Eden Hill Journal

Elena Kagan

2010-06-24T07:58:00.001-04:00

Jewish Supreme Court nominee...

whose hero, according to this article in U.S. News & World Report dated yesterday, was activist Israel Supreme Court judge Aharon Barak.

I find this article interesting in that it clarifies for me the problem with "progressive" activist judges. I have always thought a judge had a responsibility to the Constitution and to the original spirit of the law, but this clearly shows that is not the case.

Brilliant Idea!

2010-06-14T06:54:00.001-04:00

Last week I got an email from Rick Redmond of Mainedems.org. That’s a wing of the Maine Democrats. Maine voters elected from a broad field of candidates an old-school big-cheese Democrat (originally a Southerner but now just a Mainer with some lingering southern accent. Maine Dems seem committed to repeating the mistake Massachusetts made filling the Ted Kennedy seat. We had a choice. Rosa Scarcelli offered us a fresh new perspective, a Democrat with a business background, but Maine Dems weren't buying that. So now we have the ultimate party faithful aging politician as our Democratic candidate running against a very likeable mayor of Waterville and business owner of the Mardens discount store chain as well as three - count them, 1, 2, 3 - independents who have made it to the ballot.

So what do the Dems do to kick off this fun campaign? Here's the intro to the email:

*****

Dear William,
Please join Governor John E. Baldacci and Stephen King at a reception to meet the next governor of Maine, Democrat Libby Mitchell, in Boston.
Yesterday, Libby emerged as the victor in the Democratic Primary Election in Maine and will now face Republican Paul LePage and three independent candidates in the General Election on November 3. Libby is a Maine Clean Elections candidate and individual contributions to her campaign are prohibited.
Maine Victory 2010, the Democratic Coordinated Campaign, will be working hard to elect Democrats across the ticket this year. Please join Maine Victory 2010 in support all Maine Democrats by joining us in Boston on Tuesday, June 15.
Sincerely,
Arden Manning, Campaign Manager
Maine Victory 2010

*****

Good luck with that, Maine Dems. Seems like the best way there is in Maine to lose a campaign. Mainers aren't too fond of having their business managed from Boston.

Consciousness

2010-04-01T10:57:00.001-04:00

A Facebook friend brought this YouTube video to my attention this morning. This is very close to what I believe. It goes beyond me in some areas. These are intelligent men. I disbelieve one claim this makes, though. But it's worth watching.

Size Matters

2010-03-18T07:54:00.001-04:00

It has become clear to most Americans and to investors around the world that the US dollar is shrinking. One of the best ways to measure its size is to measure how many dollars fit into an ounce of gold. The general trend is that as time goes by, it takes more and more dollars to fill up that ounce. Currently it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,100 give or take a hundred.

We're all led to believe that the worth of a dollar is market-driven but we base that assumption on propaganda. The truth is that those wealthy people who run our country need to devalue the dollar and are having one heck of a hard time doing it. One hang-up is, of course, the fear of inflation. If the devaluation of the dollar is seen as causing inflation, then there will be a corresponding upward pressure on wages and entitlements. If wages and entitlements go up, the whole purpose of devaluing the dollar is lost, gone kaput.

Wait a minute...

How can I make that claim? How is it that rising wages defeats the purpose of shrinking the dollar?

To understand this you need to look at what the wealthy are trying to achieve. I know a boner this big is hard to swallow, but here's the real deal. Back in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was president, one of the biggest challenges in government was what to do about the existing problem of inflation. Nixon had tried and failed with price controls. Inflation was running wild through the Ford and Carter presidencies. Reagan's solution was multi-fold. First he worked to deregulate industry to spur competition and drive down prices. Second he turned government and the American consumer against unions because unions always push for higher labor costs and these high wages are always reflected in higher prices for American-made products. But neither of these efforts was enough to control inflation so he pushed for another tool, outsourcing. It was Reagan who really thrust America into the WalMart age when he broke down the protections against low-cost foreign-made goods.

We all intuitively know that Globalization and outsourcing and WalMart have resulted in lower prices at the checkout counter. That's a no-brainer. What we have been programmed by propaganda to deny is that government has deliberately encouraged Globalization and Free Trade to fight against inflation. It is just as intuitive to see, but we are programmed not to think of it in those terms.

Why?

Because government doesn't want to be seen as working against the American worker. Government wants to be seen as working in favor of the American consumer.

Does anybody remember Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound" back in the 1992 presidential election debates? George Bush Sr. was president. Bill Clinton was the Democrat challenger. Ross Perot was an independent challenger. Perot's message was that NAFTA and other Globalization efforts were draining jobs away from the American workforce. He was right, of course. We can all see that now. The American worker is one hurting puppy in today's economy. We have accepted Reagan's inflation-fighting ideas and now one of the greatest ironies in America is that it is prohibitively expensive to manufacture anything here.

That's a generality, of course, but the point is this. If we continue to spend most of our money buying foreign-made goods, eventually we will run out of money.

Did you get that?

We will run out of money. Americans will run out of money. If we keep buying at WalMart we will run out of money because that money doesn't work its way back into American pockets. It gets shipped to China instead.

OK so that's simple enough for even a simpleton like myself to understand. Ross Perot's argument was popular among simple American folk.

But is that the reality of what is going on in 2010? How does 2010 fit into Perot's 1992 vision?

During the eight years of George W. Bush it was becoming clear that something strange was going on but it was all being done behind closed curtains. We couldn't see what was happening. We knew job creation was not keeping up with the workforce but the nation's official unemployment figures looked healthy so whatever was happening was happening out of sight. All of the factors of Reagan economics were fully in play. America's workforce was in decay. Outsourcing was the way to make money if you were an investor or a businessman. WalMart was all the rage. Yet we didn't believe we were running out of money.

How can that be?

Word has it we were running on credit. We weren't so much actually earning the money we were spending to buy all this foreign stuff we were buying. We were charging it to credit accounts.

Time ran out.

2008 happened.

Then 2009...

Now it's 2010 and we are in some deep doo doo. The sucking sound really did happen and time has finally run out. We ran out of money and the credit market crashed just as we all knew it would.

To make things even worse, we pissed off the people who had hoarded away all the money. We pissed off the wealthy bankers and investors. We elected Democrats to Congress and to the White House and investors decided that now is just about the worst time ever to invest in America.

OK, so...

We are out of money.

What can we do about it?

We can't lower wages. Americans would sh*t a brick if we lowered the minimum wage. But workers all over the world are working to produce our goods at wages far lower than the American minimum wage.

We can't close the borders to trade. We can't become protectionist and levy tariffs on low-priced goods. Consumers would sh*t a brick if Congress did that to us, if we were paying government tariffs on the stuff we buy at WalMart.

What's left to do?

Well the answer is to somehow bring down American wages while not making it appear that we are doing that. We need to make it affordable once again to produce goods in America without triggering inflation. Whatever we do, it can't appear to the average American worker that we are suffering inflation. We can't drive up the price of labor in America but we have to give American workers production jobs. How? By somehow making labor in America as inexpensive as it is anywhere else in the world.

How do we do that?

By devaluing the dollar, that's how. We keep the value of the dollar on an even keel here in America while at the same time making it worth less in terms of foreign currencies. We convince China to let us devalue the dollar without it devaluing the yuan. We then print as much money as we need, circulate it everywhere, but make it look to the American consumer that prices aren't going up, that inflation isn't a problem, that American wages don't need to rise to compensate. By the time we figure out what happened it'll all be over, it'll be too late to do it any other way. America will be back to work and anything we do to correct for low wages will be counterproductive. America's labor force will have joined the third world right where the wealthy investors and businessmen want us.

And that's exactly what is going on now in 2010.

Fast Toyota

2010-03-10T05:10:00.003-05:00

I have a Toyota. It isn't a new one by any means, but it's a fast car. Top end is somewhere around 140 mph. I've never attempted that, of course, but I imagine it would do it if the gas pedal were to somehow stick to the floor. A couple of times this winter the gas pedal did stick open but not all the way open, just enough to give me a start. But I don't think my 95 Avalon is wired the way the newer ones are wired. Mine seems to have a cable from the gas pedal to the engine rather than a sensor with wires to the computer and an electric motor on the engine with feedback to the computer.

It's hard to get the story straight. I am somewhat of a car buff but I have yet to see any news article that is written well enough for even someone with my car knowledge to get a good picture of what is involved with these runaway Toyotas. One would think that the whole idea is to scare people rather than to inform.

One thing that really is bugging me is this...

WHY do the drivers who find themselves on the highway in runaway Toyotas not SHUT OFF THE IGNITION?

I just reviewed the CBS News coverage of this week's runaway Prius in California where the guy was on the phone with 911 for something like 20 minutes. Did the 911 operator suggest turning off the engine? CBS mentioned that the driver finally "kept pressing the off button" after he had sufficiently showed the car down using the brakes on an uphill grade.

In a car, what is the "off button"?

OK so I'll have to go check out a Prius. Maybe they have an off button.

But you know what? If I owned one of these newer Toyotas and if I chose to remain loyal to the brand and keep driving it, I think I'd practice turning off the engine while driving down the road. I'm surprised that national network television and the Toyota company itself are not training Toyota owners how to stop their cars in an emergency. Shouldn't it be clear by now with dozens of reported deaths that using the brakes isn't enough?

Practice it, people. Practice when there's no traffic around you. Try it when you're going slow at first and get used to how it is done and what the effects are. When you have that down, practice it at higher speeds. That's what I would do if I owned a newer Toyota. If it can't be done or if it isn't safe to do that, then I'd sell the car.

Political Suicide

2010-02-26T20:51:00.001-05:00

The last thing I would claim to be is a political expert. That's right up there with being a liberal in my book. Plenty of people think I'm a liberal as in left-wing socialist near or even over-the-line commie. I'm no expert and I'm no commie but I do have opinions and my opinion of what the Democrats are about to do with respect to healthcare in America is what this post is about. I'm convinced that the Democrats are committing political suicide. In fact if I were inclined to conspiracy theory I'd even think someone must be paying them pretty big bucks to do this because the Democratic idea of healthcare reform is just plain insanity.

Let me ask you something.

If you were on the Obama campaign trail back in 2008, did you go to any of the rallies where he spoke? I went to the one in Bangor which was just about two years ago as I recall and I remember him saying he didn't support forcing people to buy health insurance. I seem to recall him assuring us that this isn't the way to make healthcare affordable. He went on to suggest things that really did make sense like helping Americans to lead a healthier lifestyle so their healthcare costs wouldn't be such a burden to themselves and to society. The critical point to remember is that this was one of the ways Obama differentiated himself from Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary campaign since her healthcare idea rested heavily on mandating insurance for everybody.

I didn't support Hillary. I did support Obama. So what did I get? I got this dumb Democratic healthcare bill that mandates health insurance and that ensures that I will pay a fine (euphemism for a tax) every year if it ever comes down to me not being able to buy health insurance. Did I vote for this? HELL NO! Did anybody vote for this? Well if they did, I haven't met them yet. Nobody I know wants this thing to get passed. It sure isn't going to win many votes come November - not that I can see anyway. Yet I keep getting emails from moveon.org or the DSCC or the Obama bunch that tell me I need to contribute more money before such and such a deadline and to please call my congresswomen and tell them that I want this thing passed.

I don't. Olympia, Susan, I don't and neither does my wife. Mike, this isn't what the people want. We don't want to privatize our healthcare taxes by enriching healthcare executives. We want lower healthcare bills, not more insurance. Can you hear me?

But man I want to tell you, the Republicans are playing a really good game here. They have these numbass Harry Reid -slash- Nancy Pelosi Democrats backed right into a corner. Reid dumps this monstrosity on everyone's laps last December, forces a vote of 60 Democrats and zero Republicans, all for a bill that the American people are scared to death of and that doesn't even include the one tool that could have lowered healthcare costs, a government-run alternative to private insurance companies. Now it's like oh baby we gotta pass this thing or it'll be political victory for the Republicans - this no matter what the American people feel about it.

The smart thing for the Democrats would have been to start right out 2009 by passing the Republican plan. Instead, they insisted that the Republicans didn't have a plan. Take for instance tort reform. The Dems should have had tort reform done by the beginning of February last year. And they should have broken the insurance company monopolies by allowing insurance companies to compete nationwide. It's a whole year later now and those things haven't been done and the American people can plainly see that it is the Democrats, not the Republicans holding these reforms up. In fact, the voters are ready to believe that they'll have to vote Republican to get these things done.

In reality voting Republican won't solve the problem but that's an entirely different story. This is politics that I'm talking about here.

Democrats had the opportunity to say to the American people, "Hey, you want these Republican ideas implemented? Well we're not here to block reform. Here, let's have a vote on it." Then the Republicans would have had to decide to either vote in favor of their own reform ideas, thus supporting the Democratic effort, or else vote against their own ideas. That's good politics. But oh, no we can't have that happening. Harry and Nancy can't be giving Republicans what they want.

Politics as usual... gridlock... and in this case political suicide.

Or at least that's how it looks from my little corner of the world.

Treading Water

2010-02-04T12:34:00.001-05:00

The other day my wife pointed out to me that the picture on the small calendar that I had put on our main computer shows sap buckets on maple trees with just the remnants of snow remaining on the ground. My reaction was where in heck was that picture taken? Surely not in Maine!! Those conditions happen in April in Maine and this is only early February! Must have been Connecticut.

So I began thinking hmmm March is maple syrup month in Maine. It shares mud season with April since that's when most of the snow melts. January is always known for its January thaw, a warm spell usually punctuated with at least one big rain that turns everything including the car doors to solid ice once the below zero weather returns. December is, of course, when you always say, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!"

But February? What is February known for in Maine? For me, of course, it's hibernation time. More than any other time of year, February is time to tread water, keep the stove fed, sleep, eat, and wait for warm weather.

Actually, here in Maine, February is Florida month!

We tried that one year, drove down to visit friends on the Panhandle, walked the white sandy beaches, enjoyed 60-degree temps (it was a cold spell down there that week), and then followed right up the tailpipe of a huge snowstorm all the way home. The snow in my driveway was a foot and a half deep with a three foot deep snow bank where the driveway meets the road. And that's a conservative memory full of denial! We parked next door.

Nope, just stay home, stay warm if you can, and tread water. It can't be more than another two or three months left.

Abortion

2010-01-31T09:05:00.001-05:00

I don't generally have much to say about the subject of abortion. My own personal feelings are in conflict when it comes to this topic, as are those of many others. Some people simplify the conflict by simply saying that abortion is wrong no matter what and should be banned, no exceptions. Some would allow an abortion to save the life of the expectant woman, but many won't even allow for that in their moral calculus.

I tend to think that abortions are an unfortunate reality in life. I go back far enough to remember what women were going through before the Supreme Court struck down anti-abortion laws. Women were having abortions before Roe v. Wade. Many, if not most, of those abortions were risky and performed by people with no medical background or support. When Roe v Wade came down, many in our society breathed a sigh of relief that women would finally be able to have abortions safely. Those who provided abortion services weren't seen as mass murderers. They were seen for what they were doing, helping to preserve the lives and health of women seeking abortions.

Most pro-life advocates try to paint abortions as murder. They passionately preach that a fetus is a living human being and that to kill a fetus in an abortion is to murder a human being. Yet, despite that rhetoric, I have yet to meet a pro-life advocate who thinks pregnant women who hire specialists to perform these abortions on them should be tried for murder. Apparently it is not murder to buy an abortion. Apparently it is only murder to perform the service. Apparently it should be a criminal act to use professional skills in order to help a woman seeking an abortion save her own life.

When pro-lifers come to the point where they say there should be laws for convicting a woman of premeditated murder for having an abortion, then I'll take them seriously. As it now stands, this is nothing but divisive politics, pure and simple. Scott Roeder earned his verdict.

Free Will

2010-01-28T20:18:00.001-05:00

There's what I have always considered to be an inconsistency in religious theology - does man have free will or does God have everything all planned, beginning to end. Free will suggests that we are generating our own thought processes as we live our lives and our decisions influence the future, we have real choices. Predestiny seems to assume that the entire creation was set in motion at the start of it all and creation can only unravel one way, the way God set it up to be from the beginning. The question in theology is how can man have free will if the entire book, start to finish, is already written?

A Big Bang

Very recently it dawned on me that maybe the answer to that question lies in the theory of the Big Bang origin of the universe. I have proposed an idea earlier about thought, how thought preceded the physical universe, that creation happens when thought imposes itself on force. Big Bang theory has it that our Universe started from a single point, that somehow all of the mass and energy of our universe was concentrated in a tiny point in space and simply exploded out from there.

Could it be possible that at the point of that explosion, every particle created was given the inertia, the momentum it would use till the very end of time? Is the book already written? If so, then what is this thing we know of as thought? Are we actually creating our thoughts or is thought simply flowing through us as we pass through time and space?

What If

What if the Big Bang really did put all of the wheels in motion, if after the first few moments of creation, the book of
Creation was written in stone, so to speak? What if all thought happened right then, during Creation and we are living the physical reality of that original thought?

What that would mean is that all of our thoughts came into being then at the moment of creation. We all know we have free will. We know that fact deep in our hearts. But what if that free will were to exist in the first moments of Creation when God's book of Truth was being composed? What if the very notion of time is the expansion and playing out of this book in physical reality? What if all of time in this universe from beginning to end has existed from the origin?

God is Dead

Unfortunately, I've been having second thoughts about that notion. As convenient as it is in answering the contradiction that free will has with destiny, I just can't buy it. I've decided that the main reason why I can't buy it is that it means that the spirit that is creative thought happened then at Creation and then ceased. God wrote the book and then for all intents and purposes left.

I Don't Buy It

God is alive and permeates Creation with spirit, with thought. This is happening now just as much as it ever has before or ever will in the future as His Creation evolves. God is still out there for us to follow. We didn't leave Him behind at the Creation, nor did He leave us. And we do have free will. Every choice we make, every thought we think, everything we cause to happen becomes written in God's Book of Truth. And there's no imaginable reason to believe otherwise, to doubt this obvious truth.

And to think, all we need to do is become conscious of this.

Surgeon General

2010-01-26T09:06:00.001-05:00

Deep in the heart of the Washington bureaucracy there is a person who is, according to the agency's website, "America's chief health educator by providing Americans the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury." I shit you not. This person is Regina M. Benjamin, M.D., M.B.A.

If there is any hope at all for healthcare in America, it is the hope that Americans will lead healthier lives and not need expensive extensive medications and medical services. The "healthcare reform" legislation that the Democrats have staked their political future on is focused on providing insurance so all Americans have access to extensive medications and medical services, the exact opposite of what our nation needs.

I didn't spend a lot of time at the Surgeon General website but I did notice one thing. It doesn't seem to have been updated since November. The "Spotlight" is Thanksgiving is National Family History Day and as of today there are only three items in the "News Room" dated November 25, October 29, and July 13. The last two represent the nomination and then confirmation of Dr. Benjamin.

The Surgeon General website says that this office oversees 6,500 people. It is their job to educate. Wouldn't you think they would start by using their official government website?

Torn

2010-01-20T13:37:00.001-05:00

I am feeling torn by yesterday's vote in Massachusetts. Voters filled Ted Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat with a Republican, a move that will most likely kill healthcare reform legislation in Washington, thus earning Mass voters their nickname "massholes".

But then again, I can't imagine why voters would want someone who reminds me of Martha Stewart representing them in Washington. Yes I understand, Ted Kennedy was a snot, but geeze, was that a Democratic requirement for the seat? I've been wondering today if she was selected because of some sort of entitlement, you know, like the way Dems put Reid and Polosi in the top slots in Congress because they earned it, not because the world is a better place because of it.

But I am not convinced that the world isn't a better place now that the massholes elected a Republican senator. I mean he seems like a colorful guy. Hey, he drives a pickup! He can't be all bad!

Googol

2010-01-19T11:01:00.001-05:00

That's googol and not googolplex. A googol is 10 raised to the hundredth power where a googolplex is 10 raised to the googol power. All that is explained here in Wikipedia.

I came across a number much larger than a googol in Discover magazine, December 2008, in an article starting on page 52 titled "A Universe Built for Us" by Tim Folger. Online the article is re-titled "Science's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: The Multiverse Theory". The number appears on page 57 in the magazine and has a value of 10 raised to the 1,000 power, ten followed by one thousand zeros.

That seems like a very large number to me, but it appears in this article as a speculation of how many different universes there would have to be in creation in order for one of them to support life as we know it. In other words if the universe we exist in evolved randomly after the Big Bang, there would have to be ten followed by a thousand zeros other universes out there that randomly evolved differently from ours.

Fascinating thought, I know.

But the most fascinating part is that the article seems to be saying that scientists, in order to rule out the possibility that our universe's evolution was guided by any form of intelligence, are saying that there must be ten followed by a thousand zeros other universes out there all randomly evolving and none capable of supporting life as we know it.

Smart men these scientists, don't you think?

Climategate taught us that scientists use "tricks" to prove their theories. Would this qualify as a trick?

Artificial Medicine

2010-01-17T15:08:00.001-05:00

"Ask your doctor," the ads say, ask your doctor if this or that patented chemical concoction - being sold for profit but deemed unsafe for healthy people and thus available only by prescription - will work for you.

Isn't it ironic that if you are sick doctors tell you to take chemical cure-alls that would make you sick if you were well, that somehow by doing this you might regain your health. The real irony is that these things are called medicine. Chemical concoctions that are so dangerous that healthy people are by law prohibited from purchasing and using them are being administered to the ill under the assumption that they will somehow make sick people healthy again.

I would like to propose that we call this phenomenon "artificial medicine." If any substance is not safe for use by healthy people, then it is not safe for use by the unhealthy. It is the assumption otherwise that makes them artificial for healing purposes.

Self Destruct Mode

2010-01-08T11:40:00.001-05:00

I've come to the conclusion that Wall Street has a built-in self destruct mechanism that nobody seems to be paying attention to even though it nearly destroyed our economy over the past two years. What I am referring to is the commodities trading market which in recent years has come to include things our entire economy depends on like energy, food, and water. These commodities are traded by investors looking for good gains in short-term investments. There are other ways to get such gains, such as milking the cream off the top of the stock market by buying stocks when they dip and selling as soon as there is significant increase in the stock price. Lots of investors make money doing that at the expense many times of long-term investors.

