US Drones Kill Number Two Al Qaeda Leader

Allright, I'm coming out of thirty years of retirement

to walk a tightrope between the Twin Towers

without any prior rehersal, with or without a net.

I'm attempting to type this entire blog without notes.

Yesterday our Drone campaign paid off. Instead of killing innocent civilians damaging our credability with the locals, we actually got the Al Qaeda leader, Ilius Kashmiri, who was scheduled to be the next leader of Al Qaeda. This means that the overall thread of Al Qaeda is further diminished, we we have something to be proud of. Joe Byden has been a long time fan of Drone attacks on opperatives rather than risk the lives of more U S troops. However this doesn't seem to affect the administration's reluctance for any troop reductions in Afghanistan as promised last year when he announced an increased "surge" of thirty thousand or so additional troops. Of that "surge" the most we can expect to see in reductions of troops if five thousand, and I'm kind of wondering whether we'll even get that. Nancy Palosi says that five thousand is not a sufficient number, and I would agree. Because clearly the overall trend in troops in Afghanistan is upward and now down. Obama is likely to find his worse enemies on this issue in his own party. But there not a small number of Republicans who would also join in some House resolution, for instance, to reduce troop numbers in Afghanistan. I think basically the same war mongers who ran the Bush administration still rule in the Obama administration.

The civil war has reached some sort of a climax in Yemen where there has been turmoil for months to the consternation of US authorities because Yemen is seen as a key to controling Al Qaeda terrorism. Yesterday the Presidential compound was rocketed, and the President was injured and has left the reins of government to another, and people are saying he won't be back. Twelve security guards were killed in the explosion. Meanwhile things are even worse in Syria. Assad has really become agressive against killing insergents, and I guess the key event now is the castration and then killing of a thirteen year old boy. As Dr. Levy says, Syria has been the place of origen of all sorts of terrorist groups and initiatives for forty years. They indeed are the hub of the spokes in the "axis of evil". Thirty years ago there was an uprising in Syria and ten thousand people were killed. Someone said this leader, Assad, has only been around for twelve years but he was around during the first Gulf War, wasn't he? Compared to Assad, Qadafi is a pussy cat in comparrison. This guy doesn't mess around. I have trouble envisioning any other organization that could be worse for liberties or more oppressive than this current Assad administration. For some reason NATO is more reluctant to get involved in Syria than they were in Libya. People were saying a week ago that Qadafi would be gone by July 4th. I doubted this assasment, but apparently since then other key heads of government posts have deserted.

Well, economically the rain clouds have come and are now dropping their percipitation, and the waters are rising past your waist, and someone is coming by in a canoe advising you to leave your home for the zillionth time. Do you heed his words? Besides unemployment resuming an upward trend, now they say new factory orders are down. This means trouble, and it isn't going to get any better. Ironically I think the US dollar will rise in value because interest rates in "real terms" will be going up and dollars will be a more precious comodity, which means for the first time in ages, our dollar may be appealing to invest in. Unfortunately there are a lot of idiots in the Media and that includes Chris Matthews. The other day on his show, he gave a big, wet, sloppy kiss to Sarah Palin virtually calling her the hero of the day for "putting Mitt Romney in his place". So if Romney's speech was as bad as Matthews says it is, did he cover any of it on his show. Maybe about ten seconds worth. I don't get the local news papers putting Palin in page one and Romney on page eight. What's that all about? Only on the Mc Laughlin report was there even a little bit of sanity. Personally I think Pat Buchannon should run. After all every other republican seems to be considering it. It least Buchannon still has a few brain cells in his head that actually work. You know in the "Oh God" movie there is that line about "You display an apalling lack of knowledge about anything Theological". People like Bachman or Palin or that black pizza guy know absolutely nothing about either American History or economics. Next to them the President actually looks smart, and that's not saying much. They say no President can get reelected with unemployment numbers this high. I don't know how Ronald Reagan got re elected in 1984 with a 7.2 unemployment rate. This was the con of the century and why Mondale didn't hit him harder on this is beyond me. The American people are fickle without a brain in their head and all republicans have to do is to go down a laundry list of gas and food prices and long term unemployment rates, and everybody assumes that somehow they care. But as Thom Hartman says - - these Republicans may actually "get off" on high unemployment rates because (a) it keeps the wage base down and (b) because it "starves the Beast" because government will have a smaller tax base to spend money that could actually help people.

