Ted Cruz's Last Stand in Indiana

We all know nobody in congress likes Ted Cruz.  A couple days ago John Boehner referred to Ted Cruz as "Lucifer in the Flesh" and "I'm never worked with a worse son of a bitch".   We know it was very much against Senate protocol for a Junior Senator from a state to go to the other House and organize the overthrow of its speaker within your own party.  We know about the filibuster of shutting down the government.  We also know how Shawn Hannity defends Ted Cruz at every turn for these same actions.  But we also know that Trump is leading Ted Cruz in Indiana by eight points even after announcing that Carley Feurina would be his vice president.  Some considered this move an act of desperation since "opperation Kasich" didn't work, to get Kasech to tell his people to vote for Cruz.  Trump was still leading by eight points.  In a move that may or may not interest you the Orion Federation finally came out officially against Trump (as if there were any doubt) by pointing out that any sembelence of independence from the Republican establishment will vanish once the fall campaign gets going.  Trump never criticized President Bush in his foreign policy statement.  You have the seeming divergence between Trump and the people who want the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement.  Trump will slowly shuffle over to the idea that the TPP is really a good idea and he's all for it.  Trump will abandon his anti Wall Street and anti Big Money in the Campaign rhetoric since that's what the Republican establishment wants him to say as a price for gaining their support at the convention.  Trump will give up his anti NATO stance and anti UN stance and will stop making remarks about "getting the best deal" in trade or dealings with other nations.  One issue he will hold on to is building the Wall along the Mexican border.  That one has the support of Shawn Hannity and the Republican establishment in general.  John Mc Cain this morning talked about getting tough on Vladimir Putin because of breaking the cease fire and dropping bombs on Syrian refugees in hospitals, which is probably a war crime.  Trump will abandoned "making nice" with Putin.  In short Trump will indeed undergo a makeover.  My same source said nothing about reversing himself on preserving Social Security but my guess is that will be the next Trump position to fall by the wayside.  What you will have left is a lot of this sexist rhetoric against Hillary and bigoted rhetoric against minorities.  Today he told a story about General Pershing executing 49 our of 50 suspected Islamic terrorists in the Spanish American war.  What we will have in the fall is a Donald Trump who is indistinguishable from the sort of candidate the Republican Establishment alias the "Republican base" and Shawn Hannity and all the rest of them want.  If you're a working man voting for Trump thinking he'll raise your wages- - - I'd give up on that idea too.  Because we know how much the Republican establishment, despite their rhetoric, really likes the minorities here driving down the wage base.

Norman Goldman and others have pointed out that this is a campaign year you'll tell your children about because it's so unusual.  This is particularly true with the Republicans but it's also a little true with the democrats.  On both sides you have someone with a lock on the nomination and yet the other rivals haven't dropped out yet.  Bernie Sanders will eventually tell his supporters to vote for Hillary even though a lot of his supporters can't stand Hillary.  I myself find myself in disagreement with Hillary on a whole host of issues on the right and on the left- - and am unsure at this point whether I'll bring myself to voting for her.  I am shall we say not inspired by her campaign rhetoric so far.  Hillary has more military money supporting her than any candidate on the Republican side.  Today we hear that up and down the ticket mainstream democrats are winning in primaries for Senate and other offices against their more progressive counterparts.  So we seemed destined to have a repeat of 2014 where the democratic candidates run away from their base and people get discouraged and don't show up to vote and the Republicans win.  This idea of keeping Bernie's ideas alive in the fall campaign seems to me only a pipe dream by Norman Goldman and Thom Hartman.  Once the candidate goes- - - all of this progressive rhetoric will also die out.  We've seen this movie before where Obama campaigned on progressive issues early on but by the fall campaign he was already backtracking heavily.  I would not equate Obama verses Hillary in the same terms as Hillary verses Bernie.  There is a far more fundamental difference between Hillary and Bernie than there was between Hillary and Obama in 2008 and the media knows it.  The media embraced Obama in 2008 and people like Randy Rhodes were pronouncing him "the winner" in late February despite the fact that 2008 turned out to be a very close race.  One thing we have in common then as now is we dare not go to the convention in the slightest way divided.  Logic would dictate that the Convention is a place to work out our difference and air grievences there.  But that won't happen.  Their mindset is "It's better to have the Illusion of unity on TV at the convention and have nobody show up in the fall to vote" than to resolve differences NOW and have a higher percentage coming out to vote.  Hillary has only shown antagonism to Bernie's voters and is hardly saying anything to encourage them to come out and vote for her in the fall.

Donald Trump Impressively Sweeps All Five States

Donald Trump swept all five states under contention last night.  Pennsylvania, Maryland, Conneticut, Rhode Island, and Deleware.  Often he would win seventy percent of the vote in various places.  This election ends the dispute as to whether Trump can win over fifty percent of the vote in various areas.   In terms of Pennsylvania’s 54 unpledged delegates, the media has Trump picking a lot of these up.  There was 172 delegates up for grabs prior to the election and I would assume that Trump got maybe 130 of them.  The media didn’t say just how poorly Ted Cruz did except John Kasich out polled Cruz in a lot of states.  Next week even if Cruz wins Indiana with Kasich’s help that it won’t be enough because the results have already been baked into the cake.  Bernie is still a little defiant.  On the Democratic side, Sanders took Rhode Island but Hillary took the other four states.  But the media was a little slower last night to declare Hillary the winner of states than they were with Trump taking all five states.   First they had Hillary winning Maryland, then Pennsylvania and Delaware with Conneticut up for grabs,  I could have written most of this last night and perhaps I should have gotten off a post last night but I was lazy.  I’m going to call Judy today and ask how her prayers for Cruz are doing. 

