Long Term Unemployment Benefits to Expire

In their finally Christmas gift to the poor, the Republican Congress went on Christmas vacation for God knows how long, without extending unemployment benefits beyond the basic 26 weeks.   The current long term unemployment benefits run out December 31^st which a guess the tea party is hoping will be good news for depressed economic statistics in 2014.  However their “hopes” that the Sequester would tank the economy earlier this year, failed to be realized as the economy has resisted that particular downward pressure.  Now they have another shot at it with the elimination of unemployment benefits meaning those poor people will have to live on the street and panhandle or something, which is something I thought Rush Limbaugh was against.  Of course two years ago we had the same issue in early 2012 during the tea party debates.  Gingrich and my brother were saying how no unemployment safety net provides an “incentive to go out there and get a job”.   Of course people can’t make the impossible happen simply by mandating it.  Even people like Rush Limbaugh would be in agreement with this principle ordenarly.  Of course Newt had another motive in wanting unemployment benefits eliminated.  Because this would drive more people into the job markets and would drive UP the unemployment rate and then the tea party could use THAT as an issue against Obama.   In other news it’s the 20^th anniversary of NAFTA, so perhaps we should all dress in black for the occasion.  As Thom Hartman was so fond of pointing out “The guy with the bad haircut and the big ears was right about NAFTA” as well as people like me who have always been against it.  I remember watching an old VHS tape of the Mc Laughlin group not so long ago from 1993 and was thinking “All of those people are nuts!”   Now we have the Pacific Rim Trade agreement, which is like NAFTA on steroids, according to those who fear this new treaty.  We need to work to insure the Pacific Rim trade agreement is never ratified.   Now it's another week and another District Court Judge ruling on the Patriot Act and this meta data that has been gathered by the Federal Government of every one of our phone conversations.  This judge has ruled that they are legal and necessary.  I assume that this ruling overrules the Court ruling of the previous week.  This just with the adverse ruling is a Clinton appointee, and ironically the Judge who wanted to throw out the meta-date was a George W Bush apointee.  There is no assuming that if you are a democrat you are a civil libertarian.  Of course it was Clinton who flew open the floodgates of this casino trading on Wall Street.   It's too bad Clinton didn't have as big of balls standing up to congress as he had in bed sleeping with all of those women.

 Colorado marijuana laws are going into effect on January first 2014 and they are making ready for it now- - getting all of the sales venues approved.  They say it will be treated like a state liquor store like they have in Washington State.   “How would you know about that?”  You have to be 21 in order to buy up and light up.  However traffic cops will have their eyes out for marijuana intoxication.  In another Colorado story they say Avelanches are a problem now and these avelanches can travel sixty miles an hour guaranteed to outrun almost any skier and bury they quickly.  In other news there was a fireball streaking across the sky in the Midwest plains the other night, and I guess people in Kansas City got a look at this meteor or asteroid or whatever it was.  It sure seems like there are more of those kinds of events now.   Then we have this story about “deferred interest loans”.  You need to hear about this one.  It’s nutty.  You can defer payment on a loan for three years, and Lord knows why you would.  But then- - you get dinger for the INTEREST but not just the interest you OWE but all of the interest you would have accrewed on that loan IF you hadn’t paid a single penny on it.  And if you HAVE paid the loan way down It Doesn’t Matter because you Still owe the Accrewed Interest at God knows what rate- - for ALL of the Principal regardless of WHAT you have ALREADY PAID on the balance.  As such you might find yourself with a balance, so you think of seven hundred dollars on the principle, only to discover that you also owe $1,300 in Interest!!!  The minute I heard this- - I thought ‘This ought to be made illegal anywhere in the country” and was surprised it wasn’t already illegal. 