But the commodities market is a different story. Commodities can look good even when the economy and the stock market aren't looking so good. A good example is when the Dow started dropping from its October 2007 high. Investors shaken by the fall of the Dow went looking for something that would hold steady or even go up. They found it in oil and food futures. For awhile there, the first half of 2008, oil was looking like a really good investment so a lot of money went chasing its tail into the oil futures market. The result, as the whole world noticed, was that fuel and food prices headed for the roof.

For the investors - Wall Street - this was seen as a good thing. Money was being made even while the Dow was dropping.

For the rest of the country - Main Street - it was bad. It was inflationary. It devalued the dollar. It was beginning to convince us that suburbia, long commutes, giant houses, and gas-guzzling American-made SUVs were all a bad dream.

The result, driven by this investment in commodities futures, this casino-like mania to make money in a falling economy, drove the whole world's economy into the ditch. And this system still stands waiting for the occasion to rear its head and do the same thing again. I'm no Wall Street expert, but I'd wager that nobody is going to pass laws to prevent commodities speculation the next time the economy takes a dip.

Powerful Thoughts

2009-12-28T15:48:00.001-05:00

Just before Christmas I wrote about force, that force is the basic physical ingredient of the physical universe. I also think that thought is the basic ingredient of the spiritual. For thought to manifest itself, for it to make itself real, all it needs to do is manipulate force and the thought is manifested into physical reality.

How does this work? I wish I knew. That part hasn’t come to me yet. But two things are undeniable – that thought comes before any action is manifested and that all matter and all energy represent some form of thought, some form of reason, some reason for existence.

Putting that second assumption another way, all physical matter and all energy consist of thought, of code that represents its reasons for existence. Matter and energy are coded reason, physical memory that not just stores but consists of its own reason for existing.

Virtually any description of the higher self, of higher consciousness, describes these truths. Matter and energy speak directly to and with our higher self in a complex, timeless, infinite realm of reason visible to our inner eye. This is spiritual vision.

Force

2009-12-23T17:19:00.001-05:00

It’s taken me long enough but I think I’ve finally hit on my philosophy of life, of how to figure out how to live my life from this point forward – how to figure out things as time goes on. With any luck, time for me will still go on for quite awhile longer but I leave that fate to the angels. They seem to know a lot better than I do about that subject.

But what I have just concluded is that the universe, every bit of it physically is made of force. I know that’s a pretty tall claim but I just don’t see how it can be any other way. But that’s not the totality of my realization. I’ve actually suspected the force composition idea for decades, have even written about it before.

But that’s the physical part of the universe. The spiritual part is thought, the act of thinking, which so incredibly easily manipulates to animate force to become real. Reality creates itself by thinking itself into the physical, controlling the physical through force, through actual physical force.

So that being said, I have realized now that I have control of my life. I can only share my thoughts with the rest of reality but when it comes to the thoughts that create me, I have control of that – actually whether I want it that way or not.

I do.

My first act - leave it to me, Bill, the base male animal that he is in reality – is to declare myself independent of the side of me that wants woman for sex. I give up. I’m too old for that, ladies, and I never was interested in you, guys… not when it comes to sex.

My deepest apologies to any lady whose hopes are shattered, but my fondest gratitude to any woman who has been so generous as to share of herself with me.

Now to sweep out the toys.

Well first to finish sweeping out the hard drive, disinfect it and then get the frags out. I’ll post after I’m hooked back up.

…

Ah, time has passed as it always seems to do. The hard drive is clean, defragged, and I’m back online. Time to upload! Slap it up and pin it on the wall. Wish me luck!

Oh and to the ladies I’ve flirted with any time recently, men are all dogs. That we know. We men are all George Clooneys. But if I ever get out of line, just spank me, Mama, before you do anything else.

Climate Fiascoes

2009-12-18T09:26:00.001-05:00

I haven't had much to say recently about Global Warming, Climate Change, Anthropological Climate Change, or whatever else you wish to call it. Awhile back I did comment on JoNova's "Skeptic's Handbook" but I haven't followed up on that thread since. Now there are "Climategate" and the Copenhagen climate talks to add to the mix.

It's getting harder and harder to take Global Warming seriously. On the one hand there are scientists so set in their ways, so convinced of their mastery of the subject that they won't belittle themselves by engaging the deniers in debate. On the other hand you have the deniers so set in their ways, so convinced of their mastery of the subject that they won't belittle themselves by engaging the Global Warming advocates in debate. By debate, I mean a point by point open-minded discussion of the related issues such as whether there is reduction or increase in polar ice, whether the oceans are on average warming or cooling, whether the high-mountain glaciers are growing or receding, whether the sun is in a warm cycle or a cold cycle, whether Global Warming scientists as well as deniers are fudging their proofs, the list goes on and on. There doesn't seem to be any honest debate going on.

In my mind the reason why this debate seems more political than scientific is because the debate is political. It isn't science-based even though it purports to be so. Both sides of the debate have ulterior motives that really aren't being expressed.

People who have long been concerned about air pollution, runaway commercial consumerism, depletion of the earth's nonrenewable energy resources, and imperial wars over those resources have openly and warmly embraced Global Warming theory as the "gotcha!" moment in the debate. Here finally is proof that all the warnings about mindless consumerism will prove right.

On the other hand, Global Warming can't be right. There's no real evidence that the majority of people here on earth have in any way been impacted negatively by consumerism and even if there were to be such evidence, we can't afford to change. It would bankrupt the world's strongest economies. And to boot, it would mean that all the many ways we have found to use energy resources to further our comfort and pleasure as well as our recreation would have to go. We simply can't afford to do that right now so Global Warming has to be a farce.

So until and unless we as a world start taking this a little more seriously and start debating the real issues, it's hard for me to take anything about this seriously. That doesn't mean I don't think we need to conserve energy or develop cleaner renewable resources. I'm all for that. But I'm not about to support world socialism in order to maintain American/European/Asian commercial consumerism. Commercial consumerism will die of it's own suffocating weight. Its death doesn't need to be forced down our throats by power and wealth-hungry socialists.

Disturbing

2009-11-20T13:54:00.002-05:00

Forgive me if I disturb you.

Today is a cold, wet, gray day in Maine. I have myself couped up inside the house feeding the woodstove… and eating.

After finishing the dishes I went to a website that I have been following for the past few months – What Really Happened. It’s approaching the 46th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy so this mostly conspiracy theory website is reflecting on that event in American history.

I followed a link from there to this article in Rolling Stone dated April 5, 2007 about CIA career man and convicted Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt who died January 23, 2007 after years of suffering. In the article, Hunt’s oldest son Saint, no saint by anyone’s standards, tells of a confession his dad made to him in 2003 when it appeared that he didn’t have much longer to live.

Those old films of President Kennedy in the back seat of that Lincoln convertible, Jacqueline at his side, both smiling and waving at bystanders, Texas Governor John Connally in the seat in front of Kennedy, are hard to watch for me. I generally stay away from that sort of thing. Disturbing…

But awhile back I did just that and noticed something I hadn’t seen before, although obviously anybody can and most have seen it. After the first shot, Kennedy is bent forward but a sudden jolt catches him and throws him back and to the left towards his wife, as though he had been hit by a shot taken from ahead of and to the right of the Lincoln. That is the direction repeatedly given in this article as being the location of the infamous “grassy knoll” where the forever denied second shooter would have been.

Both this article and Wikipedia point out that there are multiple sources that place E. Howard Hunt who was at that time still in the CIA and carrying a huge grudge against President Kennedy, not just in Dallas that very day, November 22, 1963, but in Dealey Plaza, the site of Kennedy’s assassination.

Coincidence can’t possibly explain this.

Disturbing is all I can say. Deeply disturbing.

Fort Hood Shooting

2009-11-09T10:01:00.001-05:00

I continue to be fascinated by the Fort Hood shooting in Texas last week. The story has it that a Muslim of Palestinian descent born and raised here in the USA and educated by the Army, a Major by rank and a psychiatrist who has been treating soldiers for mental fatigue and stress related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a man of deep Muslim faith who had himself been subjected to anti-Muslim taunting by his fellow soldiers even, finally cracked and went on a shooting rampage on-base where he was able – presumably with the help of Allah – to shoot something like 51 people, 13 of them fatally, using two personally-owned handguns over the course of several minutes and maybe even in two different locations before finally being taken down by four bullets from a civilian policewoman.

I have to admit, that is quite an accomplishment! God must be some kind of good if He enabled that!

Everyone, now including Connecticut’s Jewish (independent right-wing neocon Democrat) senator Joseph Liberman is using this event to make political hay, both on the right and on the left (but mostly on the right).

Political correctness has it that the shooter was a coward and a traitor so woe be to anyone who tries to shed any understanding on how this war on Islam could possibly cause an American soldier to snap. Instead, it is politically correct to brand this as terrorism and the proper reactionary response to terrorism (proper in a pro-Israel sense) is to lash out against Islam.

Oh yay.

Believe This

2009-11-02T21:07:00.001-05:00

It was a year ago that Americans voted for change we hoped we could believe in. Today we discover how wrong we were. The Obama administration today set the example for what we as a nation now expect for an elected government to be legitimate.

Jews Don’t Discriminate

2009-10-29T21:41:00.001-04:00

Or do they?

Who’d A Thunk

2009-10-28T20:09:00.001-04:00

I noticed in today’s news that the brother of Afghanistan’s president is reportedly on the CIA payroll. This is the very same brother who is suspected of being deeply involved in Afghanistan’s corruption, or more specifically, Afghanistan’s booming opium and heroin trade. For more information I point to The New York Times.

Presumably our CIA doesn’t have the resources or the skills needed to determine if this man is indeed involved in the drug trade or for that matter in any other kind of corruption in Afghanistan.

Would someone please remind me what the CIA’s function is?

Moosehead Grows

2009-09-25T06:58:00.001-04:00

Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission which we all call LURC (as in lurk or snoop around, “to lie in wait in a place of concealment especially for an evil purpose”) held a hearing Wednesday on the “concept plan” for development of Plum Creek land in the Moosehead Lake region of Maine. The purpose of this hearing was to announce that LURC had approved the plan, thus terminating a process that has been going on for the past four years.

This is all in my back yard, so to speak. Plum Creek owns much of the land in and around Greenville. Plum Creek is a Seattle-based timber management company turned real estate management company when forest development markets soared in the past decade. They bought Maine forest land cheap in the late 1990s and now wish to market some of it to the public for big bucks, a process which, if it happens, could significantly alter the Moosehead Lake area. Likely consequences for my home town would be increased real estate valuations, increased demands for public services possibly including Greenville’s schools, fire department, and police, increased taxes, increased in-town traffic, and a general deterioration of the myth of Greenville and Moosehead Lake being remote wilderness. These potential negatives would supposedly be offset by the increased revenues for Greenville area residents who take advantage of employment opportunities related to these developments.

I personally don’t know what to make of all this. If this development does actually happen, it could and probably would significantly impact me personally. Although there might be benefits, there would almost certainly be drawbacks including significant increases in my property tax burdens. But the larger question is what would become of my town? How will this much development alter the Greenville and the Moosehead Lake that everybody who knows them loves?

Nobody has an answer to that question. Now LURC has made it clear that nobody really cares. It’s the money that counts.

Squatters

2009-08-29T12:09:00.002-04:00

Last night I was at the American Folk Festival in Bangor. Friday is the first day of this 3-day 5-stage music and food and craft fair event and the music starts at 6:00. Today, Saturday, is a cold wet day so I think we'll be skipping it till tomorrow, staying home to make blueberry jam instead.
I had an absolutely wonderful evening, though, listening to music and milling around in the huge crowd. I've never seen that many people on a Friday night at that festival. But it was 1:00 in the morning before I got into bed back home. We were even stopped on the edge of our own town in an apres-midnight police roadblock. This morning I was reading a Bangor Daily News blog about everybody bitching and moaning about the finances of the festival. Hey I think the bucket brigade is a wild idea. I enjoy the guilt trip! The one bitch I've had, well there are two truth be known, but the big one is that nobody has been allowed to stand in front of the stage at the Railroad Stage, the biggest stage and viewing area of the festival. Instead, people sit in these folding camping chairs that they all bring with them. It's a first-come-first-served sort of thing where rules of etiquette would forbid any polite person from standing in front of one of these camp-chair space hogs. It's like the seated people have precedence. Well it burns my ass that these people set up camp close to the stage so nobody can go stand down there. It was even worse last year when the festival organizers had set up a VIP seating section and through most of the shows nobody sat anywhere close to the stage, empty seats! What a drag that must be on the musicians!
Well anyway, I've come up with a name for these camp-chair real estate hogs. From now on I'm calling them squatters. Go to hell if you don't like my attitude.

Massholes

2009-07-26T20:54:00.002-04:00

I generally don't think of myself as agressive and as I age I am becoming even less so. But I generally don't think of myself as passive aggressive either, as hiding my aggression and venting it in unexpected ways. But I don't know, maybe I should reconsider. I've been spending time on America's Interstates and tollways this summer. Maybe I am inclined towards passive aggression. I'm thinking maybe I need a bumper sticker that reads "Passive Aggressive Driver, Don't cross me" on it.
Here's the reason I'm thinking this.
For some reason it is becoming much more expensive to fly into Bangor or Portland or Manchester than it is to fly into Logan in Boston. My daughter is coming home this summer and is flying into Logan for this reason. You can literally save hundreds of dollars if you are willing to drive into Boston to fly in and out of Logan.
Well I've never been to Logan and up until yesterday I had only driven in Boston twice in my life, once last year to a Red Sox game, and once many years ago at midnight just for the thrill of it. Other than that I have always used either the I-495 bypass or Route 128.
Massachusetts drivers have a reputation. The Urban Dictionary nails it head-on. We have tons of Massachusetts drivers here in Maine since Maine is for them a nearby playground and an easy escape. We know they live up to this reputation. But there's nothing like actually going down there to Boston and being absolutely surrounded by them! Well that is, there was nothing like it until recently. Now half the drivers on any Interstate in the country drive 10 to 20 miles per hour over the limit and will cut you off any chance they get and some states are even considering legislation that gives priority on the highway to the aggressive drivers.
But I digress...
So yesterday afternoon my wife and I drove into Boston and went to Logan to have a look around. As near as I can tell there are only two exits from Logan as opposed to the three ways in. We took the road in that doesn't involve toll tunnels under the city. We came in from the north on US Route 1A. But to get out, we paid $3.50 for the thrill of driving through a mile or two of tunnels until we could come out on I-93 northbound.
Imagine being under the ground in long narrow holes, merging left as lanes end, rounding curves, exiting left, exiting right, far exceeding speed limits, and surrounded by massholes.
So I'm thinking what the nation needs for self defense is some way to fight back and I'm thinking aggressive driving is the problem and not the sollution. Passive driving gets you into trouble, not out of it. So I'm thinking the solution must be passive aggressive - passive agressive driving - like "watch out you massholes, you're dealing with something different here, something unpredictable."
And I'm thinking I should post a warning on the left rear corner of my car to alert them of the danger, thus my idea for this new bumper sticker...
PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE
DRIVER
Don't cross me

Glitch

2009-07-03T09:23:00.003-04:00

Well now here's a curious little glitch. I've always used Front Page to write my blog. It's easier that way. I could save my work along the way, use Front Page to format links, spell check, then copy and paste into the Blogger editing window.
All of a sudden that no longer works. I can't paste from the Windows Clipboard into the Blogger editing window, even using the Ctrl-V keyboard shortcut. I can paste into the "Title" text box and into the "Labels for this post" text box, but not into the main edit box.
Well frig, eh?

How They Feel

2009-06-06T22:03:00.000-04:00

I wonder how long this link will last. The video here is available on YouTube if you can prove you are 18 or older. Why? Because of sexual profanity? Not likely. Not that the contents aren't profane, mind you. A bunch of drunk Jews telling Max Blumenthal how they feel about Obama.
Speaking of how the Jews feel about Obama, this Jonathan Tobin post says it clearly. Do what we say or we'll send AIPAC after you, but hey, that doesn't mean AIPAC is a cabal or anything. Jews don't have power in America.

Page 8

2009-05-27T17:37:00.001-04:00

On May 24 I posted about Global Warming and in particular about a chart on page 8 of JoNova's The Skeptic's Handbook. Today, someone appearing to be JoNova commented on my blog about that post. The comment was polite but lends little to expand upon that page 8 chart.
So I did some Googling.
First, here is my post and JoNova's comment on my blog. Now mind you I have a hard time convincing myself that important people in Perth Australia stay up at night reading my blog, so maybe someone is spoofing me or is serving as proxy for JoNova's effort. Be that as it may. I am, after all, a skeptic, aren't I?
At her website, JoNova gives references for her Skeptic's Handbook.
JoNova gives this reference as the source of the bar chart on Page 8 of her Skeptic's Handbook. The same chart appears as Figure 17 in this May 2007 presentation by David Archibald.
Archibald references his own work copied here as the source of Figure 17 in the paper listed above. The very same chart appears in this paper as Figure 4. A stacked bar chart showing similar information is shown as Figure 11 in this Archibald paper.
Archibald refers in his text concerning this chart to "the MODTRANS facility maintained by the University of Chicago" which appears to be this online calculator. Reference to this was found in comments here.
An interesting rebuttal to Archibald's use of this calculator is given here by "david" who, it appears, may be Dave Archer who maintains the calculator - reference "Response" to response number 10 on this site.
So the person responsible for maintaining this calculator used by Archibald and referenced by JoNova on Page 8 of her Skeptic's Handbook claims that Archibald is deriving incorrect (deceptive) data by using an unreasonably small conversion factor in the conversion from the calculator's results to temperature change. Archer claims the error to be a factor of 10. The point is that Archer's MODTRANS calculator does not predict the results that Archibald is plotting in this chart and then crediting to MODTRANS.
So I'm thinking maybe I need to keep looking. Maybe this handbook isn't quite what it purports to be.

Skeptical about Common Sense

2009-05-24T09:32:00.000-04:00

I've been a greenhouse gas believer for quite some time now. The logic of it seemed obvious to me. Greenhouse gasses capture heat from the sun. We are producing an ever increasing concentration of greenhouse gasses by fueling our industrial age with fossil fuels. Therefore we are putting gasses into the atmosphere that capture the sun's energy as heat and this is causing global warming. Makes good sense to me.
Along comes a little graph in a little booklet from Australia and all of a sudden I'm a skeptic. I suppose I should test this graph before I believe it, but before I do that, I'll share this little booklet with you. The graph is a bar chart on page 8 and it titled "As Carbon Dioxide Increases it Has Less Warming Effect". Combined with the line graph on page 5 showing global temperature variation verses carbon dioxide concentration between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago derived from Greenland ice core samples, the graph on page 8 shakes the greenhouse effect argument right to the core. Yes carbon dioxide causes a greenhouse effect, but the effect significantly - logarithmically - decreases as concentrations of CO2 increase to the point where the increases we are seeing now are insignificant. I had been led to believe that the logarithmic effect was just the opposite of what this bar chart shows.
So the pamphlet is called The Skeptic's Handbook. It is on a PDF file (2.72 MB).

All About Appearance

2009-05-11T06:42:00.001-04:00

Here's an interesting article in Haaretz.com: Jerusalem worried over breakdown of U.S.-Israel cooperation under Obama
In my view this is a hopeful sign, but with Israel you have to remember that everything public is all about appearances. The Mossad is always behind the scenes working out it's agenda secretly. But the American people last November chose to move our government to the left while since November Israel chose to create a humanitarian disaster and waged an atrocity-laced war, and followed that by taking a political turn further to the right in Israeli leadership. Perhaps now the Israeli people are beginning to see some political blowback for their chosen actions.

Bad Boy Bad Boy

2009-05-05T08:47:00.001-04:00

I have been a bad boy.
Let me explain...
A few years ago someone found one of my email accounts and assumed I was somebody else, that I was the pastor of a church, their church. Recently I've been receiving emails from these people, I'll call them Betty and Ken for lack of a better name. Last week they sent me one that was a "Powerful wake up call" about how the Muslim population growth is going to take over the planet. America's fertility rate can't sustain our culture. Here's the YouTube video. Did you know that France will be an Islamic republic in just 39 years? America's fertility rate is 1.6
Well anyway, this week they sent me an email about some movie due out this summer that portrays Jesus as a homosexual. Here are the contents of that message:
*****
The movie Corpus Christi is due to be released this June to> August.??> > This disgusting film set to appear in America later this> year and it depicts Jesus and his disciples as homosexuals!> As a play, this has already been in theatres for a while.> It's called Corpus Christi ' which means 'The> Body of Christ'.? ?It's a revolting mockery of our> Lord. But, we can make a difference. That's why I am> sending this e-mail to you. If you do send this around, we> may be able to prevent this film from showing in America and> South Africa .?> > Apparently, some regions in Europe have already banned the> film. We need a lot of prayers and a lot of e-mails.> > As a Christian I want to take a stand in what I believe in> and stop the mockery of Jesus Christ our Savior.?> > At the risk of a bit of inconvenience, I'm forwarding> this to all I think would appreciate it. Please help us> prevent such offenses against our Lord. It will take you> less than 2 minutes to pass it on.?> > ?If you are not interested,? or do not have the 2 Minutes> it will take to do this , please don't complain when God> does not have time for you, because He is far busier than we> are..?> > Remember, Jesus said 'Deny Me on earth and I'll> deny you before my Father'?> > > > > > > ?> > > > > > ?> > > > A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2> easy steps!
*****
Well for some reason I felt compelled to email Ken and Betty back. Here's what I wrote:
*****
Betty and Ken,After some brief research about the movie that your email claims will be released this summer, I discovered the probability that the the contents of your email were false. Bearing false witness is not only a sin, it is evidence that you are serving as an agent of Satan and as such, will not be spending eternity with God and Jesus and myself in Heaven. To confirm this, could you look into the truthfulness of this email which you sent me and if you find it to be false (as I have found), could you please issue me a sincere appology and ensure me that you will never do anything like this again?On the other hand, if this actually is a film coming out this summer, could you poosibly notify Snopes.com and have them correct thair error?Bill Walden
*****
I should have spell-checked it.
Well Betty and Ken didn't like this email very much. They didn't apologize for it. Here is their reply:
*****
We cannot believe this was sent from you. Assuming that is was, this is my response. The only apology I owe you is that I forwarded an email to you. I did NOT believe that email, I thought, you as a Pastor would be interested in what is going around on the internet. I am not computer savvy and don’t even know what “Snopes” is. I have to say that your response was very unkind and hurt both me and Ken deeply. We took it as a personal attack. We have been faithful attendees at Cornerstone for 13 years, supporting your ministry and you don’t even know us, thinking that we are serving as agents of Satan! Unbelievable!!!! As of this email we will no longer be coming to Cornerstone. Ken and Betty [redacted]
*****
Well now, that is sad, isn't it? Betty and Ken were so hurt by Pastor Bill that they will no longer be attending or supporting Pastor Bill and his ministry. I felt moved, so I wrote this reply:
*****
Hahahahaaa!!!! That is hilarious!!!One suggestion, though. Give your pastor a call first.Sincerely,The other Bill Walden (?)LOLOh, and do your homework next time and figure out what Snopes.com is before you forward any more of these lies. God didn't give you a brain just to time your farts with.
*****
I am a bad, bad boy.