Charles Koch equated Hillary with the Republicans in not trusting either party right off.  But he left the door open to Hillary.   Donald Trump is expected to pick up 150 out of 175 delegates in tomorrow’s haul.   Trump needs four hundred and he’ll still need 250 after tomorrow and there aren’t that many races left according to Goldman.  Even California doesn’t have the delegates to put Trump over the top.  The theory is that Trump delegates will switch to Cruz on subsequent ballots but Cruz supporters are expected to hang tight so that Cruz’s numbers can only grow whereas Trump’s numbers will shrink. 

  I had the Norman Goldman program on.  The polls close at five our time in all five states.  It looks like it will be a case of the front runners extending their lead.  Hillary will have a lead of three hundred delegates.  Before today she was ahead 2.7 million votes over her political rivals.  I haven’t shaved yet.  I used that time to use the facilities instead.  I haven’t decided whether I’ll do a blog entry today.  For dinner we had barbecue flavored pork shredded chunks and baked beans and corn.  Late arrival Judy gave me her bowl of corn.  We had chocolate pudding for dessert.  Ron gave me a brown cigarette but there were long butts in the ash tray.   People writing to me in E mail was way down as of yesterday. 

Last night they held a town hall with Hillary and Bernie and when asked whether Hillary will adopt some of Bernie’s key positions in the fall campaign, Hillary stated “Look, I have four million more votes than Bernie has” or something.  Stephanie has the Rude Pundit live for a second day in a row. This is Tuesday April 26, 2016 and it’s the five pack of states voting today.  And in order of population it’s Pennsylvania, Maryland, Conneticut, Rhode Islamd, with Delaware bringing up the rear.

This is after three and I have Norman Goldman on now.  President Obama is sending 250 troopers to Syria, which is a surgical strike or something.    Shawn Hannity says that twenty percent of the family households have nobody in that family who is employed.  If that’s true then the unemployment numbers are really bogus.  I had Shawn Hannity on over the noon hour and also after refreshment break.  I had Days of our Lives on and that show was an entire waste except Hope and Sierra moved back into their own house.  Also Hope and Raphael persuaded each other not to investigate the Demas case, in a decision that seemed startlingly sudden.  In other words since Hope is attracted to Raphael she’s no longer in avenging her dead husband’s death. 

I think a lot of us are starting to get Prince burn-out.  Who would have guessed that his death would eclipse all of the other rock stars that have died this year?  I guess Jeff said it when he said “Prince was always a little too gay for me even if the women loved him”.   Stephanie liked the album “Dirty Mind”.   I was the first person I know of that announced that Prince is with the Federation in the afterlife.   Stephanie Miller show was boring today.  I guess that was the Rude Pundit live but he’s less interesting in person.  If I don’t like the show I can always go for Bill Handle in the morning, where we can all Handel ourselves.  I turned down Larry for a cigarette and felt guilty and turned around in the hall and then froze.  I owe Larry a cigarette so will make sure he gets one.  I gave Mario a cigarette this morning in a promise for coffee I haven’t gotten.


Meet the Press featured Bernie Sanders in a more conciliatory mood toning down his anti Hillary rhetoric. Meanwhile there is a mood afoot to “Walk it back” as far as any anti Donald Trump movement among the Republican elite. Mitch McConnell walked it back saying perhaps the phrase about being ‘optimistic about a second ballot’ was out of line. They are all saying that they are as much as resigned to falling in line behind Trump. Judy won’t be happy. Trump is also expected to get 36 of those 54 uncommitted delegates in Pennsylvania. Of course they did have a lady from the Cruz campaign. But Kasich and Cruz are refusing to cooperate with one another in terms of “letting Kasich have one state and letting Cruz have another”.

Our Many Recent War Propaganda Lies

This is a re-posting, obviously, from another source.  It contains a lot of generalizations, even considering its length.   It helps to have done more extensive reading already.

Someone asked me to find war lies during the past few years. Perhaps they had in mind the humanitarian pretenses around attacking Libya in 2011 and Iraq in 2014, or the false claims about chemical weapons in 2013, or the lies about an airplane in Ukraine or the endlessly reported Russian invasions of Ukraine. Maybe they were thinking of the “ISIS Is In Brooklyn” headlines or the routine false claims about the identities of drone victims or the supposedly imminent victory in Afghanistan or in one of the other wars. The lies seem far too numerous for me to fit into an essay, though I’ve tried many times, and they are layered over a bedrock of more general lies about what works, what is legal, and what is moral. Just a Prince Tribute selection of lies could include Qadaffi’s viagra for the troops and CNN’s sex-toys flag as evidence of ISIS in Europe. It’s hard to scrape the surface of all U.S. war lies in something less than a book, which is why I wrote a book.

So, I replied that I would look for war lies just in 2016. But that was way too big as well, of course. I once tried to find all the lies in one speech by Obama and ended up just writing about the top 45. So, I’ve taken a glance at two of the most recent speeches on the White House website, one by Obama and one by Susan Rice. I think they provide ample evidence of how we’re being lied to.

In an April 13th speech to the CIA, President Barack Obama declared, “One of my main messages today is that destroying ISIL continues to be my top priority.” The next day, in a speech to the U.S. Air Force Academy, National Security Advisor Susan Rice repeated the claim: “This evening, I’d like to focus on one threat in particular—the threat at the very top of President Obama’s agenda—and that is ISIL.” And here’s Senator Bernie Sanders during the recent presidential primary debate in Brooklyn, N.Y.: “Right now our fight is to destroy ISIS first, and to get rid of Assad second.”

