We Need a Democratic Congress Now

Democratic congressmen and women are holding an old fashioned  “sit in” demonstration on the House floor demanding a vote on the latest gun bill.    If they would do an up or down bill of the entire House - - often a bill under consideration will pass but the speaker of the House won’t allow it in some invocation of the ‘Haster doctrine’.  The other day in the Senate all four gun proposals went down to defeat.  But on Tuesday Senator Susan Collins assembled an eight person bi-partisan committee to support a compromise bill.   If no gun legislation is this session I believe it will bode dire consequences for the Republicans in congress this November.   At least 85% of the American public want action on gun regulation now.  In other news Donald Trump gave his long awaited speech against Hillary Clinton.  To me the thing was a dud because we’ve heard it all before.  The two candidates are talking past each other always pointing out the other’s weakness, and both sides cheer for their own man or woman as the case may be.   Donald Trump still hasn’t made his taxes available to the public.  This “audit” he’s been talking about has been going on for months and months and Trump is almost opening the door to saying it will still be going on election day so we’ll never see his taxes.  We don’t know how rich Donald Trump is.  Maybe he’s broke.  We don’t know.  

In terms of ISIS verses gun legislation I see no reason why we can't have concerns about both.  That should make Shawn Hannity happy. But Democrats have concerns too, even about ISIS.  We also wish ISIS didn’t exist.  But if we topple Assad of Syria then ISIS troops will overrun the whole country with no one to stop them and there will be hell to pay then.  People will be slaughtered in the streets.  Christians, women, Jews, and other minorities won’t stand a chance.  Ancient historic cultural sites won’t stand a chance and will be sacked and destroyed.  There was a caller on the Thom Hartman show the other day who mentioned all of this.  But as soon as he mentioned Hillary’s name, Hartmann cut him off and began yelling at him as being some kind of an anti Hillary plant.  Of course Hillary takes millions from Saudi Arabia where women and gays and Christian and Jews have no rights and they use the death penalty for everything under the sun.   Let’s make no mistake about it.  We need a candidate who is serious about eliminating ISIS as a first priority.  If it requires “boots on the ground” then so be it.   In terms of strategy I’ll have to agree with Donald Trump.  I’ve often found that my chance of winning in a chess game, particularly a good player, is when the unpredictability factor is higher.  I believe we need s leader who is perceived as unpredictable because unpredictability makes a lot of people insecure.  

Yesterday Hillary really made a major speech attacking Trump and Trump today gave his major speech against Hillary that he was planning to give before Orlando happened.  People want to know whether Trump is serious about bringing back jobs.  If he really wants to help the poor, that’s the way to do it.  The populists are the nationalists when it comes to the economy and it’s the elite on both sides who are the internationalists.  Thom Hartman reminds us that the one way that Trump might defeat Hillary is on the area of this international trade and trade deals.  Hillary had better get her act together on this issue.  The Obama administration has been leaning hard on England to vote to stay in the European Economic Community.  It’s a little unusual to interfere in a foreign election like that.  Rush Limbaugh even agrees that getting OUT of the European Community would be a good thing because Britain’s culture is being lost due to all of this immigration which is suddenly legal.  Rush says the elite don’t want any international borders of any kind, and that’s a bad thing.  I think a dose of cultural nationalism is a good thing as well as economic nationalism.   But the other issue to come to the foreground now is Trump saying “Debt is a good thing, if you know how to use it, and I do”.  Trump has declared bankruptsy four times.  The average American no matter economically strapped they are- - don’t get to declare bankruptsy even once.  A lot of people in thousands of dollars of college debt would love to be able to be given a fresh start by the government.  How come a rich person like Trump gets to do that four times.   Trump like Judy is perfectly willing to suspend logic.  If the law allows you to do that then you’re “smart” to be able to use the law.  So Trump is smart at manipulating the laws to his own advantage, and therefore would not work to see any changes in these laws.  How many people were thrown out of work because Trump had his golden parachute leaving employees to fend for themselves.  Trump speaks of jobs coming back to the USA but Trummp, like Judy,  says that it’s “necessary” or expedient that goods be made overseas because it’s the law of the jungle or survival of the fittest or whatever “Christian” explanation you care to employ (he said laughing).   Certainly this behavior is anything but Christian but republicans just want to be CALLED Christians and identify with this “Christian voting bloc” but they don’t want to adopt Christian morals.   Trump has spoken of the government defaulting on the national debt and giving bond holders fifty cents on the dollar.  If that ever happened the world would be thrown into an international depression.   Those of you who think that Trump is an economic whiz had better think again.   The world may be a much less safe place.   I haven’t even listened to Trump’s speech this morning.  I may add to these remarks when I do.  

Wally was out there talking about the yard, and Scagg’s drugstore and other stuff and mentioned Ronald Reagan and “Death Valley days”.   I’ve never been to Death Valley but one time when we were in southern Nevada we started down the road to Death Valley and after a few minutes we turned around.   “Days” was brought to you by 20 Mule Team Borax.  Of course in the “Carrssel of Progress” in Disneyland they featured a color TV showing shoot em up Westerns.  But Westerns would be on their way out soon.  Ronald Reagan was known as a good speech maker in those days and parents said he was a far right conservative propagandist.   He ran against George Christopher for governor and on June 7^th I recorded the election results kicking off 3^rd Mastro and it was still light when Christopher made the announcement that “The voter profile analyses indicators do not augur well for my candidacy.   1966 was a year of uncertainty.  The stock market peaked out in early February.  You wonder whether the anxiety caused people to want to turn to some other kind of drug.  They were interviewing William Auld for pastor in the summer of 1966 and Auld had the magazine “God is Dead” out and people asked him about that and he assured them that wasn’t his belief.  I’ve always wondered what the statement behind the statement really was that “God is Dead”.  Maybe it was a drug induced LSD revelation some person got that “God is Dead” or something.  Of course people were reading lyrics into songs in those days.  The most obvious of which is “Along Comes Mary” about marijuana.  You had “Strangers in the Night” being about homosexuals, and “Day Tripper was about a prostitute and “Norwegian Wood” was about a lesbian, and “Puff, the Magic Drag On” was about toking marijuana.   And people came to say that “Yellow Submarine” referred to another name for yellow jackets.

