Rand Paul is giving a
college lecture at Bowie University.
He’s crusading against excessive fines, which can escalate out of
control particularly for the poor and minorities. He criticized both New York and Ferguson, MO
for excessive revenue via fines. I
didn’t realize that a significant part of the budgets of cities was raised via
fines. Civil forfeiture is the idea that
if you are selling drugs off your back porch as a fifteen year old, the
government can come and take your parent’s house, or maybe Grandma owns the
house. There are excessive prison terms
imposed for dealing in marijuana. Rand
Paul states that he is in fundamental agreement with the President on many of
these social justice issues. Rand Paul
says to give judges more discretion on evaluating individual cases on their own
merit. Mandatory minimums are a bear. What Blacks see and what Whites don’t is that
the word “Nigger” just by itself wouldn’t have that much power. But when you combine these racist
proclivities with power and authority is when you have trouble. If you are red lined by a Real Estate agent,
or the place where you work judges people by their race, or police officers or
others in the Justice system- - and maybe even insurance companies. All of these play into racial oppression of
the Black. The caller’s point was (I
think) that in some other world that was inherently fair- - you could say
“Nigger” all day long and other racial barbs or indicate your own prejudice,
and it would mean nothing. We are also reminded about voter registration laws
and the for profit Prison system we have today.
Of course there is a “felon’s voting rights” movement today, perhaps
because there are so many felons today.
Thom Hartman said that since 1980 we have quintupled the number of
people incarcerated in prison. In terms
of racists getting made at you if you call them a racist- - there are a few
exceptions to that. The grand dragon of
the Ku Klux Klan would proudly call himself a racist. We live in an era where walking home with
skittles and an Arizona iced tea is a crime punishable by death. Now there is news that the Sigma Alpha
Epsilon fraternity sings this and other racist songs on an institutional basis
on at least two other campuses, located in Texas, and that it is a ritual type
song taught and handed down from Seniors to Freshmen.
In my senior year in
High School I learned in business law that “Corporations are people, my friend”
and for decades I bought into this meme.
However as Hartman and others point out, these aren’t real people. As Randy Rhodes says they don’t have colonscopies
or get cancer, or ever attend the funeral of one of their peers. There is no corporate death penalty. The analogy I would like to use is the sort
of “state” that Israel envisions for the Palestinians on the West Bank. What they envision is not an actual “sovereign
state” but rather little more than a glorified prison camp. Unlike people with “Natural rights” (as
Thomas Jefferson defines it) corporations are a legal fiction of the State,
endowed with certain “privileges” by the state. When the constitution grants freedom of the
Press, it’s freedom of the press for People- NOT “The New York Times” as a
corporate entity. It’s people making USE
of a printing press or making USE of a corporation to express their God given
right to free speech. Apparently
Monsanto is bringing this case against Vermont’s full disclosure of GMO’s
labeling law. Monsanto is calling this
law “legally compelled speech” when they have a right not to speak. But as you know in the case of one FOX news
outlet- - the Courts have expended this “free speech” right to say corporations
have the right to flat-out Lie to the public- - if they so desire. Or as in the case of Seattle hiking the
minimum wages- - corporations can claim “unequal protection” via the fourteenth
amendments because SOME Mc Donald’s have to pay higher minimum wages than other
outlets. And when it comes to the fifth
amendment- - courts have seemed to rule that you MUST supply your DNA when
asked for it even if it gives the government access to a whole host of things
about who you are and your probable medical history. But if you want corporations to surrender
documents- - under some strange gymnastic rendering of the law- - corporations
are protected by the Fifth Amendment.
This topic is being debated right now on the “Democracy Now” program.