Breaking News

2009-04-29T20:52:00.001-04:00

Late breaking news on FOX... The Republican Party isn't moving farther to the right! Take that, Arlan!
Is this true or just another good example of amnesia?

Sour Grapes

2009-04-28T09:00:00.001-04:00

Last night I wrote about the Air Force One fly-over fiasco. It's hard to believe that whoever was responsible for this stunt hadn't considered the terror it would cause the people of New York and New Jersey over whom these planes would be flying. I should say that again so you won't miss that I am making a point.
Point One...
It is hard to imagine that the people in charge of the Air Force One fleet didn't anticipate that flying a 747 trailed by an F-16 low-level over New York City on a business day wouldn't terrorize the people on the ground.
It is HARD TO IMAGINE!!! That's my point.
In fact it is SO HARD TO IMAGINE that it seems a reasonable conclusion that the terror of the people was somewhere along the way factored into the decision to carry out this stunt. They either factored in the terror element or else the whole bunch of them were number than a bunch of pounded thumbs. It's either one or the other. There's no room in between for logical explanations.
Yet...
In the comments section of an article in nj.com concerning this fly-over, several people made the suggestion that there was absolutely no need for concern, that people who felt the terror were just over-reacting to a harmless situation, even that the presence of the military F-16 escort should have clued observers in to the fact that the military had the situation under control. People just over-reacted. Some comments even reminded people that they were just complaining because they don't like the fact that Obama won the election! In other words, it's just sour grapes. Anyone with an ounce of good sense wouldn't have felt any fear.
In other words, Obama won the election. The means he can do whatever he wants and the people shouldn't be complaining.
That's my second point, by the way.
Point Two...
Obama won so now any red-blooded American should stand 100% in support of him. HE CAN DO NO WRONG!
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that's now the Obama standard. I am saying that's the tone of a lot of comments I'm coming across now on liberal blogs especially but also comments to online news articles.
We saw a lot of this on the Republican side while they were in power. Republicans could do no wrong. Tom DeLay, Ted Stevens, Jack Abramoff, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, lies, torture, wire taps, corruption, lying to Congress, you name it... the Republicans held the power and they could do no wrong and anyone who criticized was just plain un-American.
The liberals didn't like being treated that way and for good reason. We want our freedom. So for liberals to now be reacting to criticism of Obama in the same way that conservatives reacted to criticism of Bush/Cheney is just wrong. Obama isn't God, nor did we elect him to be our sovereign Lord. He is just the elected leader of America's executive branch. It is entirely right that we subject him and all of his policies to critical scrutiny. It is entirely wrong to try to squelch that criticism.
So that is my last point.
Point Three...
It is wrong to attempt to squelch criticism of the Obama administration.
As liberals, let's show some respect for freedom, liberty, and the US Constitution. Let's not be carbon copies of the narrow-minded Right.

No Cause for Alarm

2009-04-27T20:30:00.000-04:00

This is like almost becoming the Obama mantra, "There's no cause for Alarm." What is it this time? The teetering economy? Job losses? American automakers on the verge of bankruptcy? Swine flu epidemic? Well yes all of the above plus one.
Today it seems someone in the White House did a boo boo. He has officially apologized but just the same, it warranted an apology from the White House. So what was this boo boo? Someone in our government thought it would be a fun idea if they took one of our presidential 747 jumbojets and an F-16 and did a few low level passes over New York City right down there in the vicinity of Ground Zero. And just to make things more fun they classified the mission so the people of New York, you know like the people that work in those tall buildings and since 9/11 are deathly afraid of low-flying airplanes doing strange maneuvers at low altitude over the City of New York, wouldn't have any idea what was happening.
The result?
Good footage on YouTube here and here.
A little panic?
It's hard to imagine that there would be anybody in the federal government ignorant enough to not realize that something like this would cause a lot of fear for New Yorkers. Anyone that ignorant should immediately lose his or her job. In fact anyone anywhere in the chain of command who knew this was coming but didn't try to stop it should be fired immediately.
But hey, after a good night's sleep, that'll all be yesterday. Let's focus on the future instead, right?

AIPAC

2009-04-26T08:15:00.001-04:00

Meet your master.

All Over Again

2009-04-25T07:34:00.001-04:00

It's like deja vous all over again. It's like Condoleezza Rice repeating Dick Cheney talking points four years into the war. But it's a new era, a time of change we are told. Still, how can you read an article like this and not recognize the all too familiar Bush-era pattern?
How many times were we told that a small and desperate minority was lashing out because they were losing the war against powerful America in Iraq?
When was that ever true?
How would it be any different if they were actually winning the battle?
These attacks, these bombings, they aren't a sign of success. They are an attempt - always have been, always will be - to enflame one population in Iraq against another, enflame the Shiite population into war with itself, with the US, and with the Sunnis. To have these bombings continuing doesn't show that there has been or is an imminent American victory in Iraq. All it shows is that someone with money is still backing the groups responsible for this sort of warfare.
In other words, nothing has changed, not even the absent-minded official rhetoric of the US government.
This is why the American people didn't elect Hillary Clinton as President.

Bags of Cats

2009-04-23T08:47:00.000-04:00

I have been keeping mum for awhile, sitting back and observing the wheels of progress spin out of control, looking for anything that I could possibly say something meaningful about. It's amazing all the nonsense going down these days from tea parties to rumors of FEMA camps (attributed now to Obama) to Glen Beck's entertaining take on FOX News. It's amazing how quickly Republicans forgot that G.W. Bush was ever our president.
But the Republicans don't have a monopoly on nonsense.
The latest is a bag full of cats that were released this week with the Jane Harmon story. Here's a post from d-day that sums things up quite well. It seems that Jane Harmon has suddenly become an advocate of - of all things - the right to privacy!
It's in the quote from the talk she gave with Robert Siegel on NPR that I think really lets the cat out of the bag. Harman is saying it doesn't seem like it could have been a FISA wiretap because she wouldn't have talked with any foreigners about this AIPAC spy thing, only an American citizen. So Siegel asks if she might have ever spoken with an Israeli about this and instead of saying no she says she speaks with Israelis "from time to time" and has made many trips to the Middle East on government business. Wouldn't a "no" have been a better answer?... I mean, unless it would have been lying?
Reading between the lines, though, it's easy to conclude that Harman's point is that she shouldn't have been subject to all the spying and wire tapping laws she has been voting for since 9/11 because she is Jewish and she should have the freedom to conduct her government affairs with Israel and Israel's representatives without being subject to wire taps.
I mean really, who in their right mind would think that the U.S. Congress passed legislation that would treat communications with Israel the same way they would treat communications with Russia or China or even France? Aren't all Israelis virtual US citizens? It would appear that Harmon might think that way at least. How else can you explain that conversation with Siegel?

No Right

2009-04-07T08:21:00.000-04:00

I am beginning to wonder about President Obama's strategy of leading government in such a way as to completely ignore the existence of the right. It started with his decision to "go forward" instead of looking back at the mistakes we have made. The problem I have with that is that if we don't admit our mistakes and deal with them appropriately, then all we really are doing is living in denial.
I can't help but think that this is how the world must be looking at America now, that America as a whole with Obama as our leader is living in denial of what we have done to it, how our bad policies and false beliefs have impacted the rest of the world, have left the world feeling threatened by our perception of American "interests" and security. For decades now we have lived as though it wasn't the world's interests and the world's security that was at stake, but only our own. Even in globalization our intent was to strengthen our own national interests above all else. The world perceives us this way because this is the way we have been doing things. This is how America's leaders have been programming her people.
Obama wants to change the way the world perceives us.
I'm all for that change but it seems to me like we are skipping the most important step. Obama is going ahead and telling the world voila! We changed! But he's doing it without the consent of the American people. That's the issue I have. And it can't be possible that the world is so gullible as to believe that Obama actually has worked out our consent.
One obvious way to know this is to look at the reaction of the right. These Obama "changes" are making the political right in America squirm in their seats, in Congress, in the conservative media and blogs, in politics. Everybody knows that the right wants to get power back and reverse Obama's "change". That in itself is enough to convince any thinking person in this world to take Obama's promises with a grain - no, a bag - of salt.
But I seriously doubt that the problem is that shallow. The things Obama is talking about now are things that many, if not even the majority, of politicians on the left have not been pushing for. When Obama says he wants a world without nuclear weapons, that America is committing itself to such a goal, shouldn't he have already won that debate here in America? Hadn't the world noticed that Obama isn't speaking for the American majority there? Why not? Because we haven't had that debate. Obama's election didn't happen because of that debate. Congress hasn't had that debate. The American people haven't spoken on that issue. The majority hasn't been won yet. And the world can easily see this fact.
So because of that, because it appears that Obama is not debating the opposition as much as he is simply ignoring it, the world knows that Obama's words are just jive talk.
And that is a problem.

AIG Bomb

2009-03-27T09:44:00.000-04:00

I was up way too early this morning reading a few blogs. I was in Lost in the Bozone and came across a comment by Demeur in the March 20 post about Obama in which he made this comment:
"Obama made a good analogy about these banks and AIG. He said it's like trying to deal with someone with a bomb vest strapped on with his thumb on the trigger. You have to negotiate carefully least he hit the trigger and blow us all up."
I was able to trace this to Obama's March 18 "town hall" get-together in Costa Mesa, California. A Los Angeles Times Blog covered the occasion.
It appears to me that the LA Times blogger was having as much difficulty comprehending this reasoning on Obama's part as I was. I mean just what were we supposed to take from Obama's analogy?
Yes I can see that it is meant to point out that this banking crisis is a touchy issue and that if our leaders say the wrong things, bad things may well happen in the economy as a result. It's a powder keg for sure, that we can all agree on.
But a suicide bomber has bad intent going into it - you know, premeditated. So how does that play out in this analogy? I don't know.
I suppose there are two possibilities here. One is that Obama came up with this on the spur of the moment without giving much thought to what he was saying and he really had no intent to make an analogy between AIG and the premeditated bad intent of a suicide bomber.
The other possibility is that this wasn't the first time Obama had heard of or used this analogy. Obama has a tendency to repeat himself and seems especially prone to repeating himself in a slightly different context, using an analogy that fits well in one context but doesn't quite fit the bill in the other context. His Special Olympics comment exemplifies this tendency but there have been many other shining examples that don't come to mind right off as I write.
I've heard that whenever there is more than one possibility, the safe bet is to choose the simpler one. Some would say the simpler one here is that Obama's comment was a spur of the moment thing. I disagree. The simpler explanation is that Obama was doing what he does so often, repeating an analogy that fits better in a slightly different context.
But what would that context be?
Simple.
The context would be a White House where the insiders know there is a struggle going on here between Obama's "liberal" agenda and the conservative Wall Street (and world banking) elites. In that context the suicide bomb analogy complete with premeditated malintent would fit giants like AIG perfectly. In that context, it would be easy to understand that what we are dealing with are giant corporations and powers who are telling the Obama government and more broadly the American voters that we either do it their way or they destroy our economy. A White House facing that scenario would be talking very carefully to ensure the trigger doesn't get pulled.
But hey, at that time of the morning I'm usually in a dream world. No doubt this is the same.

Meltdown

2009-03-17T08:26:00.001-04:00

TPM has a little ditty on GOP chairman Michael Steele claiming that the warming of our climate is part of the global cooling process. That's a good one. The planet is cooling down. I wonder what that is based on, what evidence.
I was thinking about climate change just yesterday. I had heard or read somewhere that Germany has cut 4,000 miles off the shipping lanes from Japan to Germany by using the channel in northern Canada, open in 2008 for the first time in thousands of years or tens of thousands or something to that effect. Global cooling my ass.
But yesterday I was wondering if maybe there's something about these wide temperature swings that science has yet to recognize. This isn't the first time that average global temperatures have been on the move. There have been both ice ages and times of extreme temperatures at other times in earth's history. Is it just something dependent on solar activity or is there something more significant at play here?
After all, it's the temperature of the biosphere that keeps changing. The biosphere is that part of earth's atmosphere where plant and animal life lives. One could argue that it also includes the oceans and surface soils. Global climate change happens where life exists so why wouldn't it make sense that it is life that alters the temperature of the biosphere?
How?
Well the global warming people have been telling us for a long time now that it is the "greenhouse effect" that is causing global temperatures to rise. The greenhouse effect is what happens in air containing an excess of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and/or methane gas. These gasses form a layer that retains heat and radiates it back to the earth's surface rather than allowing it to escape into space. Yes the heat comes from the sun but the greenhouse effect causes the biosphere to retain more of the sun's energy than would be retained otherwise.
Plants use carbon dioxide in their life process. They convert carbon dioxide into organic (carbon-based) substances and give off oxygen into the atmosphere as a byproduct.
Animals do just the opposite. Animals use organic fuels and combine them with oxygen from the atmosphere to generate energy giving off carbon dioxide as a byproduct.
So what I was thinking is that maybe nature has a little war going on here between plant life and animal life. Maybe there are periods in the history of life on earth where plants were dominant and thus carbon was stored up in hydrocarbons (oils, coal, peat, sea bottoms, etc.). With reduced greenhouse gasses, the biosphere would cool down. This would have a self-limiting effect if it brought on an ice age and perhaps water vapor or methane gas from decomposition or even carbon dioxide from animal life would reverse the trend.
Maybe there are other periods where animal life dominates and the resulting increase in greenhouse gasses causes warming of the biosphere.
What is happening right now makes sense if you look at this overall process. We are living in an age dominated by animal life, an age where humans are not only reducing the amount of plant life but also using the world's stored hydrocarbons to once again release them as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Using hydrocarbons for fuel is serving to rapidly alter the temperature of the biosphere in a way that would otherwise take nature thousands of years to accomplish.
The thing is, there's a very long ways to go still before we reach any sort of limits. The upper latitudes have been much warmer than they are now. There is a lot of carbon remaining in reserve still, carbon that was at some point in the history of the biosphere available for life, both plant and animal, and available for use as greenhouse gasses.
We have a very long way to go yet before we reach earth's limits.
But to claim that the warming we are seeing is part of the larger cooling process? Ummmmm.... What cooling process are we talking about here? Entropy?

Bogus Woes

2009-03-16T09:31:00.000-04:00

I hate this. I'm starting to be an Obama critic and I hate it! What ever happened to the Barack Obama that ran for President last year?
The latest?
MSNBC has this which they get from The New York Times, "Bracing for a Bailout Backlash".
In it we discover that President Obama is upset at AIG for awarding its executives $165 million in executive bonuses despite their dire plight which has required the US to give them $170 billion in "government assistance".
It seems that Obama is worried that the public might somehow hold him and congress responsible instead of AIG.
Gee, I wonder why he would worry about that?
But hey, we can't afford to govern out of anger, says the White House, and it's not as though we have any legal recourse? We have to give this money to Wall Street after all if we expect Wall Street to go along with getting us out of this recession we're in. But hey maybe the White House can "tap" this "sentiment" to "push through" the Obama agenda in Congress.
Wow! Hey! How cool is that, huh?
Am I being victimized by the Mainstream Media trying to sensationalize this story and polarize the electorate, or is Obama just simply not the man I thought I was voting for last year?
What ever became of Obama's promises to us?
Backlash indeed...

Inside Out

2009-03-15T10:49:00.001-04:00

Today I feel like I have been turned inside out. Maybe it has something to do with the warmer weather. Yesterday my wife and I took our dog and went hiking out on the ice on Moosehead Lake. It was a beautiful sunny day, a bit hazy or smoggy from the still chilled westerly wind, and still below freezing anywhere out of the sun. There wasn't a lot of melting going on. But it was pleasant in the sunshine anywhere out of the wind. So maybe it's just getting outside after the long winter hibernation.
Maybe not.
Yesterday I was doing my usual news blog reading and I came across a post at TPMDC concerning a Republican lawmaker's proposal for a bill that would require presidential candidates to present a valid birth certificate. The question of Obama's place of birth has been ongoing for several years now but is generally considered inconsequential by Obama supporters. When I began reading the comments posted to this TPM article, I quickly realized that the comments didn't represent rational debate. The comments were ad homonym in nature, setting exactly the same tone that conservatives set whenever George W. Bush's authority was challenged.
Well this concerned me enough to actually register to comment at TPM and post a comment about how odd the comments were and about how simple the issue seems to be. I proudly voted for Obama. Showing his birth certificate to prove his qualifications for the Presidency is no big deal. I had to show mine to renew my drivers license this year after holding the license for the past 45 years! So like sheesh!
Well they lit into me for that. I am a bad bad person to question anything about Obama, I guess. How George W. Bush can you get! Where's the change Obama promised? Where's the openness?
Well in my run down that rabbit trail I stumbled on a website that really set the ball rolling for me, really tossed my warm Obama heart out in the cold Maine snow. I've been holding it back for quite awhile now but the Obama era hasn't exactly been going the way I expected it would go. I went to the Obama rally in Bangor last year, heard his pitch to us, understood what a lot of others that day understood, the message about the need to change how things are done in Washington, the need to put what is best for the people back in control, not what is best for the special interests.
The first thing Obama did was to appoint as his chief of staff someone whose father reportedly was a Zionist terrorist, or so it is claimed. What bigger special interest group is there in the US if not AIPAC, the Israel lobby?
Then he started giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the bankers.
Then he started bombing people in Pakistan.
Then he signed into law a bogus stimulus bill that was more of a wish list for socialist reform than anything else.
Then he signed a budget bill full of earmarks because they were just the leftovers from last year. Say what? I mean...... say what?????????
Then Obama retains the right to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely, same as Bush but without the catch phrase "enemy combatant." Orwell anyone?
Trillion plus dollar deficit...
The whole world wondering what America is up to...
China threatening to cash in its US holdings...
Obama's arch political foe Hillary Clinton running the State Department...
War first, diplomacy as a last resort...
A Wall Street guru running the Treasury...
And then there's a rumor that some news article is reporting that Wikipedia's Obama biography has been scrubbed squeeky clean?
What change? I'm waiting. What is the change? How can the pandering to special interests be ongoing if we voted in change? And I'm not asking this as some conservative naysayer. I'm saying it as a concerned progressive.
OK so everyone says wait and see. The change is coming. I know, that's what I've been saying too for the past two months. Change takes time. I know that. But change has to start somewhere and as far as I can see, it hasn't begun yet. What we all heard at that rally in Bangor would never have led us to believe what we have seen since the November election.
And now this idea that we can treat any doubters the same way that George W. Bush supporters treated Bush doubters, with ad homonym attacks against the doubter's character and worthiness as a human being?
Well anyway, back to that rabbit trail, I stumbled on this nearly two hour-long online video that I absolutely was not prepared to see. So I didn't. But if you watch it and can stomach watching it all the way through, could you please let me know how it ends?

Parsley Sage Rosemary and Rhyme

2009-03-11T09:52:00.000-04:00

My chosen title today has nothing to do with what I will be writing. It came about as a typo in a chat window this morning, nothing else.
What really IS on my mind at the moment is a letter posted by Juan Cole in his blog this morning written by Chas Freeman. The letter speaks for itself.
I'm going out on the limb a bit here by citing Chas Freeman as a man worthy of my attention, not because he doesn't have an amazing resume, he does, and not because he doesn't see things the way I have come to see them, he does - this from 2006 when Bush was still firmly in power. I'm going out on the limb because I haven't followed the controversy that led Freeman to withdraw yesterday from consideration to chair the National Intelligence Council.
However, I tend to believe what Freeman is claiming, that it was the Israeli lobby which drove him out. The letter is worth a read.

New Money

2009-03-09T04:59:00.000-04:00

A March 3 article in the International Herald Tribune states that the Bank of England may soon start buying government bonds, corporate bonds, and "commercial paper" with new money to ease the credit crunch brought on by the world economic crisis.
It's hard to wrap your head around this kind of power but I've been trying recently to do just that. Silly little questions pop into my head when I think about this level of power, such as:
Why is it that the Federal Reserve can earn interest on government debt when the Federal Reserve has the power to simply create new money with a few keystrokes on some magic computer somewhere?
If money is in short supply, why don't we just print new money and inject it into the economy by spending that instead of taxing the existing money supply?
Why is it that when the government does do that, it winds up owing interest on that money in perpetuity to unspecified and generally unidentified "investors"? Since there are no actual investors in the Federal Reserve Bank, where does this interest money go?
Does the Federal Reserve Bank have vaults filled with money? If so, why? Whose money would that be? If not then where does the interest money on US Treasury debt held by the Federal Reserve Bank go?
Why do we use this system in the first place? If we do it to protect the value of our money, then why does gold cost so much more now than it did when we ceased using it as the basis for our currency? That's what we call protecting the value of our currency?
How much new money could the Federal Reserve inject this way into the economy before it triggered inflation? If there's some headroom here, then why aren't we doing it?
Oh, yeah, right... We ARE doing it! That's what the stimulus package is. That's what deficit spending is. Two questions, though. Why do taxpayers wind up paying interest into perpetuity by doing it this way and why are Republicans against doing this?
Perhaps this article will help - Creating New Money by James Robertson. Also this article from a link in the previous one - HOW PRIVATE, COMMERCIAL, NATIONAL and INTERNATIONAL MONEY is CREATED; abridged from the works of Michael Rowbotham.
By the way, if ever the right by nations to print their own currencies is terminated and a central international currency is established, the owners of that currency would virtually dictate the entire world. No doubt this has been the dream since the days of the Phoenicians. Carthago delenda est!