According to Norman Goldman just now - - California is now nuclear free.  They are closing down both the San Onofre and the Diablo Canyon nuclear plants, and they aren't coming back.   I'm assuming that carbon tax is in effect.  Judy said a couple of years ago that when the carbon tax takes effect in California the whole economy is going to fall apart and that hasn't happened.  The right wing loves to engage in scare tacticts.  The best minds have now concluded that damage to the economy from minimum wage hike is - - minimal.  Strangely if we pass immigration reform and 'bring in aliens out of the shadows" then these people will be reporting their income and we'll have more tax revenue.  Not only will a corporate tax hike not harm business but it will help the employment picture because people will use hiring employees and the like as an "expense" write off to balance against their higher corporate income that they would otherwise just horde.  That's what they do, they horde it and don't put that earned income in circulation to help the economy.  The golden rule in taxes is that you penalize the behavior you want to discourage, and you provide financial incentives for the type of behavior you want to encourage.  How else can you explain the explosion of the Clinton economy in late 1994.  And remember if you try and cut capital gains taxes too much at one time it will start a securities selling stampede.  Donald Trump doesn't want that does he, a few months after he takes office.

The Longest Day of the Year

Today is the longest day of the year, and the hottest.  They predicted this heatwave a whole week in advance and rightly predicted yesterday and today would set records. The summer solistis point and the exact moment of the full moon are hours from each other.  They call this the “Strawberry Moon” but it’s also called the ‘Honey Moon’ and the “Rose Moon”.   Great day for an arson at the old mental asylum.  Shawn is interviewing Abigail about what she remembers about the cause of the fire but only to realize she is non compus mentus and remembers her dead husband trying to rescue her.  Meanwhile Parker hasn’t suddenly turned eighteen like all the other kids they’ve had on the show.  He’s still a little boy.  Clowie hasn’t yet informed Nicole that Demas is alive and in her apartment.  In the news there was a rumor that Bernie Sanders owes the DNC a lot of money but I can’t find out for what.  Trump fired his campaign manager, Cory Luendauski, or whatever.  Hopefully the replacement will be better.  Frangela this morning said that Donald Trump is a perfect specimine of the composite worst humanity has to offer.  Apple has announced that he won’t sponsor the Republican convention in Cleveland no doubt because of their LGBT stance being likely.  They decided to delete Omar Metin’s pledge to ISIS, which was spoken in Arabic in the phone call transcript.  The justification for it is they don’t want to give Islam any more praise.  The US Senate rejects gun control bids but “new compromises are sought”.  Meanwhile the Supreme Court says that banning some semi-automatic rifles are OK.  Fifty years ago this month “Dark Shadows” began as a long running soap opera right before "Where the Action Is".  I only watched it occasionally.  This summer fifty years ago was when Grandma bought her red Dodge Charger, and Tim only sold it a few weeks ago and says that he doesn’t miss it.  It’s a family icon.  And it was fifty years ago this summer that “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf” came out, which plumed new horizons in sintilating dialog.  Music was just becoming drug oriented.  “We’ve Been Running Around” by the Jefferson Airplane was banned because it has the line “The nights I’ve spent with you have been fantastic trips”, with the LSD allusion.  We had “Psychotic Reaction” later in the summer.  “Sunshine Superman” was another pioneer album by Donavin, a classic, with “Mellow Yellow” kicking off the smoking banana craze later in the year.  “The Spirit of 67” was an album title that jumped the gun by Paul Revere and the Raiders”.  And there was "Eight Miles High" a pioneer album by the Byrds. “Paint It Black” and “Over, Under, Sideways Down” were two more psychedelic songs making the charts.  The photo is of the Beatles fifty years ago doing their last live TV show ever. The Beatles ran into trouble with the butcher block cover of “Yesterday and Today” and got in trouble with Marcos touring the Philipines.  Meanwhile I was struggling with quadratic equations in summer school at Kennedy. You could buy a sixteen ounce bottle of Royal Crown cola for sixteen cents including the returnable glass bottle.  Now the news is that shopping malls are pase and it’s no longer a good place to pick up girls.  That was true with the Anaheim Mall in 1992 just before they closed down the place entirely.  Now that’s happening all over the country even in ‘Classic malls”.  I went out and smoked these fat, stubby white rollie butts that burn quickly and irregularly and are hard to smoke because they weren’t rolled well.  Any breeze you feel is like the hot blast of a dryer.  We were limited to one glass of iced tea from Rico in the courtyard because he had to take the cart to the Senior Topics class.  Fifty years ago your dollar went a lot further.  You could buy a restaurant dinner out for a buck fifty and cigarettes cost only 35 cents, or even less.  You don’t see either cigarette machines or phone booths any more.  And now many mail boxes have you seen on the street lately.  Much fewer than just twenty years ago.  I guess this is important if you have your young grandchildren asking “Gramps, tell us what it was like in the old days”.  This was the first year 1966 – 1967 when for the first time the entire evening’s line-up featured shows in color.  Maybe the Beatles went bye-bye for months on end (too many people burning their albums in the south) but now you had the Monkees to take their place in television.  The Beatles stopped touring and stopped appearing on TV variety shows. 