This public message, heard again and again in the official media echo chamber, might seem unnecessary, given the level of fear of ISIS/ISIL in the U.S. public and the importance the public places on the matter. But polls have shown that people believe the president is not taking the danger seriously enough.

In fact, awareness has slowly begun spreading that the side of the Syrian war that the White House wanted to jump in on in 2013, and in fact had already been supporting, is still its top priority, namely overthrowing the Syrian government. That has been a goal of the U.S. government since before U.S. actions in Iraq and Syria helped create ISIS in the first place (actions taken while knowing that such a result was quite likely). Helping this awareness along has been Russia’s rather different approach to the war, reports of the United States arming al Qaeda in Syria (planning more weapons shipments on the same day as Rice’s speech), and a video from late March in which State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner was asked a question that a good ISIS-fearing American should have had no trouble answering, but which Toner found too difficult:

REPORTER: “Do you want to see the regime retake Palmyra? Or would you prefer that it stays in Daesh’s hands?”

MARK TONER: “That’s truly a — a — um — look, I think what we would, uh, like to see is, uh, the political negotiation, that political track, pick up steam. It’s part of the reason the Secretary’s in Moscow today, um, so we can get a political process underway, um, and deepen and strengthen the cessation of hostilities, into a real ceasefire, and then, we . . . ”

REPORTER: “You’re not answering my question.”

MARK TONER: “I know I’m not.” [Laughter.]

Hillary Clinton and her neocon allies in the Congress believe that Obama was wrong not to bomb Syria in 2013. Never mind that such a course would surely have strengthened the terrorist groups that brought the U.S. public around to supporting war in 2014. (Remember, the public said no in 2013 and reversedObama’s decision to bomb Syria, but videos involving white Americans and knives won over a lot of the U.S. public in 2014, albeit for joining the opposite side of the same war.) The neocons want a “no fly zone,” which Clinton calls a “safe zone” despite ISIS and al Qaeda having no airplanes, and despite NATO’s commander pointing out that such a thing is an act of war with nothing safe about it.

Many in the U.S. government even want to give the “rebels” anti-aircraft weaponry. With U.S. and U.N. planes in those skies, one is reminded of then-President George W. Bush’s scheme for starting a war on Iraq: “The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”

It’s not just rogue neocons. President Obama has never backed off his position that the Assad government must go, or even his highly dubious 2013 claim to have had proof that Assad used chemical weapons. Secretary of State John Kerry has compared Assad to Hitler. But it seems that dubious claims of someone possessing or using the wrong kind of weaponry don’t quite do it for the U.S. public anymore after Iraq 2003. Supposed threats to populations don’t inspire raging war fever in the U.S. public (or even support from Russia and China) after Libya 2011. Contrary to popular myth and White House claims, Qadaffi was not threatening a massacre, and the war that threat was used to start immediately became a war of overthrow. The burning need to overthrow yet another government fails to create confidence in a public that’s seen disasters created in Iraq and Libya, but not in Iran where war has been avoided (as well as not in Tunisia where the more powerful tools of nonviolence have been used).

If U.S. officials want war in Syria, they know that the way to keep the U.S. public on their side is to make it about subhuman monsters who kill with knives. Said Susan Rice of ISIS in her speech, which began with her family’s struggle against racism: “It is horrifying to witness the extreme brutality of these twisted brutes.” Said Obama at the CIA: “These depraved terrorists still have the ability to inflict horrific violence on the innocent, to the revulsion of the entire world. With attacks likes these, ISIL hopes to weaken our collective resolve. Once again, they have failed. Their barbarism only stiffens our unity and determination to wipe this vile terrorist organization off the face of the Earth. . . . As I’ve said repeatedly, the only way to truly destroy ISIL is to end the Syrian civil war that ISIL has exploited. So we continue to work for a diplomatic end to this awful conflict.”

Here are the main problems with this statement:

1) The United States has spent years working to avoid a diplomatic end, blocking U.N. efforts, rejectingRussian proposals, and flooding the area with weaponry. The United States isn’t trying to end the war in order to defeat ISIS; it’s trying to remove Assad in order to weaken Iran and Russia and to eliminate a government that doesn’t choose to be part of U.S. empire.

2) ISIS hasn’t grown simply by exploiting a war it wasn’t part of. ISIS doesn’t hope to halt U.S. attacks. ISIS put out films urging the United States to attack. ISIS uses terrorism abroad to provoke attacks. ISIS recruitment has soared as it has become seen as the enemy of U.S. imperialism.

3) Attempting diplomacy while attempting to wipe someone off the face of the earth is either unnecessary or contradictory. Why end the root causes of terrorism if you’re going to destroy the vile barbarous people engaged in it?

The points that focusing on Assad is at odds with focusing on ISIS, and that attacking ISIS or other groups with missiles and drones does not defeat them, are points made by numerous top U.S. officials the moment they retire. But those ideas clash with the idea that militarism works, and with the specific idea that it is currently working. After all, ISIS, we are told, is eternally on the ropes, with one or more of its top leaders declared dead almost every week. Here’s President Obama on March 26: “We’ve been taking out ISIL leadership, and this week, we removed one of their top leaders from the battlefield – permanently.” I consider the term “battlefield” itself a lie, as U.S. wars are fought from the air over people’s homes, not in a field. But Obama goes on to add a real doozie when he says: “ISIL poses a threat to the entire civilized world.”

