Divide and Conquer, Cap and Trade, Bitch and Moan

February 6th, 2010 by Juan Zapatero

I caught the most intriguing interview the other night on XM radio. It was Bill O’ Reilly querying John Stewart. He asked Stewart a question about Obama’s performance, and Stewart’s reply was something to the effect of, “You know,” I can’t figure out if he is this amazing Jedi who is just light-years beyond all of us, or if he just doesn’t get it and this is kicking his butt. After mulling this answer I had to ask myself, “Why can’t it be both?”

I mean, history is filled with the reality of amazing Jedi’s who just didn’t get it, Mao, Hitler, Darth Vader, just to name a few. With all Jedi’s - gone - haywire it’s always the same. They start with this amazing gift; with Hitler, it was his oratory, with Mao it was the ability to move people around like pieces on a chess board, and with the Vader, he could occupy different bodies. One minute he could be James Earl Jones, and the next, he could be some white guy.
I was amused to hear Stewart speak with the absolute conviction that we could do something about global warming, but absolutely nothing about Iran’s procuring a nuclear weapon.

Here’s a simple fact: For every smoke stack the United States caps off, India, China, Brazil and the rest of the emerging third world will be putting 100 into the air. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shoot for green energy. It just means to be aware of the reality. Likewise, snubbing your only ally in the Mideast and treating Benjamin Netanyahu like the bad boy who needs a good finger shaking and tongue wagging, is not a masterful move of of a jedi chess player. It’s a foolish diminution of one’s own power, which, from a diplomatic standpoint, gives countries, like Iran a green light and and a wide open lane.

However, other genius jedi’s have made foes out of friends and suffered for it; Mussolini took a nation of allies to the U.S. in World War I and made them an enemy in WWII. Hitler, who’s corruption from inception was veiled in his silver tongued speeches, turned on his ally, Stalin, and that decision contributed to his undoing, the shere division of power and resources brought the mighty war machine down; and, of course, finally, we all know that Darth Vader’s abandonment of the good side of the force and his marriage with the dark side, no matter how necessary it may have seemed to be for his preservation, was not worth the price of bondage and servitude.
“The righteous falling down before the wicked is like a corrupt fountain and a polluted stream.”

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Promises, Promises

January 30th, 2010 by Juan Zapatero

So what’s the state of the union? Well, we all know, it’s a mess. However, Obama very cleverly concluded the last decade, from 2010 on back as the decade of George Bush, very neatly sweeping his own nasty, partisan, unproductive year in with the Bush years. Obama made every promise in the book. He made promises to the left, and promises to the right. ‘We’re going to build nuclear power plants, we’re going to start offshore drilling for oil, we’re going to give tax breaks for small businesses and cut capital gains taxes.’ Then he made promises to the left. ‘We’re going to pass cap and trade, we’re going to be the leader in cutting pollution, we’re going to make healthcare for all Americans a reality, we’re going to provide more loans for people who want to go back to college.’

My wife said it was more amusing listening to me yelling at the T.V. than the state of the union address. What was I yelling?

We haven’t built a nuclear power plant in the U.S. in over 40 years. Those cooling lakes to cool the cores of those newly placed fission reactors are going to play real well with Obama’s left wing environmentalists; as will, the offshore drilling of oil. I don’t believe that we have built a refinery here in over 30 years. That brings up another point. It isn’t the sparsity of oil in the U.S. that’s a problem. We also don’t have enough refinery capabilities, and those refineries put the very smoke-stacks into the air that the Obama far left supporters want to cap and then trade against.

…I say we strap a generator to Nancy Pelosi, get Obama to keep giving speeches, and we’ll generator enough power from her standing up and down to keep Washington’s power grid going through a power-outage. It’ll be termed ‘hydrophobic electric power.’ I’ll refrain from comparisons to power produced by Grand Coulee dam.

So he’s going to cut taxes for small businesses and the middle class , and just raise them for the very wealthy (I think that means anyone who is still left working), but then he’s going to turn around and fund this giant health care monster, and all of the other give-aways he supports on the left. Bottom line: The President’s state of the union address was the longest series of unkeepable promises that I have ever heard uttered by one person in one room on one day.

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Yes, It’s a Bad Thing

January 24th, 2010 by Juan Zapatero

Let me tell you what could have happened. Back in February of 2009, instead of asking the United States Armed forces to take a 10% budget cut, a certain Nobel Prize winner could have said to himself: “Wait a second! After the tsunami that devastated southeast Asia the United States Navy sent hospital ships and aircraft carriers and supplies to aid those regions literally mired in tragedy. During and after the crisis caused by hurricane Katrina it was Navy and Marine Special Ops, Air Force PJ’s, and Coast Guard Air-Sea Rescue Crew who repelled from helicopters to rescue people from rooftops. Marines and Army were on the ground delivering badly needed assistance.”
He would have continued, “I believe I see a new emerging roll for the United States military, one that makes us ambassadors of peace and help. This is more powerful than bullets. It would be foolish for me to ask them to take a cut, because money to the military will get into our economy faster than any stimulus money: Paychecks to soldiers, and money sent to families back home, fabrics bought from American fabric companies, food grown by American farmers, (In order to sell to the United States military companies have to be registered Federal Contractors) helicopters, aircraft, vehicles and heavy equipment built largely built by American contractors. What a great way to beat weapons into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks!”
This Nobel prize winner would have taken an educated look at the recent past, and then… then when this horrible earthquake occurred in Haiti, and the United States sent food and generators, and aircraft carriers and hospital boats, it would all have made sense, It would have simply been a part of the vision. But it didn’t happen exactly that way.

I had a little debate with one of the clergy of the Church I attend. I had made a comment back in March of this year that I was very disappointed in the proposed stimulus, the areas where it proposed to spend money, and the fact that our military budget was simultaneously being cut.
He looked at me in response to, “The budget was cut by 10%” and queried me with such a peaceful look of Buddhist wisdom, “And that’s a bad thing?” he asked.

So many people don’t stop and realize, that our military buys massive amounts of equipment and supplies and food and fabric from American companies. It then turns around and helps people in trouble as only the American military can.