Now they are doing regular drug testing as traffic stops- - just like with felony arrests.  In other news - - they are putting in more Metro service to Pasadena.   Yes, it’s strange that they are going to conduct a gay wedding right during the parade.  Monique Marvez says “Who cares anyhow- - I just love a parade.  However Monique made it clear she’s not into all of this cross gender selection stuff for little kids because as she reminds us “Little kids are just learning their sexual identity and what they are supposed to do and where they are supposed to go”.   Monique says when she was six- - she didn’t suspect that “a penis is a penis is a penis” but thought that maybe she would “see something different down there” if she looked at a non related boy’s genitals- -  a peep show for the price of an Orange Crush.  It seems those victims at Target are not in as big a danger as we thought because their PIN’s were incrypted so that no criminal could hack them easily.  With any PIN all you need as ten thousand uninterrupted guesses at it- - but I imagine the software protects the holder from being subjected to ten thousand free guesses of your number.  UPS is still running behind schedule.  It’s two days and counting and they STILL haven’t made those “Deliveries in time for Christmas”.  Of course they are blowing their chances for next year.  Many people will decide that perhaps it IS better to brave the hordes of people in the malls.  But when me and Paul were at Sears yesterday there were few people in the store.  Little did I know that Sears in fact does not open till ten.  But it didn’t escape my notice that Sears has one of the worse records for gift return policies.   In other news as you know that this one expedition that shipped off from New Zealand, I guess, to the South Pole got trapped in a rapidly forming ice sheet.  I have a question.  They do know it’s summer down there and ice should be melting and not forming.  Now the ice sheet is seventeen miles back from where the expedition ship was.  One ice breaker tried to cut through but due to adverse weather it, too got stuck, and now they are sending a third ship with a more powerful ice breaker.

There are certain stories that have been censored by the Media- - not just here but all over the world.  The Fucashima power plant crisis in Japan is still going on.  Things there have not been “fixed” and this is a problem that won’t go away as the core continues to melt down and spew radioactive water into the Pacific and then the current takes it to our shores.  Now the Japanese government has passed strict new laws against “revealing State Secrets” and of course this power plant is seemed a “state secret”, which seems a little more than Insane.  Anybody who reports any fact is guilty of some major security briech.  But there are other stories, too.  Genetically modified organisms are still dealt with on the QT.  Apparently in Oregon they tried to pass a law that let consumers know about them but the food drug administration rules the law in violation of federal law.  Not just this but Monsanto - - actually flooded the markets with their genetically engineered produce- - before the food drug administration has even ruled on whether they were OK.  They were that sure of themselves.  And apparently they are forcing Ethiopian immigrants to take birth control pills - - or maybe something worse- - I would presume that despite Jew’s protestation of racial tolerance- - they don’t want any more Negroid DNA messing up their national gene pool.   There is some law about a gag order on doctors in the state of Pennsylvania.  Then we have the misinformation stories.  It seems that NPR, national public radio, that great bastion of the left- - let’s dingbat callers go through unchallenged by the host.  Who do they think they are- - David Gregory?  The lady caller said that “The reason why President Obama beat Mitt Romney in the election of 2012 is because the Internal Revenue Service went after right wing groups and shut them down, and it got so bad that these groups were no longer even permitted by the government to organize voters, while those groups on the left were unaffected.   This remark is completely bogus and it’s the Host’s job on any call in station to be forthcoming with the actual facts.  But the media today doesn’t do that but lets the callers walk over them.  In the most over-reported story of the year - - Phil Robertson has been reinstated by Arts and Entertainment.  The show has so much muscle- - that the rest of the series refused to do the show without their patriarch Phil Robertson.  So it would have been better if A & E had never suspended Phil Robertson at all because he’s gotten to play the Martyr these past two weeks talking about censorship- - when in truth he’s suffered no downside at all.  Instead A & E has generated for Robertson a bunch of free publicity- - garnering him exposure in the mainline media that he otherwise never would have had.  So the bigoted series will continue filming new shows for next season.  This whole show has reached the status among the redneck right as some Cult phenomenon - - kind of like Sarah Palin was in the fall season of 2008.  But everything about the redneck, red state, tea party right has always been completely bogus.

I just wanted to talk a little about this idea of progressive radio being silenced in Los Angeles and apparently in New York too.  Of course this is something else we have President Bill Clinton to thank for by signing the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in his "Communacations act of 1996" which open the way for a few rich people on the fringe right to gain control of our public airwaves.  Some have suggested that Clear Channel doesn’t care about good ratings (or good business) as much as they do their dedication to their political agenda of electing a republican congress in 2014, which includes the US Senate, because they already control everything else.  In 2010 the High Court used Citizen’s United to insure that a reactionary congress was elected that year, who in turn gerrymandered the districts to sabotage subsequent elections.  But now that is not enough and they want to take Progressive radio off the air entirely.   And Moe Kelly does his cause no good to remind us that he came on the radio because Thom Hartman was taken off of our local station.  I imagine that listeners WERE really pissed about that and sent hostile E mails.  I wish I had sent the station a hostile E mail.  Tom Hartman is a void that has never been filled.  They gave us Moe Kelly, Monique Marvez, and Ebony K, and Tulalla and Mando, and Johnny Wendell and Mario, but they didn’t fill the void.   And only the final two names I would label as solid and reliable Progressives.  And as you know Thom Hartman also got bumped from his local Portland station in favor of FOX Sports.  I wasn’t a bit happy about that either- - and wonder how much further this attrition of the left will go. 

