We will all find out in just over three weeks, and I have no predictions except to expect the unexpected.

PRESIDENT OBAMA SHOULD NOT

RUN FOR A SECOND TERM

I just listened to the Republican response to President Obama’s weekly address just now at 8:07. It was more of the standard catrch-phrases and clichés that we’ve been hearing from the Republicans. The Republicans want a “jobs bill” somehow without spending any money. They blame the President for the elevated unemployment numbers. This morning I was up at 5:30 already and so tuned in the Bill Press show for the final half hour of that. What became clear from that show and as Bill pointed out- is that the Democratic party stands for absolutely nothing. The President is willing to sacrifice anything and everything to “win something” and still he continues to fail miserably. Bill Press reminds us all that as of now the Republican House has made concessions on nothing. A caller said that someone told them upon his election that he was a total marshmellow and cave every time rather than ever stand on principle. It’s time for the President to announce that he will not be running for reelection next year in 2012. Clearly the president is up against an economic task he is not up to. I’m not sure anybody should do it, but he should at least let someone else try. The word “Obama” is a buzz-word now among Republicans now as a symbol of everything despised and “Washington”. By announcing he will not run again next year the President is taking that particular weapon from their hands. The President would save himself further humiliation when the Republicans refuse to fund his health care provision in 2014. Not running would accomplish other things. The republicans could no use the weapons of calling him a Moslem or question things like his fraudulent birth certificate, or question his college grades. As they say in the military, “You should either lead, follow, or get out of the way”. The President should get out of the way and let someone else take over who has a fighting chance against the Republicans. There is no disgrace in failure to run for another term. Lyndon Johnson recognized that he could not win in 1968. Harry Truman recognized he could not win in 1952 with an unending “police action” war and economic policies gone south. Calvin Coolage saved himself the distinction as being “the man who started the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover had to live with that the rest of his life. Jimmy Carter didn’t have the support of rank and file democrats in 1980 and he lost, and his name continues to be used with shame among Republicans. Clearly not running is the best political move the President can make at this point. Some people do fine in a certain environment but suck at other things. President Obama was fine as a legislator and had he stayed in that capacity he would have fared well. You know the guy who started the music group Boston was apparently an electronics genious, but could he write songs? He became a Johnny one-note. Of course Kurt Cobain picked up on the four chord progression of Boston and evolved it into new stratospheric heights and founded a whole new genus of music. The President has “gone off the plantation” as it were. He’s like an athlete caught gambling or using steroids and has to be fired from a winning team. He’s like an actress like Marilyn Monroe who kind of did a melt-down in 1962 and the S A G had to let him go. He’s like a rogue military general whom the President has no choice but to fire. He's like a stage actor who takes pills and they know first themselves that they have "not given it their all" in the performance. Then other actors pick up on it and know. And then critics in the audience and finally the public at large knows that they "don't have it" any more. Or as Maurie Head said in a song referring to Jesus, “Tables, chairs and oaken chests would have suited Jesus best. He’d have caused nobody harm- - no one alarm”. Perhaps Jesus was a really proficient carpenter, but he sucked at the job of Deliverer. I once knew a Christian who bragged that he “made bombs for a living”, and yet talking theology with this guy over the phone- - his logic is so spaced out I would not trust him with a book of matches, let alone a nuclear war-head. But some people are able to “compartmentalize”. Some things they are good at and other areas they aren’t. Pete Richards is an Excellent swimmer, a Good drummer, and at least an Average house painter. But he sucks royally at personal counseling. I ought to know. The President is still young and he can move on to other things in life where he will have more success. This job just isn’t for him. He was never good at it. He was never able to lead or to inspire confidence, and the “brave” thing to do now is to step aside.

Apparently a new nation has been born today, South Sudan. This will cause Sudan to now no longer be the biggest African nation, in land area. They say negotiations for nation-hood for this area were hammered out six years ago under Collin Powell. I sure never heard about it. They have a new flag and everything. Now people of the Negro persuasion have a refuge from the oppressive Arab majority up north. It's too bad this breakthrough didn't happen a few years earlier. I guess I'm wondering why they haven't said more about it on the news besides an occasional fleeting reference that it's already happened. Anyhow we all wish this nation a long and prosperous life.

FIVE TO ONE (No One Here Gets Out Alive)

Five stories by Mark Campbell and One by Guy Owens

SHEEP (early fall 1982) Once there was a man named Robert J De Falco who went to a road side carnival. He volenteered in a magician's stunt to make a person disappear. The trick seemed to be going well, but the magician couldn't bring him back. De Falco was as good as dead because nobody could see him. He went to another chamber and the man there said 'You're dead, you know, and your fate lies through one of those three doors". In this place were the usual fun house items of funny mirrors, flashing lights, and moving bumpy ramps. De Falco went to the middle door and opened it. In it he saw a deep dirt pit where a lot of people were apparently treading water in some bubbling mud or sludge or something and crying for help. Off in the distance were lovely girls in a park like picnic setting with pitchers of iced cold lemonaide. De Falco slammed that door and opened the door on the right. In it were scarey monsters and demons wielding all manner of torture devices running through a rocky cavern as people screamed in fear. De Felco went to the door on the left. He saw a peaceful field of tall switch grass and heard birds chirping. He went through. It was a wide valley of tall grass between two distant mountain ranges. As he made his way through the field he happened on the still waters of a pond and piered at his reflection and saw that he was now a dog. Apparently a part fox and part grayhound, with eyes that glowed green in dim light. At some point he noticed the weather hear was cool. Now a breeze was coming up. De Falco noticed that the sun wasn't all that high in the sky, either, and it was the middle of summer. After this he heard the sound of sheep. As he was getting hungry by now he pegged this as an oppertunity to get a good meal. But there were all these sheep dogs about guarding the sheep as if forming a barrier. They were now barking at him intently. He spotted ranchers and noted that they spoke in a heavy accent like Austrilian or something. He finally decided just to go around. Finally he happened on a farm house. Inside was a lad about twenty who spent his days listening to heavy metal rock on his record player. He learned he had an older brother named Howard and a younger brother named Pete. Pete had demanded his share of the inheritence before he left. Howard had gone out with nothing only asking the middle brother to take care of his prize pig, whom he intended to come back for and enter him at the county fair. De Falco it seems was the pet dog of the middle brother, who was glad to see him. But De Falco was also to talk to the pig, though everyone else thought it was just a pig. The pig called himself Jim. De Falco and the pig were friends. The dad was a gray haired mean son of a bitch who seemed to have a lot of enemies. One day the younger brother, Pete returned and the Father was glad to see him as he handed him more money. The father decided to kill the pig and present him as a welcome home gift to brother Pete. The father went into the barn and returned with a big knife he held in his sweaty hands, intending to slit the throat of the pig, kosher style and all. When De Falco (his name as a dog was Tobias) when Tobias saw what was about to happen he lunged at his father going for the throat, almost killing him. Pete then took a gun and shot Tobias dead. But then spared the life of the Pig figuring that there had been enough violence around the farm for one day.

