Assad Must be Removed from Power Now

Sixty Minutes was on and I got a portion of the first segment.  It was about the actions of FEMA and their being chronically under-funded by the government.   The middle segment was on that barbarous butcher King Assad of Syria.  Someone needs to make plans to take him out, and I don’t mean to dinner.  Certainly there are hired guns around.  Why can’t we get our elite seals or some equivelant land group to do it?    He is guilty of the ultimate war crime of bombing hospitals.  And he does it in the most despicable manner.  He bombs the rest of the place first and then when they all go rushing into the hospitals he bombs the hospital and takes everyone out.   I don’t know.  Sometime I wish we’d have either Hillary or John Mc Cain as President.  Mc Cain is hard line on Russia and Syria and he is a moral, principled man.  I think any democrat should make this a political issue next year.  The third segment was about the people of the isle of Egg, and you don’t to hear about that.  It’s in Scotland and it’s one giant private estate with no courts or police or governments of any kind and crime is virtually unknown.  But you have to have the right temperament for it.  After this it was Wisdom of the Crowd and the first half of an NCIS episode. 

Today on Days of our Lives Abe was on a power trip.  J J disobeyed a direct order not to visit Theo even if he is in a comatose state.  Abe caught him in there.  Abe wanted Hope to fire J J and she refused.  So instead Abe fired Hope.  It’s a real power trip.  Abe has become more of a stickler for zero infractions of the rules in his old age.  Meanwhile Trip tried to confess to Patch what he’d done at Kate’s blackmail threats of deleting Theo’s phone messages.  Kate kind of hinted it would be horrible of Kayla got in trouble for covering up a previous crime of Trip.   It’s a sticky situation.

This is Monday November 27, 2017 and three days to go before Thursday’s outing assuming I make it.  I ran out of cigarettes at noon or before that Bill had.  I borrowed one from Ron and just now I borrowed one from Terry.  It was two o clock.  I checked the menu and then came up here to call Judy.  This time she was able to talk.  We both agree that Vitamin C would speed up the recovery from my flu-cold.  I’m not certain that at the rate I’m going I’ll be in the pink of health by Thursday.  Of course Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were really bad days.  Sunday was a little better and today is better than yesterday but I still feel sick.  I told her Mom forgot about the dinner on Thursday but Judy says that Mom knows about it and it was just a short term memory lapse.  In fact we’ll probably be meeting at her place afterward.  Dinner reservations are made for four, which is really early.  We’ll get fast service.  But we’re favored customers anyhow and known as heavy tippers.  We warmed me again to quit smoking.  I lamented once more that we aren’t allowed to go to the store and get OTC medications such as Vitamin C.

THE REST OF THE THANKSGIVING SAGA

This is Wednesday November 22, 2017 and it seems if you hit the office circle wrong it causes the whole file to instantly close.  This happened twice just now and it’s happened before.  On Days of our Lives Will is living with Marlena now and so far has been paid a visit from Chad and Abigail and he invited them to stay for breakfast.  They had French toast and a Denver omelet and also strawberries, perhaps more.  Then Will met Gabriel and Ariana.  Before this Gabriel was hugging J J to comfort him with his guilt ridden state.  After this I went out back and then into the courtyard.  I was too late.  The cart was just going out the door and everyone was sitting around with food.   Kate and Chris were in a conversation.  I wanted a place to sit down in the shade but there was none.  Has the air conditioning has been turned on in here. 

Last night Bill lent me two white cigarettes and I smoked them both last evening, and the second one was after eight.  I watched ABC network news and Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  I was in the medication line behind Glen.  Both of us were handed our nose spray without having to ask.  Then I felt better.  The Adville helps.  I prepared the laundry for pick-up.  We watched NCIS and I went to bed soon after nine.  In the morning I woke up just after four and closed the window.  It was a little late.  At a quarter after four I went out and smoked the one long but still in the cigarette pack.  Then I went back to bed at four thirty and feeling the cold.  I got up at 5:06 and showered.  I’m not sure what I smoked then.  I went for medication with Ricardo.  He was busy talking to others but squeezed me in.  I lay down on the bed a while wishing I had coffee.  I turned on KNXT news at six.  At some point I got a cigarette from Tao.  Denise returned our laundry baskets a little after six thirty.  Everything was there.  Then I began putting things away.  

The sun was now shining on Jerry’s back.  Angles have changed.  We had corn flakes in the box with poured milk from Rene.  Actually first we got our main plate.  This was a sausage patty and scrambled eggs.  I got a half cup of coffee.  I went out and smoked a butt and then I returned to the dining room and got a half a cup of black coffee from Valerie from the kitchen.  Then out back again Bill let me have the remainder of his coffee cup in the green cup.  Then Francis gave me a cigarette.  So you see I do have things to be thankful for.  I was also thankful the temperatures were warming up.  I turned on Stephanie Miller on WCPT.  I tidied up the room a little expecting Nora to come any minute.  They never had linen changing today.  Nora must have the day off.  Thom Hartman came on.  I left to smoke out back and Phyllis came down the sidewalk informing me that Jennifer was in her office today and she was handing out money.  This is the answer to a mouse’s prayer.  I went down and she unlocked the screen and let me in.  I asked for and got eight dollars from her.  Then I went to the store and bought a pack of full flavor Clippers.  So I’ve been smoking to catch up.  I checked the menu and it was not necessary to change it today.  I missed morning snacks.  Victoria Jones was on.