Picture for a second what would have been required to help the people either in Haiti or Southeast Asia with the absence of the military apparatus:
Huge ships would have to have been leased from some large shipping company. Helicopters and crew would have to have been leased from experienced organizations, probably like logging companies, then personnel to distribute the assistance would have to have been hired and put in place. The logistics in my simplified version are daunting, probably impossible. Who would have distributed the goods? Who would the Nobel Prize winner have recommended for the task? Acorn? That forever newsworthy community activist group? Well, that may have introduced some problems: Acorn was recently ‘busted’ via hidden camera interviews wherein certain employees of the organization were caught on tape offering advice to people on how to start businesses that were tantamount to brothels, importing underaged girls to ‘do the work’. So any effort to use community activists in Haiti should have to have included some sort of policing organization to make sure that Haitian girls weren’t whisked off by the community activists to be used in brothels somewhere.

There is no organization in the world that can deliver helicopters, generators, personnel, tents, food, medical assistance with the alacrity and logistics of the United States military; don’t even dream of it.
The statement of the clergyman at my parish reminded me of the rant of President Chavez who was verbally flogging the United States for ‘sending soldiers’ to help in Haiti. “Uniten States! Sen help! You not sennning help. You senning soldiers! Don’ sen soldiers Sham on you!”
What an imbecile Chavez is. a clever imbecile, though. Dumb like a Fox. ( I think he sent a twin engine Cessna with a box of galletas as Venezuala’s contribution to the effort)

God bless the U.S. military in their new mission in a turbulent and changing globe. If Al Gore is right about the massive shift towards global warming, then the needed shift for the military towards providing emergency help in a globe battered with storms, tornadoes and hurricanes should have been a given. A democratic Nobel Prize winning president should have had the immediate inside track on that Mission. If the Liberal Vision was consistent, that should have been the natural direction in consideration.

In response to the clergyman with whom I debated, “Yes, cutting the military budget now is a bad thing, and in the mind of anyone who has any sense of vision for the emerging future, it’s very bad thing.”

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Google Hacked China Style

January 23rd, 2010 by Juan Zapatero

Google’s possible exit from China is not as foolish at may seem. Aside from a good public relations move back home, and showing integrity, it reduces their surface area from attack. Microsoft is operating in China, but is not only vulnerable to the same sort of attacks Google experienced, which brought down servers and briefly compromised security, Microsoft has the added vulnerability of exposing their operating system to being ‘held hostage’ if they don’t play by Chinese rules in China. Exposing yourself to a core of determined government’s coders who may be trying to penetrate and compromise your flagship software, when you are already vulnerable to the average hacker is certainly a way of going way-out-on–a-limb. Chinese spying and penetrating American systems goes back many years. In fact, it is doubtful that China could have had a space program of their own had they not stolen information.

The well-known situation of missing information from Los Alamos laboratories and similar facilities back in the days of the Clinton administration comes to mind. Sloppy handling of top secret technologies was the rule in those days. Clinton’s Virtual dismantling of some of the NORAD facilities to ‘Reap the Peace’ indicated the mood of the era. The wide-open door posturing of the Obama administration and aversion to various heightened security measures like intensive wire-tapping may serve as an open invitation for nations like China to explore means of penetrating security systems both in government and private industry. The often criticized Cyber-security of the Bush administration, touted by some on the left as being a violation of personal freedoms at least left a legacy of no known voracious and successful Cyber-attacks on large corporations or the U.S. government. The theft of information during the Clinton years while laboratories like los Alamos and Sandia and Lawrence Livermore were working on technologies to extend space-base laser and particle beam capabilities, and develop containable fusion energy, and the recent compromising of a server at the Rackspace Hosting Company, a big player in the Internet Provider Business, has brought to the forefront the question of whether our nation’s general posturing towards security against theft of information is well developed.

The situation with Google also makes it clear that the search for new operating systems and hardware, ones that the state department won’t easily allow to leave our shores, and ones that are more resilient to attack than Microsoft’s well-known de-facto systems has become necessary. The development of this hardware and software, though imminent, may prove fruitless if the state department proves to be sloppy in their managing of which American technologies may be proliferated abroad.

The problem with China brings to the forefront another blunder. The United States has invested so heavily in the potential future markets of China, building factories there, only to experience very poor quality products in many cases from the Chinese facilities. One wonders if the capital invested in Chinese factories had been invested in factories in Mexico if we hadn’t killed two birds with one stone: The illegal immigration problem may have been mitigated if those factories had been built in Mexico, and the espionage, spying and theft of intellectual properties would have been something that we would have at least had some more control over; additionally, transportation, shipping and management would have been closer and easier to exercise control over.

It’s been argued that the Mexican factory ventures have been tried; however, they have not been tried to the extent that they were tried in China, and the obvious byproduct of the U.S. gaining greater peaceful influence over our own hemisphere was ignored.