The Cleveland Cavileers defeated the GS Warriors in game seven 93 to 89 to win the NBA championship.  I missed the award presentation because I was out looking for cigarettes.  Bill seemed to be boycotting the game or something.  It was still hot outside at a quarter to eight, which was the last time I was outside because the AC worked so well in here and the AC actually was still going on after I went to bed which was admittedly early.  I came back in and Lebran James was holding his MVP award.   It was a see-saw score and they said the score was tied eleven times and perhaps more during the game.  I turned on the game right at six and they were getting ready to perform the National Anthem.  The Golden State crowd was loud and in evidence the entire game.  I haven’t heard from anybody from the Federation, where I presume at least Bones was all gung ho that the Cavileers had won.  It was the first national championship in any sport for Cleveland since the Browns won the NFL championship in 1964.  The game ended perhaps twenty to eight.  After this I had some program on KNXT but I dozed off before nine and went to bed.  The covers seem to come off the bare mattress.  The mattress has needed replacing since I got it because it’s always been rock hard, and now it has holes in it.

I got medication from Tom and the line was about half way to the front door.  I woke before five thirty and was restless.  I took a cooler shower than usual but it wasn’t straight cold.  I had problems trying to get a cigarette but there were some of those white rollie butts at the other table to smoke.  I turned on Francis and Angela and they are holding down the fort for Stephanie this week while Stephanie was out bike riding at a hundred miles a stretch.  I’m on too much medication to trust myself riding a bike, certainly any distance.  I am out of money, of course.  Thom Hartman doesn’t speak French and worries whether the French people hold it against him for that.  We had oatmeal for breakfast followed by an omelet and half an English muffin with the jelly already on it.  I got two cups of black coffee from Rico, which I needed because at times I’m restless and tired at the same time.  I got my medication from Ida and that was a short line.  Glen was wearing a jacket of all things, and Phyllis Green was wearing a sweatshirt.  Already at a quarter to eight it showed signs of getting really hot.

I called Mom after breakfast.  I was worried I didn’t remember her phone number.  I need to write it down just in case I have a mental lapse.  Judy had a stroke on Saturday and is in St Jude’s hospital in Fullerton.  This is where Dad was when he had his ulcer.  I remember it was fifty years ago yesterday on a Sunday (Father’s Day) when Dad was out after four weeks in the hospital.  As I recall it was a hot day and we went to the beach and Dad picked us up or something. Judy was also diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease as of a few weeks ago but Paul was keeping that news from us.  This would impact her GNLD business because Judy never tires of informing us of all the government forms she has to fill out by law.  Paul took off work to be with Judy, which makes the whole thing sound pretty serious.  I assume he didn’t want to give out any tentative or incorrect information.  I’m hoping of course to speak with Paul directly.  I was curious how Mom is faring under this extreme heat.  I looked in Google News and they said it was predicted to be 107 degrees but that was in La Canada.  Tomorrow they are predicting 91 for La Canada, which should make it a lot cooler here.  Now they are talking about all of the inbreeding of European Royalty.  So there is a lot of hemophilia and insanity rampant.  Thom Hartman wants us to think about white, rich, male privilege and how out of touch the rich are with the rest of us.  Mom still gets ice water delivered more than once a day and I keep reminding Mom to drink water.  I told her about Bill’s doctor problems.  

It's the Same Ol' Same Ol'

The media can't tell you what to think- - but they can tell you what to think About... Meditate on the Truth of this statement with me now.

 Norman Goldman once again talked about being ready to make compromises.  First we have to get back to where we were nine years ago in mid 2007 when the democrats held congress and the economy was really humming along.  In fact we haven’t yet gotten back to that level of economic activity we had then.  Certainly we are more pessimistic about the future than we were then.  I am totally perplexed at Norman Goldman’s frame of reference when he speaks of this “compromise” we’ll need to do.  We are totally beaten down.  The last time the Republicans had a president who wasn’t hard right and therefore could be said to have “made compromises” was Richard Nixon, and Republicans regard him as a failure and never invited him back to speak at conventions.  It’s my belief that the democrats should treat President Obama the same way if they’re going to be consistent.  This president’s speeches are toxic in that their only effect is to enable tons of Republican right wing response.  It seems clear to me the only thing Norman Goldman wants us to think about is "loving".  In one thing I agree with Donald Trump.  Winning is a heck of a lot better than losing and winning is what we have to start doing.  How absurd it would be for a champion sports team like the Cleveland Cavileers to suddenly "think about" somehow compromising as if that would cause them to win the final game that they would be unable to win on sheer merit.  As the saying goes "A victory has a thousand fathers; a defeat is an orphan".  The whole appeal of Hillary as a candidate is not so much planning to be a winner by rolling out a clear sighted political agenda, but just hoping not to lose.  

Self destructive behavior is horrible.  Omar Mateen or whatever his name is, has this horrible secret he's kept inside him, and I don't mean the shingles virus.  Starting Tuesday we began hearing reports one by one that Omar was on gay dating sites and hung out at the "Pulse" in an effort to pick up gay men.  We know about his repressed personality due to perhaps an over-bearing father with higher expectations of him as to what a good Muslim ought to be.  We need to take a hard look at not only the mass availability of AR 15's and AK 47's but also Mental Illness as a subject for more throrough investigation, if for no other reason than National Security.  We need to find better ways of screening for certain types of Mental Illness the way we have learned to screen for autism in young toddlers.  On the soap opera there is this pretty young woman named Abigail.  In fact it could be that her beauty is her best feature.  But this week she sank deeper into her mental illness by torching the Institution she resides in and burned herself badly including her face.  How is she ever going to get over that?  Shawn Hannity sees everything in terms of ISIS sneaking people into this country by way of posing as refugees from Syria, and he says "They are coming by the hundreds of thousand and there is no way to vet them all because ISIS instructs (all of) them on how to lie to get past the authorities.  So we are in grave danger.  As Hannity puts it "They are taking away our guns to defend ourselves and then letting in more terrorists.  Of course Omar Meteen is from Queens, New York so he is an American citizen.  So apparently Ronald Reagan should have kept out Omar's parents. So Reagan's State department should have been psychic and known that their unborn son would be a psycho-killer.  