I wanted to mention this whole space travel thing again, and you people with the butterfly nets can put them away. You won't be needing them. Many agree that "2000 Light years from Home" by RS is a prophetic song about the "Planet of the Apes" movie that came out the following year. People make the "Columbus error" in saying the Universe is only two thousand light years in a gigantic circle and if you go straight you end up back where you came from, two thousand years later. The Universe is a LOT bigger than this. But you still have the problem that the acceleration to reach light speed would kill you if you're going to go fast enough for general relativity to do its thing and stretch time and all- - so you think you were gone only a year but you were really gone two thousand years. It sounds good in theory but it would require at LEAST 2,000 G's of continuous acceleration, and no human can endure that. But suppose you admitted an invention to make the space ship "think" it had 2000 years to accelerate and did it all in thirty minutes or even instantaniously like in the Star Trek episodes. Well, OK, fine. you then are virtually going to "stop time". Now you've got another problem. Because for a human being- - - he would age thousands of times more quickly under this system, so even if the ship got to a distant destination within a few days, you would have some nicely preserved human skeletons inside the ship. But as I was starting to tell Michael this morning - - in fact he said it himself- - "The nature of the space surrounding an object depends on the type of mass of the object". This is one of Four Correct Statements Michael made this morning. The others in the group said "Michael doesn't know anything about physics". Yes he does. The other Correct statements he made were the two dates of Einstein's two main theories of 1905 and 1915, for special and general relativity, but also the fact that Einstein didn't invent the formula for special relavity himself but borrowed it from another, and named the source. Let me now return to my point. If you could find a way to take the MASS out of matter- - - you would also be altering the SPACE around that matter. So you indeed may be going into hyper-space from just that. Some make statements like "gravity IS time". That's "Bulsh". Gravity can be a factor of anything, including zero. But time in General Relativity terms never goes below a factor of ONE. That's the Ether factor. Taking the Ether out of space is like trying to take the WET out of Water.

I was going to do a whole music paragraph but in honor of Sgt. Pepper I'll just give you a few "Marcus trivia". The last song off of Sgt. Petter that I heard was "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and that was in October of 1967, which is also the same night I heard "And your bird can Sing" in its entirety. Before this I had never heard that song all the way through. The first time I heard "Fixing a Hole" was from that house next to the library where this teenage kid would play interesting music in his bedroom. When the next song to come on was "She's Leaving Home" I knew he was playing the Sgt. Pepper album, which I hadn't bought yet. Some songs arrest your attention. There was this Paul Mc Cartney song KOLA was playing about ten o clock called "She gave me the flame of Love" or something, which a strong Badfinger, "Peter Ham" quality to it. I'd like to know which album it's on. You know this one commercial with the line in it "My daughter is part fish" there is some music in that that gave me the idea for a "prequel" introduction to "It's Only Love". Why not add an organ to the song, and start off the track with an instrumental portion with a lead guitar bit- kind of a jam thing - and then go into the rest of the song. You know John Kovel is going to have a big come-down even if he starts going to church, because he might wind up in Heaven and discover HE"S the only one whose perfect.

[Saturday, June 4th 2011] It’s now 2:30. The Dodgers on KTTV are leading the Reds one to nothing. The Dodger pitcher is doing a good job but he’s working with a slim margin. I had Leo Le Port on till about 1:15. I went out for John Black grape at the liquor store. Nancy likes to lie about her finances. She is perpetually out of cigarettes and money even though Janet and others say it isn’t so. I went for coffee when they announced it and got one cup.

I want to check my blog rating right now. Judy sent me another warning letter about the high suicide and violence incidents with Chantex. Maybe I won’t take that. My blogger rating is crawling up but it’s still far from impressive. I’ve been getting away from the topics I’ve been discussing lately. I thought maybe by “expanding the envelope” I’d improve my ratings but that doesn’t seem to have worked. I need to perhaps get back to regular national news and the economy, and energy production and the ecology, and world trade and international relations. Sometimes waiting for some big event to break on the news is like watching paint dry. I haven’t listened to nearly as much music on computer lately, from any of the many, many sources. I haven’t done a Google sketch file in some months. Perhaps I should get back into that. I keep saying I ought to get back into doing BASIC programming like I was in 2005, or at least to improve the programs I know should be improved. I haven’t even downloaded any pictures from my camera since mid March I don’t think. I could get back into photo art and Word Art. I think my favorite talk radio shows are in a rut, and I’m not learning new things from them like I used to. Of course I keep thinking Dr. Levy is going to introduce some exciting new topic - - the Reds just scored a run - - . Of course is Dr. Levy is going to skip two sessions in a row it’s hard to get any rhythm going. I feel I should start going to church somewhere- - but I’m not sure why. I need to master that SUDOKO game. Certainly if other people can, I can. Now it’s four to one – Reds.

I just looked at two Sketch videos, the second being in a more complicated software than I have. Apparently you can now view 3 D renderings stereoscopically with glasses. My last update of Sketch was in March, and now they said there was another available so I did that, but they didn’t note any new features. Of course contrary to what they say, walls are no problem for interior 3 D viewing and never have been. The trouble comes when you “back into a wall”. Then it becomes a little weird. There were some interesting cloud ripple effects in the sky like ocean waves, (you'd have to see them to see why they were unusual) but the effect was fading. And when I got my camera they would probably be gone. The Dodgers have pulled ahead of the Reds in a game still doing at five with a score of Dodgers 11 and Reds 7. I was just listening to Rachael Maddau and before that going back to before dinner, a lot of Chris Matthews episodes.