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A Game to Play

January 16th, 2010 by Juan Zapatero

Mathematicians like talking in terms of things like, ‘the eye’, ‘the eye of God’, ‘the womb’ or ‘the matrix’ to represent their various logarithms and what the graphic representation of that reminds them of. A matrix can be represented in many ways and can be used in everything from genetics to Bible prophecy. I will provide you with a very basic understanding so we can move on and talk about how more recent scientific research has put a strange twist (or spiral) on the abortion issue.
Take a deck of cards and start with a sort of 52 pick –up; then arrange them in columns of 13 each. Now we can play a game with one or more people. Pick a card from the leftmost column. Next, you must match the number and color of the card from a card selected from one of the other columns. If you are playing with another person, obviously take turns. Each person first turns over a card in the leftmost column. If the card you needed to match actually ends up being on the left; for example if one person turned over a 2 of diamonds, and the 2 of hearts ends up being also in the column on the left, you will move the 2 of hearts over to one of the piles on the right, and swap it out so there is another card on the left.
(If you are wondering why I told you to first scatter the cards before arranging them in columns; that was just to be cruel.)
To make the game interesting you can do various things like, assign each person just one column on the right, and they must try to make their match from the left with only that column. Keep score. This is a rough understanding of what a matrix can be about.
Now here’s where it gets genetic. If you can imagine that every time a deuce is matched with another red deuce, all of the other cards have to be turned over, everyone’s score goes back to zero, except for the person with the red deuce, and you sort of start over, you might have something similar to what sometimes happens in genetics.
Sometimes, rare matches within any possible number of ties occur, and those matches are game changers. These don’t necessarily involve mutations. They can be matches like those that cause 2 brown haired people to have a baby with green eyes, and everyone else is saying, “So who do you suppose is the father of that baby?” – Or perhaps in our current culture, “So who do you suppose is the mother?” The game changers can cause unfortunate illnesses to appear. Some of these illnesses, it has been proposed by people studying them, may actually have been a means of survival for the species in a given place and time. I can’t go into the details of such illnesses, but Tay-Sachs is one worth studying with regard to this. Some game changers, like Tay-Sachs may have involved mutations.
Studies done in the last 40 years pertaining to gibbons (a sort of primate) in southeast Asia have produced startling results. ( I was startled) . The conclusion drawn was that these primates all must have developed, or evolved from a common ancestor, but the changes discernable from one island or locale to another were too great to be accounted for by Natural Selection in the time period that they, must have occurred in. It couldn’t be explained by any of the usual plain old vanilla evolution theories, either.
Various solutions were proposed. One of them can be visualized in a way by a sort of matrix, not unlike the one I described above. You might at this point have realized that the ability for a species to completely change or ‘obtain’ some radically different features is actually built into the ‘deck’ or the chromosomes. Whether or not these sudden, though rare – from a probability standpoint, changes survive may have to do with the time and place in which they are introduced.
Now, let me at this point proffer: If some of the cards are destroyed, or if you are playing with multiple decks and a deck is destroyed, or if the people who pick the cards are destroyed, there is no game.
Ironically, 80 some years ago a woman named Margaret Sanger proposed that the abortion of certain peoples, people who were failures in society, people who were of lower economic classes, people of southern European ancestry – the list goes on – would have been a good thing for the species. Margaret Sanger became recognized as the founder of Planned Parenthood. Hillary Clinton received the Margaret Sanger award in April of 2009; the story goes on . There is a great belief, based upon things Sanger wrote, that she would like to have seen the African Americans curtailed as a race.
The newest evidence from genetics of course, reveals that she was not only wrong about what would make a species productive, thriving and successful, but that the contrary is in fact the case. This irony was actually predicted by G.K. Chesterton in his marvelous book – Eugenics and Other Evils. Sanger was a Eugenicist.
Chesterton may not have understood the extents to which the eugenicists were wrong! It is becoming ever more clear that the ‘scientific sense of responsibility towards the species’ (that the Eugenicists claimed to have embraced) has actually shifted in terms of how it should be realized in the direction of understanding that the destruction of any of the players or cards actually damns the species. In other words, the wholesale abortion of members of the species not only doesn’t purify the race, but it can actually eliminate those changes that are ‘built into the deck’ for the survivability of the race.
Anyone who presents the argument that the ‘right to chose’ and abortion of any unwanted fetus is beneficial for the survival of man and womankind is not really concerned about the survival of mankind, but is more interested in a sort of social or economic expediency, or is under the illusion that abortions will cause crime rates and poverty to go down.
I had an acquaintance who cited to me a certain statistic that in a certain locale in the United States the crime rate had gone down, and they attributed that to the increased number of abortions. My reply was, “So let me understand this: the people ‘responsible enough’ to eliminate unwanted births did so, and the irresponsible people who didn’t care about ‘society’ continued to have babies, and the net result with this new population of offspring of irresponsible people was that the crime rate went down?” She was, of course, struck dumb.

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I Presume Too Much

January 10th, 2010 by Juan Zapatero

(With Corrections)

My apologies. Apparently I needed to publish Cliff’s Notes for my previous item called Dr.Livingston. I have been kindly taken aside and asked, “Are you on something? Or is this just flashbacks from the 70’s?”
I really had a lot to say, and it might be worth looking at if you like the idea of getting lost in a jungle, when you don’t have more than half an hour to spare.
Obviously, I have a disposition against the entire Pro-Choice movement. My reasons may be different than most people’s. I really felt I needed to bring in the colorful singing primates from Southeast Asia to make my point, but I see that I should really have stuck with the prayer breakfast, mentioned why ‘Catholics Come Home’ is such a great idea, but also why some of them may not have come home.

Now, the purpose of that interesting prayer breakfast held yesterday at Saint Victor’s Parish in Calumet City, Illinois, was not to ty to understand why the Catholics have left the Church. No doubt the Church has looked at this over and over, and they don’t need me to explain it to them. The purpose, in part was to help open the door to some venues, new and old for reaching out to lost Catholics. Bishop Perry presented the thoughts really well, as he always does.

However, I found myself pondering, “Why did so many Catholics stop attending? It’s a question you must ask yourself if you plan to be part of the outreach because you will have to deal with the question with each and every person you talk to. Before Vatican II the reason was usually, ‘death’. Since then, the reasons vary from anger at nun-slappage, anger at the changes in the liturgy, all the way through more serious issues. However, except for death, I don’t think those are the real primary reasons that keep people away.

I looked at my own journey. I left the Church and entered Pentecostal, Full Gospel, and Holiness Churches because I wanted to be fed. I wanted to hear the power of the word of God, I wanted to hear it broken apart. I wanted to eat it and learn, and I wasn’t getting that in the Church. My complaint in my previous writing seems to indicate that I feel that the Church is leaning too far left. I do not feel that the doctrine of the Catholic Church, or the Catholic Church’s message at large is too far left, by any means.
I do, however, feel that individual priests and deacons frequently take opportunity to push a political agenda. It’s an agenda that assumes the shape of our current political impasse in the country: On the one hand we have the rights of the unborn and the elderly and the individual, on the other hand we have the social justice message, the need for society to intervene, to control guns, to control money, to control the distribution of goods, to be the helper of the poor! (Thank God many of us know that government dole initiatives have many many stopping points before any money or aid ever arrives at the hands and homes of those genuinely in need, and when you have endorsed the government for this task you have admitted the complete failure of your own Church to do what God has ordained it to do. Stow the inveigled political talk. Give me the scripture if you can.)

