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.