Donald Trump is continuing to make one absurd statement after another.  When asked about people on the FBI terrorist watch list being allowed to buy guns, even assault weapons, Donald Trump said, “Let me consult with the NRA”.   Meanwhile there is new evidence that Trump didn’t and doesn’t pay any Federal Income taxes.  There are still rumors that Trump won’t be nominated; that the party will throw him out.   It seems that not only has Trump praised Vladimir Putin but Putin has praised Donald Trump.  They don’t allow homosexuality in Russia.   Trump has said “Any nation that doesn’t subscribe to our way of life and is terroristic- - is a nation we shouldn’t accept immigrants from”. 

Mitch Mc Connell is speaking now after Senator Harry Reid gave a brief speech mostly on anti gun legislation.  He wants expanded background checks and also to close the terrorist watch loophole.  Just for a little background here, the Republicans have been saying as of late that people on terrorist watch lists could be there unjustly not having had ‘due process”.  Suddenly they are concerned about due process when so many of the people in Guantanamo Bay are there on the flimsiest of evidence, or no evidence at all.  The Obvious solution is to deny these people on the terrorist watch list the right to buy a firearm, and if there are any unjustly put on that last then we can deal with that issue separately. There was talk about June 19^th being a holiday in Texas because on this date slaves in 1865 learned that they were now free.  There was also a plug for District of Columbia statehood.

John Mc Cain says President Obama is directly responsible for the terrorist attack in Orlando.  Donald Trump came close to saying the same thing yesterday.  They can’t talk about terrorism or any problem without linking the President to causing it whether it’s race relations or the state of the economy.  This kind of school yard taunting and passing the buck is not worthy of an elected statesman.  The conversational tone is altogether too juvenile these days. 

There has been an incident where Russia hacked democratic computer data banks and stolen all the information about Donald Trump the party was planning to use in the campaign.  Here is something from Washington’s blog on the subject.  NATO had produced in 2013 (prior to the take-over of Ukraine) an informational propaganda video alleging that “cyberattacks” by people in Russia or in China that can compromise U.S. national security, could spark an invasion by NATO, if the U.S. President decides that the cyberattack was a hostile act by the Russian or Chinese government. In the video, a British national-security expert notes that this would be an “eminently political decison” for the U.S. President to make, which can be made only by the U.S. President, and which only that person possesses the legal authority to make. NATO, by producing this video, made clear that any NATO-member nation’s leader who can claim that his or her nation has been ‘attacked’ by Russia, possesses the power to initiate a NATO war against Russia. In the current instance, it would be U.S. President Barack Obama. However, this video also said that NATO could not automatically accept such a head-of-state’s allegation calling the cyber-attack an invasion, but instead the country that’s being alleged to have perpetrated the attack would have to have claimed, or else been proven, to have carried it out. With the new NATO policy, which was announced on June 14th, in which a cyber-attack qualifies automatically as constituting “war” just like any traditional attack, such a claim or proof of the target-nation’s guilt might no longer be necessary. But this has been left vague in the published news reports about it.  Could a President Hillary Clinton be planning an attack on Russia?  

Now the Issues Couldn't Be Clearer

Politically the issues are clearer now in a perverse sense.  I mean by that Hillary is obviously the one to vote for despite her shortcomings.  When faced with the lunacy of Donald Trump there is no real choice any more.  Even Republicans don’t believe a religion of 1.3 Billion people should be barred from entering the United States because of a few long wolf terrorists, who were born here to begin with.  Donald Trump’s insistence on an extreme pro second amendment rights position is madness in the light of the Orlando shootings.  We need to hope and pray we elect a new democratic congress that will pass sensible gun legislation.  Of course it’s a testament to the gay lobby that now even Shawn Hannity is trying his darndest to appear “gay friendly”.   Just like all those imaginary Bernie supporters.  I think most of Donald Trump’s promises about the economy are pure BS and once Trump gets into office will be just about the time the economy crashes, and Trump won’t have a clue what to do.    The thing with the economy is that people like Shawn Hannity have this model of a static economic pie and of that static pie the poor are allotted only so much and the rich are allotted the rest and if you tax the rich they will eventually become as poor as the other 99% which would be awful.  But the truth is that it’s a rapidly standing pie, but even in the economic pie’s rapid expanse, the poor are still taking home less spendable money and the wreath of the rich is becoming unfathomable!  According to one statistic I saw- - anyone with more than $700,000 in assets is in the one percent.  That can’t be right.  I do wonder how many of the one percent have kids or dependents who are as impoverished as I am.  In terms of Trump making “better deals with foreign countries” you know this is the first thing Trump will forget about once he comes into power.  This video I’m watching says Fascism often starts with the nativist working class who feel that they haven’t gotten a square deal and want, of course, to blame the foreigners.  Meanwhile President Obama asks, “What difference will it make if I refer to ISIS terrorists as Islamist Extremist Terrorists?  It won’t make any difference militarily as a means of fighting them”. 

 I had the Gary and Shannon show on over lunch.  Bernie Sanders is making five demands.  First of all he wants to have a dominant role in writing the platform.  He wants all open primaries next times.  He wants same day voter registration.  This would be a problem because it takes the voting officials too long to identify who you are that way.  He wants an end to super delegates.  And he wants the leadership of the Democratic Party thrown out and all new ones installed, no doubt ones of his own choosing.  It’s not quite like the criminal who demands a hundred thousand dollars in gold and a free flight to the Camen Islands, but it’s close.  In soap land now Victor’s testimony before Roman is up for sale to the highest bidder.  If Kate gives him back the majority of his money he’ll start saying stuff about Nicole that isn’t true.  But if Kate turns him down he’ll say that Kate asked Victor to arrange the papers for the fake marriage.  Meanwhile Dario knows Clowie.  But now Clowie doesn’t trust him after he decided to tell her the truth.