You see, if anyone thinks that Caesar is going to be the good and fair distributor of your Christian ( or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu) kindness, that anyone is an idiot. The closest we might have come to our government being involved in doing that was President Bush’s Faith Based Initiative, and the current group in power has more secular ideas. I will honestly say, as I did previously that I often grit my teeth at the tisk- tisking and stay for the Eucharist:
In fairness,
You cannot say as a Church, “Well we need to dance to the tune of the people on the right, because we are losing them,” or “we need to serve those on the left.” The church is not a fast food chain discussing its menu at board meetings. However, I was, when I left the Church, and still am after I have come back, hungry for the scripture, hungry for the discussion of scripture, hungry for talking through the Word of God. I was correct in saying that not all Catholics who have left the Church are sitting in a bar somewhere, or off bowling. Some have indeed gone to where they can hear an exegesis of the word, an uplifting on how God’s word can live through you, instead of an “Oh so Wise “ explanation of how I may be too simple to understand that ‘George Bush’s War’ is also not ‘Pro-Life’. (Catholics aren’t idiots.), or worse, I have to sit through ad-nauseum tongue-in-cheek endorsements of the new health care plan, because it ‘really is the way to look after the poor and disenfranchised’. We hear this from people who have never worked for the government. As a brief aside: a faith based ‘health care initiative’ might have been a good alternative idea.

Let me give you a slightly rotated view of this: Catholics have the Eucharist. It is Jesus. We have the sacraments. That’s where we’ve got many of the other Churches beat. However, the Protestants have the Word of God, and they still do a far better job at opening it up and breaking it like bread and distributing it than the Catholic Churches, and that’s forty some years after Vatican II.
Catholics in the United States are no longer uneducated masses who need to be talked down to. They live in a knowledge age, they access the Internet, their jobs are often specialty jobs that require training on technical equipment. This is why, when a Catholic enters a Protestant Church and hears the tearing apart of the scripture that was just read as the reading, the lights suddenly go on. As long as Catholics feel they are being fed pabulum, being talked down to, and as long as they are told in nuance (‘Oh we’re too stupid to really realize that this is a veiled political message’ ) that the social justice aspect of Christianity is just so here, present and good, and those of us who are bitter and stick in the mud need to accept it.
I heard a deacon say, “I thank God daily for Barack Obama’s stimulus.” I bit down on the Eucharist and chewed so hard, poor Jesus ended up in my stomach without a moment of lingering. See, I’m getting mad all over again.

I suppose I could ask my Protestant Friend to tape his pastor’s sermon on the scripture, so I could quietly click it on and listen to it in Church when Deacon Free-form starts to talk.

Next time we’ll re-visit the primates, the painted gibbons, and think about the survival of the species.

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What To Like and Not To Like About Avatar

January 1st, 2010 by Juan Zapatero

If you go to see Avatar, see it in 3D. I found myself ducking to avoid incendiary canisters that were rolling off of a slightly futuristic helicopter. The movie was a giant incredible tapestry of effects, taking place in the marvelous jungle of the distant world of Pandora. I was especially pleased to see a huge portion of the cast were a combination of real people and computer generated individuals. Even though this is Hollywood’s effort to marry the future of 3D interactive film with the acting profession, it lays bare the reality that this can almost all be done by computer engineers, programmers, motion capture experts, and other technical geniuses. This is exciting, because we may finally begin to see the end of the over-paid world of acting prima donnas who use their high visibility to poison every social, political, religious and literary venue possible.

Though it’s not impossible that the owners of such intellectual properties will use a 9 foot tall purple alien with a tail to try to push home some political point (After all Fred Flintstone did a few smoking commercials, I think when he was still called Fred Flagstone), but ambiguities over the ownership of the complete right of expression of these intellectual properties may make that difficult.

The movie, of course did have the familiar , “White Americans have destroyed the rain forest, killed the American Indian, will export that misery to any indigenous peoples of any future we can imagine, and there are only two or three out of thousands that have any conscience.” However, I also found in there, a message that had long ago vanished from film - that there actually is a Spiritual Supreme Being who cares about the beings who reach out to the Supreme One. Interestingly, this being was even connected to the life forms on all levels, and was willing to answer sincere prayer.

So, I have to highly recommend the movie Avatar, for families with reservations (mental reservations, not reserved seats). If you are godless and very progressive, you can tell your children, “Ah, yes! See the lesson! We have destroyed aboriginal civilizations and we will always do so. We are fundamentally wicked, especially the Conservatives amongst us, and , as for that business about the God of the Pandoran Na’vi people, the writers had to put that in for the groundlings!”

If on the other hand, you have more traditional heartland proclivities you can tell your children, “Now, see, the person who really ended up trying to help these native Pandorans turned out to be a person who discovered prayer and discovered a spiritual life, and he was the person who was willing to try to avert the destruction of their indigenous culture and the exploitation of their resources.”

Sit next to the people with the opposite beliefs, share popcorn, nod your head and say, “How true, How true…”
Great fun. I’ve been wearing the 3D glasses around the house…. A coffee can rolled out of a cabinet that I had opened and I said, “ah, it’s just 3-D” and it hit me in the head…

