All The Puny Little Take-down Artists

LATE BREAKING NEWS  Three years ago, President Barack Obama came into office with a very good idea: He would reach out to the mullahs in Iran to see whether they were interested in rethinking their hate-based relationship with the U.S.  So Obama, despite criticism from Republicans, wrote private letters to the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and made a public appeal for a fresh start.  “In this season of new beginnings, I would like to speak clearly to Iran’s leaders,” Obama said in a message broadcast in early 2009. “We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States,Iran and the international community.”  When the Iranian people rose up later that year, Obama only tepidly endorsed them, and he was measured in his criticism of the vicious manner in which the Iranian leadership suppressed the protests. He may have been motivated partly by an assessment that the uprising wouldn’t succeed, and that the U.S. would still have to grapple with the Iranian theocracy. His approach was neither morally nor emotionally satisfying, but it showed a certain cold logic.  Unfortunately the President was the one turned down cold, and now has to live with his decision.


I’m starting to not give a crap about who wins or doesn’t win tomorrow night in New Hampshire.  They’re all disgusting except for Huntsman and Paul.  We’ve already eliminated two of the very worst candidates and more are certain to follow.  Mitt Romney for one is starting to make some really serious gaffs that could cut his big lead in half in just the last two days, possibly bringing it down to single digits.  Romney said he “knows what it’s like to be fired” when he doesn’t.  Romney says “I like firing people who don’t give me the service I desire”.  I think it was in reference to choosing Health Care plans, but you know the quote is going to be used out of context.  Romney said “I know what it’s like to sign the front of a check, as well as the back”.  Wouldn’t we all like to be the ones signing the front of the check, but we’re not.  But now Newt Gingrich enters the picture.  There is this possibly sleazy “Take down film” that runs a half an hour which is sort of horror piece on Romney’s many corporate takeovers and the laying off of people, and their bereaved interviews.  Of course we get that dark music.  Apparently some rich Nevada casino operator working for the Rick Perry campaign came up with this commercial.  He “shopped it around” to all the political candidates.  Huntsman and others and even Rick Perry himself turned it down.  But Newt was just sleazy enough to take the bait.  He has been giving all these little plugs for it in the weekend debates.  So you have the king of liars calling another candidate a liar.  I’ve been saying that Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich’s and Rick Perry’s votes all added together would not amount to a quarter or 25% of the votes cast tomorrow.  Just watch.  Right now Mitt Romney is in first place, but like I say, fading fast.  Ron Paul is in second place and just might overtake Romney if current trends continue.  And John Huntsman is in third place.  That leaves the best of the bottom tier of candidates Gingrich, Santorum and Perry- - no better than fourth place and may I suggest it’s time for at least two of them to drop out, and personally I wouldn’t mind having all three dropping out.  Randy Rhodes said there was Bain Capital and Bain Investment or something.  One was a capital venture corporation with risk capital investing in new ideas.  But they say Mitt Romney has been risk averse all his life.  They say that he only ran as governor for one term because he’s had his sights set on the White House for a long time.  Mitt won’t invest new capital in a new venture, but rather prefers to take going, established corporations and financially eviscerate them.  Scoop out all of their working assets and replace it with corporate debt.  Kind of like what happens to you when you become a Born Again Christian.  Then Mitt charges a fat financial management fee and makes off with all their money.  If I was a stock holder of a publicly held corporation that someone wanted to Pritivatize, I tell them to go screw off if they wanted to buy me out.  And I don’t see why the others wouldn’t do the same.  I feel as though it’s like the government offering up a cheap price for your property and if you don’t accept it, then they’ll just take it anyhow.  As I said my whole conception of what a “Leveraged buy out” is entirely different from Randy Rhodes or Thom Hartman.  In my conception of how it works you use your OWN capital to increase both your upside AND downward financial risk.  I cannot with any definitive specificity say that whether what Mitt Romney did was blatently immoral or not.  In this film they talk about four companies in particular but they say there are “dozens, just like these examples”.   And then there was some audio Chris Matthews clip I believe that was played where there was a lot of laughter at Romney’s expense.  The host was calling Mitt a trained dog that barks Republican tea party platitudes on command.  Of course if he were elected President he wouldn’t have to be anybody’s dog.  Is Chris Matthews aware of that?

