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!