Rush to Conclusion

2009-03-04T09:14:00.001-05:00

I was just reading this Buck Naked post about the Republicans and wound up reading an argument in the Huffington Post against the new Democratic Party strategy to paint Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party. Peter Daou just doesn't see the wisdom in this new strategy.
Sorry guy, but I do.
Daou doesn't see the sense in "political calculus." If the Limbaugh situation were a trivial matter, I would agree with Daou. This is no time for petty politics. But Limbaugh is calling the shots now for the Republican Party. For some reason that is pretty hard for most Americans to understand, Republicans have submitted to the power of this man whom the leader of the Republican National Committee recently characterized as an "entertainer" whose show is "ugly" and "incendiary."
The problem is that Obama wants some sort of bipartisanship in Washington. Limbaugh doesn't. Limbaugh is getting his way. Obama isn't. And it is not in the interest of the American people at this point for Republicans to refrain from participating in government. Obama knows that. Limbaugh doesn't.
The majority of the American public are agreeing with Obama. They want Republicans to rejoin the government, to re-engage in real politics instead of objecting to everything that the American people need and want right now.
The majority of the American public want the Republicans to turn their backs on the hatefulness of right-wing conservative talking heads.
The only way that's going to happen is if we call it like it is, and right now the way it is is that Rush Limbaugh is leading the Republican Party with his ugly and incendiary rhetoric. Let's get it all out in the open and let the American people pressure their Republican senators and representatives to abandon Limbaugh and his America-hating dittoheads.

No No No

2009-02-28T21:01:00.000-05:00

Now who stands behind the President and who wants failure?

Lipstick on a Pig

2009-02-27T11:07:00.001-05:00

Palinit

Changeling

2009-02-24T08:35:00.001-05:00

In the news recently is the Obama plan to subsidize home mortgages. I keep seeing resentment from people that keep pointing out that these bad mortgages were taken out by foolish people, in essence bad people, selfish people. Many of these "bad mortgages" were taken out prior to Hurricane Katrina. Our society hasn't seemed to recognize this fact, but it was Hurricane Katrina that really marked the point of no return for the economy. Before Katrina (BK) it made a lot of sense to a lot of people to finance a gas-guzzling SUV and a fuel-hungry mega-home out in some sub development in the sprawl of any one of America's major cities. After Katrina (AK) there were a lot of people who began to slowly realize the foolishness of this kind of living, and especially began to realize that paying a premium price for this lifestyle was downright ignorant.
What brought on this change in perspective?
Katrina.
OK, so how?
Katrina impacted the housing market in two very significant ways.
First, it caused an immediate and very significant spike in the price of gasoline. That was when gasoline suddenly flew from around $2.50 a gallon to $3.50 a gallon. The price didn't stay up there but for the first time this century the cost of gasoline became a factor in our calculations of suburban sprawl. Could we really continue our SUV madness? Could we continue to imagine that we could live where we have no choice but to drive our steel shields dozens of miles whenever we wanted to do anything.
The second Katrina effect was a large increase in homeowners insurance along the Gulf Coast. Florida was significantly impacted by this. Homeowners insurance became a deciding factor for anyone on a budget and a major factor in calculating the value of a home.
We have short memories, but BK it was good to buy a home under nearly any circumstances. Our president encouraged an "ownership society." Credit of any kind at all was feeding the economy.
Now these people who have been impacted by the aftereffects of Katrina were foolish to mortgage these homes.
Same event. Same point in time. Same people. Same home. Same loan. Good judgment BK. Foolishness now.
What changed?
Well you see, back BK, wealthy investors were making tons of money in this market. Now to save these mortgages, to rescue home values, to keep people from becoming homeless, the wealthy are being asked to support future taxes to provide relief now.
BK, money coming in to the bank accounts of the wealthy.
AK, future taxation of the wealthy to blunt the impact of this foolishness.
And since the wealthy never take responsibility for the impact of their speculation, the blame must be assigned to the people who (wisely BK) foolishly took out these loans.

A Ponzified Winter

2009-02-19T10:24:00.001-05:00

I have been getting an education this winter in human behavior. I've known for a long time that compensation for work isn't based on anything like fairness. There are a lot of jobs that require a lot of know-how and hard work but pay like dirt. There are a lot of earning opportunities that don't require much at all besides a strong ability to convince other people and that make a fortune for the gifted.
This winter's story of Bernie Madoff has everybody thinking about Ponzi schemes. Ponzi schemes are scams that take advantage of the way our hopes and dreams can blind us to reality. They offer large returns on modest investments, seemingly relatively risk free. What some of us don't want to realize is that this approach can be applied in areas other than simple investment. They can and do permeate our modern world.
The recent housing bubble was a Ponzi scheme. Builders and real estate agents promised us that with very little down payment we could have our dreams come true and at any point of our choosing in the future we could have all of our investment plus a healthy gain on it returned to us by selling our property, divesting ourselves of the investment. Under those conditions we were perfectly comfortable paying rapidly inflating prices for real estate. The success of the investment scheme depended on this inflation.
This winter I have been seeing health-related Ponzi schemes. In exchange for modest but significant investment they offer huge and even miraculous health results even though none of them claim to be cures. What makes them most recognizable is the way the sales pitch makes no attempt to differentiate the product from the profits you can make by selling the scheme. It isn't the product that you sell, it is the sales scheme, the means for making your dreams come true.
When we think of a scam, we think of an investment in something that doesn't work. We think we are wasting our money spending it on a scam. But how would we think about it if we could be certain of not only not losing our money but making money, making lots of money? Would it still feel like a scam to us? That's what makes a Ponzi scheme different from an ordinary scam. In a Ponzi scheme we make money. We make tons of money and we make it easily. We don't labor for it.
This winter I have seen the sales pitch for what appear to me to be health-related (for lack of a better term) Ponzified earning potentials. In all three instances, individuals testified to incredible health cures by using products that nobody actually understands. Big words are used to describe how the technology works. Synergy is one of them. Quantum is another. But nobody really understands how the system physically works. It just works. In one case it was ions absorbed through your feet. In another it was polymer nanotechnology changing the molecular structure of liquids or neutralizing cell phone SAR (specific absorption rate) damage. In yet another it was nutrients missing from our modern diet.
In each of these three cases, the physical product seemed to be overpriced, probably was, probably was extremely overpriced. But in the age of production outsourcing, extreme overpricing is normal for us. We see it all the time. But in each of these cases, the product was of less significance than the amazing money to be made selling it. The real sales pitch was that by selling this product, you can rise to the high side of the middle class lifestyle.
This promise of riches, just as in the financial market Ponzi schemes, becomes the cure. That's the hard part to understand. The ionizing foot cleanse, the polymer nanotechnology EMR shields, and the miracle nutrition plans all claim the same results, all seem to cure the same disease conditions, and they all work miraculously. But the only thing they have in common is that they all relieve the stress involved with making enough money to buy happiness. They all relieve stress related to making money.
So are any of them real? I mean, if you could buy this same stuff in WalMart would it still miraculously cure us? Would it cost this much to buy? Would we get the same relief if in our minds this was an expense and not a miraculous earning opportunity?
Like I said before, this winter has been quite an educational experience for me.

Motherhood Worse than Smoking

2009-02-18T10:50:00.001-05:00

If you thought smoking was disgusting, read what Ann Coulter has to say in Human Events about being a single mother.

No Solution Solution

2009-02-13T12:56:00.000-05:00

Like just about everybody these days with living brain cells, I have been trying to make sense of the financial situation we are facing now and to nobody's surprise, I think, it makes absolutely no sense to me at all. If I had to guess, and I've probably said this before, we are in the predicted outcome in Atlas Shrugged where the captains of industry and finance are on strike. They're the bosses, though, so they don't have to tell anyone that's what they're doing. But that's just my guess.
Unfortunately, nobody who appears in public on any of the media has any better answer than this.
For a very long time now Republicans have wanted to terminate social spending by government. Since they can't overcome the political power of the people here in America, they have chosen to spend us into a depression believing the solution will come when American voters finally realize that we cannot afford social spending.
That is delusional reasoning, but so what. Republicans are delusional.
It may be that this recession/depression we seem to be in is as temporary as was the spike last year in gasoline prices. It may be that in a few years everything will just simply be back on track and back to business as usual, Wall Street heading back up, home price speculation heading back up, consumer spending heading back up. But it also may be that we've reached the inevitable outcome of free trade and outsourcing, a tipping point that forces America's working class to join the third world labor market.
I'm not inclined yet to think that is the best solution to this problem, or even if indeed it is the best solution, that it is the one America will choose. And it is increasingly clear to me that bailing out the banks and Wall Street, bailing out the captains of industry and finance, isn't going to help us either. In fact I'm increasingly convinced that they are holding the economy ransom - either government hands over all future tax revenues to them or they will shut the economy down completely. They have the power to do this.
But suppose the government were to say, hey you private banks and industries, you go right ahead and run your business however you want. We are setting up a government bank to compete with you and we are going to set it up in such a way that we won't have to turn to you to get money. And don't bother coming to us for money. Our money is for loaning to individuals and industries that have the best interest of America in mind, not the interests of the wealthy few. Maybe even this - you captains of finance will not even be allowed to touch our currency. You have your own. Deal with it.
Do you suppose just the threat of that might be enough to shock the wealthy into reviving the economy on their own?

None of Your Business

2009-02-12T17:50:00.001-05:00

Maine's Bangor Daily News has featured a very strange story the past two days. It involves a man who was shot to death in Belfast, Maine last December 9th in his High Street home by his wife. Wednesday's above-the-fold headline was "Report: 'Dirty bomb' parts found." Today's headline featured in the same front page spot read, "Officials verify dirty bomb probe results." If that doesn't grab your attention, there's more.
It seems that the shooting victim, 29 year-old James Cummings, may have been a bit of an unsavory individual. A California transplant from Fort Bragg, it is reported that he was a Hitler fan and collector and neo-Nazi type who was deeply disturbed at the election of Barack Obama. He had been collecting in his home radioactive materials and explosives and had instructions on how to build a dirty bomb. It is reported that he was sexually and physically abusive of his wife Amber although some of his neighbors weren't aware of that.
The facts about the dirty bomb materials was not revealed to the public until it appeared online in a leaked document posted on WikiLeaks. Apparently the document, connected with the FBI and the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center, was intended to alert Washington officials concerned for inauguration security of the Maine find.
Oddly enough, the front page of today's News also had pictures of Belfast Police Chief Jeffery Trafton and Maine Public Safety Commissioner Ann Jordan, both of whom wanted to assure that there was never any hazard posed to the public. Now I'm in no position to explain what that means, but I would imagine if either of these authorities were to be pressed into explaining how that could possibly be the case, they would explain that they mean after the shooting, after police had secured the house. To say that a violent neo-Nazi in possession of radioactive materials and explosives with knowledge on how to build a bomb and motive for committing an act of terrorism or murder posed no risk to the community seems just a little bit far-fetched to me? Know what I'm saying?
Now we all know what really happened here, don't we? A man seething with racial hatred, a violent wife abuser, moved to Maine and set up residence on a side street in Belfast, a bustling tourist community on the coast. Somehow he managed to remain below the radar while he beat and abused his wife and collected radioactive materials, explosives, and bomb-making instructions. He was not considered dangerous by Maine and Belfast authorities until after his wife had shot him to death in their own home. Investigating this shooting, police discovered the bomb-making materials and along with state authorities and the FBI, removed the materials from the home. Some locals suspected something unusual was going on, but local and state authorities kept this incident secret, never announcing to the public what had been going on right under our noses. The secret came out online a month ago but it was never revealed to Mainers until yesterday's breaking story in the Bangor Daily News. Wishing to cover their tracks, both local and state officials assured the public yesterday after the story had broken that there was never any danger to the public.
Even more troubling than all this were some of the early comments published today from the News's online connection made by "greyhawk1" and "HarryofBangor." I won't contaminate my blog with their right-wing take on this, but to say the least, it is disturbing that people in Maine would not see the danger in what was taking place last year in this Belfast home, and that in the eyes of the authorities, this was none of our business anyway.

Sinking Feeling

2009-02-11T10:35:00.000-05:00

Dear President Obama,
This morning for sure, although in general ever since you appointed Rahm Emanuel as your Chief of Staff, I have been having this sinking feeling about your promise to do business differently, presumably ethically, in Washington. Why this morning? Well first there was yesterday's fiasco with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, whom I might start calling Junior if he doesn't start showing some signs of manhood soon, whose reassurances concerning America's banking disaster sent Wall Street into decline. But this morning I read this at TPM Muckraker (read the comments to this post too) about Robert Wolf, a member of your prestigious Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
Barack, this isn't "hope" nor is it "change we can believe in." This is business as usual. This is Ken Lay advising Dick Cheney on America's energy policy, you know?
Get a clue before we lose our faith in you!
Bill

Infuriated

2009-02-09T10:40:00.001-05:00

I am infuriated. Today's Bangor Daily News carried an op-ed written by Barack Obama titled "Partisanship must not impede stimulus." It appears on page A7 of the February 9, 2009 Bangor Daily News. Obama's op-ed is accompanied by an illustration drawn by Paul Tong.
The same editorial appears online at pressdemocrat.com but is accompanied by another Paul Tong illustration, this one being complimentary to the President.
The illustration chosen by the Bangor Daily News depicts a lanky black man dressed in a white shirt, cuffs rolled up, stooped over and awkwardly holding a long-handled shovel with which he is shoveling cash from a pile laying on the ground, some of it even under his left shoe. This black man, in every way appearing as a well-dressed slave in labor, is attempting to feed a shovel full of this cash to a scowling and distrustful bull. The expression on the black man's face, quite clearly Obama's face, is one of passivity, content, maybe even submission.
I showed the picture to my wife, pointing out to her that it was being used to illustrate Obama's own editorial. She also found it to be in very poor taste.
So I called the Bangor Daily News at (207) 990-8000 and was directed to Susan Young, the person responsible for the op-ed section. She confirmed that it was the Bangor Daily News which selected this particular Paul Tong illustration. Susan said it was the copy desk which made the selection. I asked her what her opinion of the illustration was. She said it was odd. I told her what I saw in it but she couldn't seem to share that perception. She suggested that the illustration perhaps didn't go along with the article since the illustration depicted the bank bailout money rather than the stimulus legislation, but argued that if the News has to look at everything that might imply some racial overtones, it'll be a long four years. I suggested that while that may be true, the paper should show some sensitivity towards anything that might depict slavery!

Bipartisan Challenge

2009-02-07T11:02:00.002-05:00

Since Obama took office I've been struggling with this idea of his that he wants to restore unity in Washington. He wants Congress and the Washington bureaucracy to work in a spirit of bipartisan cooperation so that America can solve the problems that have resulted from Washington's partisan conflict. I wish Obama well and hope that he actually is able to tackle this problem that is increasingly splitting America in two. I have even had imaginings that if I were in Obama's position and this stimulus package were to come to my desk endorsed by few if any Republicans, I would veto the bill and tell Congress to come back with a bipartisan solution.
But a sneaky little voice keeps whispering in my ear saying the Republicans aren't going to let this happen. Republicans think differently than the rest of us think. To understand what I mean, here's an email that I received yesterday. It looks like it's been circulating for awhile, but still this is where the Republican Party seems to stand these days:
*************
Can't win an argument with a Republican? Here's why: their positions make no sense.
You first have to subscribe to the following system of belief:
TO BE A REPUBLICAN, YOU NEED TO BELIEVE:
1. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.
2. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's Daddy made war on him , a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a 'we can't find Bin Laden' diversion.
3. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Viet Nam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
4. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.
5. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational drug corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.
6. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.
7. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.
8. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.
9. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing health care to all Americans is socialism. HMO's and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.
10. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.
11. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.
12. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.
13. The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.
14. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.
15. Supporting 'Executive Privilege' for every Republican ever born, who will be born or who might be born (in perpetuity).
16. What Bill Clinton did in the 1960's is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80's is irrelevant.
17. Support for hunters who shoot their friends and blame them for wearing orange vests similar to those worn by the quail.

NSA and 911

2009-02-03T21:28:00.001-05:00

I just watched a one-hour NOVA program on PBS television titled "The Spy Factory." The program focused on the National Security Agency's role in the War on Terror including what they knew about the 9/11 terrorists prior to the attack. Most of this information has been the topic of speculation primarily among so-called conspiracy theorists but as it turns out, it is entirely real.
One thing that really bugs me after watching this show is that it is quite obvious that the NSA was monitoring bin Laden and al-Qaeda, had their phone numbers, was monitoring bin Laden's personal cell phone purchased in New York, the al-Qaeda control center in Yemen, and the terrorists themselves here in the US. There is no way that the NSA did not know what was happening. NOVA answers that by alluding to the idea that the NSA had nobody in government that it could report those facts to.
Just how gullible does NOVA think its audience is? Of course the NSA has people in government that it reports to.

I Swear

2009-01-24T15:10:00.001-05:00

The American right, no doubt disappointed that Obama didn't take the Oath of Office on the Quran the way the right-wingers had been claiming he would, now have a problem with the fact that the retake of the oath wasn't done on the Bible. Justice Roberts and Obama engaged in a moment of tension during the inauguration ceremony by stumbling through the Oath of Office so they got together for a retake this week. Pictures of the event show Obama with his right hand raised, his left hand down at his side.
Think Progress covers Glen Beck's misleading coverage of the event complete with the YouTube video of Beck on his new Fox News gig.
I can't help but wonder how this can even be an issue. Has anybody actually read that Bible that Obama was supposed to have his left hand on? If so, how do you deal with this from Matthew 5:33-37, from the Sermon on the Mount:
******
33"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' 34But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
******
Mind you this is Jesus saying this. But what is He saying and why?
I've heard the tired old explanation that Jesus was just telling the people not to casually cuss by aimlessly swearing. I don't buy that, of course. Verse 37 is the key to understanding what Jesus is saying.
Jesus is saying whatever you say, let it be the truth. Don't live in such a way that the only time anybody can trust that you are telling the truth is after you have taken an oath to tell the truth.
I've been trying for a very long time now to express this idea. I rant on and on about how Christianity has no concept of truth other than that the Bible alone is truth. Calvinism even goes so far as to suggest that whatever you choose to say, God already knew what your choice would be and you saying it is God's Will. That's completely absurd, but it seems to serve a lot of people very well.
Here's the thing, and I think our own culture is just like the culture that Jesus was addressing here. In our culture there is a difference between making a promise and swearing an oath. A promise is a commitment to do something. An oath is a promise made in the spirit of truth. It's not that you can't speak a promise truthfully. It's that in our culture we understand that it is acceptable to make a promise that we don't intend to keep. It's not acceptable to make an oath that we don't intend to keep. So we make our oaths to God or to Heaven or to the Bible or to wherever, to a place that our culture recognizes we would have to desecrate if we were to violate our promise.
We have in our culture, and Jesus must have observed the same thing in the culture of his own time, a duality of truth. One truth has no connection to God, to the divine. It's just the truth of the world. One man's truth is another man's lie and the only judge is our own understanding. The other truth is God's truth, divine truth, truth as it is seen by God. When we need to differentiate between those two, we take an oath.
What Jesus is teaching here on the mountain is that this is a fallacy. There are not two truths. There is not a divine truth and a truth of the world. There is only one truth and that is truth as God sees it. To accept the idea that we can use an oath to certify that we are speaking truth in God's eyes is to accept that we are capable of speaking truth that isn't truth in God's eyes. It is to make legitimate the idea that truth has this duality. Oaths make legitimate the lie that there is a duality of truth.
Reflecting back on Matthew 5:37, anything more than for you to simply speak the truth whenever you speak - any need for an oath - is from the evil one. Recognizing the need for oaths legitimizes the lie.
Perhaps Obama understands this. Perhaps his promise is spoken in the spirit of truth. Perhaps this is one of the changes that Obama brings to Washington.

See No Evil

2009-01-23T04:09:00.001-05:00

Don't even ask what I'm doing up at this hour of the night, but to be awake at this hour of the night and discover a new word that begins to bring recent history into clearer focus...
Agnotology
Even my spell-checker doesn't recognize this one.
Wikipedia has quite a lot to say about this word.
I ran across it in a post in the blog The Big Picture.
The definition given there:
"Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth."
What better word is there to describe the Bush era... or for that matter, Sarah Palin!

One Day After

2009-01-21T08:10:00.001-05:00

I watched the inauguration live yesterday on Public Television. I could feel the teeth chattering cold out there on the Washington Mall! But I didn't find the occasion as emotionally stirring as I had imagined it might be. Obama himself seemed reserved, although perfectly in character to what he ran for president as, a man of principle disgusted by the direction America had taken under George W. Bush's presidency.
I was stirred by the musical interlude at noon just prior to Obama's swearing in. It nearly brought me to tears although I can't say why. I don't normally get emotional listening to classical music.
Obama's inaugural speech seemed dry to me, as though the wind has been taken from his sails since election day. He was polite to his predecessor, but he did get in a few good jabs. I wouldn't have wanted to be Bush sitting there taking it from Obama, although as an Obama supporter, it certainly felt good to know that someone bigger than George W. Bush was delivering punches with the truth about how devastating the Bush presidency was for America.
Now it is one day into the new America. Obama is already beginning to live up to his campaign promises. Republicans are stalling the confirmation of Obama's choice for Secretary of State, but the pow-wows that Obama promised us all while on the campaign trail have already begun. Obama is meeting with Defense Department heads to discuss the withdrawal from Iraq. He has requested a suspension in the war crimes trials of Guantanamo detainees. And he has suspended all changes in federal regulations until his staff has reviewed them. He has finally put the brakes on the Bush machine.
I think the one thing that struck me the most about inauguration day was that the departure of Bush and Cheney was a cause for great celebration. There was no regret at all in seeing them go. No, I can't say that is true. That is what I wanted it to feel like. That is what I celebrated. But a layer down from there in my thinking was this feeling of uncertainty. It was exactly the feeling that the codependents of an abusive husband feel when the husband is dragged away in hand cuffs. Once we resign ourselves to the abuse, we become dependent on the power of the abuser to protect us. That is what George W. Bush was to us. He was the man in control of the abuse. I tend to think Obama doesn't have that same effect on us and we are going to have to adapt to not living under an abuser.
Yesterday was liberating for a large portion of the world's population. But none of us know what today will bring. That's how I feel one day after.