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A Loaf Under Each Arm

December 27th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

Yesterday I went out early paying visits, with a loaf of bread under each arm.
No, I wasn’t crying about my financial circumstances. I just hate visiting empty handed. I arrived at the family home of a friend to find that he had left already to return to the east-coast. I had missed seeing him for Christmas. What ensued was one of those heart-rending moments I often have around the holidays, ….and the rest of the year.
His father was resting on an overstuffed chair under a blanket, trying to keep his badly aching knees from aching. We talked about warmth and furnaces, and then I mentioned I had bought a new one, and then the conversation went to tax write-offs, and how I was determined to give this government as little money as possible and, “Say, Juan,” asked my friends father, “tell me about this new health bill! What’s this law going to do for me? How’s it going to help me and the Mrs.”
Ah, I had the sad job. I could smell fresh coffee brewing down the hall. “Well, it’s not,” I had to tell him. “It’s not designed to help seniors. In fact, it’s more likely to hurt seniors in more ways than one…”
“Yeh? How?”
“Well, first it will actually cut money to Medicare, under the idea that they can make Medicare more efficient. They’re just redirecting some money from Medicare. Worse, it’ll raise the cumulative effect of Federal, State, and local taxes… some people say… as though your Federal Income tax went up 10%. Remember, the government only has one way to raise revenue to pay for such things…. That’s to raise taxes.”
He pulled his pajama top closer at the top and buttoned the open button. “Well, why are they doing this? Who’s it going to benefit?”
“Well, it’s supposed to benefit people who are simply not on insurance, can’t get it or choose not to be, because it will force them to buy insurance and present proof of it, sort of like if you own a car, and it will force insurance companies to cover everyone for a prescribed rate. You know what that will do. It will make insurance companies raise the rates of everyone else to cover the people it ordinarily wouldn’t cover. You’ll be paying higher rates, along with higher Federal taxes to cover this trillion dollar program and the interest on the loan from the Chinese. ”
“Oh, my goodness.” He shifted his position to glance down the hall, “Say, how’s that coffee coming?”
“Also,” I continued, ” in order to pay for this program and the Mega-stimuli, the Feds will have to scale down some programs that the states are beneficiaries of, so you can pretty much count on your state taxes going up too.”
He looked at me stunned,”well, how did this get passed?” Such Christmas cheer and good news for the new year.
“Well, unfortunately Congress, the Senate, and the Presidency are all controlled by the Democrats, and, well…. it’s usually a bad thing when one party controls everything.”
“Well, what did the Republicans want to do?”
“Well,” I started slowly, ” they wanted to keep insurance costs down by limiting the amount of money people could sue doctors, hospitals, companies that make tools that people injure themselves with… This would have kept down premiums on malpractice insurance, and other forms of liability insurance. Also, they wanted to provide companies and other organizations and individuals greater tax benefits for providing insurance to their employees and members. This way, the government wouldn’t have to create this huge bureaucratic addition, the new Federal Health Care Agency (or whatever they’ll call it) with tons of employees sitting around…”
“I know, I know, and eating donuts… For Christmas sake…”
My friend’s sweet old mother toasted some of the bread I brought and it smelled good. “Have some, Juan.” She returned to the kitchen to get the coffee.

“Now tell me about this new furnace you bought…” He was rubbing his knees.
“Well, my energy bills were going through the roof”
“Mine too, they were $400.00 a month last year!”
“Well, then you might want to consider looking into a more efficient furnace. You see, with this cap- and-trade that the government passed, our energy costs will be going way up…”
I could see through the front window that the snow had started to fall again. We ate warm bread. We talked some more about NSAIDS and pain relievers. My friend’s father periodically rubbed his sore legs. I knew I had to be leaving. It was coming down in clumps now, the coffee had perked me up, we had confirmed the madness of the magistrates, and I still had 2 loaves to deliver…

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Loss

December 19th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

It’s clear that in this life we will lose things.
It appears to be by design.
We will lose physical strength as we age, no matter how much we exercise. We will lose some bone mass, no matter what supplements we take. We will lose our hair, even if we have some transferred in from parts unknown. We will eventually lose our lives.
Some of us will experience a sort-of extra-curricular loss. We may lose a car, we may lose a bet if we are so foolish as to make them. We may lose a friend to one of the diseases that seems to plague or participate in the human condition. We may lose income. We may lose money to scammers and have to live on less income. We may lose possessions to thieves.
We will invariably lose some arguments, even if we think we didn’t. Let’s hope we don’t lose friends as a result of those arguments.
Despite the fact that we are designed to lose things, it is necessary, and also by design that we must fight not to lose things. We must fight to keep thieves from stealing things. That may mean buying a dog, lamping one’s lawn or business facility better, fencing things in, or providing surveillance systems so that thieves will begin to realize they will be caught and prosecuted.
We must fight to keep our physical flexibility and durability so we can continue to work and be productive for our families. This means watching what we eat, exercising,etc.
We must fight to keep our minds and spirits healthy, so we can continue to do that great thing we were created for.
Nevertheless, the most accomplished leaders of our time and in past times are people who have endured and coped with loss. Without it, they wouldn’t have been the people they became, and became, and became. A simple look at the lives of early American leaders like Jefferson who lost home to fire, and lost family to a variety of causes reveals this. I wonder if he would have become the author of our Declaration of Independence without that loss. Is there any way to calculate and list the loss that Abraham Lincoln experienced in loss of childhood, loss of mother, loss of political races, loss of a unified country, loss of children? I see him bowed over his dying little boy, and wonder if our nation would have been saved without it.
No, we must lose things, and more than things, if we are to be the great people God intended us to be. There’s no other way.
From an American perspective, I see Theodore Roosevelt brandishing sword against personal, physical and political loss, not always able to accept it; similarly, Ronald Reagan lost family, and the guidance of a father, and political battles, and yet he became one of the U.S. leaders of our time with the greatest impact. Bill Clinton suffered similarly in his youth. The loss experienced by several of the Kennedy’s is well-known, and some of the Greatest leaders in our religious worlds, like Pope John Paul II had stories of loss that must be read. They must be thought about.
The list of leaders worldwide who lived through intense and continual loss is more than I can enumerate. The list of shallow leaders who won every political battle and breezed easily through every challenge is equally as long. It’s also scary, because shallow leaders tend not to have the intestinal fortitude necessary in times of great difficulty.
Leadership formed out of pain and loss can be well-comprehended in Moses. His painful and continual loss was invested deeply in a leadership that is probably unrivalled in all-time, even if you don’t believe in the miracles. His separation from family, abnegation of greatness, exile, loss of loved ones, even loss of personal identity was a bleaching storm.
Yet, his death, which had to come, was at the kiss of God’s mouth.
If you are living through loss of possessions, try to place it in perspective. You can get through it and rise above it. If you are losing loved ones, our God will give you strength, though it will invariably seem not to be there at times. You will look back through the haze of a long journey and see that it was there, like a steady light in the fog. If you are losing your own life, trust with prayer. It is by design. You cannot experience the greater design without the loss, and to work through the loss is to know the Designer.