FACE THE MIGHTY WATERFALL (turn of year '82 - 1983)

Jesus took his disciples on a little mountain hike. They began climbing along a trail, and then Jesus stopped the assembly and passed out magic mushrooms and said "Take these, each of you. Behold if you had the faith of a mushroom seed you could say to that mountain "be thou removed" and it would be gone". The desciples took the mushrooms and ate. One of them could be overheard to remark "- - - but where are the seeds?" They came in sight of a mighty waterfall and Jesus led them along a secret trail cut into the rock, and they found themselves behind the torrent of water. All of the desciples were amazed- - and then they began one and all to trip out staring into the waters- - - and they supposed that this waterfall held all of the cosmic secrets of the Universe. One of them said "I know what's happening now. We are inside some mighty elevator and we are ascending up through the heavens, and behold these waters are none other than the waters of Noah that existed in heaven before the flood". Then after a while Jesus raised his hand and the waterfall completely stopped, aside from a little dripping from the rocks. The desciples were sad that Jesus had "brought them down" like this and destroyed their "trip". And they looked at him and marveled. Then Jesus raised his hand again and the waterfall commenced just as before. And he said to them "What have you learned from this experianced". But none of them were able to express much of anything that was going on in their minds right then.

THE GREEN VAN (Spring 1982)

The local Calvary Pastor held services at "The church of the sanctified flake". It was a new, modern building he had comissioned, that had a varied coutour roof that looked just like a giant corn flake. Now at eleven AM every Wednesday a Green Van could come by on its regular weekly stop and pick up a group of seven or eight riders to go off, people imagined on some day excoursion. It had been doing so regularly for the past year and a half. And then I asked some of the people still standing around outside, "Where is the van going". And the others told me that every week a different bunch of people get picked up and are never heard from again. I said, "But doesn't anybody ever ask questions about this?" and they said "No". Now in those days there was a scarcity of warm weather. And sun bathers would search in vain for a place that was half way warm- - and since places in the church roof dipped low - teenagers from the local inhabitants, unchurched, would climb on top of the roof and try to get a tan in what often ammounted to drizzling rain that would sometimes occur. And they would smoke the weed. And sometimes someone noticed that pieces of the roof actually tasted like corn flakes. And others in the church asked why people were allowed on the roof to smoke marijuana. And the Pastor said "It's really more trouble than it's worth to try and get them off. Besides one day somebody may witness to those people and eventually lead them to Christ".

THE MOUNTAIN TO THE EAST (spring 1982)

Behold one time the Pilgram lived at the Palm Street house as a house resident when Zachery and his parents still lived there. But he moved a little westward to an apartment near Walnut just the other side of the overpass that goes over the Santa Ana Freeway. He felt he wanted to be on his own for a while. Then someone invited him to go in a missionary trip to Honolulu, and since he had nothing in particular planned, he went along with them. Now the sea became stormy and waves pounded the ship, and it became hard to hold the ship's wheel as water poured into the boat. The Pilgrim's head hit something and blacked out. The next thing he remembers he was being nursed back to health by a pretty woman named Michelle with sensuous breasts and long, slowing light brown hair. She would entertain him either on an accoustic guitar, or on the flute, which she was most proficient at playing. After a few days the Pilgrem felt he was ready to leave. He went back to his old apartment on Walnut. But now only to be told that over six years had passed and that it was now 1982. The Pilgram then decided he needed to see Zachery and he would be the deliverer to all his problems. But that overpass had now become a mighty mountain. The Pligrim asked others saying "There was no mountain there before' and then said to him "Behold nearly seven years have passed and this mountain represents the ammount of sin you have accrewed during this period. So the Pilgrim began to climb the mountain, rock by rock. And the overcast cleared and the sun beat down on him. And he prayed to the Lord for relief, and God sent a cool breeze to ease the man in his discomfort. At last the Pilgram reached the top of the mountain. It was like the plaza of the Disneyland Hotel with the Dancing Waters. And behold there was Zachery, now a young lad, and he was tuning his guitar. After this he took requests from the passers by. The Pilgram expressed his delight in seeing Zachery. And Zachery said "Blessed are the believers, but more blessed are those who have actually encountered and seen with their own eyes. Such are ye".

We are running a little long on this blog now and it's coffee break. We'll see you on the next blog probably and at that point we will continue with the last two stories. One of them is guarenteed to run a little long.

FINAL SPACE SHUTTLE FLIGHT TAKES OFF

This morning at Cape Canaveral the final space shuttle was launched into space. They had been worried about stormy weather that plagues the south Florida area this time of year with heavy thunder and lightning strikes, such that many feared it could be many days before they got off a successful launch. Today's launch is the final space shuttle launch capping a thirty year shuttle program, based on technology that came about in the 'seventies. As far as I know the launch was not broadcast live on any commercial television station. In contrast the launch of the Columbia back in April of 1981 was heavily hyped and broadcast live, and everyone was excited. Rush did at least two songs about this launch, and were live in attendance. Today the maximum attendance for a launch of 45,000 was reached and they had to turn people away. Even the Challenger explosion in late January of 1986 was seen by many people, including myself live. But somewhere along the way we lost interest. Spending on space programs has slowed to such a trickle you wonder just how much technological inovations have come about in the last thirty years. Apparently not enough to keep the program going. Now they say the proposed moon launch in 2020 will be scrapped due to this disease we are in of "chronic constriction of the wallet".