The Future Arrived Yesterday

2009-01-18T16:53:00.001-05:00

Well "yesterday" metaphorically speaking...
Actually it was 1973 when this article concerning the arrival of the future appeared in the Maine Times, republished in Mother Earth News.
I was in my twenties back then. I was aware of the Maine Times and Mother Earth News and Country Journal. I never took the time nor challenged my intellect to comprehend this talk of a post industrial age having arrived in Maine. It was a new concept and seemed based on selected and somewhat editorialized facts (see the list of "items" in this article). But Maine has since developed somewhat of a split personality relating to this post industrial notion.
Clearly the largest industries of Maine have all gone the way of Detroit automobile manufacturing. The textile industries have struggled and died for many decades now. Shoe manufacturing was a large component in Maine's economy, now almost completely gone. And Maine's paper industry has been on the decline for a decade or more, although it was still going strong in 1973 when this article was published in the Maine Times.
But industry didn't follow the dire warnings of this article. A new kind of industrialization found strength in Maine and the state is now dotted with hundreds, even thousands of small industrial producers. Maine's economic future rests in part on the success of these new small industries. Not only that, but a remnant of traditional large industry remains strong in Maine. And as if to thumb its nose at this article, Maine has continued to develop recreation and tourism based on high energy consumption and inexpensive gasoline. It is a bit difficult to embrace the idea of post industrial enterprise while industry remains this strong. Until very recently, it looked as though the post industrial age would never arrive.
But starting about the time of this Maine Times article there developed a counterculture in Maine, a new side of Maine's personality that is clearly described presciently in this 1973 article. Maine has developed and is continuing to grow a strong sustainable living culture based on organic farming and gardening, renewable energy and energy conservation, healthy living, and progressive politics. Nowhere is this trend more apparent than in the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, MOFGA, and its annual autumn country fair, the Common Ground Fair.
This whole progressive movement was in its infancy here in Maine in 1973. Thank God someone had the foresight to welcome these new people and their new ideas to Maine back then. Much of the pioneering work for the nation's post industrial transition is already being done here in Maine. Perhaps now with the collapse of America's industrial strength and the realization that we are fighting wars now to secure our future oil demands, our whole nation will begin to see the sense in post industrial living.

Over the Moon

2009-01-16T10:35:00.000-05:00

I have been patiently waiting for the public appearance of Tripp Johnston, grandson of Sarah Palin. So far I haven't seen his appearance anywhere other than in words, which doesn't somehow seem adequate considering the significance placed on him by the McCain campaign last fall. It was, after all, his existence that disproved rumors about Sarah Palin faking her pregnancy last spring. Yes I've heard about the need for privacy but isn't this taking it to the extreme? It's been nearly three weeks now.
So far, this from the governor's website is all I have found from the governor to indicate Tripp's presence in the world:
*****
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 08-212
Governor Sarah Palin Welcomes Her First Grandchild
December 31, 2008, Anchorage, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin has welcomed her first grandchild, Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, born to Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston on December 27.
*****
So I pose a question to my readers. Has anyone heard or seen Governor Palin say or seen her quoted as saying the name "Tripp" in public? If so, could you let me know? I'm afraid if something doesn't come up soon, someone will have to file a missing persons report up there in Alaska.
Sarah Palin may be "over the moon" about this new arrival but I'm beginning to wonder if that's where this baby is hiding out. Is "hiding out" a good term to use in this context?

Atheism

2009-01-15T11:55:00.000-05:00

Atheism seems to be one of those complex words that defy definition. That seems strange to me too because of my simplistic view of things. I mean shouldn't atheism simply mean the belief that there is no deity? But then you have to define deity. Even if you speak of God, you have to define what God means to the people who use the word. God should be another simple word, but it isn't. In any debate about the existence of God, shouldn't the topic of the definition of God be a basis for the debate?
The thing is, atheism is all about proving the nonexistence of something. Aren't negatives supposed to be difficult or impossible to prove? So why bother? It just makes atheists look like fools, doesn't it?
I mean, isn't it blatantly obvious that there is intelligence in the universe that this intelligence exists independent of the human mind?
Isn't it?
And isn't it blatantly obvious that even in evolution, intelligence guides any change?
Isn't it?
The thing is, it's dumb to make that the focus of the debate. It's just plain numb to argue that there is no intelligence outside of the human (or animal) brain.
Atheists and non-atheists alike know that the debate isn't about intelligence. The debate is about whether there is a living, loving, caring, deity who has defined and dictated to humanity the terms and rules of morality. That is the real claim of religion. Religion claims that morality comes from God. We all know that intelligence plays a guiding role in the development of life. What we differ on is the source of morality, the origin of the rules we all have to live by.
Theists see a living God, a deity, as the source of morality. To theists, morality supercedes human consensus. God tells us how to treat each other.
To humanists, morality is a human consensus. Man decides what is good and what is evil.
It is here, in the debate over the source of morality, where religion fails. Religion insists that morality originates from a good and loving deity. Yet all around us, and throughout the history of the universe and projecting into the future of the universe, we see tragedy and destruction under the same power of intelligence that we see creation. In our own lives and history we see tragedy and disease all around us. Theists concoct elaborate defenses for their deities, but the evidence is that there is no loving deity in control. God doesn't really care about tragedy. He is just as likely to deliver us into it as He is to deliver us from it.
Atheists point to this uncaring God as proof that there is no God. Their real claim is that there is no loving, caring deity in control.
So by that standard, an atheist isn't a person who denies the role of intelligence in creation. An atheist is a person who believes that morality comes from man.
Now doesn't that make more sense? Is it really that difficult to defend the notion that man concocts morality?

DTV Frequency Allocations in Maine

2009-01-10T12:50:00.000-05:00

I have been researching what is currently going on with the Digital TV changeover and have discovered a few things that haven't been in the news. There are four VHF TV stations in the Bangor, Maine area. According to the FCC website which allows searching by state, some of the VHF stations are broadcasting digital on UHF instead. In fact, only one station, Orono's Public Broadcasting station, will remain on VHF.
Technically what this means is that anyone in my area who has been using an outdoor antenna to receive local broadcasting will need to buy a new antenna, one suited for both VHF and UHF.
Furthermore, as you can see below, the digital transition isn't narrowing the bandwidth of each station. Each Digital TV station will still use the conventional 6 MHz bandwidth. It'll just use that bandwidth on another TV channel.
So I just called the digital transition hotline for Maine Public Broadcasting 1-866-418-7678 and was told that I needed to buy an VHF/UHF outdoor antenna. Right. Whatever. The girl I spoke with didn't have access to any of the technical information such as what the broadcasting power would be tomorrow on their Digital TV channel 9 after WMEB-TV channel 12 analog goes off the air. Some hotline.
Anyway, here is the technical information for the Bangor, Maine broadcasting area.
*******************
WMEB-TV Orono, Maine
Analog frequency allocation - Channel 12: 204 - 210 MHz
Transmitter Power: 316 kW
Service area map

Digital frequency allocation - Channel 9 - 186 - 192 MHz
Transmitter power: 15 kW
Service area map
*******************
WABI-TV Bangor, Maine
Analog frequency allocation - Channel 5: 76 - 82 MHz
Transmitter Power: 39.8 kW
Service area map

Digital frequency allocation - Channel 19: 500 - 506 MHz
Transmitter Power: 363 kW
Service area map
*******************
WLBZ-TV Bangor, Maine
Analog frequency allocation - Channel 2: 54 - 60 MHz
Transmitter Power: 51.3 kW
Service area map

Digital frequency allocation - Channel 25: 536 - 542 MHz
Transmitter Power: 250 kW
Service area map
*******************
WVII-TV
Analog frequency allocation - Channel 7 174 - 180 MHz
Transmitter Power: 316 kW
Service area map

Digital frequency allocation - Channel 14: 470 - 476 MHz
Transmitter Power: 79 kW
Service area map

Digital Minority

2009-01-10T10:52:00.001-05:00

Finally I am in a minority! I am a member of the digital minority. What's that? Well here is my story.
As we all have been told by now, the US Federal Government has in its great wisdom finally decided that on-air free reception broadcast Television is taking up too much bandwidth, too much airspace in the electromagnetic spectrum. Each TV channel takes up six megahertz of bandwidth. Channels 2 through 13 operate in the VHF frequency spectrum, useful because it isn't quite as dependent on "line of sight" alignment between the receiving antenna and the transmitting antenna. VHF signals carry better than higher frequency signals so they carry farther into the rural areas from television stations that serve metropolitan areas.
Somebody pointed out to the Federal Government that it is now technologically possible to carry digital television signals using the same VHF spectrum but using a narrower channel width than the 6 megahertz analog channel width. God only knows how it's done but the decision to make this transition was made by Congress and the transition was planned for final implementation this month and next. Maine Public Television has been running infomercials about this transition and has been touting the benefits of purchasing either new television equipment with digital tuners or digital television adapter boxes that allowed older analog television equipment to receive a signal from digital transmitters.
To promote the transition, the Federal Government has been offering coupons worth $40.00 towards the purchase of digital converter boxes, two coupon per household. This program was intended to boost sales of digital TV tuner equipment in order to hasten production and bring down the purchase price of the equipment. The program succeeded and now the government is saying they have far more requests for coupons than they have coupons to give. It's almost like getting a moose permit in Maine. More people want to shoot moose than there are moose to be shot.
So anyway, being the lazy ass that I am, I didn't apply for a coupon. But yesterday I went out and bought a DTV converter box, a Zenith DTT 901. When I got home from Bangor I hooked it up. Channel 12 was playing at the time and the signal was good enough to watch. We are 80 miles or more from the transmitter and slightly behind the hill so it is challenging at times to get good reception, but last night the old analog signal reception was quite decent.
So I hooked everything up and had it so I could see the new tuner's menu system on the TV screen and I sent it into scan mode to find all the wonderful new digital TV signals in my area. Zero! Not a one! It's not that Bangor stations aren't broadcasting in digital either. They are and have been for quite awhile. It's that this glorious new rig needs a strong signal or else ZILCH! Nothing! No TV at all!!
This is the dirty little secret of the Digital TV revolution. It's not like nobody could foresee this happening. I used to be in the TV repair business and even had my own TV antenna sales and installation thing going for awhile. It's not like I didn't see this coming. In fact, I would have been pleasantly shocked had the new tuner actually worked!
But the thing is, to have made this transition work right, the government should have required that remote areas that have been served for decades by analog VHF broadcast television should be served by digital TV after the transition. The way to do it would either be for the government to supply satellite TV or for the new owners of this freed-up and auctioned off airspace to have been required to establish low-power repeater transmitters.
Instead of doing this, the Federal Government in its usual display of arrogance and indifference, chose to fail to inform the public of the problem and instead spread propaganda touting the wonderful benefits of digital TV. And everybody, including the "This Old House" professionals, went along with it. This problem of mine isn't a problem at all for the majority of broadcast television recipients. Or at least I would hope it isn't. Maybe it is. But it certainly is a problem for a minority of us who live in rural areas. We are the Digital Minority!
Looks like I'll be going without Public Television now unless I'm finally ready to shell out $30.00 or more each month for cable or satellite. Such a deal!
By the way, there is a movement underway now to delay the cutoff date for analog broadcast of high-power television signals. Some are becoming aware of the problems that have until now been swept under the rug. But I'll be very surprised if even the Democrats now in power have the resolve to fix these problems. Americans shouldn't be forced to spend, spend, and spend some more only to discover that you can't get there from here. Those who serve to profit from this change should be the ones making sure that nobody is left out in the dark.
And one more thing. Free broadcast television and radio has been a mainstay in American life for the best part of a century now. This idea that it should now become a source of profit for cable and satellite delivery companies is a Republican idea that should be resisted. There are millions of Americans who simply cannot afford subscription rates for cable and satellite TV. These are the Digital Minority that should not be given the cold shoulder by government.

Unfortunate Resolve

2009-01-03T10:42:00.001-05:00

For years now I have read Americablog every day, sometimes even several times a day. John Aravosis is a fellow Mainer even if he doesn't share my interest in the opposite gender.
No more.
I have decided the time has come to replace Americablog with something less focused on an agenda that just doesn't represent my thoughts and interests. Since the 2008 election, I have been noticing pictures of what appeared to me to be gay men baring inappropriate amounts of male skin as advertising. I'm not usually all that annoyed at attractive females baring their skin but I don't enjoy looking at gay men paired together in skimpy bathing suits or stubble-faced young men kissing. Thanks, John, but no thanks.
Recently Americablog defended its inappropriate advertising by saying they couldn't afford to refuse good money from advertisers.
Fine. So be it. Just count me out.
What finally nailed the coffin shut for me, though, was Americablog's sharp criticism of Barack Obama. Apparently gays are upset that the Obama administration won't be employing enough gays but will be recognizing people who are not acceptable to the gays. It has always been my opinion that Americablog was about revealing the truth about conservative politics. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe revealing that truth was simply Americablog's way of bringing down a political opponent. Maybe the truth isn't all that important to them. Maybe now there is a new opponent, a new entity in power that still doesn't meet the demands of the left-wing homosexuals.
The problem with right-wing politics is that it is reactionary. It uses hot-button issues like abortion and school prayer and gay marriage and fear of foreigners to stimulate reactions from voters. Instead of educating voters and letting them decide objectively, reactionary politics depends on illusions that create emotional responses from voters. Truth has no real meaning in that kind of politics.
My concern is that Americablog seemed to be engaging in that kind of politics, but targeting the reactionary politics at the Left. Thanks, guys, but no thanks.
So the search is on for a good replacement. Any suggestions?

Nothing Much to Say

2009-01-02T10:45:00.001-05:00

Here it is, wow, the second of January, 2009. 2008 is long gone now although it seemed yesterday that everyone was doing the 2008 in review thing that the news people always do. Were they a day late doing that? Isn't it usually the last day or two of the year that they do that?
Well maybe they're like I am right now, frustrated with all of the nonsense of the 2008 campaign but afraid to say much about the new administration which won't seat itself in Washington for another 18 days. We're all clinging to whatever remnants of hope remain that Bush won't screw up any more of our future before he heads out the White House door for the last time.
I don't know about the rest of all you people out there but I'm beginning to wonder if Obama can pull this thing off. Things are a lot bleaker now than they were a year ago. I mean things couldn't be worse if we were actually trying to make it worse. Things couldn't be worse if the wealthy among us deliberately were trying to make the Obama revolution go away empty handed. That's how bad it is now. It's like if we really wanted to identify and imprison America's enemies, we'd begin by shipping all the wealthy Republicans to jail. That's how bad it is.
But the other side of the coin is that the old boy Democrats are in control of both houses of Congress and they are itching to spend money. I wish it weren't so but it is. Instead of focusing on America's future and the success of the American workforce, instead of focusing on job creation through sustainable energy, food, and industrial production, instead of finding ways to beat back down the absurd price of healthcare services and medicine in this country, instead of enabling unencumbered grass-roots industry among the people, these old-boy Democrats want their socialism. I'm with Sarah Palin on this one. Thanks, but no thanks, guys. Well I'm not sure I'm entirely with her on that. I'm not like give me the money but forget the socialism part. I'm more like hey, we can't afford this! Stop all this ridiculous spending! Plug the dike!
Of course Republicans see this with glee. It tickles them pink that the federal budget is now on a runaway train whose engineer is the Democratic Party. It's especially OK if the money is being dumped with no strings attached into unknown bank accounts all around the world as it probably is. Some people are still getting rich off this screwed up economy. And when the day of reckoning does come as it surely will, Republicans will say it's all because of those old-boy spend-happy Democrats and you know, they'll most likely be close to the truth there.
The only hope is that Obama will have some hat trick that he hasn't shown us yet, that the magic Super-O will deliver us to safe haven before the economy actually collapses and that we will see an economic recovery beginning soon. That's the hope despite the fact that Obama himself is telling us it's probably going to get a lot worse before anything gets better. That is something he and the old-boy Democrats and the obstructionist Republicans surely can deliver. But the hope, the dream, of some sort of sustainable and affordable economic growth, the hope of alternative clean energy delivering us from this absurd need to dominate the planet, it isn't looking like Obama has much of a plan there and if he did, the forces in Congress against him seem overwhelming.
On the other hand, though, the notion on the Left that Obama is a man of peace is beginning to seem a bit strained now. It would appear that Obama's promise to go after al Qaeda taking up where George W. Bush left off back in 2002 seems to be happening now. American troops will soon "surge" into Taliban-held areas in southern Afghanistan. Followers of Islam are enraged by Israel's ruthless attacks in Gaza while at the same time they are bracing themselves on the east from the threat posed by India. Pakistan - long the host of the Taliban and al Qaeda and with strong government ties to international terrorism, the CIA, Mossad etc. that nobody likes to mention - is the hotbed of Islam. It is the only nation in Islam armed with nuclear weapons. Its western border is Iran, an enemy not just of the US but of Israel and of Pakistan itself. On the north lies the mountainous border with Afghanistan soon to be swarming with US troops under the leadership of President Obama who is determined to wage war against terrorism. To the east is India, also nuclear armed and possessing a suppressed minority population of Muslims. Above all this you have the wealth of the Jews who feel threatened by virtually every aspect of Islam and wealthy industrialists and oilmen who want access to the energy resources of that region to further the wealth of the West, to Hell with Islam. If this isn't a recipe for disaster nothing is. Nowhere in the mix is there any strain relief. The Jews aren't going to give up on Israel any time soon. Alternative energy doesn't seem close. Americans are still thirsty for oil and they are being increasingly joined by the Chinese and the Europeans. The Mossad and the CIA have vanished from the radar screen, which can only mean they have penetrated and are messing with everything and the media is cooperating in suppressing the truth about that.
Good luck there, Barack. You say energy independence is the key? I agree but do you actually have a plan that you can get past Congress?
And then there's Social Security and nationalized healthcare insurance. With the National Debt already at $10.5 trillion and climbing at over $3 billion a day - that's $3,000,000,000 a day or in other words $10.00 per day per American citizen (times 365 days that's $3,650.00 per year per each of us in America, men, women, retired people, the unemployed, mothers, and babies, $3,650.00 a year apiece - where will the money come from to pay for Social Security once the worker contributions fail to meet the commitments? I mean, do we just borrow more money to pay off Social Security's claims on the debt? Or do we just type a few strokes on some IBM keyboard somewhere and the money magically appears backed by the full faith and trust of the United States Federal Reserve Bank... which has been very busy recently giving huge sums of money away to wealthy banks.
Sigh...
Good luck Barack. They've got us all by the balls, you included. What's the plan here? How are you going to get us (We the People) to overpower the old-boy Congress and start doing something right? George W. Bush sure wasn't the solution, him and his shoot first look later VP and Tom DeLay and Bohner and Wolfowitz and Pearle and Stevens and all the rest of the big-spending Republicans. Ted Kennedy isn't going to save us from this. Hillary? Are you kidding me?
So I just don't have anything to say about this. It's just too early to say anything. Obama hasn't even taken office yet. Bush is still stirring the overheated pot. I'll just hold my breath for awhile and wait for someone to begin to show signs of leadership. I'll try not to think about retirement. I'll try to forget what nobody ever talks about anymore with respect to deficit spending, namely just how much debt service can the US budget endure. We used to wonder about that back during the Reagan years when we were first getting adjusted to virtually uncontrolled deficit spending. Now it never crosses our minds. So I'll forget about that too. I'll just keep my mouth shut and see what the leaders say next.

Tripp [Sunday] Saturday

2008-12-30T09:23:00.001-05:00

Bristol done did it! I never thought she would but she did! She is now, according to news reports, the mother of Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston. It appears that the birth was announced to the world by People Magazine who, according to some reports, will be paying the Palins some $300,000.00 for the rights to publish the baby's pictures. That's some deal! Those are some lucky kids, those two, what with Bristol's new baby being worth so much and with Levi's luck as a home-schooled high school dropout or graduate or whatever he is landing a job as an electrician for the oil industry at age 18! All this despite the rumors, substantiated or not who knows, of him being a recovering addict and the son of an accused drug-dealing mom.
But the baby has arrived, silver spoon and all!
Update: Well I published without doing enough research, I guess. People is now reporting the birth occurred on Saturday, not Sunday. I guess when it comes to the Palins, even People can't get the gossip straight the first time. Go figure. 7 pounds 7 ounce, 7 pounds 4 ounce, 5:30 AM Saturday, Sunday, take your pick.