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JESUS BOWED TO NO MAN

April 12th, 2009 by John P. Schumake

Obama HAS RUINED MY WEEK. That IMAGE OF AN American President bowing to an Arab sheik will forever be in my memory. It will play forever. He bowed so low (when I saw the actual footage it was far worse than reported) that I am sure that as he sprung back from the double gainer the hem of the sheik’s toga was on the end of the president’s nose. …And with the white house trying to explain their way out of this embarrassment, all I could see in my mind was Jim Carrey in the movie “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls” trying to climb out of the hind end of a rhino,” … but then the rhino slowly turns into a camel… As the sheik meeting with Obama rides in on a camel (nothing against camels or sheiks) it appears as though someone is trying to board that ship of the dessert by climbing in, rather than out of the stern… And that someone sadly is our president.

Though I do love and respect the American Presidency, I do believe, at this particular moment Barack Obama did not.

In Church this week (I went to Church this week several times, trying to get images out of my head…. ) While I was sitting in Church, listening to the sermon, the priest began speaking on how it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Now apparently the eye of the needle is an historic place where camel drivers would have to stop, remove goods and sacks from the camels back, cause the camel to actually kneel down so it could scoot through ‘the eye of the needle’. Here I was again, back with the camels … The only image I kept getting in my mind this time, though, was one of that wealthy sheik riding up to the honorable mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, right after 9-11, and handing him a check for ten million dollars. I then hear the sheik making a comment on how the United States should learn a lesson, and should now learn to have some regard for the Palestinians and maybe the experience of 9 -11 will teach the Americans blah, blah, blah…. as he tries to hand Giuliani a check. Giuliani stuffs the check back in the sheiks’ shirt.

I went to Church this week several times, as I said, trying to get images out of my head and prepare for the resurrection. Now, depending on your religious beliefs you may have varying beliefs about Jesus, but one thing is clear: This man never ingratiated himself. Whether you are a Muslim, a Christian or Jew, whether you love him, or are indifferent to him, it must be apparent that he never groveled. He stated very matter-of-factly, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” When asked by Pilate if he were a king he stated plainly, “You say that I am.” He said to the emissaries of Herod, “Go tell that fox, ‘Today I cast out devils and give cures, tomorrow and the third day I am perfected.’”

I have no comprehension of his great soul. I found myself thinking as the priest carried the bread out of the Church sanctuary to a small tabernacle outside of the main sanctuary, “I wonder how he feels being carried? What’s going through Jesus’ mind as someone carries him?”

Is he looking into our faces?

Whoever we have been taught to believe God is, “Maheo, the Great Spirit, or Allah, the divine one, El Shaddai, the great expansive plain, the Father of the Universe, Yahweh, Jehovah, or Jeshue the bread of life, we need to bow humbly to that one, pray for his mercy, and then live in his image, standing tall, honoring our beliefs, not trying to kick the truth with one shoe under a coffee table, the truth that we are in fact a nation founded on Judeo – Christian writings by thinkers and great men who wrote profusely in the Judeo Christian traditions. Read the American Historical documents. Let’s not lie. We have grown to be a nation that loves Muslim peoples and Hindus and Buddhists, and those religions too are flourishing, but the facts are the facts, and denying our bounty and heritage and roots as we ingratiate ourselves, bow low to people who would stuff checks in our shirts and apologize for who we are is not a way to turn from our blunders and rise again.

-John P. Schumake

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That’s Our Womb Locked up in That Room…

May 11th, 2009 by John P. Schumake

Take a sheet of paper. Call it… Roe v Wade.

Now, what this sheet of paper says is that a woman’s right to privacy allows her to terminate her pregnancy. To Roe v Wade , whether or not this is a human is irrelevant.

Now. Comes along a Federal Court decision that says, ” if a woman is attacked, and her unborn child is killed, the attacker can be tried for murder.” Bend up a corner of the paper, and fold it in, because what was totally open, has acquired some definition, that is, the issue of whether the unborn is or isn’t human life is no longer irrelevant. It’s human life if it is taken away without the lawful consent of the mother.

Now, twenty years ago you couldn’t imagine that there would be a place called the Internet where people sell human body parts. The Internet twenty years ago was the ArpNet growing up into a Network linking colleges and Universities and… the Defense Department. So what will you not be able to imagine ten years from now? You might not have pictured that a woman, (or a pregnant man) might, just might, under certain circumstances choose to sell individual body parts to individual bidders for a currently gestating fetus. What will the courts decide? Lets say that, even a very liberal court will say, “This is way out of bounds. Profiteering in the dismemberment of (potential human life) is uncivilized…. . Maybe, just maybe another corner of that paper will be bent in. This will be the corner that says: “It’s a woman’s body, and she has the right to do what she wants with it… Sometimes.” On the simplest, programmatic level, you’ve just introduced an ‘if’ clause. How do you feel about that?

Now. They have made great strides with developing artificial wombs. For the womb to be the most successful at growing the human embryo outside of the body, it should be made up from tissue that is a composite of both donors to the developing embryo. A man and a woman contribute a mateial to fertilize an egg and grow it in their own artificial womb. They visit it. They love it. They get in an argument. They decide to split. The woman says, “I can do what I want with my body!” The man says, “Wait, that’s our body!” So bend up another corner of that paper. A woman can terminate a pregnancy because Roe V Wade decided that an individual’s right to privacy allows a woman to do what she chooses with her own body… The only problem is-> In the artificial womb, Whose body is it? and whose privacy is it? The courts may decide that the only being with a legal claim to privacy in this case is, “the embryo…”

Science will change the human landscape of thought and ethics faster than the law makers can legislate, and faster than the courts can… legislate while they say they aren’t.

Thank God, I suppose. I say, ‘thank God’, because lawmakers and the courts did such a bad job.

