More of the Same Ol' Same Ol'

We won't learn much from President Bush on Wednesday night that we didn't already know. Obviously all that extra time he's taken to make his decision hasn't done any good. President Bush plans to increast troop strength by twenty thousand. This is despite the fact that even those who advocate a "surge" say it will take more like two hundred thousand to achieve the effect the President wants in Iraq, ie. to "pacify" the area. They have it all figured out to a scientific ratio to population to troops. Of course Bush isn't listening to either the hawks or the doves on this issue. I have no idea who he's listening to. For the longest time he insisted the generals were telling him we didn't need more troops. Generals Casey and Abasaid were saying we didn't need the extra troops and they said this as long as it made Bush happy. Now Bush has fired those two and put in two others who agree with his new policy. This doesn't seem like a very logical way to run a war. It used to be said the troop increase would only be for four months or so. Now those in the know are saying that increased number of troops, whatever it is, will be in Iraq for the remaining two years of Bush's adminestration and he can let the next President figure out what to do.

Congress isn't going to start their hundred hours till tomorrow. The Democrats plan to pass six major bills in one hundred hours and aren't allowing amendments by the Republicans to screw things up. Already they have made lobbying and earmarks reforms, which are good. It seeme tonight's game between Florida and Ohio State would somehow interfear with the hundred hours. I looked up on the internet which said the other Florida, Florida State beat UCLA, though some web cites didn't even think the game has been played yet. I still am not convinced this congress is going to do anything really novel or radical. Now we have the news that the late associate Justice Renquist was hooked in drugs his first ten or eleven years on the high bench. William Renquist was hooked on phylactid (?) darvon, and codeine. The FBI was inlisted to spy on and blackmail witnesses who would testify against Renquist as his confirmation hearings both in the early seventies and in the 1986 hearings for chief justice. Apparently Sen. Strom Thurmond asked Negroponte to do some stuff. They say that Renquist was constantly slurring his speech on the bench. I don't know what to make of all this. Every day we learn something more radical about our politicians than we knew the day before.

There is a lot of interest in the Kabbalah now, and they're advertizing it on the radio. The more research I do on the topic like in the Wickipedia and Q and A websites, the more I realize I don't know. Let me just say that according to the Federation the Kabbalah goes back to the days of Solomon. Reading "The secret passage of the lion" at the time of Abraham about 1800 BC there was Shem, Noah's son, who was the King of Salem, alias Jerusalem. And after him was Solomon. And it was said that the sons of Darda were those with spiritually elete knowledge. It says elsewhere that Zerah, of whom Darda was one of his sons, was the eldest of twin sons of Tammar, who were sired in a quazi incestuous relation with Judah. Tammar, the mother, tied a scarlet string around the finger of Zerah as he came out of the womb, then he retracted it and his brother Perez came out whole first, but Tammar said "Zerah is the oldest". Hence the dezignation of the Federation of the Zerahites and Dardanians as "The Elder Race". When they ended up going down to Egypt the Dardanians left by Sea first while the Perezites were still in Egypt and sailed to Grece and founded Troy. Later on these Dardanians fanned out Westward and became the Sephardic Jews. The Sephardic Jews are the "Medeteranian" or "Spanish Jews" of the middle ages and the ones most into the kabbalah. Zerah means "Golden Dawn" and I guess the study of the Goldn Dawn is a whole other branch of study, as are the Free Masons, but all three claim to have esoteric knowledge. They are all into spiritual spheres of the body much as chakras in Hinduism are, and are into mysterious number combinations. One article today went so far as to say Greek Mathmeticians got their knowledge from the Kabbalah. Others said Kaballah tradition goes all the way back to Adam. Others say it was a segment of the Mosiac law called the "oral tradition" meaning it was meant to be transmitted orally, whereas God espressly told Moses to write down the Torah, or written law. Since I don't know that much about the Kaballah or even which books they consider Sacred, I have little more to say except they believe in the four archangels, Michael (which means "Who is like God?) and also Gabrael, Raphael, and Uriel, which means "light bearer".

The following was typed Wednesday January 3rd.

This is after dinner. We had fish, rice, and salad and I had seconds. I went out to the bakery for a large coffee and John was there. I hope I left him enough coffee. I guess this is getting to be a “back to normal” day since there will be no football game on tonight and Al Franken is back on the radio. [Actually there was a FOX game with LSU defeating Notre Dame in the Sugar bowl. “According to Jim” made its return to the ABC airwaves last night] Another sign of back to normalcy is that there was a shooting at a High School in Washington state. Today is the eighth and presumably final day of mourning for President Ford. Sarah Jane Moore will be interviewed from her call at 5:30. Ford was laid to rest at sunset on a hill he had picked out himself outside his Presidential museum in Grand Rapids. Jimmy Carter claims that when the two were traveling together he never wanted the trip to end the time with Ford. There was of course a 21 gun salute and a 21 jet flyover in a missing man formation.

Of course congress presumably gets going tomorrow though I hear it will be partying and festivities. I’m with Ed Schultz. Enough of the balling and partying and let’s get on with the game, the task at hand. This congress can’t get going too soon in my book. Meanwhile Randy Rhodes, who spared us by not talking about her dog again today, lamented the death of Saddam Hussein. That’s been the one bright spot in the news lately, that Saddam was hanged and mocked and taunted by guards and the whole thing was tapes on a cell phone and put on the internet. That’s modern day enlightened news as it happened. For some reason Randy’s brain just isn’t plugged in today. She’s talking and lamenting how nobody knows the history of Saddam’s reign. She says the US supplied him with the Saran gas. I’m glad he’s dead. Remember what Vincent Bugliosi said about Charles Manson, “If you decline to give this man the death penalty he will laugh at you from inside his cell”. We’re all tired of looking at the guy’s face and it’s time to put him out with the rest of the garbage. I think Saddam, like Manson got more than a fair trial and exploited everything for his own propaganda purposes.