In the weakest sense, that statement could be true of any violence-promoting organization with access to the internet (Fox News for example). But for it to be true in any more substantive sense has always been at odds with Obama’s own so-called intelligence so-called community, which has said that ISIS is no threat to the United States. For every headline screaming that ISIS is looming just down a U.S. street, there has not yet been any evidence that ISIS was involved in anything in the United States, other than influencing people through U.S. news programs or inspiring the FBI to set people up. ISIS involvement in attacks in Europe has been more real, or at least claimed by ISIS, but a few key points are lost in all the vitriol directed at “twisted brutes.”

1) ISIS claims its attacks are “in response to the aggressions” of “the crusader states,” just as all anti-Western terrorists always claim, with never a hint at hating freedoms.

2) European nations have been happy to allow suspected criminals to travel to Syria (where they might fight for the overthrow of the Syrian government), and some of those criminals have returned to kill in Europe.

3) As a murdering force, ISIS is far out-done by numerous governments armed and supported by the United States, including Saudi Arabia, and of course including the U.S. military itself, which has droppedtens of thousands of bombs in Syria and Iraq, blew up the University of Mosul on the 13th anniversary of Shock and Awe with 92 killed and 135 injured according to a source in Mosul, and just changed its “rules” on killing civilians to bring them slightly more into line with its conduct.

4) Actually useful steps like disarmament and humanitarian aid are not being taken seriously at all, with one U.S. Air Force official casually pointing out that the United States would never spend $60,000 on a technology for preventing starvation in Syria, even as the United States uses missiles costing over $1 million each like they’re going out of style — in fact using them so rapidly that it risks running out of anything to drop on people other than the food it has such little interest in dropping.

Meanwhile, ISIS is also the justification du jour for sending more U.S. troops into Iraq, where U.S. troops and U.S. weapons created the conditions for the birth of ISIS. Only this time, they are “non-combat” “special” forces, which led one reporter at an April 19 White House press briefing to ask, “Is this a little bit of fudging? The U.S. military is not going to be involved in combat? Because all the earmarks and recent experiences indicate that they will likely be.” A straight answer was not forthcoming.

What about those troops? Susan Rice told Air Force cadets, without asking the American people, that the American people “could not be more proud” of them. She described a cadet graduating in 1991 and worrying that he might have missed out on all the wars. Never fear, she said, “your skills—your leadership—will be in high demand in the decades ahead. . . . On any given day, we might be dealing with Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine [where, contrary to myth and White House claim, Russia has not invaded but the United States has facilitated a coup], developments in the South China Sea [apparently misnamed, as it belongs to the United States and its Philippine colony], North Korean missile launches [how, dare I ask, will an Air Force pilot deal with those, or the much more common U.S. missile launches for that matter?], or global economic instability [famously improved by bombing runs].  . . .  We face the menace of advancing climate change.” The Air Force, whose jets are among the biggest producers of climate change, is going to attack climate change? bomb it? scare it away with drones?

“I know not everybody grew up dreaming of piloting a drone,” said Rice. But, “drone warfare is even finding its way into the upcoming Top Gun sequel. These [drone] capabilities are essential to this campaign and future ones. So, as you consider career options, know that [drone piloting] is a sure-fire way to get into the fight.”

Of course, drone strikes would be rare to nonexistent if they followed President Obama’s self-imposed “rules” requiring that they kill no civilians, kill no one who could be apprehended, and kill only people who are (frighteningly if nonsensically) an “imminent and continuing” threat to the United States. Even the military-assisted theatrical fantasy film Eye in the Sky invents an imminent threat to people in Africa, but no threat at all to the United States. The other conditions (identified targets who cannot be arrested, and care to avoid killing others) are bizarrely met in that film but rarely if ever in reality. A man who says drones have tried to murder him four times in Pakistan has gone to Europe this month to ask to be taken off the kill lists. He will be safest if he stays there, judging by past killings of victims who could have been arrested.

This normalizing of murder and of participation in murder is a poison for our culture. A debate moderator recently asked a presidential candidate if he would be willing to kill thousands of innocent children as part of his basic duties. In the seven countries that President Obama has bragged about bombing, a great many innocents have died. But the top killer of U.S. troops is suicide.

How's the Obama Revolution Treating You?