Street Value

2008-12-27T17:31:00.000-05:00

Wall Street certainly is a mystery to me. How can so much money appear out of nowhere and then vanish just as quickly? It doesn't even equate with a poker game where someone can be in the money one minute and in deep trouble the next, all on a single bad hand. No, at the poker table the money all goes to somebody in the end. On the street, it just vanishes.
A year ago we were all trying to figure out why Wall Street investors were pulling their investments out of stocks and sinking them into oil futures when these same investors knew very well that they were damaging the economy by driving up fuel prices. Yet that didn't stop them from doing it. That whole thing turned into a little circus ring with investors seeing oil futures going up and finding the temptation too great to pass up. The more investors dumped stocks and went for the oil futures, the more money there was in that market chasing after a fixed commodity, so the prices rose making the investment in oil futures even more tempting for other investors. Money seems to have a bubble mentality.
I never did figure out if the oil futures market wound up ahead on that game or lost their shirts when oil futures toppled.
But it's the mortgage securities market that really baffles me. We all know that investors lost their shirts on that one. I was thinking about that today and it occurred to me that it isn't really the bankers themselves that lost at that game. I mean, banks did lose but not as much as investors lost. It was a good game for banks. They made the loans, then packaged them and got their money back by selling those mortgages to investors. But really, what did investors see in low-interest mortgages? Why were they so hot to buy that crap when stocks were still on the rise? What made this market in low-return mortgages look more appealing to investors than actual productive stocks?
Clearly it wasn't the return on investment represented by mortgage interest. There had to be something besides interest that made these securities seem so appealing. But what?
The only thing I can think of is that the value of the property secured by these mortgages had some sort of appeal. Back in '03, '04, and to some extent '05 there was an attitude that real estate was a secure investment. But the security of real estate seemed to be rising. Property values were on the rise and seemed to be rising at a stronger rate every year. Mortgage investment strategy, the packaging of mortgages for sale to Wall Street investors and the seemingly endless supply of easy money for real estate purchases, was throwing ever more money at a limited commodity, housing. This extra money was driving up the prices of real estate. These rising prices seemed to offer security to investors so even more money came flooding in from Wall Street. That whole thing turned into a little circus ring with investors seeing real estate futures going up and finding the temptation too great to pass up.
Deja Vu...
There's only one hitch here...
There were only two ways for Wall Street to see any sort of "good" return on their investments in low-interest mortgages.
One was if the mortgages were short-term and the interest rates would be higher when the mortgages were renegotiated. Did Wall Street stand to gain this way? Was that part of the scheme? Somehow I doubt it. I doubt that the investors expected the homeowners to give them higher interest rates rather than refinancing the mortgages and leaving the investors with near-zero return.
The other way seems much more likely to me. The other way I'm referring to is that Wall Street could see gains if the mortgage became a foreclosure and the investor wound up holding a property whose value had inflated well above the value of the mortgage. With property prices rising like a space shot to the moon, that option must have had a very strong appeal to investors who knew the loans were being given to many people who simply did not have the ability to pay them off. Foreclosures were a sure thing.
So what was it that finally tipped over this apple cart?
Katrina.
How?
It was Katrina when gasoline prices finally rose above $3.00 a gallon. Do we remember that? We were paying $3.10, $3.20, even $3.50 or more a gallon for a little while back then. The price soon came back down, but the scare altered the landscape of our economy. The scare scarred us.
How?
For one thing it allowed the advocates of "peak oil" to convince us that there was a tipping point in the supply/demand scale for oil and that this tipping point was getting close. Talk of $5.00 and $10.00 gasoline didn't seem so far-fetched anymore. Gasoline had gone from $1.50 a gallon to $3.50 in just the first five years of the Bush Administration and the sky was the limit. We were actively alienating our suppliers around the world as well as our competitors and the future looked bleak.
So all of a sudden American home buyers began finding themselves a little short of money as they commuted in their new SUVs from their new far-suburban homes to work. Already the Federal Reserve Bank had decided there was a risk of commodity inflation so interest rates were on the way up. Low-interest credit was getting harder to find. But consumers were finding they had less money left each month to make house payments. They were paying too much of their income for heat and gasoline.
At first it must have looked like a wet dream come true for Wall Street. People would soon be foreclosing on property that was worth much more than what they paid for it.
Wet dreams rarely end well.
The only way most people would foreclose is if they had no way to sell their property and pay off the mortgage. The only way that would happen was if the value of the home was falling and had fallen below the current value of the mortgage.
Somehow Wall Street hadn't taken this into account -that is to say if my option two above was true, if Wall Street anticipated foreclosures as a part of the investment returns strategy. Wall Street anticipated foreclosures in an inflating property market. Instead, they got foreclosures in a deflating market. They got foreclosures in the only way that foreclosure made sense.
Maybe now with less money to throw around, we can find some stability for awhile. Maybe we can figure out a way to stop investors from building these ridiculous pyramid schemes that just wind up being clown and elephant filled circuses?
And why are there elephants in the circus and not donkeys?
Maybe this is like a high stakes poker game where there winds up being far more money on the table than entered the room in the players' pockets.

Jesusmas

2008-12-25T07:56:00.000-05:00

Interesting new term being thrown out in this video, "Christ-ophobes." I think that would be what the right-wingers would refer to me as. But watching this whole video reminded me a lot of good old (now deceased) Jerry Falwell. Look at the jiggling blubber around his scornfully smiling face, and the way he puckers his lips when he is trying to make a special point to his simpleton audience. And the pride, oh look at all the pride! If you don't see Falwell in that you have forgotten Falwell.
So from your favorite Christ-ophobe, Merry Jesusmas to all!

Christmas - Saved

2008-12-24T08:25:00.001-05:00

Saved in the sense of "born again" and God's Grace and the Spirit of Christ...
Just not "saved" in the sense of "returning to the real meaning of Christmas," the birth of the God-child Jesus, star shining bright, wise men crossing deserts on camels, angels talking with lonely shepherds in the night. What I mean is saved in the sense of being saved from the religious notion that somehow Christmas has been stolen from them.
You see, I've been there. I've had these strong feelings that Christmas has been so commercialized that we have lost sight of the real meaning of the nativity, the Bible story about the birth of Jesus. I have been a member of a church, many of whose members bemoaned this same over-commercialization and corruption of Christmas. But I was weak as a Christian. I couldn't blind myself to the fact that ALL of the people in the church who had this complaint still celebrated Christmas in the commercial way, most very happily so! Me, well I knew that if I were to put my beliefs into practice and deprive myself and my family of a Christmas tree and brightly wrapped presents and cookies and eggnog and trips over to Birch Street to look at the lights on that guy's house and then on to the end of Maple Street and a few other streets in town and Santa Claus and Rudolph and the mad rush of wrapping all the presents on Christmas Eve (my wife's tradition) and Christmas songs and... well you know what I'm talking about. The story of the pregnant virgin and her much older husband being turned away at the inn but by God's fiat creating that spectacle at Bethlehem a couple thousand years ago was losing ground.
But a day or two ago I came to the realization that the story of Jesus' birth on the Winter Solstice is a fable in itself. The Bible never said Jesus was born on December 25 and there is no indication that all the events surrounding this birth all took place on that same day. In fact, the tradition of celebrating the birth of Jesus on or around the solstice seems to have derived from the adoption by the church of Rome of pagan celebrations in order to increase membership.
In other words the story of Christmas being about the virgin birth is just as bogus as the story of Santa and Rudolph.
So why sweat it? God in His Grace isn't sweating it. Complaints and resentment don't express the spirit of Christ. And really, none of us are upset by the commercialization the way Jesus was upset by the money changers in the temple. So why not just shut up about the religious significance and get on with enjoying Christmas?
Remind me that I wrote this if I ever slip back into thinking that the real meaning of Christmas has been lost.
Update: You have to read this...

A Liberal Flat Earth

2008-12-21T07:45:00.000-05:00

I might be stepping out of bounds here in terms of what I usually have to say about things, but I don't think it's very far out. You be the judge.
I just read a post in Juan Cole's blog about his attending a Muslim event along with Melissa Etheridge and Rick Warren. Rick Warren is the author of the book The Purpose-Driven Life and pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. Barack Obama has invited Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration ceremony on January 20. This has caused quite a stir since Warren is a religious conservative and advocated for California's Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage in the state and annulled 18,000 gay marriages. I have been reading for days in John Aravosis's AMERICAblog about what a bad idea it was for Obama to make that choice since Warren has done so much damage to the gay and lesbian community. Aravosis was an early and strong supporter of Obama even when other highly respected liberal bloggers favored Hillary Clinton.
An aside...
I'm neither gay nor lesbian. I found the love scenes in Brokeback Mountain disturbing and un-tasteful. In other words I find male homosexual copulation to be disgusting. I don't attribute morals to the God who is going to oversee the destruction of our entire universe eventually and certainly the death of our own sun. But in human terms I can understand why most societies consider homosexuality immoral. Homosexual marriage appears to me to be an attempt to legitimize the morality of homosexual sex. I do see that this is what the gay and lesbian activists have been trying to do for decades here in America, to legitimize the morality of how they engage in sex. Again, morality isn't a God thing. It is based on human consensus. But that doesn't mean that in human terms anything goes. Some things clearly are immoral. Take for instance the torture of human beings. That is clearly immoral by any human standards of morality.
Back to my thesis...
Aravosis's derogatory tone towards Obama's choice of Warren and by extension Obama's bad judgment in general - something we have heard a lot of recently from liberals - hasn't been striking a chord with me. I have not been surprised or upset so far with Obama's leadership or with his choices when it comes to advisors and cabinet members. It makes sense to me that Obama wants his administration to represent not a small core of America's political community, the liberals, but a wider spectrum. Obama has enough faith in his own judgment and in the powers entrusted to him by the Constitution to believe that he can lead this wide political spectrum to do what is right for America. I still think that's what Obama is doing - not just trying to do but doing in reality.
So I disagree with Aravosis and the LGBT "community" here. I don't see Warren as a hateful person. I don't see myself as hateful either. But Aravosis is basing his support on only one issue, the gay and lesbian marriage issue. This isn't at all unlike the conservatives who base their judgment of political figures on one or a few conservative hotspots.
Juan Cole attempts to lift the debate a little bit. He comes to Warren's defense and suggests that it would do the right wing religious faction good to embrace social issues the way Warren has been doing. That's a very good point. But it seems to be Cole's only point.
I've met a lot of conservative-minded people who have good personalities, really likeable people, gifted and charming. That's no reason to trust them any more than charm and philanthropy are good reasons to trust car salesmen. There can be very little doubt that Warren and his congregation are advocates of conservative policy and adversaries of anybody with liberal intent. Cole doesn't seem to want to point that out.
I just think that all these single-issue debates are two-dimensional, so flat-earth. You have to look into the depths of what people want to keep secret before you can see things three-dimensionally, before you see the curvature of the earth. Warren may appear to be philanthropic, but at his core he's still a conservative and so are his constituents. They keep a lot of secrets. Aravosis may appear to be liberal and an Obama supporter, but at his core he is a gay activist. He keeps a lot of secrets.
The earth appears to be flat from so many different and opposing perspectives. It's up to us to expose that it is round, to expose the secrets that make the illusion of two-dimensional reality possible.

Bristol Day

2008-12-20T07:54:00.001-05:00

Today is the day. According to her grandfather, today is the day that Bristol Palin (hopefully soon to be Johnston) is due. Strangely enough the Palin news today is filled instead with the story of Levi's mom's arrest Thursday on six felony drug charges. I guess she's out on bail now or something? No room for any news about Bristol herself. Oh well, her time will come I'm sure. Soon we will all glory in the smiling solstice baby, firstborn male of the next Palin generation.
I could be blogging on other things, I suppose. I mean it's not as though nothing else is happening. But the shoe incident in Iraq is old news now except that it looks like the shoe-tosser may be suing the Iraqi officials who beat him after his arrest. What is there about democracy and freedom of expression that this guy clearly just doesn't get?
Bush is again handing out billions like they were lollipops, this time to save union jobs. Go figure on that one! Who'd a ever thought GW Bush would be caught dead saving union jobs on his way out the door. Grampa Bush must be rolling over in his grave! But GW is an oil man. He knows what it means to have to keep the unions happy. I mean look at Sarah Palin's hubby. He was a union oilman wasn't he?... Ahhh, a steelworker... I mean among other things... like a member of an Alaskan secessionist party that strongly dislikes the US government?... or is that a myth?
Well anyway, I wish Bristol and Levi and Sherry and Sarah and the whole Alaska clan all the best this winter solstice which isn't actually today. It happens tomorrow morning, Sunday December 21, at 7:04 AM Eastern, 3:04 AM Alaskan time.
I suppose I should try to clarify something here. Reading the comments to the drug bust news in the Miami Herald, it became clear that some Republicans are taking this news personally. I mean they are behaving as though the news were some sort of an attack or smear on their pure lily-white favorite Republican, Sarah Palin. But how could anyone possibly take it that way? I mean, really, people! Get a grip! Sarah isn't the one that got caught. And aren't those troopers working for Sarah? So Sarah is the good guy here, right? Even if she isn't commenting... yet... Sarah is the Euthyphro here, the pious one.
I mean I suppose you could stretch the parental responsibility thing and wonder how such a responsible Christian full-time-and-then-some working mom could let her daughter hang out with and even be having sex with the home-schooled son of some drug-crazed (or whatever) woman. But I mean really, folks, get serious. What mother has any say in what her teenage daughter chooses to do with her life? Let Sarah off the hook here, for goodness sakes.

Big 3

2008-12-12T08:34:00.000-05:00

Cars have pretty much been a hobby of mine since I was a teenager. I had my first car before I had my driver's license and I got my license at 15. Usually I work on my own cars although I default to the professional mechanics when things go beyond my limited tool set or my limited know-how. I have had some foreign-named brands along the way, a couple of Saabs, a couple of Toyotas, a Datsun pickup that never saw the road, even a KIA made Ford Festiva that was an absolute blast to drive. That thing made the road seem very roomy! I had an 850 Mini when I was in England that I could drive on the Motorways with my gas-pedal foot on the floorboard and I owned two German-made Buick Opels. But I've had American cars too, quite a few of them, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Chevy, Ford, Dodge and Chrysler and Plymouth. I never had a Cadillac or Jeep but my parents had a Hudson, a Studebaker, and a Rambler while I was growing up. My Microsoft spell checker is going wild with all these old and foreign car names.
I've seen quite a few American auto names vanish. Hudson and Rambler and Studebaker are gone, victims of the 50s, 60s, and 70s.. Oldsmobile too and Plymouth, victims of the 21st Century. Rambler became AMC and that was swallowed by Chrysler which was swallowed by Daimler Benz of Germany and then spun off to some Wall Street folks that don't want it anymore. Oldsmobile was one of the old-timers that was swallowed by GM and by the time I came along shared parts and Fisher body designs with the rest of the GM lineup. Plymouth became indistinguishable from Dodge and even Chrysler in recent years with the Breeze/Stratus/Cirrus, the Voyager/Caravan/Town & Country, and the uni-named Neons and PT Cruisers.
But today the big news is that all these names may be ready to topple. Why? Because the economy is shot and the Republicans in the Senate have never seen a better opportunity to break the American auto unions.
There he goes pointing fingers again, you all say. True.
But it's true. Republicans yesterday filibustered a 14 billion dollar "Big 3" stimulus bill because the UAW wouldn't agree to wage parity with the foreign automakers who build cars here in America with non-union labor. The UAW said maybe they could do that in 2011 when they renew their contracts, but not in 2009 which is what Republicans insisted. Republicans wanted it right now because right now is when the UAW would be desperate. Things could be better in 2011. Things are looking really bad right now so right now is when Republicans insist on concessions.
Who knows where this will all end up. Maybe the Big 3 will fail, maybe they won't. But this thing has been coming for a very long time. The Big 3 automakers have been supporting Republicans for a long time trying to get the government to free them from the unions. If they now fail, it'll be because these corporate giants succeeded in their anti-union idealism, their Atlas Shrugged righteousness.
But aside from the political aspects of this, I am undecided about what is best here. I am not at all convinced that the Big 3 are America's savior when it comes to making our automobiles. They really do seem to be our worst enemy and they have been that for a very long time. It was the Big 3 that was unprepared for the gas shortages in the 70s. It was the Big 3 that was unprepared for Japanese and European quality. And it was the Big 3 that pioneered and championed the gas-guzzling SUV industry. Now it is the Big 3 that is unprepared for high energy prices and global warming. And it is the Big 3 that need taxpayer money now for their survival, or so it is claimed.
Will American workers no longer make automobiles if the Big 3 go down? Or is this what it appears to be, union busting? If the UAW collapses as the Republicans want it to, will other brand-named cars come along? Will we finally be allowed to build, own, and drive lightweight fuel-efficient cars?
I don't have a lot of sympathy for the UAW either. Union labor tends to drive up the price of goods for everybody, not just for high income consumers. Union contracts certainly fueled the inflation of the 70s and early 80s until Reagan lowered trade barriers and allowed direct low-wage foreign competition. We all have saved tons and tons of money by buying non-union products.
But this long economic struggle to overcome inflation by fighting the unions with low-cost foreign labor, free trade, and outsourcing is a slippery slope, a slope that increases in severity with every year that goes by. American factory towns have all suffered from America's post-industrial economy. Atlas Shrugged economics has a downside. What one hand giveth - low cost products - the other hand taketh away - fewer good-paying jobs. Everyone always says get an education. That'll get you good paying work. But even that is now on a down-slope. We think we can become masters of the service industry, be the engineers and the managers and the money counters while the third world does all our labor for low wages. But the balance of trade deficit is teaching us a powerful lesson in why that can't happen and the boondoggle in the Middle East is threatening to bankrupt the entire European master race. Do Republicans really believe that there is some way to maintain stability in America when millions of illegal immigrants flood out the American job market with a virtual underground labor economy?
Despite all this, Republicans are in their element in the US Senate filibustering America's pathway deeper into this economic mess so they can be the deliverers when America becomes desperate enough to just hand the whole thing over to them. Ayne Rand had that part right. John Galt's day is yet to come. John Galt, by the way, epitomized the concept of a secret conservative conspiracy working actively to bring America's economy to its knees so the superior conservative theology could take over. Anyone who believes no such conspiracy exists hasn't read the book.
But John Galt wasn't your typical American conservative. John Galt was intelligent and honest. We have a very long way to go before America can trust her future to the Republican Party. Meanwhile here we are cleaning the socialist influence out of corporate America. Things just might get a whole lot worse before they can even think of getting better. I wonder if Obama read Atlas Shrugged. Maybe the time has come for me to read it again.

Taboo Marketing

2008-12-06T09:15:00.000-05:00

I just did a Google search on the title of my post here, "taboo marketing," and came up just about empty. There is the adult taboomarket.com site but that's only a small fraction of what I am thinking about with my use of this term. And since I've never thought of this term before waking up from an unusual dream this morning, I feel it fair to warn you that this post comes entirely under the classification of speculation. In fact, "Speculation" could easily have been its title. What I'm thinking about is the way taboo thinking affects market prices and market speculation.
My dream was this convoluted thing about me being involved somehow in an alternative solution to illegal drug distribution where small private agencies worked as co-ops to provide a limited and controlled low-cost supply of drugs that are otherwise scarce, illegal, and expensive. The whole point of making drugs illegal is supposed to be to limit their supply, but the reality is that the supply is relatively unlimited even with the laws making the drugs taboo. The taboo instead makes the drugs expensive.
The same thing holds true in sex marketing. Marketing of sex is taboo and that taboo, rather than limiting the supply of pay-for-sex services, instead drives up the cost of those services. We all know this.
Now it just so happens that a good many of the traders on Wall Street and in many other markets around the country and the world know this too. They know it because so many of them have first-hand experience with paying for drugs and sex. They understand how the price of a product can be forced up, way up, by somehow branding the product as bad.
Take for instance energy.
Cars and trucks that get poor fuel economy are the money-makers in Detroit. America's "big three" automakers are on the brink of bankruptcy because American consumers stopped buying these high profit margin gas guzzlers, not because we didn't want them anymore, but because we couldn't afford the gas anymore. But another factor crept into our thinking while we weren't looking. We became aware of and concerned about global warming, about how wasteful uses of earth's oil resources were raising the CO2 levels in the atmosphere and endangering our way of living here on earth. Suddenly, pleasure driving and recreational use of petroleum became taboo.
Recently I have been trying to imagine what it would be like if energy were both inexpensive and clean, if technologies were developed that made it efficient and non-polluting to convert renewable energy resources generated by the sun into useful low-cost energy sources for our homes, businesses, and transportation. What would it mean to us if all of a sudden it was no longer a bad thing to use energy? It dawned on me that some people already live in a mindset where there is nothing wrong with consuming petroleum energy products. These are the people who live in denial of human causes of global climate change. Their numbers are dwindling, but they are still out there on the roads by the millions.
But what would it mean to the rest of us if energy were both cheap and clean?
What would be the effect on our thinking if energy were no longer taboo?
Well BAM! already. When I began thinking about that, I realized that the badness of energy wasn't about waste. It wouldn't be "bad" to "waste" energy if energy were cheap, abundant, and clean. And since it is a good thing for energy to be cheap and abundant - few of us would seriously argue with that - then the problem is that energy isn't clean. The reason why it is "bad" to "waste" energy is because it pollutes, it makes our world a worse place to live. It makes us unhealthy and it is threatening the stability of earth's climate.
Yet only recently have we begun to think this way. By "we" I mean the majority of American and world energy consumers.
The result of us thinking this new way, that energy consumption itself is a bad thing, is that energy consumption has taken on an aura of being taboo. Consumption of gasoline especially has taken on the same sort of aura as smoking pot or buying sex. It is "bad" for us.
So as a result, we are willing to pay more for it.
Why? Because when we feel that we are buying something that is bad for us, something that is taboo, we understand that this commodity should be scarce. The theory of supply and demand insists that when there is normal demand for something that is in low supply, the price should go up. And when there is high demand for such a commodity, the price should shoot through the roof! So because we feel that we are purchasing something that is taboo, we know we should have to pay a lot for it. It's just wrong for it to be otherwise.
That is what I mean by taboo marketing. You see, the people who market these taboo products stand to make huge profits as long as the public accepts the taboo. As long as we insist that mind-altering drugs are "bad" for us, people who sell them will make huge profits. As long as we insist that sex is something to be shared freely only within marriage and is taboo otherwise, people who market sex will continue to make huge profits. And as long as we know that energy consumption is bad for the planet, people who market energy will continue to make huge profits.
Granted there is volatility in the oil market. There is volatility in any hugely profitable market. But the key to driving up profits is to promote the perception that it is wrong to purchase the product.
Taboo marketing in a nutshell.

Two Terrified Turkeys

2008-11-27T07:55:00.000-05:00

Is it my imagination or has President Bush taken on something of a terrified persona? And what has become of Dick Cheney? Even here in this pre-Thanksgiving ceremony at the White House where Bush is attempting humor, he doesn't seem relaxed at all. He seems stressed, nervous, stumbling over his own script which focuses, believe it or not, on the pardon of two White House turkeys!
If I were Bush (God forbid!) I think I might be concerned about a pardon as well. I have no doubt that Bush and Cheney were hoping for a McCain/Palin victory. They didn't get one. Now their one remaining hope is that Obama's outspoken desire to sweet-talk the opposition party into cooperation leads him to overlook Bush and Cheney's many misdeeds.
What misdeeds are you referring to, some may ask. Yes some in America still see Bush as flawless. Some even go so far as to give Bush God-like powers where good is defined by what He, Bush, does. Whatever Bush says is, by definition, Right since Bush Himself is "The Decider."
I'm not that generous, as you may know.
I still haven't gotten past the 9/11 thing, the remarkable coincidence of it. You had the Project for the New American Century white papering its way out of the 20th Century about how essential it is becoming at the turn of the century for America to build up its military so we can protect our strategic energy interests in the Middle East. They state that the only thing holding us back is the American public's resistance and that this resistance will block this neo-conservative dream unless some Pearl Harbor type catastrophe hurls public opinion forward.
Next you have Bush taking over the White House and this neo-conservative PNAC dream team taking over America's offense - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Bolton, you name it.
Then, oddly enough but conveniently, you have the new Pearl Harbor happening not even a year into Bush's presidency - 9/11.
Immediately you have the neo-conservative dream team taking the field and planning the offensive that would take over and essentially colonize the Middle East. You have dream team neo-conservative think tanks within the Pentagon coordinating with their counterparts in the Vice-President's office to feed bogus "intelligence" to the White House and the State Department as well as to the head of the Defense Department. This bogus intelligence is fed to the American people and the world and leads to the US invasion of Iraq, presumably to rid Iraq of its massive stockpile of WMDs.
Then just to put icing on the cake, you have Rumsfeld himself testifying to the 9/11 Commission that 9/11 was a "blessing in disguise." To back him up you have both Rice and Powell testifying essentially the same thing, although without the use of that term.
So you have prescience, coincidence, conspiracy, and thanksgiving. And on top of that you have an intense politicized media campaign geared to assure that we have those four things in exactly that order. Heaven forbid that we should have the conspiracy component happening prior to the miraculous coincidence that was 9/11. How unpatriotic it would be for any red-blooded American to think that was possible!
We all know that McCain and Palin would have been OK with it even if it somehow turned out that conspiracy did precede coincidence, that somehow this prescience demonstrated so clearly by PNAC's white papers actually led to some plan of action that resulted in 9/11. After all, conservatives all knew that the American public needed a jolt. Conservatives pretty much are unanimous in believing that the US invasion of the Middle East was necessary and good. Conservatives all know that the end justifies the means.
But what does it mean to have Democrats in power?