Paul called about ten thirty.  He wanted to come by and bring some goodies but first he wanted to see Mom before he ate lunch.  He must have been on a tight schedule.  I went down to the dining room at eleven and Mary Jane said to see Dr Messina.  Two people were ahead of me but Dr Messina was very brief with both of them.  He was also very brief with me.  But I told him about my cold and he asked about Thanksgiving plans.  I went to the table and Paul showed up a minute later.  He decided to eat with us because Steve has vacated his seat and this place is pretty liberal about one-time guests.  We had two slices of pepperoni pizza and a green salad.  The thing is this pizza had actually Mozerella cheese on it.  Paul and Jerry got into an extended conversation.  Jerry told him her life’s store with her daughter and son and all.  Paul talked about work at the Youth Center.  I asked about Judy and it seems she’s in worse shape than any of us thought.  She needs assistance walking and she’s afraid of losing her ability to swallow.  Her Parkinsons is getting worse.  They’ve been married 36 years.  Paul agreed with me how chilly the nights are.  Paul planed to do a little work around the house before he left for work at two.  Paul brought some oatmeal bars and walnuts, almonds, and grapes.  I have finished the small bag of almonds and am starting in on the stemless grapes.  Neil Savedra was doing all “Fork Report” and so I turned off KFI and turned back up the program Bill had, which had been news and now it was “The Chew”.  I’d rather see food shows on TV than on the radio.   Now we’re on page five.  For some reason time seems to be going really slow since lunch.   It’s twenty to three.  

What Do We Have to be Thankful For This Year?

Charles Manson is dead at age 83, the same age Dad was when he died.  He died at a hospital in Bakersfield of all places.  There were rumors this trip to the hospital for Manson would be his last.  Even people who stay on death row are most likely to die of old age rather than ever be executed.  That seems like a way to run up a lot of medical expense.

  President Trump is re-thinking his decision the other day to left bans on bringing big game trophies from Africa into this country like elephants and such.  The optics of it weren’t good.   There is more than a rumor that the XL Canadian pipeline is leaking oil.  That isn’t good.  Someone said they used PIG's as electronic detectors of fissures and weakness in the pipes that were supposed to sound the alarm.  The pipe information gadgets or whatever they're called themselves were well designed but the software on the receiving end was tampered with by the Koch Brothers because they say it's "too expensive" to check out every little warming of a vulnerable pipe but would rather face lawsuits in the courts as land owners file for damages.  It's "just a cost of doing business" you know.  

  Thom Hartman says that the Republicans want this tax slashing and deficit exploding tax bill passed really soon so that when the democrats win in 2018 and 2020 that they will be blamed for all the bad ramifications such as an exploding deficit and Medicare and Medi-Cal funding being slashed.  I don’t know if they think that far ahead but Hartman says much of Obama’s deficits were caused by George Bush.  It's just a new guimic the wyley Republicans have come up with to keep one step ahead of the electorate.  

Charlie Rose has now admitted to all sorts of sex escapades and has been fired from both CBS and PBS.  He claims he just “misjudged the feelings of the women” when he paraded around naked and showered with employee prospects in the apartment and flash women in a bathrobe and a lot of other stuff.   Of course when they say a man asked a woman for “sexual favors” I think they’re referring to a blog job.  Of course now we hear it’s common for men to show women they don’t know their dicks and Stephanie isn’t turned on by the sight of a male penis.  There’s where gays differ.  Gays love the sight of another male penis.  Norman Goldman just announced that Donald Trump officially endorsed the candidacy of Roy Moore.  But there is a definite difference between “unwanted advances” where the man is rebuked with a “No”, as opposed to attempted rapes of teenagers.  There is also the dynamic of power difference.  A man with a lot of power has an unfair influence over a woman with much less power. 

  John Conniers is a democratic congressman from Michigan and he made quid pro quo arrangement with a woman that he would pay her off a large amount of money if she signed a non disclosure deal.  Of course now the deal is disclosed.  But he threatened her job if she didn’t have sex with him.  The news is more flooded than ever with these sorts of stories from all directions and political persuasions.  John Coniers is the dean of house members because he’s been elected 27 times to that office, which means he’s been serving since the sixties.  Thom Hartman believes we need to legislate this stuff into law so that in the future women will be protected.   I guess they’ll officially make blackmail and intimidation of women a crime. 

This morning I got up at four thirty and needed to smoke so I got dressed and went out there and had a cigarette.  I returned and went back to bed and got up at 5:37 by the digital clock and showered.  I smoked a white butt that was on my night stand and made my next to the last cup of instant coffee.  I got my medication from Rico after six but didn’t use the nasal spray.  But I am still sick with the flu all right.  The virus is still with me and I’m afraid the virus is going into my chest because I’ve been coughing more in addition to the nose stuff.   I had Stephanie Miller on computer.  Free Speech TV has a newly designed web site and live stuff won’t come across.  There are incompatability issues.  However the stuff in the frames below would play OK.  But strangely they’ve eliminated their “radio programs” segment with Bill Press and all the rest.  I finally got the show on WCPT.  But the biggest jolt of the morning was downstairs with Phyllis Green saying that some people had money draw yesterday.  Apparently money draw was at one fifteen yesterday and supposedly they announced it but I sure didn’t hear anything.  I also didn’t hear anybody talking about having gotten their money and usually there is a lot of stuff like people paying back debts like cigarettes and stuff and going to the store.  Jennifer won’t even be in today.  But yesterday she was in the dining room with Timmy helping serve the plates and she never breathed word one about money draw being Monday. 