Norman Goldman was talking about the so called Obama revolution. People like Goldman and Stephanie are constantly singing the praises of Obama as though he were a trail blazer in progressive thought. Let’s look at the facts. Yes there have been cultural changes in two major areas. Marijuana is more socially acceptable now and Gay Marriage has become part of our culture along with certain bathroom priveleges. Are we to credit Obama and Hillary with these. Neither campaigned on a platform of gay marriage or marijuana lieniency in 2008. Bernie Sanders is doing that now with marijuana. There was talk in 2008 about getting the economy going again and raising incomes of workers. You need only to look at how the republicans are campaigning now to realize that the average American believes things are getting worse with the economy. President Obama supports the Trans Pacific Partnership which nobody wants. It isn’t “free trade” but a windfall for international corporation with laws tailor made to suit their needs. President Obama had a chance to campaign on the gun issue in 2012 and didn’t. He remained silent. If Obama Care were really as good as Millar and Goldman claim it is in terms of eliminating “what’s wrong with the health care system” then it would have been a winning issue in the 2014 Congressional election. Instead all the candidates ran away from it. Race relations are worse. Race relations with the police are worse. The President campaigned in 2008 on ending war in the Mideast, or at least we all thought he did. One need only go to the Republicans and look what they’re saying and clearly things in the Mideast aren’t getting any better. President Obama is the Drone King. Let me give you a couple of thought pictures. Did Herbert Hoover talk more- - or less about the recession and the economy in general than Coolege did? Sure he did. People don’t talk about something unless it’s become a problem. So it is with race relations and gun violence. And people like Goldman say “Well the President has scaled the wars the Empire fights around the globe. OK- - consider this example. We all know Elvis had a weight problem. People say Hillary never met a war she didn’t like and how she has to fight wars to prove she’s as macho as any man and all that. Well we know in 1968 Elvis starved himself for his big NBC Comeback special. Just as Hilary now is trying hard to sound progressive. But just as Elvis reverted worse than ever to his over-eating problem, so the minute Hillary gets in office she will revert to being a pro war President. I don’t know about you but I’m getting sick and tired of people like Norman Goldman imputing wrong or improper motives for wanting to vote for Bernie Sanders. It can’t be that we are voting for him because we honestly believe him to be the better candidate for the job. No. It has to be something dark and sinister like we all have some sort of emotional problem. We can’t face reality- - and the list goes on. And it’s silly for Goldman to say “Well- - perhaps this is just is not the year to fight for progressive issues, but someday in the great bye and bye we’ll wake up and all our goals have been met. Wars aren’t fought that way. They are fought in the here and now- - today- - and each side is fighting as if their lives depended on it. Because both sides know they are fighting for key pieces of ground and if they lose this battle today, it will make it that much easier for the enemy to win the next battle tomorrow. Just as Citizens United made it easier to win the 2010 election for the Republican this victory in turn set it up so the republicans could Gerrymander the districts to make it that much easier to win in the future. These kind of negative feedback loops are not that easy to counteract, and Norman should realize this.

Why Anyone Who Votes for Hillary Is Ignorant, Stupid, and/or Psychopathic

A Great Awakening – Public Support for Fake “Free Trade” Deals Plunges in the U.S. and Europe

 

Given Ultimatum, Obama Forced to Publicly Display Preference for Saudi Terror-Leader, Money, over 9/11 Victims

 

Additional Evidence of Mind-Boggling Fraud Emerges from the New York Primary 

Here are four recent postings from Washington’s blog.  You might want to take a look at all four of them.  Really it’s just a question of being perceptually aware or not.  

So what do people want to read about in tweets or whatever?  I don’t even feel qualified to even talk about Prince because I was not a major fan of his.  Stylistically he’s a little like Adam Ant although musically I prefer Adam Ant to Prince.   Prince was certainly politically aware and advocated for a lot of Black causes including giving money to Trayvon’s family, and that’s a good thing.  Now John Fugelsang is saying that Prince could be a bigger genious than Hendrix and sings better than Hendrix.   True to form this morning is overcast but there is no rain.  Apparently the rain is restricted to Bakersfield and points north in the Central Valley.  Prince has kind of driven politics off the top story headlines so for that we’re all grateful.  This is Friday morning April 22, 2016 and Earth Day.  Stephanie is wearing her purple shirt and this is the reign of the purple, with Stephanie going to Miniapolis on May 7^th.    FH had the idea of putting out a Prince commemorative album called “Reign of the Purple” even though it would not have the endorsement of the “Prince lobby”.   Mal Evans talked with FH this morning.  Mal Evans has lost power to another spokesman who has taken the lead in making pronouncements of the Federation.  Prince is said to be stingy with releasing his songs to just anybody on the internet or anywhere.  It is hoped that now that Prince is no longer with us there will be more of Prince’s songs available on You Tube.  Last night the Federation saluted Donald Trump on his stance on this bathroom parody issue of letting you use the bathroom based on the sex you NOW identify with.  This is Donald Trump’s latest way of shocking his audience with yet another outrageous stance.  Stephanie is announcing she’ll be in Chicago on September 10^th and will be back in LA for a sexy liberal tour on November 5^th for a pre election extravaganza.  Stephanie is reliving all her favorite lesbian memories listening to Prince songs.  This whole Prince thing has gone crazy with the media making the death of Prince the lead story on the news and the media has expended considerable coverage on the death of Prince and we really don’t know that much yet until the autopsy is performed today.  We know that Prince is from Miniapolis – which is Romulan territory and the Romulans are a little jealous they didn’t get Prince after he died.  Actually it was that friend of Stu Sutcliffe I haven’t heard from since July, that made the statement that the Romulans should have gotten Prince. 

These days I’m making my entries shorter.  I was going to perhaps do a blog entry reviewing Einstein’s special theory of relativity but I didn’t have the mental energy to write it and my viewers don’t have the mental energy to read it.   However we should know about the world around us and how laws of chemistry and physics work.  The more we know about all kinds of "stuff" the more well rounded we are.  Some are expects in working in wood, or some are experts with dealing with horses, or dogs, or some can tell you everything you want to know about oil painting.  It's good to excel in something.  It bothers me we are coming into an era where computers are not even regarded as computers any more but appliances.  Leo Le Port has it as his goal to "use them without having to think about it".  You just turn them on and if all the steps in using them aren't completely instinctive and intuitive- - then it's too hard.  They didn't design them right.  In other words- - let the machine do our thinking for us.  I don't need software in my microwave or refrigerator and I don't need thermostats that automatically go on and turn on various lights or worse yet anticipate our needs and "guess what we want" at any given time.  People in the media are starting to wonder again whether computers will begin to Out-think us, and take the initiative and instead of machines doing our will, we end up doing their will.  It's something to think about, anyhow.    