Housing Inflation

2008-11-26T06:59:00.001-05:00

Here's a prescient article from 2006, just as the housing bubble was bursting. This isn't too far off from what I've been thinking, that somehow the inflation calculations weren't taking into consideration the rising cost of owning a home. This article certainly explains that clearly enough.
But imagine where the economy might be right now if the housing bubble had been factored into the inflation rate over the past ten or twenty years, especially over the past eight years of the Bush administration. During the Bush years we were seeing low rates of inflation being driven up mainly by the rising cost of energy - and here again there must be some way that this rising cost of energy is masked over by inflation calculations. Meanwhile housing costs were skyrocketing, being driven up by the demand side of the supply/demand curve which was being driven up by historically low interest rates. People buying houses weren't paying much attention to the actual cost of the houses they were buying. They were paying attention to the monthly payments. It wasn't can I afford a $250,000 home, it was can I afford the payment and with record low interest rates, the answer was yes.
So under this demand-side pressure, house prices rose sharply during the Bush years. But because Washington in its wisdom has elected not to factor housing costs into the inflation rate, we all perceived that inflation was low, insignificant, nothing to concern ourselves about. And by we, I am including the investors who were making all this inflationary mortgage money available in the first place. We did not exercise the caution in lending that we would have exercised had we known the real inflation rate. Again, read that article to see what I mean by that. It was the perception of inflation that dried up the mortgage credit market.
Had that perception been there all along, investors would never have made low interest mortgage money available in the first place. There wouldn't have been the inflationary demand for housing at any cost that created the housing bubble. There wouldn't have been a housing bubble at all and our economy might be strong right now instead of stumbling drunk into the ditch.
But instead, here we are still trying to ignore the fact that the actual price of houses has anything at all to do with inflation. Here we are again trying to re-ignite the fire that inflated the balloon in the first place, easy credit. Here we are still stuck in the Reagan mentality that we have inflation by the tail because of free trade. Here we are, Democrat and Republican alike, wondering when this train wreck will be back on the tracks.
Maybe when we all begin to wrap our heads around the concept of housing inflation, inflation in the cost of buying and owning a house, maybe then we can lay a foundation for a new economy. But I don't see that happening any time soon, do you?
And for those of you who still argue that housing costs shouldn't be factored into inflation because house prices never fall since houses are an investment from which you always get a return, it should soon become clear to you that this is delusional reasoning. Calculating inflation in such a way that it masks the real increases in the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly cost of living might help politicians stay in office, but it is crippling the economy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with keeping housing costs down. This trend to drive housing prices up as high as they can stand to go to get a better return on investment is not a good thing. It is a bad thing. It's time we began to understand that fact again. We need to avoid conditions that encourage house prices to rise. We need to remove speculation from the calculation of a house's worth and get back to the real value again. Real value is the value of property right now, as it is being used right now. Speculation over what the value would be if this or that were to happen has become so normal that we now base property taxes on the speculative value of property instead of its real value. The housing bubble was fueled by speculation about the future value of property. The sale prices of homes were based not on anything real, but by speculation of future value. Now we are in a race to the finish to discover what the real value actually is of all this inflated property.
But have no fear, Chris Dodd is here. If there's any way in the world to keep that from happening, he's on the case.
Change we can believe in doesn't have white hair, have you noticed that?

No Clue

2008-11-25T18:02:00.001-05:00

So today it was another how much? 800 billion US dollars? For what? The credit card industry? The mortgage industry? The lenders? Again? And are they lending what we handed them before? Has that money run out already because Americans are just borrowing so much these days? Not.
I've recently been hearing the Diane Rehm show on Public Radio in the afternoons. Yesterday they were talking about the Citibank thing and today it was this new $800 billion bailout. She takes calls but also has a panel of "experts" to answer questions. What I noticed yesterday and today is this growing uneasiness and even disgust with the way that even the experts have absolutely no clue where this money is going or what it is doing to help the economy. There is zero transparency and so far, no results. "It could have been worse" is the best anybody has come up with so far and even that comes without references to support the claim.
But doesn't it strike anyone yet that it is ironic the way Middle Class America is loaning all this money to the rich so the rich will agree to loan Middle Class America enough money so they can afford to go to work tomorrow? I mean what in Hell is going on here? The banks have money. The wealthy are still wealthy. If the point of going through this economic slide-down is to rid us of "easy money," then what's the point of working-class America investing our future prosperity trying to keep easy money flowing? The economy will recover when the wealthy want it to recover and not one day sooner. What's so hard about that to grasp?
But we go on and on about how this or that bailout kept it from getting worse while all around us it keeps getting worse and there's nothing to show for all the bailouts so far other than that the corporate executives are still getting their bonuses and living high on the hog.
No, these "stimulus" bonuses that the Fed (a private bank, if you recall) and the US Treasury are giving away to the wealthy aren't about saving the economy. These are just payback from the Republican Party as this Reagan wave of conservatives fades away. Consider this an investment in the future of the Republican Party. This money raised on the backs of working class Americans will finance the next wave of right-wing politics which is coming closer and closer to inevitability the more we send taxpayer money off into the abyss. Between this (stimulus) tax burden and direct conservative obstructionism, Obama doesn't stand a chance, or so the thinking goes. And when conservatives rise again, this money will be there waiting for them.
They wanted to rob us blind by using our Social Security withholdings to pump up Wall Street. They failed at that, but they aren't failing this time. The wealthy have Middle Class America by the balls this time. The squeeze is on. And when Obama moves in, watch out. There are a lot of people in this country who have a lot of money and influence who don't want Obama and the Democrats to succeed. Obama's stated goal is to bring the Middle Class back their wealth. There are a lot of wealthy people in this country who see working class wealth as socialism. A lot of wealthy conservative Americans don't believe that working class Americans deserve good pay.
These last few months of Bush economics are contributing hard to that goal.

Fideism

2008-11-19T08:04:00.001-05:00

I bought a book at a thrift store this summer titled The Swiss, The Gold, and the Dead: How Swiss Bankers Helped Finance the Nazi War Machine written by Jean Ziegler and translated from German by John Brownjohn. The book is heavy reading. It's not calculus, but it takes at least a second reading for it to sink very far into my thick skull. Ziegler's thesis is that the Swiss, for the sake of convenience as well as for the huge profits they made in doing so, laundered the gold that the Nazis were stealing from the Jews and helped finance Germany's military leading up to and continuing throughout World War II. Swiss neutrality, rather than opposing war, translated into doing whatever was practical from a financial perspective.
In Chapter 2 - titled "Resistance," Ziegler introduces the term "fideism" - page 61 - attributing the term to Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae. Ziegler suggests that this term explains how it came to be that the Swiss, despite their ability to understand the higher principles involved, believed these higher principles were "impracticable" and were "inhibited by overriding constraints."
How easy it is for people to fall into that trap. It has always annoyed me that idealism is looked down upon by the older, wiser generations who understand this principle of practicality. Even the Serenity Prayer alludes to this: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Fideism, though, appears to have an even more significant meaning than what Ziegler attributes to it with the Swiss. Wikipedia defines fideism this way:
"Fideism is the view that religious belief relies primarily on faith or special revelation, rather than rational inference or observation"
So fideism is the word that describes the tremendous unnamed gulf between my wife's way of looking at things and my own way. My wife is faith-based. She finds it very easy to downplay the importance of reason and logic and science when it comes to religious beliefs. I look for reason and logic in any belief. Faith is nothing if it can't stand being tested by reason and logic. In fact, in my view faith is what takes reason and logic astray. It is very easy to use this belief in fideism to justify completely unreasonable ideas and behavior in the name of faith.
A few years back, our daughter was engaging in an online debate with a former youth pastor of hers and one of the things that came up in that debate was that man's insistence that when faith comes into conflict with rational thinking, it is faith that a true Christian has to follow. To her great credit my daughter just couldn't buy that illogical argument. But at the time, neither she nor I had a word we could use to embrace this concept. Fideism is that word.
It's not that I am anti-faith. Any reasonable assessment of my ideas clearly points to my use of faith. I believe in things that I don't have enough evidence to prove. We all do that. Life would be empty without that. No, it's not that I insist on evidence-based reason or nothing at all. That isn't the problem. The problem is that when faith comes in clear conflict with the evidence, do you use reason and logic to test your faith or do you disparage reason and logic and insist that only through the higher power of faith can understanding be gained?
The fideist (word added to my spell checker but present in the Wikipedia article) throws out the evidence and attempts to impugn and invalidate the logic on the basis that faith is the higher form of thinking.

Theocracy

2008-11-17T09:16:00.001-05:00

Off and on ever since I began blogging years ago I have touched on the notion that in the background while the rest of America was asleep, the Christian Right, America's religious right, have been working hard to take over our government. Over the past year there have been several situations that reminded me again of this, specifically Alaska Senator Ted Stevens's comments after his conviction and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's nearly successful campaign for the White House despite swirls of controversy over her honesty. Why is it that the American public supports people like this?
Why, when Monica Goodling, Alberto Gonzales, and Lurita Doan crashed and burned and even when Jack Abramoff of all people (think Ralph Reed), and Tom DeLay from Texas fell from grace, was there talk of the honorable things they were involved in, the service to God they had been rendering?
How can God be at the center of all this Republican slime?
The common thread binding all these people together - Palin, Stevens, DeLay, Goodling, Gonzales, Doan, Reed, and many others including George W. Bush himself - is what appears to be a developing consensus among rightwing Christians that the end justifies the means, that God supports anything that will bring about the fulfillment of His plan for America and the world.
The official term for what is going on is Christian Reconstructionism. Alarmists have coined the term Dominionism.
As with so many other movements that the common person is only aware of as undercurrents, Dominionism is not a movement that we perceive openly but a movement that we sense if we are aware of political momentum. Most Americans are in denial of the idea that right-wing Christians are trying to take over our government, that they have organized and have been very successful in putting agents of their theology into public office, agents who have used the powers of their office in illegal ways to cement the power of this theology in American politics.
Although it was the Terri Schiavo case that really brought this fiasco into the spotlight, it was the US attorneys' firing investigation after the 2006 takeover of Congress by the Democrats that brought this boil to the surface. Americans watched in disbelief and disgust while congressmen grilled lying DOJ officials, officials whose official responsibility in government is to ensure that the truth is told. Bush and Rove literally threw Gonzales to the dogs, but we the American people finally got to see this Dominionist "end justifies the means" theory in practice. Anything, including the DOJ head's lying under oath, goes.
It has taken me a long time to realize that this political movement is actually succeeding. But this weekend I stumbled on a website, Theocracy Watch, that has been tracking this movement. I'm planning on reading this website over the winter to come to a better understanding of all the things I have been suspecting but didn't have enough information to prove. Have I been correct in my suspicion that the Republican Party is attempting to bankrupt our country? Why would they want to do that? What role is Sarah Palin playing in this movement? Why did she excite the religious right, reinvigorate the base? Who and what are this base that she reinvigorated? How is this religious base connected to the other Republican base, the wealthy among us?
And what are their plans now that Obama, not just Democrat but half African, is our president?
Fun reading, folks. Theocracy Watch

Destiny

2008-11-08T10:39:00.002-05:00

It's strange sometimes the way my personal philosophy gets shaped and defined. I was brought up attending Protestant churches, the local Congregational church and the Methodist church. By my mid-teens, though, I had pretty much made up my mind that all this God talk made no sense. Religion and science seemed to be on divergent paths and I intended to walk with science. My dad and an older half-brother of mine became involved in a "fundamentalist" church in a neighboring town but I didn't see any point in that. I was an atheist when I finished high school and joined the Air Force.
In my early 20s I had a few drug experiences that changed my mind about God. Those experiences showed me that "reality" can melt before your eyes. Reality as experienced by a human being is a graphic model existing in the mind and is based on a highly filtered system of perception. It has only fleeting resemblance to what is really "out there," to the actual existence of things. It's no wonder there are so many conflicting realities in politics, religion, and life.
I became a "born again Christian" a year or two after leaving the military. I was looking for answers to my drug experiences and this evangelical, Bible-believing Christianity promised to provide those answers. It took years for me to finally conclude that I was being duped by this religion. I kept blaming it on myself, that there was something wrong with me, something weak about my faith, that my doubts were blocking my spiritual experience. But at the same time I kept running into situations where these right-wing "fundamentalist" Christians kept insisting that any real spiritual experience was evil if it couldn't be traced directly to the text of the Bible. It kept coming up and being reinforced that real spiritual experience comes after a "saved" person dies. While here in the body on earth, the deceiver is the one in control and our only hope of spirituality is that we be saved by God and go to Heaven when we die.
As ignorant as that theology is, it's also quite simple. It places virtually no demands on you, the person. All you need to do is yield to the power of God and then use the Bible as a check and balance to ensure that your beliefs are really from God and not from the deceiver.
My doubts won out in the end. The hypocrisy of fundamentalist Christianity was overwhelming for me. I had to get out and I did.
But having been in there, I am now faced with needing to understand what this power was that had me in its grips. It's not that I went back to not believing in God. It's obvious to me that there is an intelligence far exceeding human intelligence and that everything in this universe and beyond is awash in this intelligence. What had me in its grips was a theology and all theology is based in fallacy. There is no one correct theology capable of calling all the rest false. All theology is false. The reason it is false is because it comes from intellectual thought, not from actual spiritual experience.
Fundamentalist Christianity claimed to get around this because it was based on the Bible, writings that were gathered by an act of God into a canonized collection containing all of God's writings to mankind. God wrote the Bible by miraculously inspiring human authors. Furthermore, the inspired truth of the Bible somehow managed to survive the English translation process. God was at work even there. Anyone who seriously doubted this in the fundamentalist church was suspect - suspect of what, nobody was really saying, but suspect just the same.
But the problem is that it always seemed to me like someone had come along in the fundamentalist church and established theologies that weren't really being exposed in the presentation of the Bible. Someone long ago used the Bible to intellectually concoct theories of what the truth really is and those theories were what was actually being taught in church. It's not like anyone was hiding from me the fact that theology existed. I heard about Calvin and Luther and Scofield. But no pastor in my experience ever actually referenced these theologians. They presented the theology but they didn't reference the source. Instead, they made it appear that the source was the Bible. Church leaders made it appear that the source of their theology was the Bible and that it was fact, not theory.
Now, years after leaving all this behind, I am just beginning to understand the power that theology had over the teachings of these fundamentalist churches. And I am just now coming to realize that probably the most influential of all theologies was and remains Calvinism.
I am puzzled about how Alberto Gonzales could have felt righteous about what he did, even after his resignation.
I am puzzled about how Tom DeLay can claim his innocence even in the light of all he did to corrupt government and make it serve him.
I am puzzled how Senator Stevens can call himself innocent in light of his seven felony convictions especially considering his own knowledge and recorded phone calls showing his understanding of what he was involved in.
And I am puzzled by Sarah Palin's professed innocence of virtually every claim made against her. It's as if she has never told a lie and never been found out to be less than what she wants her image to suggest she is.
In all of these cases, the culprits claim to be in service to God. How can that be? How can you deceive and corrupt and mislead in service to God? How can such clearly self-serving behavior be God's work?
Well the key is the belief in destiny.
Sarah Palin had something interesting to say this week after her and John McCain's defeat in the election. She was reflecting on Obama's victory as a minority candidate and on the rise of the Black race in America and according to a FOX News article she said, “America is going to reach her destiny.” Maybe that shouldn't have struck me as odd but it did. Why? Because as I see it, America isn't on a road to destiny. America is, if anything, a destiny in itself. America is where the people of the world look when they want to see freedom and independence and constitutional protection of those values in action. It isn't that some day in the future we will reach that destiny and the Obama victory is a big step in that direction. In my mind it is that the Obama victory attests to the fact that America already is the place where this is not just possible but happening. It has been happening all along and it will continue to happen as long as America defends its Constitution.
So what possible "destiny" could Sarah Palin be referring to?
I'm not going to go putting words in her mouth or claiming she believes things I don't know that she believes, but I know she is the kind of Christian that we have seen in action in the Republican Party over the past decade. She is the DeLay/Gonzales/Stevens kind of Christian Republican. Everything she does serves herself first and in the name of God.
But why is this getting to be such a common thing and why does the idea of destiny keep coming up?
If destiny has to do with Christianity and it has to do with popular theology, chances are it has to do with Calvinism. And that's where I'm at in my study. I want to understand what Calvinism is and what effect this theology is having as it is applied in America's right-wing churches. I know what the world's destiny is thought to be under Calvin theology, but to what extent do Republicans want to see this destiny fulfilled and what are they doing to help God do it?

Innocence

2008-11-08T08:12:00.000-05:00

She is as innocent as Senator Stevens, if not more so! She just never did any of it! And if she did she's sending it back! It's just all those bad apples making that barrel smell. It's not her! She doesn't smell! She doesn't stink!! Oh no!!
"Ms. Palin said that her experience made her realize how brutal national politics could be." Oh really????? Gosh! And she discovered this when people were criticizing her, not when she was tossing out so may criticisms of her opponents that some in her audiences were calling for the death of her opponents? Oh, right, she never heard anyone saying anything like that. Heck, she probably didn't even hear herself being nasty! Maybe that's why she has that tinny nasal sound to her voice. She has the feedback line to her ears shut off at the source!
Ya gotta love Palin. She's amusing if nothing more. And her daughter Bristol has turned 18 according to some reports. When is she due? December? January? Won't it be wonderful when she and little Levi finally marry his dad?

Day After

2008-11-05T20:41:00.001-05:00

It's now the end of the day after the day of the election, 2008. The pundits have all done their thing. The speeches are so in the past that they aren't even being played on network news tonight, or if they were I missed it. Everyone's focused on what a great achievement this was for racial progress in America. Oh? I didn't realize this was even about race! Yes I understand in a distant way how this must feel for a person of color to finally realize that King's "dream" has arrived at the front gate of the White House. But as I told a friend last night, my hope, my belief, is that Obama will make sure that we all understand that the "White" in White House has nothing to do with skin color. This isn't about race. This is about victory over ignorance, Obama's victory over the Republican Party's pride in its own ignorance. This is about the audacity of some Democrats to believe that an American leader can be a rational, intelligent human being, that the country isn't forever lost in the insanity of reactionary politics. The fact that Obama is a man of color just adds color to the beauty of this event.
But the sleaze continues. In Alaska it appears that voters will send their felonious Senator Stevens back to Washington for Washington to sort out whether or not "ethics" still has any meaning in the U.S. Senate. Should the Senate give him the boot, it turns out that Governor Palin can't just appoint a replacement. Alaska would need a special election. Some speculate that Governor Palin herself might run for the job. If you ask me, she'd make a great replacement for the king of earmarks and sleaze. This today in TPM (from Newsweek)...
I especially like the remark about the Palins being "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast." Sarah has been reminding me of Ellie May Clampett for some time now. This article paints Palin in a whole new light if you didn't notice. I had been under the impression that the campaign insisted on the new clothes, that Palin resisted. Yeah well she resisted the way she resisted the bridge to nowhere. And some of the clothes have gone missing? Gee! Go figure on that one! Wonder whose closet those clothes are hiding in!
I can only feel sorry for all the women in America who had hopes that this woman would represent them. Girls, you picked the wrong mama!

Unfreakinbelievable!

2008-10-31T21:21:00.001-04:00

This is just un-freakin-believable!
It would appear that the Goddess of Alaska is so into herself that she thinks they wrote the Constitution to protect HER from the media! The First Amendment protects not the press but the politician. And this is the ONE that Republicans want at the helm if McCain wins and kicks the bucket?
Exxon Valdez anyone?

Palin Wardrobe

2008-10-22T08:47:00.000-04:00

So some Republicans got all bent out of shape that Michelle Obama stayed at the Waldorf and feasted on lobster and caviar. Turns out that story was bogus. Last I heard, Maine lobstermen were getting $2.00 a pound for their catch. I would hope that whitey Republicans would allow Blacks to partake of a bargain like that, but hey, whatever...
Now it turns out that the Republicans have generously been buying clothes for McCain's intelligence-challenged trailer trash running mate to make her look just like a celebrity. Go figure, eh? I wonder if this story is false too?

Cindy for Prez

2008-10-08T07:06:00.000-04:00

Cindy who?
Oh, yeah, right, Mrs. McCain... Cindy McCain. Is she running for Prez too?
Well it would seem that she indeed is. This quote at Tennesseean.com caught my eye this morning:
*****
“What I have found is that it’s necessary to make sure the American people understand what we have to say, what we stand for as a husband and wife, and what we will do for the American people if we’re lucky enough to be elected,” Cindy McCain said.
*****
Cindy, using the Republican trick that I call reality inversion, is making the point in this article that Obama has "waged the dirtiest campaign in American history” against her and her husband. Oh? Is that so? So that explains why her own husband and his surrogates came out early and hard calling Obama everything from a Muslim terrorist to a pedophile? I guess so.
What this actually shows is that Cindy is looking at John as her man, bought and paid for. She sees John the same way any lobbyist with a big investment in a politician sees that politician. Her interests are represented by the man she has her money invested in, John McCain. She and John aren't simply a husband and wife team, they are lobbyist and bought politician. She has her own agenda and John is the politician she bought to serve her.
So, Cindy, did your man straighten it all out last night in the Nashville "town hall" debate?