This is Saturday morning December 28, 2013 and this will be the driest year we have ever had in California in my lifetime.  We’re going to end up with 3.6 inches of rain for the entire calendar year.  This morning I was craving a cigarette when I woke up a little after five.  I got up and Richard Moore gave me a Philly and said it would be the only one.  He’s given me a total of three cigarettes in this eight day long cigarette drought crisis.  The humidity has been low and this morning it’s 54 degrees right now at six AM, a veritable heat wave.  But the maximum won’t be as high today.  Long Beach and Fullerton set heat records each of around 84 degrees but I continue to say that some of these heat spikes are a little bogus.  Yesterday morning was cooler than this morning and I was wearing that new sweater and I was actually cold.   Of course if I don’t get Christmas money from Mom my tensions with the people around here are going to escalate something fierce for the next two days.  Janet asked if I were going to the ATM this morning and I had to remind her it wasn’t the end of the year yet.  Judy likes to talk about the idea of clearing your body of all toxins.  To an ordinary person like me you’d think if you were paranoid and a little neurotic lately- - perhaps Dr Messina could come up with another drug for me to take.  Judy likes to talk about how “People don’t loike to feel emotions any more”.  But I would remind her that if she doesn’t want to talk to me- - she’s good at walling me out and not taking phone calls without betting an eye.  You’re over at her house and she just lets all of these phone messages go by unanswered and it doesn’t bother her she’s holding people off.  But when a family member wants to talk to me it’s NOW! And I’d better jump.  There is a complete power inequity.  I would never have picked this past eight days for quitting smoking with the number of free floating and actual anxieties I’ve had with unresolved issues- - and I wouldn’t have kicked off the period the same day they were doing major spring cleaning in here moving all of the furniture out and scrubbing the walls and floor moldings and the whole bit.  You tack on to that the fact they’ve begun getting chincy on food portions- - and the general coffee drought in the evenings- - and I guess it’s no surprise that I’m still physically craving a cigarette.  You will note that Dad always said growing up that “The way to solve any family conflict or tensions- - is just take a pill and it will all go away”.   It should come as no surprise that raised this way that if I find something that actually DOES ease tensions- - I’m going to gravitate tword that.  And you know that when I’ve tried to write a blog with the cut and paste bit and all- - - that my thoughts have been the farthest thing from organized, and I didn’t attempt to “fix” the last posting.

Plenty To Get "Hung" About

My blogger numbers suck lately so you'll pardon if I take out my frustration by boring you in this posting.  This is the first one I have done in three days.   I was thinking of calling my "next posting' something like "The worst week of the worst month of the worst year".   Another heading I thought of "2013 Signals Fast Track to Hell for the United States".   One caller on Nicole's show talked about revolution.  After all Nelson Mandella if his life demonstrated nothing else it's that "When non violence isn't working- - step up the Resistance to something a little more Effective".   His life is a monument to the success or systematic, armed and organized violence.  And let me tell you don't say the cause of the left isn't just because we've tried everything else and only been walked all over.  They go after our pensions and our SSI and our Union funds, and the Unions themselves, they pander to the worse forms of bigotry and other forms of hatred for hatred's sake.  And they love it!   No sane person could possibly believe Mitt Romney was any Christian because he is completely devoid of empathy, or concern for all of the people he's hurt in his financial dealings.  You can not find one Bible verse from genisis to revelation to justify the things Romney DID and the things the tea party bosses such as Sheldon Adelson and Grover Norquist are doing.   If you're wondering about my own personal New Years resolutions in 2014 I'm well on my way now to becoming a non smoker.  And I don't anticipate having near the number of "Messages from the Other Side" if you know what I mean.  Unless they're throwing money down to me I'm wondering why I need them.  I plan to improve my computer skills in Sketch, and Excel and in Power Point.   I hope perhaps to get one of more good vitamin supplements.