A New Face on the Twenty Dollar Bill

Dr Ben Carson favors retaining Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill because “Jackson was a tremendous secretary”.   Carson wants Harriet Tubman on the two dollar bill.  Now I guess slavery champion of Indian oppression will not be popular in the South rather than have a Negro on US currency.  There are civil rights scenes planned for the backs of the five and ten dollar bills.  Alexander Hamilton was saved because there is a Broadway musical out about him now.  Today is Thursday April 21, 2016 and tomorrow is Earth Day.  Yesterday was marijuana day.  That’s a new one.  They say a majority of US citizens now favor an outright legalization of marijuana.  Up till now the latest person to die was Grant in 1885.  Tubman died in 1913 so she’s been dead for a hundred years.  President Jackson is responsible to dismantling the national bank and also of completely paying off the National Debt, which according to Thom Hartman threw us into one of the worst economic depressions we've ever had in the late 1830's.  As to the "trail of tears" and the Indian relocation act affecting the "five civilized tribes" the members of those tribes were NOT given a choice about "obeying the constitution and acting like good Americans".  This was a unilatteral ruling in 1830 without conditions that these tribes had to be driven off their land.  Previously to that Jefferson and other President had advocated that these tribes be "Americanized" but by the time of Andrew Jackson it was too late for that.  So the conservative caller is wrong.  I think they should bring back the five hundred dollar bill.  But big bills are suspect now because it’s primary illicit drug money.

There is an excellent summary video piece on Hillary Clinton and her campaign for President that lasts a half hour and I watched it.  About the only place where they overtly stepped over the line was in calling Barry Goldwater a hardened racist.  That isn’t true.  Barry Goldwater had philosophical issue with aspects of the Civil Rights bill.  Maybe there were one or two other things I would have rephrased but basically it hit the nail on the head and went into all her finances and worst of all her consistent war monger record, capping it off with her long held desire for war with Iran.  She didn’t just make a “mistake” about Iraq in 2003 but double down on her stance every chance she got.  And the piece certainly pointed out all of the quid pro quo stuff she did for the big corporations and rolled out an unbelievable tale of her finances and how basically her whole life was waiting right for this moment when she could run the world. 

Prince, the pop singer died this morning at age 57.  He died at his home and apparently had been battling a bad case of the flu for seven weeks.  Some of these new viruses can be real killers.  Prince recently has been an advocate of various Black causes.

The big "Revolution" was supposed to be in the Democratic 1992 platform, which couldn't get away from using the word "revolution" many times.  I would imagine that Hillary's platform will NOT contain any liberal "pledges" or whatever like the 1988 platform did.  Hillary won't pick Elizabeth Warren as VP for a lot of reasons but will probably go for a "safe" moderate.  This eqivelency between "moderate" and "safe" as in one who can win is a misplaced one.  The Democrats in 1960 went left in their platform and won.  The democrats went left in 1992 and won and went left in 2008 and won.  But after 1992 and after 2008 theswe Presidents lurched to the political right once they got in office.  So neither of these campaigns was any kind of Revolution.  But the real revolution of the Clinton administration came in 1994 and Bill Clinton surrendered whole hog to it.  One thing accomplished prior to that date was the raising of the Federal Income Tax, which was instrumental in eventually eliminating the deficet.  Since the economy took off at the end of 1994 one can hardly argue that the rise is because Republicans just got elected.  

 Bernie Sanders is dejected after his big loss in New York. Sanders seemed almost shocked at the magnitude of his loss. Hillary beat him by sixteen points 58% to 42% or something like that.  Now he has to win 78% of the remaining votes but Hillary Clinton still has to get 56% of the remaining votes, so show how messed up the super-delegate thing is. Donald Trump won big winning 89 out of 95 delegates.  He’s a happy camper.  Yesterday Shawn did not have a good interview with Ted Cruz.  Twice as many democrats voted in New York as Republicans. John Kasich beat out Ted Cruz for second place. I was too tired to go out for a cigarette before three so I just lay on the bed.  When I did go out I felt like a fifth wheel anyhow. The lady with her teddy bear was out there.  She used to be a smoker. I had Norman Goldman on.  Escaped slave Harriet Tubman will be on the twenty dollar bill dispossessing Andrew Jackson.  It’s the biggest change in our currency in a long time. 

There is some new book on the creation of ISIS where the book preview stated that it was all part of some "Anglo-Zionist conspiracy" to keep the Mideast warring among themselves.  Of course we have yet to hear of a conflict between ISIS and Israel.  We come to wonder who profits the most from the creation of ISIS and the answer is of course the war industry.  Someone wants constant war in the Mideast.  This is the theory.  Hillary Clinton admitted her desire is for the US to go war with Iran over conflicts with Israel.  I tried looking up the original source but I couldn't find it.   It's clear though that the Saudis are not exactly unhappy about the existance of ISIS.  Nobody is going to attack the Saudis directly.  The Saudis are still said to be upset about the shift of power in Iraq when Iran got a strong influence in Iraq due to the instalation of a pro Shiite government there in 2006.  The Saudis never got over that.  But George Bush made a big thing about restoring democracy to Iraq.  He's made his bed and now we all have to lie in it.  

The Financial Times reported yesterday:

The Saudis could never reconcile themselves to the US-led invasion of Iraq, not because it toppled Saddam Hussein but because it led to Shia majority rule in an Arab country. When Hosni Mubarak was toppled by Egypt’s popular revolt in 2011, Riyadh accused Mr Obama of betraying a US ally. Saudi perceptions of US complacency in the face of Iran’s advances in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen are a grievance far outweighing western perceptions of Isis jihadism as the main threat in and from the Middle East. After the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to a lightning Isis offensive in 2014, even the late Prince Saud al-Faisal, the respected Saudi foreign minister, remonstrated with John Kerry, US secretary of state, that “Daesh [Isis] is our [Sunni] response to your support for the Da’wa” — the Tehran-aligned Shia Islamist ruling party of Iraq.