Last night I was drowsy (basically from the flu virus).  The meager dinner filled me up and I went back to the room and lay down through most of the evening.  Occasionally I would go out for a cigarette.  I was cold last night until Bill said it was OK to close the window.  Bill gave me two new towels and a face cloth and I was worried that when Nora cleaned today she’d just take the excess towels like she did the last time.  I’m still worried about that happening.  I went down for medication with Leah and I used the nose spray.  I watched ABC network news, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  Then I watched “Lucifer” on FOX.  After the medication kicked in I felt better. 

I had Raisin Bran from breakfast out of the box.  For the most part they still don’t use the regular bowls for cold cereal.  This was followed by scrambled eggs and French Toast and a big sausage link.  I took Jerry’s French toast because she didn’t want it and Steve took her sausage.  Phyllis had been saying that Jennifer might show up anyhow but the odds were steeply against that.   I checked the halls to see if Nora was coming today.  They did the linen changing on the other side of the building.  It’s a good thing too because I felt sick in the morning.  I did go down to check the menu and it was a good thing.  I didn’t want chili and corn bread because my stomach felt a little unsettled as it was, so I changed it to a baked potato.  I didn’t go to morning refreshments.  I had Thom Hartman on.  Larry gave me a cigarette a little before lunch and I didn’t even know if I would go to lunch.  But I made it to the table and I felt better once I started eating.  We had teriyaki pork and oriental vegetables and brown rice that I mixed all together.  We had yogurt for dessert.  Coffee is always nice.  Then it was Gary and Shannon on over the noon hour.   There was a lot of emotion expressed on Days of our Lives but I don’t want to go into that now.  I left Steve Harvey on at two and it’s on now.  I went down for afternoon refreshments from Rico and got two Oreos and an orange drink.  Mary lent me a cigarette. 

President Trump Has Told Over 1500 LIes

President Trump tells five and a half different lies a day- every day in the life of his administration and he’s on the way to telling two thousand lies in just his first year of office according to Chris Matthews.  He lies on twitter and he lies at White House press briefings and he lies to the FBI.  Trump always used to talk about “lying Ted and crooked Hillary”.   He is the champion of both.  I don’t think Trump “needs to expand his political base”.  I think Trump knows he’ll never be reelected but he doesn’t care.  All the Republicans want out of him is to pass the laws they want in Congress and just keep both houses of congress in 2018.  Just tell more lies.  Trump made a big thing out of Al Franken’s unwanted kiss and then that photo on a plane, but President Trump has kept his silence against the far worse accusations made about Judge Roy Moore.  President Trump is a pure hypocrite.   Franken said he would be open to investigation by congress, which surprised me.  Congress has much more important things to do with their time.  Now the rumor is that Judge Roy May be seated in the Senate and then he will be kicked out.  Meanwhile the Alabama Republican Party and Alabama’s governor is in lock step behind Judge Roy Moore.  Roy Moore’s wife made a defiant speech.  They consider themselves “smart” in not bowing to all of the accusations.  Of course if these cases were to go to court, if they do, they will be forced to change their tune.  Unfortunately you have the statute of limitations.  The democrat in the Alabama senate race is now five points ahead, but earlier polling showed all of these sexual escapades having no effect in the polls.  Of course AG Jeff Sessions has told more than his fair share of lies too.  It’s hard to believe President Trump still has the undying support of 38% of the American people.  A lot of people love to be lied to.

Malcolm Young of AC-DC died this morning at age 64.  He and brother Angus Young co-founded AC –DC in 1973, which was a long time ago.  Most of AC – DC’s hits were nearly forty years ago.  The millennial generation may not even be familiar with their songs.  Malcolm retired from the band three years ago in 2014 because he suffered from dementia.  Malcolm played rhythm guitar and Angus played lead guitar.  It’s always been that way.  

The Sound FM 100.3 is off the air Jeff says and the last song they played was “The End” from Abbey Road.  They should have concluded with “When the Music’s Over” by the Doors.  Five minutes later they renamed the station KKLQ and are playing Christian music.  After this I got snacks with Rico.  It was a lemonade and a graham cracker.  We won’t be seeing any more of Aden.  He’s working in Florida now as an assistant cook in a restaurant.  

On Days of our Lives now Theo is in a coma.  They have to draw out the suspense.  Kate blackmailed Trip into giving her Theo’s phone so the police don’t get it.  Frankly I’d think if it was so important to her that the evidence be concealed the Christian thing to do would be to face any consequences from Kate and give the phone to the police and let them examine it.  Before this it was Gary and Shannon for the noon hour.  I think this is Nora’s day off.  We had chicken strips for lunch with French fries and catsup over both of them.  We had canned pears for dessert.  

The Republicans passed their version of Trump’s tax plan today and thirteen republicans voted with the democrats voting “No”.   That’s not very many.   As of a few days ago there were only fifteen working days of congress before Christmas.  That doesn't give the US Senate much time to pass a bill and then go to conference committee and work out the details.  Back in the Obama days the house passed all sorts of stuff the senate rejected with the filibuster.  But they have apparently blown up the filibuster in the Trump administration and everyone is just talking about getting fifty percent plus Pence's vote to pass any bill.  