The Unemployment rate has continued its march in the wrong direction rising to 9.2%. Because of this the republicans have "stiffened in their resolve" to not give in on any tax hikes, anywhere. Maybe Thom Hartman is viagara for the brain but he's wrong. It apparently does lead to stiff thinking. Just yesterday we were promised some "break-through" with rosey news that the President and John Boehner were forming a working relationship, and that Boehner had agreed to some revenue enhancement in that he would agree to 200 Billion in closing of corporate tax loopholes is the President would agree that the rest of the four Trillion would be in government program cuts, mainly to the poor. Apparently the President agreed to put Medicare and Social Securety payments up for debate even though Social Security hasn't contributed a penny to the debt because it's an independent program. Senator Bernie Sanders wrote a letter to the President asking him not to cut Social Security or Medicare. The American people in poll after poll have told polsters that the deficet isn't that important if it means sacrificing these two programs, neither of which to the American people want cut in any way. We had been led to believe that "if the President continued to make progress in the talks with Boehner" that there would be some kind of a budget deal announced Sunday or Monday. But as I said nearly a week ago and nothing has occurred to change my mind, the President is going to do a complete cave-in on this issue with not even a semblence of Pride left. Only 18,000 jobs were added last month, which is way below expectations. But government has lost 500,000 jobs to a large extent because state governments have been slashing budgets. There is some question in my mind how much of this deficet is George Bush and how much as the current President. Thom Hartman states that Bush doubled the national debt from five to ten trillion, but now it is over fourteen trillion. I have no choice but to believe that President Obama is responsible for the final four trillion, meaning that this President has run up the deficet almost as much in a year and a half as George Bush did in eight years. Most republicans say that the current national debt is slated to double again in the next five or six years. As far as corporate taxes are concerned Hartman is now revising his figures. Formerly he had said that business is responsible for between seven and nine percent of the overall tax burden nationally. Now Hartman is saying corporations only pay six percent of all U S tax revenues, and are in fact second from the bottom among the world's developed nations. I'd be happier about tax cuts if I thought that THIS would make the republicans happy. But the truth is NO MATTER WHAT this President does, the republicans will complain and say the President didn't cut enough. At some point you have to realize these people are whackos. Now you know they have added a balanced budget constitutional amendment to their list of demands. As you know these bills take a long time to get ratified so if that is the way to make them happy, we're going to be waiting for a budget for a long time.

Rupert Murdoch is at it again. FOX news owns a tabloid newspaper in England called "News of the World" or something. Now this newspaper is in trouble for tapping people's phones and recording their conversations and using these to sell newspapers. But they tap not only the perpetrators of crimes but the victims of these crimes, as well as the relatives of fallen dead troopers in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Of course we know FOX fired Glen Beck for being too whacked out even for their news. I don't normally watch FOX news because I don't have cable TV. But perhaps I really should start, because Randy and those who do say it is really "out to lunch" in terms of what sort of items it represents as facts. I just watch Sunday mornings and I haven't heard anything there that was "over the line". But I know various apologists for the tea party will quote unnamed sources with absolute certitude to back up their fanciful claims about what to them is some "tax and spend" economic reality, as well as saying things like "We have high gasoline prices because Obama had banned oil drilling". They don't stop to think it just might be because we are running out of oil, and I mean world wide. We hit peak oil - - world wide- - in 2006.

I have been laboring over how to cover this last story for most of the week. I wanted to say that this bit about "occupying John Lennon's body" is nothing I actually claimed for myself. I'm just saying that some Person X seems to be showing his presence. Whoever it was we don't know if he is still alive, or whether he is writing songs now, or died mysteriously somehow. With the exception of the Hamburg trip in 1960, that is. There has always been one thing "wrong" with trying to make any claims for myself in that unlike other "astro projections" or whatever you call them, there is no visual imigry, and virtually nothing in the way of conversations or specific interractions with people. This has always puzzled me. The Hamberg thing was completely different from the later stuff. But I'll tell you what even prompted the theory to begin with. And that is you can see an "evolution" in Lennon that utterly ended in the spring of 1968. Vocally there is a certain machismo that Lennon developed in his voice dating back as far as when he recorded "Money" on July 18th 1963, if you can trust that date. Apparently "You Really Got a Hold On Me" was recorded the same day. If we believe it was truely some "unknown vocalist" as the letters N U J V would imply, then we have to figure out who it would be from the evidence. It was said that John Lennon wanted to write "a soul song" "something that sounded Black that would appeal to the American markets". The first some to fit this bill was "All I Gotta Do". Here is a song vaguely patterned after a Cherrels some or something, though Lennon claims he wanted it to sound like Smokey Robinson. People on KTLK this morning were going on about "how the Beatles brought Black music to racist white parents, who would never allow their kid to buy a black record". Obviously that's hype over-kill. We see this evolution in Lenon's voice further in songs like "I Call Your Name" and "Slow Down" and "You Can't Do That", "I'll Cry Instead" and "When I Get Home". (Later in 1964 there were "I'm a Loser", "Baby's in Black", "I don't want to spoil the Party" "Mr. Moonlight", and perhaps a couple others prior to 1965) I'd like to take issue with Wickipedia on one thing they said. "I'll Cry Instead" was obviously recorded in February when other songs were that were planned for the HDN movie. John Lennon even said where he wanted the song to be used in the movie. On June 26th 1964 they released the U A Hard Day's Night album and single in the US. The album included "I'll Cry Instead" but then Richard Lester yanked it at the last minute. Wickipedia claims the song wasn't recorded till June. But were this so meeting a June 26th release date in another country would really take some doing. There are other things to say on this topic but first of all here are a couple of intervening paragraphs before we get back to it.