One last thought that may seem stray: Slavery and the right for it to be ‘practiced’ in the United States may well have been decided by economics, as many people suggest, but it wasn’t. In the end, it was decided by bullets, and bodies of brothers blown to peices, a land writhing with pain, and a land, still, still just emerging from the death, but…

Maybe it was better that it wasn’t decided by the expediency of economics.

-John P. Schumake

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Based Upon what at Least Some Have Admitted To

September 2nd, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

Based Upon what at Least Some Have Admitted To

When the history books are written, fifty or sixty years from now they will look back upon this time in the United States, this time in our Senate and house of representatives, this time in our presidency and they will no doubt say, “This is an example of what happens when people do massive amounts of drugs in their teen years and in their post teen years and then grow up to become the ruling class in the country.”
I have looked into history’s reflection in that deep reservoir of our own history and realized, no lie remains hooded, no untruth remains carefully occulted. From the forthright letters of Abigail Adams to the insidious clandestine tapes of Lyndon Johnson, the truth has always found a way to the surface.
It’s not so strange that a statesman or official should change his stance or position on something. Young Benjamin Franklin while living in London, wrote ‘A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity’ wherein he stated his convictions that human beings really do not have any freedom to control their actions. He thereby proposed that we are all, therefore, not really responsible for these actions. Franklin later recanted, and even went so far as to take any of the remaining pamphlets in his possession and set them ablaze.
That’s quite different from the case at hand, wherein senators and representatives at town hall meetings are shamelessly stating that the proposed Health Care plan does not and can not provide for abortions, when, in fact, based upon a good understanding of the Hyde ammendment , with all of its History through the Clinton Years, one can see that it can and it does.
The case with Franklin is also quite different* than the case wherein a president states that he will not pursue the scrutiny of the Central Intelligence Agency, re-examining actions that were already tried, studied, interrogated, analyzed and, in essence, dispensed with, and then departs from his word to satisfy the hard left, essentially weekening that arm of our defense which looks out for our security. It’s a sort of double jeopardy. It makes it unlikely that the individual members of the agency will be able to retain their same level of commitment, the esprit de corps that is necessary for the success of any organization.

I marvel at the insipidness of any group that would so shoot themselves in the foot: If Holder does indeed conduct the public scrutiny, dunking stools and stocks, for members of the CIA who weren’t sufficiently fretted the first time around, then, if anything were to happen to this country, anythin even remotely resembling 911, or even exceeding it, the current group in party, the Democrats, will forever own it. It’ll be worse than a blot. It’ll be soot that they can’t remove, the mark of Cain, so to speak, undeniable and irremovable. They are indeed loading up to shoot themselves in the foot.
I do not believe that truth is the ensign of any one political party, nor do I believe that lies are the mask warn by any one party. However, I am appalled that whenever I point out to people the cleverly crafted deceptions of the current Congress the answer I invariably receive is not, “That’s awful!, or “Are you quite sure about that?” but rather, “Well, Bush did it! Look what Bush did!” It’s as if the glinting necessity to see our elected servants serve us with honesty has tarnished into the dark green need to see our own side win at all costs, whichever side that is.
Congress rushed through the stimulus package, insisting that the nation was in mortal danger if we didn’t pass it, refused to let the Congressmen have a day to read it, refused to let the minority party register an opposing view, then later referred to them as obstructionists who wouldn’t partake in the process. Six months later, less than 10% of that badly needed money has been distributed to those so badly in need. I have seen this sort of theater before, where the Shakespearian character revels in his own ability to deceive, letters are quickly written to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Reed insists that a vote happen immediately, Pelopsi wants the bill (and the letters) signed, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern stumble off to deliver the sad fate of the United States, Hamlet and the rest of the Republicans choose the moment to be….
…introspective.

History will reveal the carefully woven tapestry of deceit.

*I tried to find a better example of a statesman or president among the founding fathers saying one thing and then doing another, but as far as the founding fathers were concerned it was hard to find something so blatantly opposite that had occurred in so short a span of time as the example with Obama and the CIA.”

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Paranoia’s everywhere. Jobs aren’t.

September 6th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

The Director of HomeLand Security is paranoid that Veterans returning from foreign wars are going to become the prime candidates for future homegrown terrorists. The Green Czar is paranoid that white polluters are going to dump pollution in black communities. (I think it’s pretty accepted that even on the individual level most white people who let a freezer bag blow away in the wind make sure that they are in a black community first before that happens.) The Democratic National Committee is paranoid about Dick Cheney’s statements that the previous administration effectively defended the country against terrorist attacks, so paranoid that the DNC is launching a wave of ad campaigns to counter Cheney’s candid interviews. (Forget, the ad campaign. If the Dems don’t get through their reign without preventing a terrorist attack, DNC will mean ‘Done Due to National Crisis’.

American parents are paranoid that when the president speaks to school children Tuesday, September 06th that he is going to wrap an ulterior motive in a seemingly innocuous message, and that he is going to try to indoctrinate the children with radical left wing ideas. This is the first time in history that I know of that parents were actually scared of the president of the United States talking to the school children. Was anyone really ever scared that George and Laura were sitting in front of a classroom reading out of children’s books. They were doing so on September 11th, when the planes struck. George looked right comfortable sitting on that little chair reading with the children.

The White House is paranoid that people are spreading messages contrary to the HealthCare message. They are paranoid that they are mischaracterizing the intentions. The White House has gotten paranoid to the point that they wanted people to tell on their neighbors, report people who might be disagreeing with the White House’s message, and might have it wrong.

Paranoia’s everywhere, but the jobs aren’t.

The jobless and job loss per capita statistics are the highest that they have been in 26 years.