 Yesterday Al Franken was fingered for sexual harassment planting a kiss in a woman whom he works with in a comedy skit and later there was a photo of Al cupping her breast while she slept on an airplane.  Franken apologized excensively for both incidents.  This isn’t like Judge Roy Moore who is trying to smear his women accusers and the party in Alabama is even more strongly supportive of their man.  The sacrifice morality for politics because they assume nothing will ever be proven, and if it isn’t positively proven like in a court of law, then there is no hard evidence.  That’s how they think, so they have to practice solidarity of political position.  Of course Stephanie Miller has her “meet and grope” lines at her gatherings like last Saturday in LA.  Of course people are twitter happy now.  That’s their reality.  Having to exercise the discipline to read a whole thought out newspaper article is beyond them.  People will look back at this era of history as an era of loving both gossip and moral corruption. Now Stephanie is talking about how Italian men love the hair on their backs blow dried. 

The Latest on Judge Roy Moore

Now there is a movement to make particularly young girls wait until the eighth grade before being given a smart phone.  They claim that having a smart phone at too young of an age induces thoughts of depression, bullying, and suicide.  Roy Moore is in the news again.  He has a bank of attorneys and they are attacking witness number five, whom we have discussed at length- - Beverly.  Moore doubts that the signature message in the HS year book is genuine.  I have no reason to believe that it isn’t.  It was from 1977.   But Moore hasn’t attacked the other four witnesses including that fourteen year old.  But now there is a new, sixth witness to come forward and this charge is from 1991 when Moore was married.  The others occurred when Moore was single.  Apparently Moore’s wife supports him.  But there was a new dimension yesterday when it seems that Roy Moore was banned from frequenting a shopping mall where young girls hang out back in the early ‘eighties.  This is an independent source of accusation that will only strengthen the prosecution’s case.  But the Republican Party of Alabama is stalwart in their intractable support of Judge Roy Moore.  That’s human nature in the far right.  They place politics over morality.  They are afraid of losing one senator.  In other news a new Republican senator has given a thumbs down on the Republican tax plan.  And Susan Collins of Maine has already indicated she will vote against this tax bill.  That takes the number down to fifty.  The Republicans are so concerned about controlling the US Senate, every defection hurts.  Losing Roy Moore will make it that much easier for the Democrats to take control next year. 

POTPUREE:  USC is favored by sixteen points over UCLA in the big game this weekend.  They just announced articles of impeachment against President Trump after this commercial break.  The more we learn about Pluto, the more interesting the little world becomes.  Hydrocarbon particles in Pluto's atmosphere are responsible for the dwarf planet's surprisingly low temperatures, a new study suggests.   Pluto is therefore the only planetary body known whose temperatures are driven more by haze particles than by gas molecules, study team members said. [Amazing Photos of Pluto and Its Moons]  EWN says “Democrats in congress are introducing articles of impeachment against President Trump.”  But the half dozen democrats sponsoring the move aren’t supported by other democrats.   President Trump delivered a lengthy televised address Wednesday touting his visit to Asia, arguing the U.S. position in the world “has never been stronger.”  One day after his return to Washington, Trump clearly wanted to promote a trip he views as a “tremendous success” but has been largely overshadowed in the U.S. by the growing controversy surrounding Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.  The president delivered a play-by-play account of his foreign travel, ticking off a litany of moves he described as wins for the American people on issues ranging from trade to North Korea.  Trump said he took office inheriting a number of problems, which he said he witnessed on his “historic” tour of Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.  Anybody seventy one years old qualifies as “historic”.  

The bottom half of humans own next to nothing, but they own as much as the world’s richest 80 individuals do, because though the bottom half are poor, there are 3.79 billion of them. So it’s really like eighty pies split up 3.79 billion ways.  The average person among the richest 80 owns 45,750,000 times as much as does the average person among the lower half. In other words: in terms of wealth, the typical one of those hyper-rich equals nearly 46 million of those poor people.  The richest  person among the poor half of humanity owns approximately $5,000, but billions of people in the lower half own less than nothing — they’re negative net worth: owing more than they own. However, whatever they own is visible, and easily seizable, either by creditors, or by thieves.  By contrast, the wealth of all billionaires, including of the top 80, is largely secret, lots of it being in shell companies, many offshore, untraceable. Consequently, estimates of the wealth of the richest 80 individuals are probably unrealistically low. This secretiveness is a major reason why the public tolerates being ruled by an aristocracy: they don’t even recognize that they are — they think they live in a democracy, even if they don’t.  The roughly two thousand known billionaires do lots of business with others in the billionaire class, and with politicians whose careers they fund. And they tend to get what they want in the resulting governmental policies. As for the bottom half of the economic pyramid, even the ‘news’ that the poor read is often produced by the two thousand; and, even when it’s not, whomever does produce it needs to sell ads to these billionaires, which means that it’s necessary to please them in the ‘news’ reports, which the poor, like everyone else, will be reading, and which will be shaping the public’s views, and so will help to determine the politicians whom they vote for (if they vote), which votes will reflect what has come to be ‘known,’ from those ‘news’ reports, and from those ads, which will, in effect, thus be buying ‘their’ government.