This is just after noon on December 26, 2013 on a warm mid day where temperatures around here spike.  However I think the 85 degree temperature reading for yesterday was a little bogus if you check temperatures anywhere outside downtown Los Angeles.  Places that are normally warmer were not as warm.  Nicole Sandler is on now and we turn our attention to the various Christmas messages of yesterday.  Right now Nicole is reading the Pope’s Christmas delivered from the famous balcony in St Peter’s.  She says she took out most of the references to the Almighty.  The Pope mentioned Syria, and the Central African Republic, and Nigeria, and the Horn of Africa.  It was a gracious message expressing a wish for Peace on Earth and for harmony among mankind.  The Queen too delivered a Christmas message and they released new photos of baby George in his baptismal gown- - perhaps taken a couple months ago.  The baby had a certain regal look about him.  By way of “the opposition response” the Queen allows this too and this time was taken up by an Edward Snowden message.  Snowden wants us to know that he did a good thing and that the dangers of a generalized loss in the expectation of any privacy is a serious one.  American children growing up today have no expectation of privacy or ever having a private, confidential thought.   However the British government was always not so stellar in their desire for human liberties.  The Queen yesterday officially pardoned a patriot and a computer genious who pioneered computer technology during WW II and helped to define just what a computer really is.  He broke a lot of Nazi codes and did much to shorten the duration of World War II.  For his efforts he was convicted in 1952 for “Being a homosexual” and was compelled by the Crown to undergo chemical castration, which apparently they had back then where your balls shrivel up to nothing.  Two years later this guy named “Touring” (?) took his own life by eating a cyanide laced poisoned apple.  He said as a youth his favorite movie was Snow White.  There are those who think it wasn’t suicide.  But the conduct of the State in this matter is totally disgusting- - more disgusting than any acts “Touring” may have committed.  It’s one thing to be flagged for the “act” of sodomy or whatever in Texas.  I can see being convicted for a certain “act” where you pay a fine or something or spend thirty days in jail and then go your merry way.  But this guy was marked for life and apparently his carrier as a computer technician or anything else was completely ruined by what the Crown did in fingering him.  It would seem that somehow the concept of a “thought crime” rather than any specific Act- - is not new.

This morning I got up at a quarter to six and I did not post yesterday or the day before.  At least Moe Kelly and Nicole are live today.  Moe Kelly took off on Jesse Jackson and I’m not at all sure why.  Other people have the right to weigh in on the Phil Robertson issue, but apparently that right doesn’t extend to Jesse Jackson.  I don’t get it.   Moe points out that the KKK has all of their rights intact and they have expressed their “opinion” such as it is, freely in today’s favorable climate.  They can even hold KKK marches if they want to.  But they can’t threaten anyone or incite violence.  The “right to hate” is not an absolute right.  They had coffee in the courtyard and I got a half a ham sandwich from Dora with my coffee, and I also had a second cup.  I called Paul at some point in the morning and we managed to get a little caught up on things.  Yesterday he mainly relaxed and had dinner with friends in the evening, much as I supposed when I couldn’t reach him last night.  Paul and Judy both complemented me on my progress in quitting smoking over the past six and a half days now.  I reminded Paul that there was some book that stated a person could quit smoking in five days flat if they did it completely cold turkey.  Paul mentioned a watch place and an optometrist place where I could get the needed things done on those two areas.  He wasn’t sure whether it would be today or tomorrow and it turns out to be tomorrow.  We have started on page three.  I tried to downplay the extent to which I have been having OCD and downright paranoid thoughts over the past week, as readers of the beginning of this file done yesterday know.  We had baked ham with fairly thick slices for lunch and mashed potatoes and corn, so it was like dinner for lunch.  We had mixed fruit for dessert.  I got a long half cigarette from Gwendeline and felt lucky.  The only other substantial smoke I’d had was a whole cigarette from Richard Moore this morning.  We had Raison Bran for breakfast and after a protracted wait we had scrambled eggs with stuff in it, and toast and butter and jelly, and Owen asked for his piece of toast back he’d given me.  Nicole is worried about the “meaning’ of Christmas, with the enphasis on “meanness” because there has been a spirit of meanness this year that people are fed up with and Moe Kelly was just happy that Christmas was over with, since there seems to be more a spirit of tension in the air this year.