Betty Ford was a couragious woman. She died Friday at age 93. She was known for facing her alcohol and substance abuse problems boldly and publicly, and founded the Betty Ford clinic. She also had a double mastectomy, and made women aware of breast cancer and encouraged them to get a check-up. She also was outspoken for the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, and also as a champion of abortion rights. She lent a new dignity and boldness to women that they had never had such a role model of before. And for this she will be long remembered.

OK this is a still warm Friday July 8th. We did a blog earlier today with mostly relatively sane stuff. Later we're going to do what I call "Six Songs and Stories" from the vault, mostly written in the 1980's. But after we're done with this opening paragraph, I'd like to tie up a few cosmic loose ends (assuming the wiring in my brain hasn't frayed completely) First according to Blogger this is the 75th posting in this particular blog, and we're aiming to do number 76 perhaps Monday, which will cap things off for a while. In the news you could phone most of this stuff in. It's the same ol' same ol'. Around here Dr. Levy's appearences are getting fewer and fewer and he missed last night, and maybe we'll see him at the end of next week. His "newsletters" have taken on an non existant quality. He's got a nice backlog of my writings if he finds the need to fill space. Relations with family members is sparse, and that seems to be for the best. Sometime I think the only time they want to have anything to do with me is when they see some problem or weakness in me they're able to exploit. I'm not at all optimistic about the election of 2012. People always talking about "not letting Democracy slip away" in this country, but I have the feeling that's just what it's doing. I guess Thom Hartman said today that they did an anthropological study of far flung cultures of the world and concluded that while the build up and development of cultures is usually slow and progressive, that their demise and collapse can often be quite sudden. This ought to give every American pause. I have this fear we are way too technologically dependent on gadgets and such and if we ever had to make it on our own, many of us would fall flat on our face.

COSMIC SECRETS, LOOSE ENDS, AND BLOOPERS

I now know the name of the fourth group of "Cassiopians". The other three are the Crestorians, the "Texas group" and the "Phil Collins" group. The fourth group are called the Taccomans. This is not an alltogether alien name to me. It's just that I had always referred to them as "the west coast Arkturians". It turns out their connection with Arkturas was some misunderstanding of something I was told a long time ago, but they are in fact of the Cassiopian star system. (Cassiopians refer to themselves as a "star system" rather than as an Empire, or Federation, or Republic, or whatever. Why this is significant is that this is the group that took over the Orion Federation communacation ministry back in early 1990 but it became much more pronounced in June of 1991 till they were driven out under "opperation mongoose" about March first 1992. That's one mystery down. As you know today is the 36th anniversary of the death of Richi Vallenz in his Romulan "avatar". This was when he had a heart attack in his swimming pool on a Tuesday afternoon on July 8th 1975. I didn't know such a thing could happen to "one of those people" and asked others who merely said, "It obviously did". The story on this one is that they took his body and dipped it in a vat of hydro-chloric acid on the shore in Ensenada, Mexico a few days later. Richi was never heard from again, at least by me till he resurfaced in early 1995, when he has been around frequently. Sometimes people will "go underground" for a time and resurface. As you may know Stewart Sutcliffe "went underground" about the turn of the year '62-1963 and didn't resurface again till late 1971 and he did so where he had departed from Torranto, and formed a band with the same band mates of all things. (No, I don't mean the Beatles) These included Fernando S. (Vocalist who kind of sounds like Pete Ham) Darren D. - - - Barret R. (who took over on bass) and occasionally Terry L. (backing vocal). He also "went underground" for a shorter period from about the end of 1989 through the early fall of 1993.

That WAS the most whacko paragraph in this posting so you've made it through the worst part. However I would like to talk about this whole dangeling loose end, at least in my mind that "was there some other spirit-fource, psychic energy, ghost, avatar, or what have you- - influencing John Lennon from July 1963 and later till at least early 1968? The one responsible for all those vocal machismo parts on Rubber Soul and the like? Well I've been"interviewing candidates" for the job. One guy Lennon referred to as his "new magic guru" and that was Magic Alex. But he failed to make the grade. Not a musical bone in his body. I checked out at least three others, who are all dead now. The thing wrong with most candidates is that they are "too productive" and have busy schedules joining bands and such. I was looking for kind of a loser - loner, like maybe some Black teenage gang member from Cleveland who died under mysterious circumstances or something. Finally I came accross someone who just might be a suitable candidate. If I ever thought of it before I pushed it out of my mind. This candidate "works" on a whole number of levels. First an foremost John Lennon is one person who can actually stand to be around him and who doesn't regard him as a total asshole. This guy's propensity tword flakeyness knows no bounds. The more you know about him, the more you don't like him. But I'm not naming him here and now. (I have to provide a little suspense) He has credentials as being "black enough" to fill the bill, and also creative enough, and a good enough musician, and actually rather tallented and inovative. We have a bit of a problem when it comes to Abbey Road however. At least most sane people would regard it as a problem. Of course there is a major problem with any "Walk-in" - - what I call the Impostor problem. Or as Johnny Taylor sings it "Who's screwing your life up, while you are busy making a botch-job of someone elses?" You kind of have to deal with this impostor problem with one-way walk-ins. Because logically it could turn into an endless chain of succession where in the end everybody is confused. But right now I'm stopping for today. I can do those Stories tomorrow. But now you've read this.

WHAT MORE EVIDENCE DO THOSE ON THE FAR-RIGHT NEED?