Here is kind of a fifty year flash-back album that first appeared in "Escape from Egypt" in March of 2007 but we are duplicating it here just to draw its contents to your attention.  Actually if you were doing a CD of earth length you'd have to drop the final track.  But we're doing Federation length CD's.  

LOVE OR CONFUSION (rel. March 18th. 2007)

One Mint Julip (Clovers)

Sweets for My Sweet (Drifters)

Little Darling (Diamonds)

Teen Beat (Sandy Nelson)

He's A Rebel (The Crystals with Darlene Love)

The Stripper (David Rose & his Orchestra)

Wipeout (Safaris)

Nadeine (Chuck Berry)

Dead Man's Curve (Jan & Dean)

Pretty Woman (Roy Orbeson)

Come a Little Bit Closer (Jay & the Americans)*

The Game of Love (Wayne Fontanna)

They're Coming to Take Me Away (Nepolian XIV)

Somebody To Love (Jefferson Airplane)

Brown Eyed Girl (Van Morrison & Them)

Love Or Confusion (Jimi Hendrix Experiance)**

When the Music's Over (The Doors)**

"Draining the Swamp" is Slow-going

There was another mass shooting today in the Sacramento Valley in a small town of 1,500 people just southwest of Red Bluff.  There is this shooter who is said to have gone from site to site shooting people starting at home and ending up at a grammar school.  Five people are dead including the shooter.  I still don’t know his name yet but it seems we get these mass shootings almost every week now.  The survivors were taken via helicopter to a hospital in Redding.  Now they are saying that lives were saved because of prompt protocol instituted by the grammar school.  Good for them, I guess. 

I listened to the Gary and Shannon show.  They had draining the swamp.  This morning before nine Jeff Sessions was testifying before a House committee.  I heard the open statements of the democrat and the republican.  I didn’t hear any of Jeff Sessions testimony but I heard about it from Gary and Shannon.  Apparently someone broached the idea of a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary but Sessions didn’t think such a move was called for.  Basically AG Sessions denied everything as to the Russian connection in the 2016 campaign.  He had no good explanation for not remembering that meeting with Popadopalis and Trump a year and a half ago.  It almost seemed to me to be a lost exercise expecting they’d learn anything from calling this witness.  I still haven’t heard of any new Muller indictments though I keep hearing from left wing talk show hosts that they are coming.

There is a new case in the Judge Roy Moore case.  He wrote in her high school annual about being in love with her and what a sweet girl she was.  This constitutes evidence.  They were both eating in the same restaurant and she went out on a rainy night to wait for her boyfriend to pick her up.  But Judge Roy Moore beat him to it.  But instead of getting on the highway he drove the car around to a secluded spot out back where there was no lighting.  He locked the doors.  Then he began groaping her breasts and then grabbed her neck and pulled her toward his crotch.  He then began taking off her shirt.  She was afraid he was going to rape her.  Beverly is her name and she has hired Gloria Alred as her attorney, who is an excellent spokesman for such feminist issues.  Senator Mitch Mc Connell believes this witness.  This one could be the tipping point that gets the Judge out of the race.  There’s no way around it.  Now I hear there are some thirty witnesses in the DA’s office where he works that will attest to the fact that this 32 year old man dated underage teenage girls.  What will Shawn Hannity say now?  To finish the story the girl wasn’t raped.  The guy said something like, “You’re only a child” but then said not to tell anybody because nobody would believe her.  The next thing is unclear but it would seem he opened her door and threw her out of the car and she was on her back on the pavement.  Then the DA sped off in the car with the right door still open. 

On Days of our Lives now Will is claiming to be Susan’s son and Susan is calling Will “E J”.   So that was Dr Rolf’s plan all along – to convert Will into Elvis Junior.  Samantha, Paul and Raphael have all met the new Will.  In other news Theo was shot by J J because J J thought he had a gun but he didn’t and now he has father and daughter Carver mad at him. [next day splice]   I watched Days of our Lives and the latest wrinkle in the Susan and Elvis thing is that Susan got Dr Rolf to get Will to really believe that he Was E J and was the one who was shot by Wesley and this is the reason why he couldn’t remember anything about his own life before the last three years.  Theo is in surgery now because they have to remove the bullet because it’s lodged right next to the aorta.

They have changed the guidelines for defining high blood pressure.  The old line was 140 over 90 and I guess that's reasonable.  The new guideline is 130 over 80 and this one is absurd because forty-six percent of the US population now his high blood pressure under this guideline.  But blood pressure medication is all generic now, which means it's easy to get without paying high prices.  Shannon was saying that her blood pressure was a hundred over sixty.  Not even mine is that low.  I think the cholesterol guidelines are also too strict because the line is at two hundred.  In the old days "normal" was something between 200 and 240.  How can health change that much?  Still people are living longer.  I just think some people are looking for ways to make our lives miserable.   

  Last night I had a strange dream that Tina, of Nick and Tina had been pregnant many times with children we never saw and strangely they were all girls.  She had artificial ensemination with all different men so the siblings were only half related.  One of these offspring was with Justin in 1985 but Marie was involved in this somehow, like it was her egg or something.  (?)  The other part of this dream is strange.  There was a pool party and Tina kept talking about the “Lucky sperm club”.  And there were in utero photographs of her latest pregnancy but it was all psychedelic and on a big screen.  And there was some stuff you could drink that would make it appear in the camera as flames of fire on your skin. I tried drinking this potion and saw flames of fire on my skin when I held it in front of the camera.  