Moe was ticked off about UPS and not delivering on Christmas when they promised.  I have mixed feelings about this.  Moe believes that if you have a backlog of orders and are running behind that you contact your workers and say “I know what we promised you, but you have to work on Christmas”.  But the other side of me just wishes more people would honor the holidays and give promised holidays off.  After all there are virtually no holidays our family has celebrated since I can remember where we actually celebrated holidays on the actual day.   They are talking about “It’s a Wonderful Life” now and in today’s political climate that movie definitely does have a subversive “Non Romney” message.   Nobody knows what the tea party stands for nowdays anyhow.  We don’t know if they are Christian or Ayan Rand or what.  And theological distinctions like being a Mormon obviously don’t matter.   Stephanie Miller this morning had her show from last March just before the sequester was to go into place.   Of course today’s “libertarians” don’t really believe in liberty, as in “civil liberties” but they do want to “help the unemployed out” by taking away their benefits because all that payment was after all just “forcing them into dependency”.   Of course if you follow that logic to its logical conclusion then you’d close down all of the hospitals because “there are a lot of sick people there”.

I noticed that the old red Atlas was moved several books over- - and I wonder if Emma had done that and I never noticed.  I don’t think there are any books missing.  Nora noted that the top of the CD cabinet hadn’t been cleaned- - but maybe that creamer was just spilled.  Last night I got a fourth cup of coffee from Glen last night- - tepid instant- - and I told Glen “I’ll try not to come around in the remaining two days”.   I actually have enough in my ATM account that I could use that card for a big cup of coffee at the liquor store for a fat fifty cent “tip”.   Last night it was Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  Then it was a Christmas I Love Lucy special, that was in color, with black & white flashbacks.  It really was a “special” centering on the birth of little Ricky, who gets a drum set at five years old.  The last five or six minutes I watched “The Middle’ and that show was a rerun.  Then I watched about the first eight minutes of the next comedy working off the premise of “What the hell happened last night?”   Then I turned to some animated thing on KTLA and dozed off, and when I next woke this guy was singing- - and I guess he was melodic.  I turned it off and went to bed maybe twenty after nine. 

Today is “Boxing Day” so does that mean your employer gives you a gift- - if we’re going to follow tradition?  Today is the beginning of Quanza and Nicole says “This holiday is all about family unity”.  I’m thinking that if African culture is all that hot on “Peace’ how come the worse moral decadence and debotchery comes out of “The Dark Continent”?   (Selah)  It could be that I could be a “non smoker” for the first time in twelve & a half years, by the end of the year, before the next seven days have expired.  We’ll see.  It’s one thing to say what is “supposed to happen” but it’s another thing for it actually to happen.  “It’s” shouldn’t be green-lined.

Tuesday evening was Christmas Eve but it sure didn’t feel like it.  The songs were playing on KOST radio, but it didn’t feel like Christmas Eve.  About seven thirty James let me have another white cigarette and reminded me that I now owe him fifty cents.  One for that one and the other one he “gave me as a Christmas gift” earlier.  OK.   I had NCIS on and was feeling drowsy.  I prepared the laundry for Denise to pick up in the night, and made out a fresh list.  And luckily Denise even works on Christmas Eve.  Christmas morning was totally strange, being desperate for a cigarette.  However I did luck out this day.  I got a cigarette from Richard Moore, and one from Nancy Warwick and one from Paul Evans, and one from that brunette on the west patio, and two from that Oriental guy (if you’re into smoking pencil shavings)  Phillies don’t really count as a cigarette.   Ricardo said Christmas Eve morning that he would be off until after New Years.  I’ve been going for my medication before breakfast.  We had oatmeal, and I got a second bowl of oatmeal from Hilda.  We got a fried egg and bread pudding with whipped cream on top.  Owen gave me his piece of bread pudding but I didn’t finish that.

I finally listened to some KLOS Christmas classic rock.  They played “Snow for Christmas” by Emerson Lake and Palmer, which I had been hoping to hear right off.  They played Tom Petti’s “It’s Christmas Time” and “Rock and Roll Christmas” by George Toorogood, and a rocking version of “Merry Christmas, Baby” of which Charles Brown has the definitive version.  Later I heard that Hawaiian Christmas song by Bing Crosby, which sounds like he’s joined by the Andrew’s Sisters.   Most of the stations had Christmas songs.  Time kind of hung heavy in the morning.  I did go out for morning coffee.   Dora had more of those bread pudding slices and I was so hungry that I had one.  I had “Let’s Make a Deal” on for the last fifteen minutes, and had “The Price is Right” on a little.  Flashing to the present, “Days of our Lives’ was playing in the big room and I got another short from Gwendeline.