Palin Fatigue

2008-10-04T08:20:00.000-04:00

Google it. I dare ya. I swear I'm not the only one afflicted by this.
Google "Palin Fatigue" and see what I'm talking about.
Juan Cole had this to say about Palin:
*****
Palin has revealed her real self in the Gibson and Couric interviews, and clearly knows nothing and offers only rubbery expressions and glib repetition, for all the world like a rasping myna bird, of a stream of memorized slogans that sound as though they were disinterred from a time capsule originally buried in William F. Buckley Jr.'s back yard several decades ago.
*****
I have wished a bird would fly away,And not sing by my house all day;Have clapped my hands at him from the doorWhen it seemed as if I could bear no more.The fault must partly have been in me.The bird was not to blame for his key.And of course there must be something wrongIn wanting to silence any song.
Robert Frost, A Minor Bird
*****
As for me, I just wish she'd go back up to Alaska where she came from and let the people of Alaska deal with her nonsense. They had begun to do just that before McCain rode in on his big white horse and flooded the state with his lawyers to save this Alaska beauty queen runner-up from her fate.
I had a déjà vu the other night when I was watching the VP debate. Palin made some comment about supporting the troops and it dawned on me that this was Dick Cheney speaking through lipstick. Sarah Palin is the new Dick Cheney. Don't believe me? Show me one instance where Sarah Palin disagrees with Dick Cheney. Just one. Any one will do. Sarah says Dick's worst moment as VP was his embarrassing shoot first look later hunting incident.
Palin is one with conservative hate radio. So was Cheney. Palin gets her talking points from them. So did Cheney. Palin faults anyone opposed to the war as not supporting the troops. So did Cheney. Palin can't recognize that anything Cheney has done was bad. Neither can Cheney.
Should the American people decide that Palin should be the next vice president, the transition from Cheney to Palin should be seamless. 4 more years!

Jerusalem Embassy

2008-10-03T07:34:00.001-04:00

In last night's VP debate, Sarah Palin seemingly out of nowhere brought up the idea that under McCain/Palin the United States would build our Israel embassy in Jerusalem. My surprise at this goes to show that I am completely uninformed. This morning I Googled and discovered this in Wikipedia.
*****
The United States Jerusalem Embassy Act, passed by Congress on October 23, 1995 , states that "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999".
*****
While this idea simply seems inflammatory to me, it has deep significance to both Jewish and Christian Zionists, thus Palin's little pitch last night in support of this Zionist idea.
What business is it of ours where Israel establishes its capital? If Israel passed legislation to make Manhattan the capital of the United States, do you suppose anyone would take notice? Do you suppose anyone would think that Israel had overstepped its bounds? If this doesn't show the power of Zionism over our federal government, nothing does.

The First Debate

2008-09-27T08:53:00.001-04:00

Last night I watched the first debate of the race to the finish by America's two main candidates for president. You all know that I am an Obama supporter so my impressions will certainly be colored by that fact.
I felt disappointed.
Why? Because I felt that Obama was pulling his punches the very same way that John Kerry pulled his punches back in 2004. Obama was trying not to come across as an attack dog. He was trying to be civil and respectful. McCain, on the other hand, showed no respect at all for his opponent. The moderator, Jim Lehrer from Public Television's News Hour, tried right from the start to get the two candidates to face each other and direct their replies to one another. Obama did that throughout the debate, but he was met by McCain's stubborn refusal to turn and speak to Obama. McCain came across as a snob whose hatred for Obama was so strong that he couldn't even look the man in the eye.
It wasn't that McCain didn't leave the door wide open for Obama to criticize, it's that Obama missed virtually every opportunity he had to point out the open hypocrisy of the McCain campaign - McCain's choice of the earmark queen of the world as his running mate, McCain's inside meddling with the nation of Georgia organized by the lobbyist for Georgia's high level connection to the McCain campaign and leading to the Russian invasion, and McCain's contradictory lobbyist connection to Freddie Mac even when McCain used these issues to attack Obama. In my mind there's simply no excuse for him not pointing out that McCain's positions are hypocritical considering the people he has chosen to be at his side in this campaign.
It seems clear to me that Obama has made a conscious choice not to bring these things up, probably hoping that the Pandora's Box of anti-Obama lies the Republicans are throwing around wouldn't be opened by McCain. Maybe that's good strategy and maybe it isn't. Maybe those outrageous lies need to be exposed for what they are. Maybe Obama can't win this thing if he hides from these lies.
But it was clear to me that Obama was shying away from pointing out McCain's weaknesses last night when he should have been presenting a forceful image of himself as a leader and as a commander. Strike one against Omaba.

Bailing Out the Boat

2008-09-24T05:16:00.000-04:00

My days of boat bailing go way back. In the 50s and 60s when I was growing up and Wilson Pond was my playground, my dad had a little business going on the side to supplement his meager government retirement as well as to share his love for Wilson Pond. He ran a little boat landing on Wilson Pond where people could come for a day or a weekend or even a week and put their boat in, maybe dock it overnight, maybe even camp out. In those days ten bucks went a long long ways. He also rented three or four old flat-bottomed wooden boats. Every time it rained, someone in our family, often me, would go to the landing and bail out those boats using old one-gallon oil cans with their tops removed and their rims bent into a V. If it had rained hard enough, we might bring a larger bucket.
This proposed government bailout of Wall Street has absolutely no similarities to bailing out those boats. Yes some would have you think that Wall Street is just about to sink into the Atlantic unless we begin bailing like madmen. I tend to think that's not the case. The Dow is still hovering around 11,000. It's still inflated by all the easy money of the Clinton and Bush years. And then there's all that money that the Bush tax cuts put in the hands of the wealthiest Americans. There's a lot of money still out there. Real estate prices are still well up there in the housing bubble range. They haven't dropped to pre-bubble levels. Gold is up. Energy is up. New car lots are full of gas-guzzlers still. Our highways are clogged with SUVs and full-sized pickups. There's no panic for lack of money.
No, this bailout isn't because Wall Street is going under. It's not.
This bailout is the golden parachute for the outgoing Bush team.
Bush is asking Congress to hurry up and pass legislation that puts $700 billion borrowed dollars, borrowed from God knows whom, into the hands of the Bush team as a blank check with no oversight and no legal recourse in case of abuse. It's the biggest bank heist in the history of the world if Congress goes ahead with Bush's demands.
Why does that come as no surprise to me. Bush is on his way out of Washington. Why shouldn't I expect him to suck the treasury dry on his way out the door? It's become the American way.

POW

2008-09-20T08:29:00.000-04:00

Have you ever wondered how it came to be that John McCain was actually in charge of his release date when he was a North Vietnamese POW? I mean, it is McCain's claim and now the claim of the Republican Party that John McCain is a genuine war hero because he refused to be released out of sequence, refused an early release. How did he do that? How was it that the North Vietnamese weren't in control of the release date? What authority did McCain have over the North Vietnamese in this matter?
Well it turns out that McCain has other problems as well concerning American POWs after the end of the war. An online article in The Nation Institute dated September 18, 2008, claiming to be an expanded version of an October 6, 2008 article in The Nation, delves into McCain's record in Congress of obstructing the POW/MIA movement.
John McCain a war hero? Yeah right. Not quite the right stuff for that claim to hold water.

I'm Melting! I'm Melting!

2008-09-17T08:09:00.000-04:00

As we sit by our TV sets watching the meltdown of Wall Street, things are going on behind the smokescreen.
Make sense of this one!
I don't think I heard any mention of this in the media in the coverage of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy over the weekend. I'm no money guru but doesn't this Bloomberg report say that this $138 billion in loans to Lehman Brothers since the bankruptcy was immediately repaid by the Federal Reserve Bank? Isn't the Federal Reserve Bank the one that insures all of our FDIC backed bank deposits? Um, gee guys, but is that the money I'm supposed to feel good about?

Christian Liars

2008-09-15T07:50:00.000-04:00

For many years I have wondered what sort of rationalization it takes for Christians to tell lies. Somehow lying isn't that much of a sin in Christianity. It's seen as somewhat of a Santa Claus thing, it's OK to do it as long as someone benefits from it. But why? Why isn't lying just as much a sin as any other sin? Why doesn't the truth matter for Christians?
If you approach a Christian with this thesis, she will deny it. She will look at you as though you've lost your mind. She doesn't lie. Bush doesn't lie. McCain doesn't lie. Palin isn't telling lies. But in even my own personal experience working for Christians and having Christians in my extended family, I know how easy it is for these Christians to repeat obvious lies. And the lies clearly benefit the liars.
I'm not talking about run-of-the-mill liberal Christians here either. I'm talking about Bible-thumping right-wing "fundamentalists" who point fingers when they see sinners. I'm talking about right-to-lifers and anti-gay activists, people who are delighted to commit themselves or their children to the mission field. I'm talking about solid "family values" Republicans. I'm talking about people who you would think would know that the Bible doesn't advocate lying. Or am I wrong about that? Does the Bible justify lying for Christians? If so, where? Give me book, chapter, and verse.
This weekend something relating to this occurred to me that I hadn't really paid much attention to before.
Years ago, fundamentalist preachers used to preach and write about how Christians need to separate themselves from the world. God's domain is heavenly. The world belongs to Satan. Christians need to separate themselves from Satan's realm, die to it spiritually, and be born again into God's heavenly realm, not through physical death but through the "born-again" experience of salvation and righteous church-based living and fellowship.
I don't attend church anymore, but in the trailing years of my church attendance there was some controversy over that concept of separation. It was argued that Christians couldn't effectively witness to the "unsaved" if they were separated from them and if they held themselves to somehow be living more righteously when in truth we all know we are sinners. Salvation-based righteousness seemed hypocritical to the unsaved even if not to the saved. Because of this controversy, the idea of Christian separation from the world slipped into the shadows. It became, for those who still believed it, something that was kept in the closet.
But the basic concept that there is God's heavenly realm and then there is the world has remained strong in right-wing Christianity. And it is clearly understood that when you pray or when you read your Bible or when you fellowship with your Christian brothers and sisters you don't lie. You are in the presence of God or the Holy Spirit when you do those things and lying in that presence would of course be a sin.
But outside of that realm, when you are in the world, dealing with worldly ideas and powers and problems, you aren't dealing with God. Satan rules the world. The Bible tells you so. So how can it be considered a sin to lie to Satan?
So I ask again. Give me book, chapter, and verse to justify telling lies to the world. Clearly you do it for your own personal gain. Explain why that is not tarnishing your soul when you do it, when you make that bargain with the Devil. We all stand at the crossroads every day, every moment of our lives. We all face the same temptation - join Satan in the bargain and gain personally in the world or stand with God and your commitment to truth and suffer the consequences. Where in the Bible are you told to strike that bargain with the Devil?

Bush Doctrine

2008-09-14T12:39:00.001-04:00

The bloggers on the left have for days been discussing how Sarah Palin fumbled her way through the Charlie Gibson questions about the "Bush doctrine." But I have to give the credit here to Palin. If someone sat me down and in the middle of an interview asked me what my views were of the Bush doctrine, I wouldn't have a clue what I was being asked about. I might ask instead of trying to pretend I knew, but I don't think the Left is winning anyone from the center or the Right with all this criticism. Chances are most Americans are as clueless to this phrase as I am and would side with Palin in this criticism.
There was another similar situation in the Gibson interview regarding "entitlements." I still haven't figured out what that's about but something about Social Security and Medicare not being entitlements? What the f***... Coulda fooled me!
Are the left trying to outsmart themselves or something? This is a sure course to defeat if they are. Palin may be somewhat clueless but so are the people who will elect her to the White House. We aren't winning any political points by pointing out that she is clueless about the things the majority of Americans are clueless about.

Low Blow

2008-09-13T06:57:00.001-04:00

I stumbled on a YouTube video yesterday that's hilarious. It's hard to imagine this being doctored footage but who knows anymore. Anything's possible. The way Cindy McCain's expression changes and she shifts on her feet and looks aside makes me think she knows what she's dealing with here.
Have a look.
John McCain's Wandering Eyes
Running mate or playmate? It doesn't look to me like Sarah is all that turned on about McCain's softer side.

War the First Option

2008-09-12T07:38:00.000-04:00

I didn't watch the Charlie Gibson interview with Sarah Palin but I've read and watched excerpts of it. This exchange caught my attention:
***
GIBSON: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?PALIN: Now, as for our right to invade, we're going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be, a military strike, a last option.
***
Palin has the appearance of being a yellow-ribbon "Support the Troops" ditto head of Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush but on this one point she seems to be on a plank of her own. The way she framed her answer where she says we need to "get to the point... where war is not going to be the first option" would seem to imply that we aren't at that point now. We are not now at the point where war is not the first option. To phrase it without the double negative, we are currently at a point where war is a first option. We need to work toward changing this, but this is where it stands right now.
This stands in sharp contrast to what the Bush administration has been saying for the past six years. The Bush gang has been assuring us that war has to be the last option. Even Obama agrees on that point. But Palin says we aren't there now. Palin says we have to work with our allies and work on building new relationships before we can reach that point, that in fact as it now stands war is our first option.
I wonder if anyone else picked up on Palin's comment. Did she misspeak or is this how she actually frames the issue in her mind? And if this really is how she thinks about this, is she right? Is war the first option under Bush?

Evidence

2008-09-09T06:38:00.000-04:00

I have been following the rumors that have been circulating around the Internet suggesting that Sarah Palin lied about giving birth to Trig, that Trig is instead Bristol's baby. All speculation on this seemed to end when Bristol's parents and the McCain campaign announced that Bristol is herself now pregnant, five months along, making it impossible for her to be Trig's mother. For most, that was evidence enough, but for me, that was campaign related and furthermore relied on the honesty of the one whose honesty was in question, circular reasoning.
I've been keeping my eyes open for any evidence that might help settle this question. The evidence would need to come from an independent source, not from Palin herself and not from the McCain campaign. So what is this evidence? It isn't strong but it certainly seems to be real and independent. It is a letter from a Wasilla resident Anne Kilkenny. Snopes.com confirms Kilkenny's letter.

2008 Fly-in Weekend

2008-09-06T06:41:00.000-04:00

It's Saturday morning in Greenville, Maine, home of the Seaplane Pilots Association International Seaplane Fly-In. This year is the 35th year of this event. How time flies!
I'm not a pilot and this fly-in originated and remains primarily a pilot event, but it has become a major tourist attraction here in Greenville extending the summer tourist season by one week. Fly-in weekend is always the weekend after Labor Day come rain or shine, come doggy summer heat or chilly Arctic cold, come hurricane too. This year it's Gustav and Hanna whose effects are supposed to blow by later tonight, or tomorrow. But the weather was good yesterday for flying in and is supposed to be good today for the fun.
There was a stiff southwesterly wind yesterday. I came into town around 2:00 PM to check on a few things and had a treat from the top of Indian Hill. I'd just come out of the credit union and was about to get back in my car when I heard a roar in the distance from the direction of the Junction Cove. I looked westward just as a very large Grumman Albatross rose up above the tree line on what appeared must have been a southerly take-off run. Its engines were roaring and continued to roar as the pilot sharply banked the huge plane eastward, still in his bank as he went just south of me at maybe 600 feet above the ground. Not fighting gravity the pilot let his nose drift level and then begin to drop as the plane turned northward and dropped out of sight below the tree line heading up the lake over the East Cove. Where is that camera when you need it!!
This is also air show weekend down at the Brunswick Naval Air Station but do they have a crafts fair down there? Sure they have the Blue Angels but do they have a bomb drop contest like ours? Do they compete to see which canoeist/pilot team is the fastest to get out to a dock, strap the canoe to the plane's floats, fast taxi around a pylon, and get that canoe back to land right in front of the crowd who are still trying to dry off from the spray the airplane kicked up when it blasted its way out into the lake? And all this is just the side show. The main event is having all those beautiful airplanes and all their rigging filling the Fish and Game's Stobie Hanger, the East Cove, the municipal airport, and the air all around Moosehead Lake.
I wonder if anybody blogs these fly-ins. Someone really should.

Convention VP Speech

2008-09-03T23:33:00.000-04:00

I just watched Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the Republican convention. I have to admit, this lady wins hands down. I wouldn't want to be running anywhere against her. I'd lose for sure. She has a certain appeal that can't be denied. She's fierce. What was that joke she told? What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick. She had her lipstick on for sure.
But something just occurred to me. For anyone concerned that John McCain would be George Bush's third term? Heck, there's no comparison at all now that Sarah has arrived on the scene. This woman IS George Bush the Third! She is completely convincing to anybody who listens to political speeches without trying to fill in the gaps the speakers deliberately and cleverly leave out. If you don't ask who, what, when, where or why, this one is for you.
In fact the whole Republican convention is for you. There have been so many lies spun out from that podium this week it makes my head spin! But oh the cheers! My how those Republicans love to hear those lies! It's almost like wouldn't it be cool if McCain actually did win so we could actually live the proof that this is all just a pack of lies. But you know, we did that in 2004 and nobody in that party learned a thing. This is 2004 all over again. Four more years all over again.

Sarah Palin

2008-08-30T14:24:00.000-04:00

Senator John McCain yesterday announced that his choice for the next Vice President of the United States of America would not be his favorite, former Democrat Joe Lieberman who has been his shadow throughout this campaign, but rather Sarah Palin, a new face on the political scene with several years experience as mayor of a city of 9,000 and a year and a half experience as Alaska's governor. This after a two-hour private meeting with her the evening before the selection according to an ABC blog.
All I can offer at this point is some early thoughts on this unusual move by McCain. It's hard to figure this out, actually, why he would choose a running mate who has significantly - astonishingly even - less experience than even Obama whom the Republicans - following Hillary Clinton's lead - have been criticizing for months as inexperienced. Who would you want answering that phone at 3 AM while you and your family are sleeping, Sarah Palin, hockey mom and moose-slayer, or Barack Obama? The open hypocrisy of McCain's choice is amazing.
Was it my imagination or was John McCain overly friendly with Palin in the announcement ceremony. I even sensed - and as a man I'm qualified to make this observation - that McCain was almost fawning over her. McCain does have a reputation with beautiful women so maybe that's where I got that impression.
As far as my first impressions of Palin, she reminds me of the Bush Administration's young female religious right beaurocrats like former Justice Department bureaucrat Monica Goodling and former GSA chief Lurita Doan. Both of these women appeared to be ditzes and neither seemed capable of recognizing truth if it slapped them in the face. Unfortunately, my early readings about Sarah Palin leave me wondering if she wouldn't also be this same kind of religious right political hack.
Some suggest that McCain's choice was a gamble to win the Hillary faction. Somehow I can't imagine even a single Hillary supporter voting for a religious right, moose-hunting, wolf-slaying, global warming denying, oil-drilling, creation science promoting, opponent of a woman's right to choose. Palin stands firmly for these politically divisive minority right-wing issues. However, there is a significant demographic among women that I've never seen recognized that Palin speaks directly to and for - my wife's friends among them. These aren't Hillary women at all. They wouldn't be caught dead voting for Hillary. What they are is the female component in Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority." The demographic in American politics is huge, especially considering that many of these women bring their husbands along with them. This demographic spans all age groups. George W. Bush relied heavily on this demographic. John McCain has never had them. Political pundits don't even seem to know they exist, but Sarah Palin knows they do. My guess is that she was able to convince McCain that they do and that she could land them in his boat.

Color of Race

2008-08-13T07:59:00.000-04:00

After posting on August 8, I did email everyone whose email address appeared on that anti-Obama message that wound up in my Inbox. I received a couple of courteous replies and a couple of discourteous replies, one even leaving me to wonder if I was being threatened. But I also wound up with an education. One of the individuals who identifies him (?) self as "m" and says he is an Army veteran of Vietnam has been mailing me more of this anti-Obama trash. Twice now he emailed me the one about Obama's airplane no longer displaying the American flag on its tail. A quick Google of "Obama airplane" brings up the truth from Snopes.com.
The airplane smear is characteristic of all the smears. The intent is to paint Obama in the minds of the feeble as a secretly America-hating Muslim Marxist whose supporters are mindless, time-clock punching puppets. Anyone with the power to think freely, it is argued, should see this.
I have been aware for some time of the notion that Obama is secretly something other than what he appears to be. Right-wingers and even some in the Hilary crowd tried to suggest that he might secretly be Muslim. But I am beginning to understand that the Right are now saying Obama is secretly a Communist, a utopian socialist Marxist.
That comes as quite an education for me.
First I find it surprising that the Right wants to be understood to be critical of American workers who punch a time clock.
Second, I find it amazing that in order to prove that Obama has secrets, the Right circulates easily disproved lies instead of any real evidence.
But most of all, I am struck by the way the Right is painting Obama in stereotypes that Americans have been conditioned to hate.
Hate is the key. The Right is saying that it is OK to hate Obama.
Here's what I think is going on. I think the Right is using reality inversion here. In reality it isn't Obama who is keeping secrets, it's the Right. And the secret they are keeping is that they don't want to see a black man become their leader. Racist America has long defended the power of whites to keep blacks powerless.
The result of white racism against blacks is always fear and hatred.
The intent of the Right to paint Obama as a secret Muslim Marxist is to get the mindless followers of the Right to fear and hate Obama.
The intent of the Right against Obama is the same as the intent of racism. It just uses a different vehicle, a vehicle that only exists in the imagination of the Right. In reality, the Right is expressing racial hatred against Obama.
One of the things that came back to me in the replies to that email was a strong criticism of Michelle Obama. It is well known that she said she is only now able to say she is proud of America.
Strangely enough it never was very popular to express pride in America until the Right made patriotism a political hammer after 9/11. At my high school graduation I spoke in defense of patriotism and to this day can still remember how unpopular patriotism was at the time. Even Ronald Reagan couldn't turn that around. The wave of false patriotism under George Bush and Karl Rove won't last. If Obama wins and Congress is under Democrat control, the last thing these patriots will admit to is pride in America. Pride and patriotism is still just a political hammer.
So the issue with this Michelle Obama thing isn't about pride and patriotism. Think about it. What Michelle Obama was doing was criticizing white-dominated America. An uppity black woman was very publicly criticizing whites. How dare she do that!! Attack her!!! Bring her down!!! Hate her!!!