One could argue that "teologically" that Function is ontologically preceding to "Form". One Jeopardy question last night raised the issue of "what do you call speaking in similies and metaphors", which baffled me. The answer was "speaking figuratively". The word "figure" alludes to Form. Forms can be both numbers and shapes. Form is structure, and structural design. "How do you make this". You have to know about Form if you are going to instruct a 3 D printer. But before you have form - - (logically speaking) you need to have the WHY before you have the HOW. Or at least normally. You want to achieve a certain outcome- - and so you go about with a drafting board designing the form. I claim that with 9 - 11 you need to speak in Teological terms. What was the goal of the 9 - 11 Comission? Was it to cover up the truth? How come 42% of the American people are suspicious- - don't believe the 9 - 11 comission. They have doubts about their truthfulness. Paranoid personalities are natural "teologically based individuals". To a paranoid- - nothing just "happens" spontaniously- - there has to be an intelligence- - a reason behind it. Someone was "planning something". They look at what happens and say "It's all making SENSE now. All of the individual pieces are coming together". This is teological thinking. I spoke of "speaking figuratively". To me this does not exclude- - other "alligories" that don't necessarily have a one for one correspondence of form to form. Many "alligories" are meant to evoke some emotion or image where if you break it down- - the components don't make sense. I've heard a lot of Sunday sermons like this. Many others would say "Well come people are all form and no substance". So it would seem to me that SUBSTANCE would be the next aspect of "things" to worry about. We have channeled down a lot of words that are related even though they might not on the face seem like it. Substance is tied first of all to mass, but also gravity, and weight, and force is measured basically in weight per square inch. Space comes into play. If you believe my writings- - all space is "formatted" where matter has to be "compatable' with the space in it, just as programs must be compatable with the way a particularly hard drive is formatted.
There is a widespread
explosions of explanations for Friday the thirteenth. An old story I heard was that there was this
one cruise ship that was christened on a Friday and the maiden voyage was on a
Friday and the Captain was named Friday- - and the ship left the dock - - and
was never heard from again. Some would
say the lunar month- - particularly when it comes to women’s menstral cycles- -
begins on the thirteenth day of the month and there are thirteen periods per
year. Of course in the matriarchal
society they had (way back when) there were thirteen witches in a coven. Some people have stated that Purim in the
book of Esther (a period just passed), occurred on the thirteenth day of a
(lunar) month, and on a Friday, and it was the crisis point for the Jews and
the Jews ended up being saved, and devout Christians read this story and said
“Whatever is good for the Jews is bad for the Christians”. If the Jim Spencer theory of the calendar is
true, then President Lincoln was shot on Ford’s theater on Friday the
thirteenth, though the Federation has always stated it was on Friday the
fourteenth.
This whole thing about
powdered alcohol seems to defy all known science. Anybody knows when you boil alcohol it will
evaporate before the water does. So you
have a distilled “spirit” you can capture.
But certain molecules are inherently a certain way. Some molecules such as oils repel water and
others are designed to cut sludge. But
if it were even theoretically possible to produce powdered alcohol it would
have been done decades ago. You can get
your bottom dollar on that. The
implications though could be severe if true because I can see nine and ten year
old kids stashing these packets in their pockets getting stoned over lunch
break. It would be an easy way to goose
up a drink in a bar if you thought it was made too weak.
Bill Press was just on
from yesterday and naturally during pledge drive all the hosts are making their
donation pitches. It sounds like
something even I could afford with five dollars a month, and I get a free
coffee thermal cup or whatever out of it.
I didn’t mean to imply in that blog my donation would be limited to
three thousand dollars if I won Power Ball.
It would depend obviously on my exact winnings, but I assure you it
would be considerably more than three thousand if I won big. Today’s date is Thursday March 12, 2015 and I
got up at six o clock on the dot. I had
Stephanie Miller on before seven and the computer booted up in a timely manner
today. I went down and got meds but
didn’t feel really “OK” until I had the dollar twenty five coffee at the
store. I used my debit card for that,
and cigarettes I didn’t need because I still have a half a pack because I’m smoking
less. I was sitting in the front room
first and for an instant after I was back till the dining room opened and I
took the unopened coffee into the dining room.
We had oatmeal for breakfast followed by an omlette and toast and butter
and jelly. It was more Stephanie Miller
but I think I’ve about “heard all the news” and the reverberations of
that. They are predicting much warmer
weather this weekend starting today. The
rest of the country is about fifty degrees warmer than it’s been the last couple
months. Chicago is now in the forties
after ranging around a minus five or something for weeks. All those mounds of snow have melted pretty
quickly- - and the percentage of ground in the US with snow on it is back down
to normal levels, it seems.