Judge Roy Moore Should Withdraw from Senate Race

A growing chorus of Senate Republicans including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have called on Senate candidate Roy Moore to withdraw from a special election in Alabama if allegations prove true that the former judge initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl nearly four decades ago.  “If these allegations are true, he must step aside,” McConnell said in a formal statement on behalf of all Republican senators.  I’m glad at least a few Republicans put moral decency over party success and expediency to win at all cost.  Here is more of the article.  Other Republican senators weighing in included Jeff Flake of Arizona, David Perdue of Georgia, John Thune of South Dakota, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called on Moore to step aside as well — and without couching his statement with “if true” language.  “The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying,” McCain said. “He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of.”  This is the ultra conservative judge who won a primary a couple weeks ago. 

The Senate bill differs significantly from the House version approved by the Ways and Means committee on Thursday: It would preserve some popular tax breaks, including ones for mortgage interest and medical expenses, and would maintain a bottom tax rate of 10 percent for lower earners. But it would also jettison (meaning keeping the House version) the state and local tax deduction entirely and delay the enforcement of a 20 percent corporate tax rate until 2019, which could rankle the White House and mute the economic growth projections that Republicans are counting on to blunt the cost of the tax cuts. 

I think we should change the national anthem to either “My country ‘tis of thee” or else “America the Beautiful”.  At least it contains no overtly racist lines in it.  Clearly in the Star Spangled Banner there is a racist line about hiring free slaves as hirelings to fight the Americans because Britain had probably abolished slavery by then.  President Woodrow Wilson signed the order making “The Star Spangled Banner” our national anthem.  Woodrow Wilson was a racist.  We know that now.  Clearly the lyrics are accronistic and in the other verses the wording becomes very archaic and obscure.  It’s time to move into the 21^st century.

President Trump gave what they said was a total half hour speech praising his Asian neighbors.  It’s Trump’s “Everything is coming up roses” speech.  By those standards we must have the worst living standards of all seven nations.   He didn’t just praise Japan and South Korea, but also China, Viet Nam. Singapore, Malaysia, of all places, as well as the Philipines and Indonesia.  Bangkok is the most visited city on earth, Trump says.  Trump threw in a little history about early relations between this nation and China going back over two hundred years to George Washington.  Then it was Norman Goldman.  Flynn made some sleazy deal with Turkey turning over two people Turkey regards as criminals to them for a few million dollars in payment to Flynn.  I’m really puzzled who the US and Trump are bending over backwards to be nice to Turkey.  What have they ever done for us except to complicate our campaigns in the Iraq War.  And there was more about under age molestation.  You do get tagged as a sex offender if you’re convicted of a felony with under-age girls. 

On Days of our Lives, Brady’s little phoney frame-up backfired big time when Eve had an alibi.  She and Clowie were at the opera that night and took pictures of their visit.  The police let her go.  Chad confronted Andre about whether he is the one who has been sabotaging the business.  Meanwhile Samantha had a change of heart and now wants Will’s body exhumed and got Raphael’s permission to do that.  Of course I was saying that was the logical solution to the problem two weeks ago.  That will answer all of their questions without having to go to assholes like the Di Mira’s for the answer.  But we already know the script writers aren’t going to make it that simple. 

It was right after President Obama was elected that Randy Rhodes and other liberal commentators were referring to the two thousands as "The lost decade".  But I say that basically in 2008 our problems were just beginning.  Most sane people would gladly turn the clock back ten years ago when the political race was wide open.  2007 was the last year of the renters tax rebate and economically the past nine years have been my worst, without question.  It was basically the day after Obama was nominated that Sarah Palin made it on the political scene.  This was the true beginning of the Tea Party.  There WAS no tea party ten years ago.  Just imagine that!  Bush was on the skids and his policies were unpopular even among his own people.  As such it was better to have Bush as President than Donald Trump for a whole host of reasons.  But we democrats should have chosen Hillary Clinton over Obama because she was a fighter and wouldn't have been such a conciliatory push-over with congress the way Obama was.  She would have come up with ways of fighting back.   I think the affordable care act was prematurely enacted and made democrats an easy target of the tea party from that moment on.  The cry then became, "We're not going to allow the democratic congress to pass ANYTHING.  We didn't have Donald Trump's presence on the world stage back them.  Just think how nice it would be for US to take a Vacation from Trump!  And I'm not even mentioning the whole host of areas where Republicans have gotten so much stronger.  Race relations have gone to hell and bigotry and hatred are much more fashionable now, not only against Blacks but immigrants, Moslems, and women as an entire gender.  So no, I'm very unhappy with what has happened in the past ten years.  Plus I don't think most of us would mind being ten years younger either.  