It didn’t occur to me that the Orlando shooting would be a false flag stunt.  After all we know who the shooter is and we have the FBI information about his terrorist connections.  Still the attack plays beautifully into Donald Trump’s scenario.  We “need an event” like the beheadings of summer 2014 to whip up the people into a state of psychological hysteria and get them to vote Reputlican, even if only on sheer emotion.  The attack fits the same pattern observed dozens of times over the last several years; in particulars, the summary execution of the suspect and disbelief of those who knew him best, including his family.  Yet again, the timing of the attack combined with the demographic of the alleged victims and the demographic of the alleged gunman, dovetail too well with the domestic and geopolitical agendas in Washington. The Orlando shooting is simply perfect for at least six top priorities of a future Trump regime:

• push the Gay agenda,
• go nuts with the Second Amendment,
• justify Orwellian surveillance,
• embolden the police state,
• fan hatred of Muslims,

Money Draw call came just before two.  I went out and talked to Glen a while and then got in line which wasn’t too long.  That new Linda girl has this red blotch on her face.  Is it from too much rogue that won’t come off?   Gabby was hanging around sometimes lying on the floor.  I asked for and got fifteen dollars.  I took two pieces of chocolate and left.  I went out and bought John Blacks and a turquoise lighter.  They modified the wheel so it’s easier on your fingers, I guess.  Larry Barton paid me back the two cigarettes he owed me.  After a while I got in line to see Dr Saran.  They were calling names alphabetically for once.  Though they were only up to “G” I figured I’d take my chances.  For most of the time I got to sit down in a chair.  Now they’ve gone to those drugstore blood pressure indicators where the nurse doesn’t have to do anything.  I think the figure was 121 over 78 or something.  It wasn’t rounded off to five’s the way they usually do it.  I asked Dr Saran for my blood test results and the folder was empty.  He said he’d look into it. I thought there was something else I should remember to ask him but I couldn’t remember.  Bill has spent almost no time in the room and isn’t here now.

The Cleveland Cavileers beat the Golden State Warriors in a game played in California.  Now the Cavileers are only one game down 2 to 3.  Thursday is game six and Cleveland stands a good chance now.  Friday the heat wave begins.  I went for medication but unlike last night the line was really long again despite the fact it was Tom passing them out.  I got free coffee from Glen on credit.  In general cigarettes were very hard to come by, which is good because I only owe John one Pall Mall.  In his room Glen pointed out they’re making the coffee packets longer now for a stronger brew.  I still fell asleep right at the end of the game and woke up at nine o clock when Bill asked me the time.  I was pretty drowsy and decided to go to bed. 

Mass Shooting in a Gay Nightclub in Orlando

There was a horrendous shooting in a gay bar in Orlando where fifty are dead and there are another 53 injured.  They need blood and people are volunteering, particularly type O.  The shooter was Omar Metin and initially they thought it was an anti shooting because it was a gay night club named “Pulse”.  The President came right out and called it a terrorist act, notably an Islamic terrorist act.  These commentators are gung ho to say it was an ISIS terrorist act because “ISIS targets soft, gun free targets”.  Apparently he drove from Ft St Lucy and there was some Terrorism Central located in Tampa, an hour’s drive away, but the shooter didn’t go there.  Omar Metin’s father believes it was an anti gay shooting because his son is mentally unstable and hates gays, and there are also a lot of gay pride parades going on right now.  Police are still looking for witnesses even if they left before the shooting because they still might have picked up on something.  Metin was born in 1986 and he’s 29 now and apparently “self radicalized”.  There was an Islamic cleric who spoke this morning who didn’t want us all to jump the gun as to the cause.  According to KFI the cops have come under criticism because the shooting started at 2:00 AM but there was a three hour stand-off when hostages were taken.  But according to KFI there was no negotiation but it was just Omar mouthing off your typical Islamic extremist rhetoric.   Fifty people are dead and another 53 are injured which makes it the biggest shooting massacre of all time, even out-doing the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting.   There is speculation he was using thirty round magazines.  It was an AR 15 he had a license for.  So everything was legal. And if it’s fifty calabre they he’d be shooting masses full of holes like Swiss cheese.  The man was under investigation by the government three years ago.  The Orlando police came under criticism because they waited three hours to move in and the thinking now among Law Enforcement is not to stall for time but to rush in early.  Of course KFI had to give us the adage “The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” so if there had been armed people in this night club the problem would be handled a lot sooner.  We are further told by KFI that these shootings are not because of the accessability of guns.  This KFI further says that people when it’s happening to them are in a state of denial and think it must be part of the loud music ambience.  Apparently there were three different D J’s blasting three different kinds of music.

In the Belmont Creator beat out Destined by less than a nose coming from the outside.  Destined had been ahead.  Lani came in third.  “Cherry Wine” “Exagurator” and “Strateveri” were other horses talked about as potential winners, but not today.   It was a fast track and a warm day.  Around here we’ve had June gloom overcast all day. 

There is talk about Elizabeth Warren becoming Clinton’s vice president.  But it may be “a bridge too far” because of the gender issue.  We all know the progressive left loves her.  I think knowing Hillary’s ego, she’ll want someone she can dominate and that isn’t Elizabeth.  It’s also said that Warren lacks the necessary experience in foreign affairs.   Meanwhile Donald Trump has begun using a teleprompter.  Right now they have this touch state map of red and blue states that automatically calculate the electoral vote totals depending which states are turned red or blue.  Where could I get a map like that?  Meanwhile Mitt Romney is still making speeches where he opposes Trump.  The Republican National Committee wants to coordinate more closely when Donald Trump does his campaign attacks.  The smart thing for Republican congressmen to do is to not endorse Trump because that way when he goes down in flames in the fall, they won’t lose their congressional seats.  This would be kind of a reversal of what Obama feared in 2014 by not campaigning.  People are talking about how Donald Trump was a rotten business man.  In one posting, one guy states that “My father turned Donald Trump down for a loan”.  Both Hillary and Donald will continue to be vetted and look worse and worse in the process.

