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)**