Democrats Can Celebrate Some Election Victories

Today is a good day for Democrats because two democratic governors got elected, in Virginia and in New Jersey.  There was a smattering of other democratic victories to give us all hope.  Let’s all sing “Count your victories”.  We should count ourselves lucky.  Some would say that “all that hard work is paying off”.  I’m sure Claire from Days of our Lives thought the same thing.  I’m not convinced it’s the beginning of a major trend.   Norman Goldman tells us that today is the one year anniversary of Donald Trump’s election.  He says it doesn’t seem like a year but when I think of all that’s occurred in the past year it fully seems like a year to me.  He says “We knew what we signed up for”.  There are many things wrong with that statement.   Electing a president shouldn’t be a pig in a poke where we guess what we get.  The next thing is I didn’t vote for Trump.  I voted for Hillary.  The next thing is that the revelation of Trump’s rotten corruption was gradual.  It was a gradual let-down over the past two years.  Two years ago I thought that Trump might have potential because there were a lot of unknowns.  Every time an unknown became known, it was a disappointment.  Even a year ago people hoped in vain that somehow Trump at long last would act “Presidential”.  Certainly Trump has shattered every precedent in the book.  Now we wait with baited breath for Muller to come out with major indictments leading to Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. 

Apparently the US Senate is going to come out with their own version of the tax cutting bill tomorrow.  One change I’d make right away is a total revamping of the Gift tax.  Right now it’s forty percent on a flat basis.  I would tie the gift tax to a person’s income tax bracket.  That way if a person like me won $25,000 on a game show I’d get to keep the whole $25,000 because I’m in a zero income bracket.  I’d judge gambling taxes in the same way.  I would allow for an investment tax credit.  Of course there is new and old capital.  Clearly if you’re expanding your business out of the income the business has earned, money that would otherwise go toward dividends, then I’d give a hundred percent tax write-off treating it like expenses.  For new infusions of capital from a fresh source, we can negotiate that.  I would also reduce the corporate tax rate but to 25%   I’d do that as an experiment to see if all of the wonderful things Trump says will happen actually happen.  I would also restore all of the tax credits for the ordinary person such as debt for any accrued interest.  But I would eliminate business expenses for non essential business expenses as I said in a previous posting.  The three martini lunch is not necessary for making a deal.  If you have to get the person drunk to make the deal then it shouldn’t be made.  I would also eliminate tax deductions on limozines and corporate jets.  And of course rather than eliminate the Estate tax I would expand it and make it maybe two million dollars rather than five point five million like it is now.  This would raise a lot of money.  I would also of course institute a lot of trade tariffs that would raise a lot of money.  But keep in mind I think we are at the crest of an economic boom.  Economic booms just don’t last more than ten years and whatever happens with the legislation I would prepare everybody for a major drop in stock prices and reduction in earnings;.  Jerry Brown is so miserly he’s still assuming that we’re in a recession here in California.  Cut-backs in funding should be restored to pre 2007 levels.  Personally I think it would breed a lot of good feeling among the voters.  

Norman Goldman suggests we “extremely vet” white men with guns and that would be easier to do then extremely vet all the Moslems of the world to see which one has the intent of terrorism.  This Texas gunman broke out of a mental institution.  He should have been cited by the Air Force for domestic violence and gotten on the restricted list.  This gunman wrote threatening E mails to his mother in law and beat his wife and fractured the skull of his stepson.  Donald Trump is saying absurd things about the shooting such as those two heroes with guns who pursued him after he ran out of bullets and finished his shooting.  Yes they shot him twice but the man died do to a self-inflicted gun wound.  Trump is now saying that “Hundreds could have died were it not for those two brave men”.   Otherwise Trump and the leader of Japan are good buddies and enjoy golfing together.  Now Trump is in South Korea.   Typing rates have sped up and blogging rates have definitely speeded up over the past few weeks.  Our family still has no plans for Thanksgiving.  And I’m not sure when my antivirus is going to expire or what I’ll do about getting a renewal if Judy is out of commission to help me.  Also it’s been some time since I’ve spoken to Mom about getting her computer or just how I’d go about that.  Norman is serious about this “vetting” of white guys periodically sending FBI agents to their homes of the ones who sign a pledge saying they don’t have any firearms.

The big news on Days of our Live is that Brady has gone over to the dark side.  He is framing Eve Larson – Kiriacus for the murder of Damos.  She has the motive and the suspicious circumstances but she didn’t do it.  Victor told Brady to “Deal with the Eve Larson problem” and this is his way of dealing with it, by framing her for murder.  Of course he has the omulet and he used Henderson as a useful pawn to throw Eve’s stuff out on the lawn and Henderson saw the omulet but didn’t touch it because it was cursed.  But Eve believing in her innocence dived right into her purse and pulled out the omulet getting her finger prints on it.  As you may remember Victor thought Brady was too much of an alcoholic to continue to be in the running for CEO and this was the little “project” Victor assigned for Brady to prove himself he has the chops.  Meanwhile Theo paid people for followers to Claire’s songs and she found out about it and was furious because she thought they were genuine fans.  Of course you don’t know to what his autism clouds Theo’s judgement on how to interact with people.  Clearly the stage is set for Claire dumping Theo and taking up with Trip.  (It’s still a strange name)

The Propaganda Machine of the Far Right

 People think all of the proposed Bill of Rights to the Constitution were passed.  Actually this is not so.  Jefferson and Madison exchanged letters saying that corporations would be another source of danger of concentration of power along with Church and State.  Madison said that it was a danger to have a perpetual state of war.  This is definitely a fear of mine over the past fifteen years.  It’s interesting that the founding fathers viewed corporations as a dangerous source of a concentration of ruling power.  They obviously saw into the future.  Thom Hartman constantly quotes from the founding fathers to remind us of our roots, or at least where our roots should be.  Today the media has grown to great power.  But it has done so as a mouth piece of corporations.  So even Public Broadcasting and NPR are now the tools of corporations despite the left-wing rhetoric they put in their commercials.  Bill Mar and Phil Donahew were fired because of their views on the Iraq and Afghan wars.  People need to remember that.  I remember the days when the mainstream media put out feature broadcasts against war and the military.  But today they have these “embedded” reporters where they get a bunch of people who will cover the war but only if they are brainwashed first.  So we see nothing on our TV but the glories of current and past wars.  People don’t remember President Eisenhower’s farewell address where he warn us all against the dangers of the Military and Industrial complex.