 

SELF CRITICISM: The question arises to my blog readers how I can improve my blog postings.  My readership suffers because I don’t do simple things like check for spelling errors, or put links in when I want to refer you to something prior I wrote.  I should also make my eleven blogs topic related so that when you do a search of a word or topic you have a decent chance of finding it without having to go through all eleven blogs.  I also have certain writing styles which can be annoying.  Often I have annoying changes in font.  Going back to June of 2010 I start off in great big font only to switch to much smaller and less legible font.  I should know that the average person would just stop reading at this point.  I also go off on tangential footnotes of something in a prior posting which is more of a distraction to the current topic- - rather than anything helpful a person would want to read.  It’s my opinion that some bloggers repeat themselves too often.  I have the opposite fault in that I don’t give enough detail to the topic I am currently discussing, which might be something where I need to connect the dots for my readers - where I fail to give sufficient background on whatever names I am discussing at the moment.  There is also the overall problem, which may be the biggest factor of all- - of people’s short attention span, which is probably less than 24 hours.  I find this trait very annoying.  Washington’s blog frequently refers you back to an article of five years ago with no problem whatsoever.  It’s not as if all of the problems we had five or six years ago have been solved.  A lot of them are just as relevant as they were back when they were written.  Mohamed Ali’s funeral is relevant now, but one month from now our minds will have faded and there will be another “trending topic”, which itself will fade in another month.  I need discipline in writing my postings.  That’s for sure.  But other people need discipline in reading them.  It would be helpful if they came to my writings with an attitude of not “How much will I be titillated or stroked today” but rather “What can I learn from this posting that someone took the trouble to write?”  Maybe that’s too much to hope.

 Last night the Warriors defeated the Cavileers in Cleveland in game four 108 to 97.  The Cavileers were ahead during much of the game but the Warriors in the end showed their clear dominance in a game that went later than most games- - maybe a quarter to midnight in the Eastern Time zone.  So the Warriors are up three games to one.  No team in the NFA finals has ever come back from a three to one deficit.  I didn’t know that.  I went for medication at 7:25 and the line was still long, back to the “front room” doors.  The line proceeded slowly with Ida and it took twenty minutes to get my medication at a quarter to eight.  The line was still almost as long behind me when Glenda and Patty got in.  In the morning I got medication from April and the line then wasn’t a problem.  I went out to the bakery for coffee.  I got a dollar fifty large cup because I need to wake up in the mornings.  I had KNX radio on.   “Some Girls” by the Rolling Stones was out this date in 1978.  President Obama spoke on the economic problems of Puerto Rico.  The significance is that the President made it relevant to us- - by referring to them as American citizens just as we are.  But their economy hasn’t recovered the way “ours” has (so he claims)  So the President wants a bi-partisan bill making its way through congress on restructuring the debt of Puerto Rico, that won’t cost US tax players anything.

Donald Trump Could Win in the November Election

Donald Trump has one ace in the hole politically that nobody is talking about.  The economy.  If the economy goes south in the next few months it will vastly increase Trumps chance of winning the election in November, that is if he can even get nominated by his own party, which isn't a done deal yet.  Although I would say when Paul and Judy say it's a lost cause for the Republicans to pick anybody else at this point, I don't see any way of it's not being Trump no matter what he says.  If the economy goes south people will blame the democrats and the Obama administration along with Hillary.  It will be guilt by association.  The fact that the Republicans in congress will be far more to blame than any "executive action" will not be noted by the fickle public who are looking for a scapegoat.  Hartman believed that if the economy took a sharp dip people would blame Hillary and flock to Bernie, but it's too late for that.  So lets then review the causes and cures of this economy.  I'm all about problem solving.  First there's the employer problem of not checking immigrants to make sure they are legal.  There should be significant penalties for knowingly hiring illegal aliens.  These depress the wage base, obviously.  I would also disallow these "sanctuary cities" and also would want it official that state and local could go about the business of rounding up illegals and turning them over to the federal authorities.  But the biggest, most singular thing we can do is to start an FDR style massive infra-structure program for our roads, bridges, and water-works.  America is aging fast.  No Republican wants to do this.  I think we need to raise the cap of social security withholding to at least $250,000.  We could move the age of retirement back to 65 from the 67 it is now and give decent raises in the payments of Social Security to reflect the real inflation rate for old people in terms of what older people have to pay for the items they use.  I wouldn't mind it if we slipped in some one time stimulus check like Obama did in 2009.  We could pay for this by closing tax loopholes.  Then there is the minimum wage.  We need to raise the minimum wage to twelve dollars an hour to give the average wage earner more spending money to put money in circulation.  The "velocity of money" is at an all time low.   The percentage of working people in this country is at an all time low at least dating back to March of 1978, nearly twenty years.  These unemployed are a drag on the economy.  One thing we need to do is stop Paying the Banks NOT to lend money because they can get more from the Federal Government than they could lending it out.  This is insane!  We need to once and for all get rid of NAFTA and the trans pacific partnership.  And we need to change our tax laws so you can't write off business expenses and move your entire opperation overseas.  I would also have the Courts to look into this 'inversion" stuff, which ammounts to the same thing, but it's even more illegal.  We need to cut taxes on corporations to 25% and see what happens.  I wouldn't go lower than that right now because we do need revenue.  In terms of repatiating money shipped overseas, I'd take that on a case by case basis.  I wouldn't issue a blanket amnesty here.  Then we need to change the laws about paying Chief Executive Officers in stock option.  This inflates stock prices artificially.  But more importantly it discourages new hiring.  I don't see what would be wrong with a one hundred investment tax credit- - write off to plowing your corporate income into new business expansion and hiring new people.  I would also encourage people to finish college and I would increase High School standards if that's even possible, so people are more educated to begin with when they come out of the system.  I would also make a lot of speeches about hard work and self relyance.  I would cut college loan interest rates in half from six percent or higher down to about three percent, or perhaps even lower. I would slap on a half a percentage stock traders tax to slow down the frenzy of computer trading, and make a little money in the process.  I would slap on a 30% terriff on foreign goods that compete with goods made in this country.  In this I think I am in agreement with Donald Trump.  I would also get in China's case prosecuting industrial espianoge and also take steps so that they don't manipulate the price of their currencies to below true market levels.  If we do all of these things we should have a decent economy before you know it.  However right now what is destined to happen the next eight months or so is "already baked into the cake" and it would be till January when a new President takes over that we could even think about beginning to see progress.

