"Flash: City hall workers are on furlough today"
(Tomorrow they go back to Prison)
Well now you don't have to worry about kissing and telling. "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" is soon to be a thing of the past as the Senate passed this repeal bill last Saturday with votes to spare, as several republicans including Scott Brown, joined the democrats in passing this landmark bill. Still gay advisors are telling their people not to come out of the closet just yet because everything has yet to be nailed down officially. My position on "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" has always been "Whatever the military is comfortable with is fine with me". It's just that if you're counting promises kept, this is a big win for President Obama. In fact the Democrats are on a roll. They are hot and heavy into debating this new START treaty with John Kerry making long-winded detailed speeches. I think the Republicans are finding out what things democrats will do with their backs to the wall. Also passed is some long awaited "aid to Black farmers" bill and also a food safety bill of some kind. But the DREAM act is pretty much history. Some people were saying that Harry Reid could keep the senate in session right up to January 4th because the new Congress will be seated on the fifth. Of course this tax bill is all candy and no spinach, and so you better hope and pray that it works as advertized to stimulate this economy or we're all sunk.
On the winter solistice will be the total eclipse of the moon. It seems with every lunar eclipse lately they say how rare it is. Either it's the first full moon on Christmas in thirty years, or else it's the last eclipse we'll see till 2040 or some such thing. Now they are saying this lunar event will facilitate the finding of life on the surface of the moon, "because this is the identical condition by which we see planets on distant stars". I don't really track with that answer, but if they say so. Maybe again they should tell us just how much water they expect is on the moon.
This is a really bad day in the lives of two soap opera characters, Johnny and Hope. Johnny is about to learn that he has to have his left eye surgically removed. I don't know about you but if I were that little kid I'd look for my next chance, while not sedated, to head for the exit doors. My philosophy in removing body parts goes thussly. I weigh a doubt against a certainty. I know I'm going to lose a leg or a breast or a hand, or in this case an eye- - if I go through with the surgery. And the doctors don't sound real optimistic about this being the end of it. They act as though every hour increases the chance of metastisis and won't be sure they got all the cancer for weeks afterwards. I might just be getting tired of "Playing Pirate" by then. On the other hand if my kid is showing absolutely no sumptums and feels fine I just might say screw the whole thing and forget I heard it. If I'm still alive five years from now the doctors won't care anyway, one way or the other. We turn to Hope in prison. I don't envy the position she's in. The whole cell block hates her and worst of all that includes the warden. They've pretty much put her on notice that her days above the sod may be short. Having a husband and loved ones seems to be of no avail in this series. Having the mayor as a friend of the family doesn't even count. In soap operas the good guys are impotent against the bad guys- and that's just the way it is.
Since this is a short blog and I'm short on material let me carry on with a topic that I bored my brother with earlier today. I know what the Wickepedia definition of "Monism" is. They just claim that everything is a manifestation of the one, singular reality. My definition is somewhat different. The "Marcus" definition, and why Christianity is dangerous if it adopts it is, I view monism as the belief that there is "God" and "everything else" and by the way "Everything Else" is Evil. This is so extreme that the act of creation by God himself is seen as an act from which only Evil can come. It's as though there is a limited good and so creation OF anything must be evil. The Devolutional doctrine goes that God created the lesser gods, who created angels, who begat mankind, who was at the bottom of the moral ladder. But somehow under Gnosticism, one comes to the "Knowledge" of "The One". This philosophy is a little Aristotelian in that it sees "God" as the First Mover, the unmovable Rock. Of course this is refuted by Newtonian physics. I think this is why fundamentalists are so anti Science.
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