Randy Rhodes made a pitch for Obama Care.  Of course some good has come out of it.  Keeping your kids on your policy “keeps them in the system” and insures that more people will be covered.  Randy wants young and healthy people in the pool to subsidize the rest of the population with bad livers in need of a transplant from drinking too much or whatever.  Medicare is really the dregs of the system right now having only the oldest and sickest of the population.  Once it gets some young and healthy blood in the system, rates will go down as the Vampire system is strengthened.  Randy talks about Staten drugs for preventing heart attacks, even those are the most dangerous kinds of drugs you can take.  Also with Obamacare,  85% of the income of an Insurance company has to go directly into services to the customers and not in profit or overhead.  Of course you know the Insurance Companies hate this.  Of course Mitt Romney is leading the charge to repeal Dodd Frank because he doesn’t think the consumer deserves a break.  Obama as president has a lot of prerogatives.  The office has many perks not available to the rest of us.  The only thing that could impede the reelection at this point would be some new crisis in Iran that the President does not get on top of soon enough.  So if President Obama has a rabbit to pull out of a hat concerning Iran he better do it quick.

You know there is a song “Count your many blessings”.  But sometimes it’s the problems that arrive one after the other that you decide one find day to sit down and actually count.  You’ve heard of the party of No, but this is the list of No.  At lunch today we had some cabbage soup with a cold cut sandwich and Fritos and an apple.  We also were served a cut of hot water and a thing of instant coffee.  We’ve been getting this instant coffee routine with a distinct Decaf flavor for days now with no explanation.  So “No Coffee”.  There is No Loretta.  Someone said she’d be back today but Marcia at Dr. Levy’s class said that “they took her to another place and the Mormon Elders don’t know where to find her so they can visit her”.  This is not good news.  No Birthday Gift.  For almost the first time since living here I received no birthday gift.  There was no Mormon gathering last night.  I went down just after six thirty and sat down on the couch with Bob Stradley and another guy and waited a few minutes then left.  As it approached seven I returned down to take another sweep of the place and still nobody.  Later on I heard a roomer that Seid and Nicky were really converted Moslems.  There were hints that perhaps they were declared unwelcome here any more.  Dr. Levy did not show up at noon as usual and I was freaking out.  He did not make it till twenty to two and they stayed only a short while and could not take me to the bank.  Oh yes- - I called the bank this morning and found I had a 34 cent over-draft.  I’ll comment more later on.  I called up Terry after lunch and again later and there was no answer at his home.  There are of course no Bowl Games.  It was true for last year I guess, too.  But it’s really starting to freak me out when everybody else is talking about them.  No keyboard.  The first time I booted this computer this afternoon the keyboard didn’t boot.  This has been a recurring problem since last Thursday and I imagine it will only get worse.  Are you counting all of these up?  There is the whole conthiscated back up hard drive saga that’s gone on since two Mondays ago December 26^th.  Along with is nothing in the My Documents main directory.  No SSI increase notification letter this year.  I don’t remember ever seeing one and I looked through my files this morning and there wasn’t one.  Of course I found out the hard way that I received fifteen dollars less than they had been saying forever with the TV and the media and the 3.6% increase stuff and all.  Dr. Levy just said “It’s going to be all right”.   That’s the only sane thing to do right now is make yourself believe it.


Well, what the hell.  It's early January and already it's fire season in Southern California.  Vast areas of the United States are lacking in snow.  It's all thanks to la nina.  Of course we need to always keep our brave fire fighting personnel in prayer.  Today on the soap opera Jack Deveroux took the moral high ground and decided to "be the better man" by understanding the complicated relation between Jennifer and Daniel and not trying to exploit it's weakness the way a lesser man would, but instead sought to strengthen it, for the mutual benefit, actually, of all three of them.  In extra terriestrial news - Mal Evans appeared tome last night with some questions I could have used.  The heading was "Are you kosher, or are you pork" and there was a Walrus metaphor to these quiz questions playing on a lot of "inside humor".  The questions were things like, "Do you have recurring dreams of waddeling through wastes of snow being chased by Escamoes with spears?"  or "When people look at your photograph, to they have fanticies of you being next to some scrambled eggs or a Denver omlet on a plate?"  And there is "Do you have secret sexual fanticies about a girl named Janet?"  And then there is "When you listen to early E L O music, do you have visions of the spirits of dead ansesters?"  and then there is "Have you ever been allergic to strawberries?"  and "Is your marital life disturbingly evolving into the sort of relation Ronald and Nancy Reagan had?".  Then there is, "Do you ever fear that the only thing you done was Yesterday?"  The bad grammar is significant.  Mal Evans told me that he had tried to talk to John Lennon on Sirius A because he had some things he wanted to talk to John about - and even things about me".  I did not pursue the obvious question here.  Mal said that he tried to contact John but those on Sirius A told him John was at a big Elvis Birthday Celebration Blow-out.    Of course is my guess is the purists on Sirius A would be thinking things like "I guess we're gona have to put up with all the inferior cultural riff-raf".   I just wasn't in the frame of mind for this kind of humor.  Mal did say something about "We're doing what we can for you" but I have no idea what that entails.  All I can say is that just because Jack Deveroux came through his great crisis, is no guarentee that we all do that.