A couple of days ago I was thinking of writing a fictional story about some people from the Secret Service taking candidate Barock Obama aside and telling him the “score’ if he ever gets elected and who really runs the country. It takes very little imagination to suppose that President Obama is just a pawn in someone else’s game. Clearly he has tools of Wall Street setting his economic policy. He’s conducting three simotanious wars when he ran as the anti war candidate and Hillary made that a major issue. It stretches the imagination very little to suppose “Homeland Security” was an organization already in existence that in fact George W Bush set up to help get him into power and that 9 – 11 was just an excuse to take our civil liberties away and go to war, because these items were on Bush’s agenda already. Bush got rid of that computer system set up in the latter days of the Clinton administration to help track down potential terrorists, saying he wanted to set up his own system - - sometime later. Also there was a movie that came out in 1996 that quoted Al Qaeda in saying that they were going to vastly amplify on the truck bombing of the World Trade center in 1993 and this time they were going to take out four thousand people. Well, it wasn’t fiction. It also takes very little imagination to even suppose that detonation charges were deliberately set in the Twin Towers prior to when they collapsed to greatly increase the loss of lives and garner more headlines and sympathy. Anyone who’s seen the video of the buildings going down can’t help but conclude explosives were already in the buildings. Of course there has been the “red shift” in election results since the year 2000. The D Bolt voting machine or whatever it’s called was hacked in 2006 and someone demonstrated how easy it would be to change vote tally results. The CEO of the company apparently admitted it’s an avowed goal of his to insure republican victories. What more evidence do you need?

Of course the whole tea party movement is a phoney bologna movement. It was organized by big money. Let’s review a few facts. They say all the President wants is “more tax and spend policies”. In reality a large portion of the economic stimulus, perhaps too much of it, has come through major across the board tax cuts. Now the President is willing to agree to an 85% and 15% ratio to solve the debt limit crisis, meaning 85% of the deficit reduction comes from government spending cuts and only fifteen percent from enhanced revenue. Federal government revenues over the last ten years are down 24%. I bet you didn’t know that. Spending on discretionary income has remained flat.; In terms of the dreaded national debt, Ronald Reagan did substantially more damage in this area as far as running up the deficit simply because the interest rates were so much higher them. Back then it would be eight percent or even higher whereas now it’s around one percent. Ronald Reagan did away with the Sherman anti trust bill that had been around since Grover Cleveland or something, and no subsequent president has lifted a finger to revive it. Nancy Palosi and the House passed a tax bill that would reduce tax liability for overseas corporations that relocated in the U S but the Senate refused to pass it due to forty one senators in the other party probably representing ten percent of the population. But people like Dr. Levy will never believe any of this because they have a virtual religious devotion to the way they were brainwashed by the media, which seems to have little regard for telling us what’s really important.

Let me refresh your memory of the Donald Siegalman case. He was a former governor of Alabama. He ran for reelection and lost, and suspected vote tampering because he had the victory locked up when he went to bed and in the morning found he had lost. He decided he’d run again in two years. But meanwhile the Attorney General of Alabama filed charges that he had bribed an office holder or something. He appointed a man to the hospital board, which two previous governors had also done. It was an unpaid position. His only crime is that both he and the hospital board member supported a state lottery but the Republicans had connection with Indian Casinos in the state, and would not allow this. He was convicted in a kangaroo court case and immediately put in chains and thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained for seven months.

Casey Anthony was acquitted on the three major charges involving the pre-meditated murder of her two year old daughter in Orlando, who was drowned in a swimming pool, mouth covered with duct tape, and her body found in the woods to be discovered six months later. Casey loved to party and tattoo herself, and was carefree in the months following her daughter’s disappearance. She apparently got a tatoo that reads "the good life" or something. She did not even report her little girl missing for a whole month. She told elaborate lies to cover up her deed even making up a story about a non existent housekeeper, and others who didn't exist. I don’t see how any jury would render an acquittal in such a case but apparently the O J jury isn’t the only one that’s “out to lunch”. This jury took eleven hours after over a month of testimony to render its twelve to nothing verdict for acquittal. The jury had been sequestered and thus shielded from the public outrage over this case. The only chance Casey Anthony has now of doing any time at all is serving the fourth year of a sentence for lying to authorities, which is not even a felony in that state. The media of course has spent much time in the distraction of this soap opera trial, even though little children go missing or are killed every day and none of them gets this kind of notice. It was a day in which justice has not been served.

A BIT OF SELF-EXAMINATION

We all have faults as human beings. I believe even Jesus of Nazareth was not infallible. There were a lot of things he apparently didn’t know, so could not incorporate that knowledge into decisions he made. My primary fault is that basically I’m a lazy person. I haven’t had gainful employment in fifteen years. I don’t research things enough and don’t cite references and quotations in my blogs. Unlike George “Washington’s blog, I don’t read like a newspaper with a flood of facts and statistics. Thus it can be argued that I tend to over simplify things. At times I over generalize and over extrapolate based on a scarcity of actual knowledge. At other times I under-generalize to my own detriment. I want to continue to acquire “facts” about situations and issues when companions around me have long since chosen up sides. The alcoholic’s prayer is “Lord give me the courage to change the things I can change, and the tranquility to accept the things I can’t change, and the wisdom to know the difference”. Some have modified that to go “Lord, give me the meth to change the things I can, the Vallium to accept the things that can’t be changed, and the pot to know the difference. Also alcoholic anonymous says “I should accept God as I understand him to be”. Jesus of KFI takes issue with that going on some theological correctness trip, which would have me respond “You mean we should accept God as we DON”T understand Him?” In 1977 God appeared to John Denver as an old man wearing a fishing cap because he knew that’s an image that his character could relate to”. There is a church hymn that goes “Too us he’ll condescend” –in a good sense. That means “God is willing to cone down to our level”. I don’t like people who are dogmatic claiming to know things they don’t know what the hell they are talking about, but they are cock sure of themselves, but even so they won’t tell you even what they think they know because they see you as “not worthy”. It’s not a bad idea to “state the obvious” at times because a lot of times we routinely ignore the obvious. It’s obvious we have to raise the national debt ceiling before time runs out. I think my moral outrage on the previous posting is more than justified. I mean “chaos is not an option” as I see it. Donald Trump says “I have investigated and found Obama’s birth certificate is computer generated”. That is not news, but this show is a rerun. Emotional and/or political bias makes otherwise balanced people ignore the obvious. I think psycho-tropic medication inhibits the brain’s ability to “put the pieces together” and cause one to do more poorly as both “Wheel of Fortune” and also video games. They call them “reflexes” because if you had to judicially weigh out every decision you made throughout an entire day, you would be living your life forever in slow motion and would be useless, for instance, as an employee.