Purging the Voter Rolls in New York State

Today is Election Day in New York on this Tuesday April 19, 2016.  There are questions about times and registration.  In upstate New York they used to have voting from six AM to three but this was switched from twelve noon to nine PM, because in primaries in lower New York they don’t start till noon.  I didn’t know that.  There is some kind of a legal suit to be able to allow independents to vote because if you didn’t switch your registration by last October (?) you’re stuck and can’t vote.  Formerly I’d heard the March 25^th date, which was Good Friday and the DMV might be closed anyhow.  Shawn Hannity says that as a member of the Conservative Party he can’t vote but he doesn’t mind because he wants to be known as a proud member of the Conservative party.  Thom Hartman states that North Dakota has the least restrictive voter laws and that state is almost exclusively white and almost no minorities.  That ought to tell you something.  Some have suggested that perhaps we need a Constitutional amendment federalizing elections and granting for the first time an inherent right to Vote, which experts say is never explicitly stated in the constitution.  Of course we know the funny business going on in Colorado in the Republican party but that's a story for another day.  But it illustrates this notion of "You only THINK you have the right to the vote".   Bernie is rising in the polls so there’s still a trace of hope.  I'm thinking that we could have a repeat of Michigan where even the latest polls were all wrong predicting a Hillary landslide.  In upstate New York particularly in the northeastern part- - they share a media market with Vermont and those people are avid hunters up there.  There is another national poll that shows Bernie and Hillary within the statistical margin of error from being a tie, with Hillary two points ahead.  That ought to tell you something.  The Hillary partisans say "Well nya- nya- it's too late because Hillary already has the race locked up!"

 Norman spoke of Bernie supporters getting hot headed and emotional.  The truth is that Norman is using this “emotional” label as a red hearing to distract from the fact that we Bernie supporters have honest reasons to believe we’re right.  Nobody is saying Bernie is all good or Hillary is all bad.  Don’t put words in our mouths.  Also we know that we’ll have to vote for Hillary (most likely) in the general election because we have no other choice and we want the next Supreme Court justice picked by a democrat.  Today the Supreme Court held a ninety minute hearing on whether Obama was right in his executive order not to prosecute illegal aliens living in this country.   I had Hartman on this morning. 

The cannabis lady has a second commercial out now.  I turned on Stephanie Miller before breakfast and it’s on now.   I got up this morning at a quarter to six.  Today is Monday April 18, 2016 and Income Tax day.  I got a cigarette from Paul before breakfast and from Judy just before breakfast I got my medication from Tom.  I managed to save that last dollar till I went to the store just after seven and got a dollar cup of coffee, which I drank back here.  We had Raison Bran for breakfast followed by a fried egg and toast, butter and jelly.  I got black coffee.  Augustine was speeding up the process but there were no extras.   So just how filthy is this “sexy liberal tour”.  It might be a whole lot filthier than I dare imagine, if you’re there in Ashville watching the thing live.  Monique Marvez is on right now.

 Is Hillary secretly for Citizen’s United?  She does change her positions on things through corporate pressure such as the bankruptsy bill of the early 2000’s.  She has as much as said “For me possible temptation to compromise or engage on corrupt thought- - is impossible.  I don’t do it”.  Let me reference Justice Marshal in Brown verses the Board of Education.  The key line in that decision is “Separate but equal is a hoax because things that are separate for Blacks are inherently inferior”  I think you could say therefore Hillary’s practices are inherently corrupting and compromising.  If she were honest she’d say “Well Bernie has chosen the high road as far as campaign donations are concerned.  But as for me I really don’t care that much about the niceties of moral purity.  I’m in it for the money”.

Obama told CBS News today that we can’t allow bipartisan legislation subjecting the Saudis to potential liability for terrorism … or else other countries could retaliate against the US   This about says it all.  I think it's absurd that one nation cannot sue another.  Who made that rule?  Pat Buchannon on the Mc Laughlin group last Saturday stated that IF the Saudis are complicit in the 9 - 11 attacks in any way - - why would we NOT want to know about it?"  It's a right of the American people.  If they retaliate by not buying out bonds and T Bills who cares?  The market for T Bills is strong now- - even if artificially strong.  It's time for the Obama administration to allow the victims of 9 -11 to sue the relevant parties in Saudi Arabia and also to release those 28 pages in the 9 -11 report released in 2002.   We can't trust the Saudis and we can't trust Pakistan either- - - who provided safe sanctuaries for enemy troops in Afghanistan and sheltered Bin Laden.  We need to take another look at whom we choose to call our friends.   Saudi Arabia is no friend of the American oil or natural gas producer because they have the power to undercut our prices any time they want to and to bankrupt producers of domestic fossle fuels.  