Bernie Sanders met with President Obama this morning.  Sanders will not get out of the race till next week after the District of Columbia votes.  President Obama endorsed Secretary Clinton today.  Elizabeth Warren is endorsing Secretary Clinton tonight.  Sometimes you can damn people with excessive praise.  If I were Hartman I would be thinking about the future where Bernie Sanders is concerned and not about past accomplishments.  I was looking at the history of the nation of Israel yesterday and also read the history of ISIS.  What both of these have in common is the idea of a cause being Ripe to Take Over.  Israel took over and now the Arab nations have abandoned the Palestinian People.  Israel can literally get away with treating them however they want even though they have no power to defend themselves.  What they need is a good Attorney to help them get their land back but that won't happen.  Contrast this with the "Rightious Cause" of Bernie Sanders.  Did Thom Hartman come to praise Sanders or to bury him?  I couldn't tell from that hour of phone calls this morning.  Hartman wanted these calls to be very brief- - fifteen or twenty seconds, and not to go into "any political rants" about the Progressive struggle still going forward.  No.  Hartman acted like a funeral director who wants to have a little ceremony for the deceast and then go on to another assignment.  Free Speech was not on this morning and I tuned in WCPT for Stephanie and kind of dozed off.  But when Hartman came on Free Speech was back on the air.  I was a little disconcerted about Hartman’s hour of tribute toward Bernie almost as if they were referring to the deeds of a man who was no longer among us.  It took kind of a tone of “Well it was nice while it lasted but now that era is gone”.  It’s like that Captain on Star Trek who was wined and dined at age sixty and then forced to step into the disintegration chamber and become No More.  I could not imagine Shawn Hannity for example having an hour of “tribute” to the conservative message of Ted Cruz in that way.  He would regard such a tribute as kind of a death nell or “note of finality” or burial of the conservative cause.

Sometimes You Can Judge a Book by its Cover

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.  Sometimes "first impressions" are the ones you should be guided by.  Sometimes things are exactly as they Seem.  I didn't like Hillary the first time I heard of her and that impression has stuck.  I liked Bernie and every subsequent thing I've learned about Bernie Sanders has only strengthened that belief.  Paul and Judy picked me up and they were pretty much on time a little after four.  I complained that I had offered to let Bill have my key to keep the room locked during dinner and such but Bill turned me down so I left the room unlocked.  Paul encouraged me to vote when I had told him I hadn't .  Clearly as a Republican Donald Trump would be my only choice.  If I had been truly independent I could have asked for a democratic ballot but this was not the case.  Mom was having problems with her medication delivery.  We got there and Mom was supposed to be out waiting for us but she wasn’t.  Paul went and got her as Judy and I waited on the sofa.  The place was filling up for the dinner crowd even though it was not yet four thirty.  This was the least satisfying dinner we had.  The best thing about it was going to the salad bar and loading up on their stuff and ranch dressing.  I ordered a large “crab cake” and green beans, some very disappointing “red cabbage”, which would have been better raw.  It was some ungodly shade of pinkish something.  There were potato wedges I used butter on and I got one dinner roll but there was no option for more.  I had two cups of coffee. Mom had the briscit, which I wish I had had.  Mom, for once, was actually waiting in vain for a second cup of coffee to warm hers up but we never got it.  We had some small lemon square thing for dessert.  There were no pies, cakes, or ice cream.  They must be undergoing budget cutbacks.   Paul and Judy separated once again and I went with Mom to get her evening medication including her oral anti-biotics for her ears.  Why not just use ear drops?   Then we went to her room and she turned on the TV for the Nightly Business Report.  Their graphics have improved from when I used to watch the show back in my apartment.  But she had the sound cranked up really loud.  Paul and Judy came in.  We talked about politics and Paul and Judy said there were down ballot conservatives I could have voted for.  I wasn’t interested.  I suggested they could vote for Gary Johnson.  They voted for Ted Cruz because his name was still included.  Paul would turn the sound down and to parodies of the commercials they showed.  Mom now doesn’t remember anybody she voted for except she voted for Harris because she didn’t want to vote for somebody with a Latino name.  It grew rather warm in her apartment and the air conditioner didn’t appear to be working.  I looked at some of the magazines she had out but I didn’t take any home.  The bottom line is that Hillary is now the Presidential Nominee of the democratic party having won in New Jersey and here in California by a decisive margin.  Today I read an article saying “The revolt of the Bernie Sanders left is much less of a factor than people feared.  I suggest that this is because Trump’s statements have been so bad that people out of sheer fear of the Unthinkable- -are rallying around Clinton. Judy agreed with me that Trump does things for the sheer shock value and the media is giving him more coverage than "Hillary and all other republicans combained".  But people get burnt out on shock value after a while.  After a while Mom got tired of us and Paul thought it best that I get home for medication.  They gave me an orange, which I ate later that evening.  When I arrived I checked out the room.  Nothing had been stolen.  For some reason the weather seemed cooler back here and the building was certainly cooler.  When I did get my medication only Glenda was ahead of me.  Thom mentioned that he knew I had been away and then I remembered the iron pill at dinner I missed.