I think it’s important occasionally to see where you have been, what steps you have trod, and what you have accomplished, and possible mistakes that you’ve made. Also it helps to clarify something for your readers at a later date if you think you weren’t clear or perhaps misleading. I came across the claim that the Federation knows the future to exactitude provided you don’t go beyond the fourth dimension. This morning a representative amended to that to say “in theory we know the future to exactitude, but that isn’t to say everyone in the Federation knows this by any means”. That could be code-speak for “few or none know it”. Yesterday a Federation spokesman, I’m uncertain whether it was the same individual said “You know that idea for a cloaking device you have seems like a real loser to me. If that principle were valid, don’t you think we at the Federation would have found a way to do it by now, with vast resources far in excess of yours?” OK, he made his point. That whole idea for cloaking matter was entirely my idea and I never clamed it came from anywhere else. This morning I was looking for all the reference to the Jesus “dog biting an important person” example I could find. The original file was “Realprog” and it was August 14^th 1995. I reprint the relivent portions and apparently quite a bit else from the period in “Escape from Egypt” in March of 2007. Also in Karn-evil I mention it again and that segment is also reprinted in a December 2009 blog posting. I spent a lot of time tracking those down. Also one theological gem of paramount importance is the September 2006 entry in “Cosmic Tides” called “The Inevitability of it all”, which is a reprint of September 2004 commentary. I also came across “six mental hurdles to becoming a Christian” somewhere. Also in summer of 2008 there is a lot of Bosc house stuff from late 1981 and the first seven months of 1982. I hit a few items covered in this again in recent postings.

Sometimes Randy Rhodes over-reaches. Some liberals say there is a massive right wing conspiracy to not teach progressive history in the schools, that is, the history of social and labor reform in this country. I think it was an under-stressed topic even when I was in school. Some would say "well they would never put Republican women in berkas because if you tried to pick one of them up you wouldn't know what you were getting. She went on to talk about requiring cosmetic surgery for women to make them "presentable" in case they ever want to be some executive's whore. (Shades of Clowie Lane) Also there is seemingly a rise in endentured servitude, which you thought went out in the 18th century. In this case some corporate over-lord has immigrents working for $3.50 an hour and they pay for the privelege because they don't get to keep their money but "owe their souls to the company store". They have to pay for their green cards and probably charged exorbenate fees for these. You might even accuse these people of kidnapping natives from another country and shipping them here, but Randy didn't go that far. Clearly right wingers like George Will love our lax immigration laws.

This is July 4, 2011. I had Stephanie Miller on but that was a rerun. I was on computer before breakfast and ran late getting down and had to get Rice Krispies from the kitchen. We had the usual orange juice, coffee, toast with butter and jelly, and a fried egg. I turned down Andrew’s orange juice because I was still worried about diaria. Oscar gave me a bigger capsule for disria than the usual small white ones, which others had complained was ineffective. I never had a problem with the white ones. I made coffee this morning but did not drink it all, and didn’t give any away either. Last night I sold nearly sixteen ounces of coffee to Janet for a quarter and she complained I was trying to short change her. I gave her the rest of the pot, which filled the cup almost all the way up. Dana’s cups were sixteen ounces. I think the bakery ones, which she had, might be twenty. Sixty Minutes had something about the murder in the South by a KKK member and the guilty man is still walking free in Liberty, Mississippi. Then they had a thing about the Vatican library. I believe they had scripture from about 200 AD. I don’t dispute that date. There is a lot of difference between 200 AD and, say 50 AD. For forty years I’ve been hearing “They are within a hundred years of getting back to the original gospel documents”. Yeah but those last hundred years are a real bear!”

In my many searches I came across the reference to the demon “Osmodeus”, which in fact was a reference to Stewart Sutcliffe. He claims that as one of his aliases. Also I talked about ‘Never having met the third Zachery, as if there were three”. The question is “How do I know there WAS a third Zachery. This is one of those classic cases of "over-extrapulation" I was talking about. Walk-ins so far as I know are rare. Usually when there IS some "personality change" it is explainable to environment, or age, or the medication the individual is taking. I ought to know that being in here. As for myself I never even thought there were Two Zacherys. That was Mal Evans' idea. He's convinced there was a "change" in late 1977 but nobody else has claimed that. So in keeping with that "theory" of his - I have inferred that if the 2^nd Zachery abode in the body of Valerie Shoffner at least for a time. Walk-ins exhibit an amazing indifference to experiances of their own past, as if they had happened to some other person, and I observed a little of this. This would be the one known as the "fake" Brian Jones. But we're all not Raphael Hernandez. Unless you (or I) can come up with major evidence it's best just to drop it. And what I was trying to say in that one file is that Stewart said they (Valerie vs Zachery) were different people based on his own experience.