I would just say that these so called “tax protests” over the weekend, are a phenomenon that I didn’t foresee the magnitude of.  They were all over the country.  They weren’t paid protestors as Donald Trump tweeted that they were.  It was a spontaneous outpouring of two sentaments.  The first was that the rich should pay their fair share of taxes to save the government from an impending exploding deficit.  The second was that President Trump needs to show his Federal Income Taxes over the past dozen years or so like every other candidate for president.  Donald Trump promised us all multiple times he had no objection to showing his income taxes and would do so as soon as he was being done audited.  But now since his election he’s doing sort of a “Nya – nya”.  He says “The election is over and I won.  The issue is decided”.  First of all it wasn’t a referendum on whether Trump should pay his taxes.  Indeed 75% of Americans want Trump to show his taxes.  But the more important point is that people like Shawn say it’s important for Trump to keep his promises.  But now that he’s won Trump is saying that he doesn’t care about promises any more.  Basically he’s just saying “I just said I’d report them so I’d be elected.  Well, mission accomplished”.  I’m surprised (though I shouldn’t be) that Shawn doesn’t see the credibility gap here.  But now we come to the protests themselves.  We are told that there were fights and disturbances at these rallies.  So the implication (from people like Shawn) is that “These liberals bring disorder and cause violence wherever they go”.  But clearly we need to examine the sources of these conflicts.  Right wingers go to these rallies of the left and deliberately set about to cause violence.  Yesterday they punched a woman right in the gut or something and started a brawl, which was their intent.  But to them it’s just another way of sabotaging the left. I am not completely confident that law enforcement will properly be able to isolate the source of these conflict.  Sometimes in football the cry goes out “They always flag the second guy to throw the punch” or whatever.  There are still a lot of Obama holdovers in the Justice Department but this could change over the course of time.  The time may come when nobody will get a fair trial in America.  

Here’s more damage that the disasterous bills from 1996 have caused.  There was something called the Internet Morality Act, which ought to be called the immorality act.  It shields certain web sites such as dating services from any liability if your account gets hacked, for instance if someone pretended to be you and started setting up fake accounts.  This happened at a gay dating site called Grinder.  There is this one young man who’s gotten over a thousand propositions for sex over the past several months.  They show up at his work and at his home.  Simetimes sixteen men will show up at his home per night.  There was a line that goes “Don’t be put off if I tell you “No” because I have fantacies of rape”.   One can only imagine what would happen if this occurred at a heterosexual web site.  It’s clearly this bow toward commercial supremacy just like the communacations act was that allowed the establishment of FOX news. 

There seems to be a movement from within the Trump administration to go back to the past and “Get more adults in the room, in the decision making process”.  Trump just hired on two people who used to be in the Bush administration.  They say Trump wants to hire more people like these two, which will further the retrenchment of promises made in the campaign.  It seems Rex Tillerson has “grown up” and now as Secretary of State for a couple of months is doing more traveling and standing up to Russia and “clearly his star is rising”.  I guess so.  

Sometimes Computer search doesn’t hit everything in blogger.  Let's talk about our rock compilations, which we have posted so many of.  “Stray Cat Blues” is on that Dylan Doors and Stones compilation.  So is “Jigsaw Puzzle” and so is “Parachute Woman”.  Also “When You’re Strange” is on that album listed under ‘People are Strange”.  I guess we’ll leave it as an overlap because there is a dearth of Doors songs as it is.  Also this album was pitched as an individual album to buy apart from the eight disk boxed set.  But you should question the completeness of the results in "Search This Blog".  For instance I searched "Stray Cat" and came up dry as far as the eight CD boxed set is concerned.  

LATE EDITION:  At a North Korean press conference at the United Nations, can you hear a diplomat say he hoped journalists had a good holiday weekend and then warn of possible thermonuclear war.

North Korea has consistently issued threats of war toward the United States in recent decades, but the Trump administration's announced end of a "strategic patience" policy with Pyongyang has upped the ante in terms of warnings and bellicose rhetoric. North Korea's UN deputy representative, Kim In Ryong, on Monday unleashed at a hastily called UN press conference a torrent of threats, war scenarios and rhetoric aimed at the United States.

The press event was held hours after US Vice President Mike Pence visited the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. Pence warned North Korea not to test the resolve of the United States "or the strength of our military forces."

In New York, North Korea returned verbal fire. North Korea's UN ambassador condemned the US naval buildup in the waters off the Korean Peninsula, plus the US missile attacks on Syria.

On North Korean border, Pence tells CNN US will drop 'failed policy'

Kim said, "It has created a dangerous situation in which thermonuclear war may break out at any moment on the peninsula and poses a serious threat to world peace and security."