 (a few days ago) I wish Thom Hartman would get off of this uppity pedestal he puts himself on like “Don’t tell me how to run my radio station”.   This lady mentions the Clinton crime bill and all of a sudden Hartman is accusing her of “Bashing fellow democrats” and we don’t allow that here.  The thing is that conservatives don’t pull this kind of bullshit in general.  You don’t hear charges of “left wing trolls” for the most part.  The phrase “right wing troll is a leftist construction.  Just let people state their opinion as the title “Free Speech” suggests.  By the way, “Free Speech” is having another of their fund drives,  Donations will be muted just like last time by the fact that this is such a political year.  Speaking of “muted” this is a good word to describe Barock and Michelle Obama’s remarks about race.  Yep.  Back in the sixties people like Mohamed Ali and Robert Kennedy were much more strident about matters of race which you don’t have today.  There aren’t the same role models for Blacks you had in the sixties.  It was pointed out that people who spoke strongly for the Black cause ended up assassinated.  I don’t know if this is coincidence but it seems like there’s a pattern.   It’s just that people like me now have an excuse to come out of the woodwork with another Black icon gone like Mohamed Ali.  

This is Wednesday June 8, 2016.  Yesterday it was John in the wheel chair talking about all the smog in San Barnadino and he also spoke of a red sky at sunrise and sunset.  As you know I used to have visions of that “other life” of this guy named Richard who lived in San Barnadino among other places.  And one thing in my memory was the red sky at sunrise that came early like around five thirty in the morning.  Other cities this guy lived in were Bishop, and San Diego State and also various houses along the Fullerton-Anaheim border.

Let's talk about my prophecy book God's Winepress, and notably the cover for starters.  The front cover is dominated by a heavy line showing the stock market- - with a downward direction but it also forms an "M" for melinium.  Above this line are newspaper headlines such as "Millions Missing" and all sorts of disasters and things like "Suicide" or "Dope Raid" and one headline says "New Hope".  Below this is a mostly white background.  The cover front and back is blue and white.  I originally thought of doing it in Olive but Laura didn't like that color and I asked her "What color do you want?" and she said Royal Blue, so that's what it is.  There is a drawing of a cluster of grapes and a wine goblet with a DCLXVI for "666" on it for the Antichrist drinking the wine of God's wrath.  There is talk of "properly aging this wine".  There are also nine other words on the cover in smaller print.  On the back there are other things like "Who is the Antichrist???" with three question marks.  In the book I note the Trinity as a false Satanic Doctrine used by the Antichrist and I liken him to a three headed snake.  When I list various Cults I notably omit Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, which most "Jesus people" regard as cults.  I refer to the passage in Isiah 63 as "The man from Edom with his robes dipped in blood" as being about the Antichrist and not Jesus Christ. I also speak of Moscow as being the Third Rome and the Second Rome is the Byzantinian Empire where there were a lot of assinations.  I speak of the Antichrist as Communist and at one point I predict Breshnev will die "and there will be a rapid succession of leaders" and one might infer then that Gorbichev would be the Antichrist.  I speak of Esau and Edom in the Bible and King Herod as Evil who pretended to be a follower of Jesus but in reality was trying to kill him.  I speak of the Temple that King Herod built as being Evil because Jesus condemned it.  On the back there is also the words "What does he want?" with tire tread tracks from a tank that are gradually pushed down by the thing above it.  The word "God" is done in a negative or white print on a black background and upside down it looks like "009".  There is also a 51 OHM thing when seen upside down.  There is another occurance of the number nine when there are six swasticas in a row followed by a cross at seven, and then squares eight and ten are peace signs that border a spiral shape thing in the number nine position.  This is like the rapture or something.  Below this there is a drawing of Mt Aararat deliberately from the Russian side and there is writing on the creases of the mountain that are a mirror reverse of "Death to Baal".  At the right there is a hand and finger pointing leftward.  There are lines above the mountain depicting an opening up of Heaven.  To the right there are line drawings that look a little like Viet Nam and the Ming Kong delta- - but they also look like rivers of blood flowing downward.  There is kind of a John Lennon connection where I almost predict his assasination.  I quote from the Bible of a two horned Ram and a he-goat.  This he-goat comes from the "islands to the west- - accross the sea".  Mark David Chapman visited Hawaii shortly before he shot lennon.  Lennon had two last names, John Ono Lennon, hence two horns.  I also make predictions.  I say there will be "continued violence in India" but that South American nations will throw off their military governments and install democracy.  I speak of Russia boycotting the LA Olympics in 1984.  I speak of Japan and China as the only bastions of freedom and democracy in the world.  I also speak of Russia invading Turkey in 1981.  This is the biggest error of the book.  However a few months ago there was news that Russian and Turkish troops were actually engaging one another in a possible precurser of WW III.  I also predict that any European Union would break down because there would be too many disagreements among each other.  We see this happening.  I speak of Esau alias Edom as the ultimate sell out and betrayer.  I alss make a strong case in the early chapters for Free Will for the Rightious and it's the first appearence of the "Cosmic Funnel" which I got from Jim Morrison.  The Saved have Free Will but those trapped in sin, don't.  There are other aspects of the book I have gone into.  The Walls of Jericho is something I go into because it's a city of sin and prostitutes behind walls.  I speak of those Outside the Wall of being the ones with virtue.