I went eight days without doing a blog from August 24^th through September 1^st of 2006. I wouldn’t have believed it but I found a direct reference in a word file from the period on the September first entry. I kept looking for more than one August 2006 link and didn’t find it. I was looking for some story I wrote about Howard and Pete that had aliases and I think was pretty fictionalized. I just wanted to check it over. But I never found it. There was stuff about Howard in early September of 2006 taken from the “Yorkshire” file from August 2004, and another paragraph or two from the “Standings” file and I don’t know when I wrote that and didn’t check. I wanted to add those two songs to the “Best of John Lennon” compilation that I had been meaning to do for a long time and from a week after I wrote it I debated whether I should have included them but finally have, when it dawned on me [after someone from the Federation visited to me yesterday] they should be the last two songs. That is in "The Last Hours of Ancient Religion" from January of 2010. I haven’t changed the Mc Cartney one yet. There is more stuff about my musical endeavors in August 1967. Also the compilation of songs in general in the “Kill Kill Kill” posting from Wheels of Vengeance from August of 2006, which seems to be the only listing for August 2006. I took some acedophelis, two little capsules, because I thought it would help my diaria. I’ve had two bouts of it today and had two yesterday, but none of them were really bad, like sitting on the toilet for twenty minutes at a stretch or anything. I consumed a lot of time and that itself made me agitated. I just need to chill out and turn my mind off for a while and learn how to relax. We had roast beef and mashed potatoes and gravy and mixed vegetables for dinner with lemon pudding for desert. Phyllis Green said that the fish we had was tainted and that was on Friday night, just before my problems began. Even Friday evening was “agitated” and over-reacted to stressful events, and I had chalked it up to too much sugar and caffeine, but that may not have been it at all. Janet confirmed she could have coffee tonight, and I just said I hoped I would even be up to fixing coffee tonight. I have this fear I might be boring in my blogs. Sometimes I read my own stuff and find it boring because it “states the obvious”, but that’s because I was already aware of them and have worked through them in my mind. But for others who haven’t worked through these problems, it could be fresh insight.

Today is the fortieth anniversary of the death of Jim Morrison, which I remember being on Thursday July 8^th 1971. I guess he died in Paris in the bathtub in cold water with all his clothes on. That’s the story I always heard.

Now they have developed a camera with “after the fact” focus readjustment. If something near is focused but the background is blurry, just click on it, and it will instantly come into focus, just as if you had taken it that way to begin with. Some hope this innovation will revise the sale of the specific point and shoot camera.

Some argue that elections for US congress are skewed heavily in favor of incumbents because of the vast franking privileges that sitting congressmen have for sending propaganda through the mail any time they wish. The Supreme Court has now taken exception to certain "matching funds" election laws where the government will kick in funds to a new guy, if he's shown he is capable or raising SOME funds on his own. This is one of those areas that calls for wisdom and discernment before any legal decisions are cast in concrete.

AUGUST SECOND IS A DONE DEAL ALREADY

Well a woman on Jeopardy is afraid of butterflies. I think she saw one twoo many vampire movies as a kid. Of course some things we should be afraid of, like what will happen if we don’t raise the debt ceiling. Clearly everything the Republicans would happen if the President got his will will be the things that WILL be that happen if we default on our debts. Interest rates will skyrocket worse than any deficit could cause and the money markets will panic in a chain reaction as the economy is plunged into chaos and foreign investors pull their funds. But to the people on the Mc Laughlin report except for Eleanor Clift, they all think the President should exceed to every one of John Boehner’s demands, and approve every last budget cut and nave NONE of the tax hikes and loophole closures and corporate subsidy cuts that the President wants. They even mocked the idea saying “Now hoe expensive can a corporate jet be?” They accused the President of taking a cheap shot at the rich by bringing up something so obvious to the American people as a waste. They even went so far as to say that the salaries of a few dozen luxury yacht makers might be impacted if we close tax loopholes. Clearly as Maurie Head sang long ago “My mind is clearer; at last I see where we all soon will be”. The President will cold like a house of cards as he does on virtually every issue eventually, but John Boehner won’t acknowledge this and continue to cast the President as the villain as the economy slides into the toilet. The senate is democratic but that won’t matter. The democratic rule’s days are numbered there also, so they won’t think it matters. Things don’t look for the Senate saying democratic next year, and then they will pass a flag burning amendment, which just might be approved by three-fourths the states. Of course the approved method of disposing of the flag in official flag etiquette is - - burning the flag. What are they going to do then? Of course if government closes down how many prisons and mental institutions will have their doors flung open to let the loonies run free and become the bag ladies pushing shopping carts on the street pan-handling when they aren’t talking to themselves or buying food for their fifty cats. Of course the loonies were already set free in the election of 2010 and they took over Washington in the guise of Mitch Mc Conell and John Boehner. Clearly the President has no balls and will not fight for any of his principles. So therefore he will wait till the last possible minute and sign whatever bill John Boehner shoves in front of him. He’s too much like Mr. Data on Star Trek. In one episode Data was bullied by a despot and Data was a slave to his moral scruples and couldn’t fight back the way he wanted to. When a person with no moral scruples confronts a person with scruples, the latter is at a marked disadvantage. They spoke of these mafia moles going along with murders that they didn’t try and stop. Suppose there was a suicide bomber scheduled to set off a bomb at Times Square or Union Station? Would you blow your cover to prevent it, or you pull a Bo Brady and say “I don’t think we have enough evidence yet; we should wait”. There comes a point, like if someone is going to set off an atomic bomb in downtown Detroit that you say “You know, I think saving the lives takes precedence”. John Boehner is a terrorist with an atomic bomb because the economic repercussions are highly unpredictable because such a thing has never been done before. The President has no choice, really but to go along with the Mc Laughlin group, John Boehner and the dictates of the Tea Party’s check list of things to do. And having done so he will have lost every bit of courage and credibility among his own party, but he’ll do it anyhow, because that’s the sort of guy he is. He’s like Ned Flanders who from the back of a long line says “Hey, if we just turn around and look the other way we’ll be in front of the line”. His idea of decisive swiftness if to run faster than anybody else among the forces running in retreat. And at this point the President should at least say “A gun was held to my head and I am not responsible for what happens next”. But he won’t do that either. Instead the tea party will be emboldened making fresh demands the nature of we can’t now even fathom, just like the demands today would have been unthinkable twenty or even ten years ago. This is our current state of political reality.