The View From Here Right Now

You’ve heard the adage “The more things change the more they stay the same”.  Certain things never change.  We still haven’t found a cure for the common cold.  We still have two political parties in this country and only two.  No matter how inherently better the parliamentary system might be for the majority of the nations in the world where you have a nice variety of political parties and interests, we’ll never have that system here.  It’s a trusted adage that “religion will always be a matter of Faith in a real where fact does not enter into the picture, and the minute Fact enters into the picture, it’s no longer religion.  They have never isolated any real psychic phenomina.  “They” explain this with another adage I don’t buy into saying “The minute you OBSERVE an event, your mere observation of it CHANGES the event.  This is a non objectivist view of the world that I reject.  They say they have isolated the “graviton” alias the Higgs bozon “God particle” but to do so violates the Newtonian adage of gravity being universal to ALL matter and can’t be separated from it but is a transcendent scientific “Law”.   Isolating gravity as a separate entity is still pretty much the realm of Star Trek and science fiction.  There is the adage that two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time.  A coralary adage is that one substance or thing cannot be two places at once, though they have scientists working on this one to try and establish it as fact.  Given this view of the world we should all be atheists of the Madalane Murray O Hare variety- - - which states that nothing exists or can ever exist that can point the way to some supernatural entity or realm.  There is another adage which may be true that there can be only three special dimensions.  However from a mathematical point of view, this view cannot be disproven because if there ARE other dimensions, by their nature we can never discover them or find out what they are.  Basically in this day and age, children are still children, and adolescents are still adolescents.   All of the sexual and growth tensions or whatever of Junior High are still there- - despite seeming changes in current morays. 

I was able to catch the President’s address on KNX.  The President spoke of inspiring competition among communication providers such as cable and such.  This is a good thing because competition is at the heart of Adam Smith’s model for capitalism.  But the President affirmed the capitalist model for the economy that is if you have a healthy, vibrant economy- - money gets into circulation inspiring more jobs and more business and more overall wealth.   At 8:06 was the Republican response.  This was a straight out terrorist paranoia speech with the refrain of “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”.   More people die of car crashes and a whole lot of other things than die of terrorist attacks.  Clearly the response to the fear is all out of proportion to the actual threat.  It’s easy for a politician to milk what you might call “primal fears” of the people.  But they aren’t “primal” or instinctive, but fears that have been carefully developed and nurtured in the people by bombardment of FOX news.

This is Saturday April 16, 2016 and Federal Income Taxes are not due till Monday the eighteenth.  This is because Friday was “Emancipation Day” in Washington DC or some such thing.  They say that Tax audits are down this year due to the Republicans cutting off the budget of the IRS.  The problem is that word gets around that there is less likelihood of your getting caught now for cheating, which will encourage more people to fudge on their taxes.

Leslie Van Houten is up for parole for the nineteenth time for the murder of the La Bianca’s in Los Felis and Jerry Brown has indicated this time he wants to let her out.  Leslie hasn’t found Jesus or anything like that as a come on to let her out.  It’s just that nineteen she’s been in prison now for 46 years- the majority of her life.  She probably hardly remembers what it’s even like to be free.  But apparently she’s guilty of fourteen individual stabbings so the La Bianca family is understandably distressed at the prospect of her release.  Apparently Susan Atkins died in Prison so that’s at least one Manson family member who has gone to her Eternal Reward.  We must remember that the “death sentence” on the victims is permanent.

Bernie Sanders has been in Rome or Greece or something delivering a speech before the Vatican.  Pope Francis invited Sanders to speak.  Some consider it a political stunt but I see it as a reflection of the shared values of Pope Francis and Sanders and the importance of these issues getting a more public airing.  Besides the campaign has gotten so dirty it’s time they took a break from it.  If the Thursday night debate was on CNN, and I think it was, then I could have watched it on line because CNN shows them for free.  I’m still tired of Norman Goldman running con-tinued interference for Hillary condemning that Dr Song fellow for using the word “Financial Whore”, which was very appropriate.  But unfortunately the only liberal talk show host who has not actively opposed Bernie Sanders is Bill Press, who remains politically unbiased.  Bernie Sanders supporters would love a radio station where they could be unabashedly for Sanders and cheer him on optimistically to victory without all of the nay saying of Goldman and Hartman.  And if it's not as if they wanted for the votes to come in before this negativity.  They've been saying it for months, almost before a single vote came in back in February.  There are Bernie supporters who are NOT comfortable voting for Hillary either due to her whiny- - ranting personality.  And don't play the "sexist" card on me.  No matter what gender we're talking about- - someone who goes into an angry rant is someone who is not appealing.   Some don't really feel that Hillary has answered all the Bengazi questions.  Not to mention the whole decision to go into Libya in the spring of 2011 to begin with.  We were all duped by the Moslem Brotherhood and "Arab Spring".  Then there is the whole E mail question.  Then there is the fact that fact checkers have a field day with Hillary's many lies and distortions about Bernie and her political record in general.  Bernie supporters would love to have a place to go to where they are free to be themselves- - free to be unabashed Bernie supporters.  Unfortunately the Norman Goldman show is not that place.  

Another issue needs to be addressed.  Getting the dirty money out of Politics.  I think it's an idea whose time has come, even if I wouldn't have said so twenty years ago.  This is a part of my own "evolution process" as the facts of the matter become clearer.  Some people like Goldman or whoever say "Well, Barock Obama took a lot of money from Wall Street and still he passed the Dodd Frank bill insuring that there could never be a meltdown like 2008 again in the economy.  First of all Congress passed Dodd Frank.  All the President did was sign the bill.  He hardly had a political choice back then he campaigned on it so much.  The key thing to look at is has he Enforced any of our financial abuse laws?  The answer is no.  Thirty years ago the financial laws more faithfully enforced than they are TODAY.  This falls squarely on the executive branch and not on congress.  I've also heard that Dodd Frank was passed in a watered down form.  People wanted it to be stronger.  And I've also heard that even the provisions in the act aren't being enforced.  I've also heard that many environmental laws have been skirted.  They aren't being enforced.  Clearly a vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote for fresh leadership- - and not a third Obama term!