People make assanine statements. Like "No socialized medicine but take your hands off of my medi-care". Or how about this one, "I'm all for religion and God, it's just all this supernatural stuff I can't stomach". Or "Marriage is a wonderful thing. It's just dating that's evil because it is a "gateway activity" that could lead to sin". The phrase "We all have to live within our means" seems to imply some ceiling on "personal growth". People talk about "printing press money" as though you could walk down to any bank and exchange it for gold right now and you don't want to lose this right. Homer Simpson was once told that the Wickipedia proved him wrong on something, so Homer says "We'll just change it when we get home. We'll change a lot of things". (that remark used to be funny) How about this exchange? A husband comes in and says to a counselor "My wife used to be so full of life and vigor and enthusiasum she brought to everything. But now after ten years of marriage she's down and discouraged and apathetic". The counselor responds, "Well, you' just told me what being married to you did to her". And the guy says "Oh, I know a friend who became a Born Again Christian and the same thing happened with him. Could there be an application of your words there?" "Well, you said it". Or you hear an evangelist say "You know you're gambling with eternity?" And someone yells out "No, I DON'T want to gamble you may be someone I can't trust and screw up my life". Or this: "I know that deficets are bad because I made a bad investment on my home a few years ago and can't pay for it now, and don't want the same thing to happen with the government". Or "Government investment in the ecconomy chokes out private investment". And of course there is always "I don't believe in getting married and I'm going to raise all my kids the same way". That one actually used to be funny. How about a preacher saying something like "He who steals my time is a thief". Or "If you go to church you're a thief if you don't put something in the basket to pay for the lights and air conditioning". Or "God is such an important person that if he feels you slighted him he feels entitled to respond with the ultimate vengence". And there is always "It's OK to talk to God, but if he ever talks to you they'll lock you up". And of course Christians are always saying you should "Keep on doing the same thing that's failed every time you've tried it, over and over again". Or "If I fall down on the job and fail to look after my flock, well it's not me, it must be the will of God". Here is a wise saying "The world is full of surprises". Often the person saying it himself doesn't know how prophetic his remarks are

"LET'S CRASH THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY!"

According to a source, the Republicans are running a pilot program experiment in Minnisota because they have a situation now where a democratic governor will be blamed for Minisota defaulting on its debts. Obviously Republicans love this, because it will insure that the democrat is not reelected. Of course in California here July first i a new fiscal year. You can no longer drive in the diamond land with your hybred car if you're alone. Other changes taking place in California today are the lowering of drivers license fees and the cutting of the state sales tax a full percentage point from eight & a quarter to seven & a quarter. This is the lowest it's been in some time. That may help even me out just a little and maybe it will spur business. Also all those corporate taxes will be cut in accordence with the measure passed by the voters last November, and I believe other taxes are being cut. With all this you'd think we are awash in money but we aren't. They are closing down all sorts of State Parks just in time for them not to be available for the Fourth of July weekend. How unpatriotic! There are continuing drastic cuts to the needy and the disabeled. You get used to one cut and they lay another one on you this week. Now I'm told that there will be a fifteen dollar cut in my state SSI payments. The state budget is being balanced on the backs of the elverly, the infirm, and the poor, including children. So in reality Jerry Brown has morphed into Meg Whitman whom he defeated in an open popular vote last November. Suddenly the machinations of "The Governator" don't seem all that draconian. Now we come to the United States government. The Republicans obviously want to crash that if they can before next years election. Remember it's the overt sentaments of people like Mitch McConell and Rush Limbaugh toi see to it that this President's policies fail. Never before to my reconing has an opposing political party been that candid about their intents. I wish the American people would "wake up" as to what's going on. But instead of waking up and smelling the coffee, the people seem to continue to slide to the political right, as if by inertia or something. Some say that the President needs to be more macho in asserting himself and taking the offensive. A big "Amen" to that.

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has cancer and is being treated for it in a hospital in Cuba. Of course people like Pat Robertson wanted to "take our Hugo Chavez" in 2008, and I don't mean for a night on the town. He wanted to eliminate him, CIA or Mafia style. Of course as you know the Federation tends to be a little partial to left wingers like Chavez and Quadafi. As to the Libyan leadeer, I was told by you know who over a month ago that the Mc Laughlin group was wrong when they said Quadafi would be gone by July 4th. It turns out that source was right, and now we are worried about every being able to get rid of Quadafi. I think the practical reality is that we underestamated Quadafi's popularity with the Libya people. You've seen all those green flag demonstrators on TV. I think on certain matters the us may be guilty of being "excessively proactive" and trying to micro manage all of the political systems of the world. This is an issue on which we need to strike a balance, both logistical and ethical.

Nine more people were killed in protests in Syria today. There are ten thousand protesters in various areas of the country. All that stuff we said in a previous posting still holds. I believe Syria is the country to watch and be wary of, more so than Libya. The US won't win in any brownie points if we obsess on a place like Libya and ignore the genocide in Darfore and other places all around the world. They say the situation in Sudan is improving. I'm thinking that if the Islamists who are the agressors in this situation really believed their own writings they would admit that Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet and therefore has a word or two to say for our time such as "love thy neighbor" and turn the other cheek. You have the abortion trade in Asia which right wingers in Texas approve of, and you have "blood diamonds" in South Africa. I think the United States needs to lay out a clear foreign policy. It was John Kennedy who said we should give aid to those who need it "not because the Communists were doing it, or because we seek their votes or otherwise expediant, but because it is Right". When is the last time the United States conducted foreign policy so as to do what was right?

We are about to celebrate the Fourth of July once again. The weather around here is heating up just as they predicted one week ago. They are getting much more accurate in their weather prognostications. Of course this is a time for reflection and the hard won liberties we all enjoy today, and perhaps put in that Rusty Warren record. We need to meditate on the words, "therefore we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor", and realize a lot of the signers of the Declaration of Independance did in deed pay a high price. Of course Thomas Jefferson's words were edited in some places. The original draft has it "We hold these Truths to be Sacred and Undeniable, that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain inailable rights and that are among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Note it doesn't say these are our ONLY rights, but AMONG the rights we are born with. The term "sacred and undeniable" were changed to "self evident". Supposedly Jefferson put in a line about King George imposing the institution of slavery on our land, but others made him take it out. We need also to remember that the founding fathers came here to ESCAPE religious tyrany, and not to Establish it. (Selah)