Here’s my observation and my question: How many jobs would have been created if the President had 1.) just allowed the Oklahoma Oil drilling to go forth as President Bush had provided, instead of rescinding Bush’s decision. Think not only of the engineers and planners, but the truckers trucking equipment, the builders building temporary habitats, the pipefitters, the laborers, the list goes on… 2.) if the Democrat Congress had allowed the existing Alaskan Pipeline to be extended up to Anwar, and Oil Procurement facilities set in Place at Anwar – not to mention the cost savings to the American government for not having to clean up all of the oil drippage that will start to occur when the exisiting pipeline empties, the last of the 3 billion barrels of oil is sent through it, the steel cools, the banding begins to flex and snap, and the oil starts dripping all over the pristine wilderness in an uncontainable irreparable mess. 3.) Allowed the drilling for natural gas to go ahead in the Bearing Circle Area under American control (there’s tons there), and 4.) Allowed American companies to drill offshore in the Gulf instead of letting Chinese firms drill a few miles outside of our territorial waters. (There was certainly no environmental concern there. We at least have some control over domestic companies that drill within our waters. By forbidding them from drilling, we lost control over the regulation of the spars and derricks for the sake of a clean environment.)

How many jobs were lost? I don’t know. I do know this, however: I know that the jobs would have been created by the private sector, not financed by an obscene stimulus that our children will have to finance. I know that there would have been engineers, planners, financiers, truckers and pipefitters back at work by now, because some of these projects were nixed by a Catatonic Congress over a year ago. Congress has been under the control of the Democrats for over 2 ½ years. Now, it’s interesting that they were Catatonic for 2 of those years, locked in an immovable stupor and unable to move. They accomplished nothing for 2 years, though they controlled both Houses. Now being Catatonic, and Paranoid are traits or aspects of types of schizophrenia. Just as individuals can have schizophrenia, so can organizations. In schizophrenia, the nerve transmitters and receptors at the dendrite ends have often twisted themselves 180 degrees, so that the transmitters are essentially not transmitting appropriately to the receptor that should be receiving the message.

It’s very typical in cases of Catatonic schizophrenia for the individual afflicted to be locked in a motionless state, and then, after a period of time to suddenly be released into a period of unboundable energy and activity, and then, without warning to return into that completely statue-like state.

We have seen that very behavior with this Congress: For 2 years, from 2006 to 2008 they couldn’t make a decision, pass a law of any substance, or accomplish anything. Then, in the beginning of 2009, in an almost uncontrollable frenzy, with a sense of urgency they had to pass bills into law that no one was given any time to read, They were “Late, yes late, for a very important date, absolutely positively late!” Then they proceeded to attempt to bluster through an onslaught of legislation, Health Care, Freedom of Choice, Fairness Doctrine, all aimed at massively empowering the Federal Government, shrinking control of the states expanding the role of the government as employer, health provider and banker for the populace, yet denying individual energy companies the ability to go out, break ground, and create jobs.

The schizophrenia has entered its paranoid phase, as we can see by the statements of Van Jones, Janet Napolitano, Nancy Pelosi, with her unfounded and insane indictment of the CIA, and now the investigations of incidents by Eric Holder, that had already been investigated!

What is predictable in schizophrenia is the fact that the patient may be Catatonic, or the patient may be paranoid. What is not predictable is when the highly energized schizophrenic will suddenly emerge from the blame everyone. Paranoid phase, seeing eyes everywhere, fearing terrorists springing like locusts from our own military, and lapse back into the totally immovable, statuesque state, doing nothing, saying nothing, accomplishing nothing.
　

-Juan Zapatero

*check later for expanded links

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Every Single Person has Worth.

September 12th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

Every single person has worth.

No.

Every single person has inestimable worth. There are, in my belief, things that individuals do that are unseen, invisible, impossible to comprehend in any physical sense, yet valuable.

Electricity is generally invisible, yet no one will deny its existence. I believe that the day may come when some scientists will even be able to measure some of the invisible attributes that some badly deformed or mentally handicapped individuals possess, perhaps beyond any other, an energy developed due to the constraints of their circumstances, just as we all develop energy (or muscles) when faced with inertia. It’s just the way the universe works.

The trend towards a sort of de-individualizing eugenics that we are currently seeing reborn in this nation, particularly with regard to certain healthcare legislation attempts is troubling. The question of the viability of one’s life is again being brought to the table. Should an individual under 15 be a prime recipient for healthcare, or should they be placed in a queue? Should an individual over 60 be a prime recipient for healthcare, or should they be given counseling, perhaps out of our own military’s ‘Why don’t you just end it all, because you’re a burden’ book.

You would think that the Democrats would understand the incredible worth of life that hasn’t formed to exactly the specifications of a perfect human mesomorph, or life that hasn’t quite yet accomplished that physical stage of its development, or even life that has formed in a seemingly incomplete or disappointing way (from a human standpoint), I mean, after all, they did elect Al Franken to the Senate.

Look, they elected a former and now aging beauty contestant from California to the speakership of the house, and we all know that California beauty queens will never receive the Einstein award for brain size. So why is it that the Democrats, can’t comprehend that their age-selective healthcare legislation is being met with such disdain across the country by seniors and eventual seniors at these tea parties?

While people like Rom Emanuel have told the Dems that they have to ‘Punch Back’ at the people who are speaking out at tea parties, and even though there have been recent incidents of a healthcare protestor having his finger bit off by one of Obama’s supporters, I would think that the realization that these anti-healthcare skeptics only represent a microcosm of the people who are disgusted with this proposed highly managed status of one’s viability (shades of Himmler and Mengele){ } proceeding from the Democratic pulpit. It’s even more troubling that this very debate over the affordability of healthcare occurred between John McCain and Barack Obama during the debates. McCain stated that there no way it could be paid for without taxing people earning under 150,000.00. Obama said he could. Well, now, Obama is recanting on this, ‘surprise, surprise.’ So why is it that we are expected to believe him when he states that the health care plan does not have any provision that will allow for abortions to be included.

Yet, the Democrats adamantly refused and voted down any measures or language that specifically guaranteed the exclusion of abortion, which can only mean one thing and ONLY ONE THING: “And that is -> That they want to leave open the possibility of abortion actually being included in someway at some point in time.” If that wasn’t the case, they would have included the language.

Ergo, as disrespectful as Joe Wilson was when he called the president a ‘liar’ during the Presidents recent speech to Congress,

you can understand why so many people are vocalizing that they, in essence, agree with him.

-by Juan Zapatero
copyright 2009 Juan Zapatero

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Watching T.V. With the Mute on is Like the 1940’s in Reverse.

September 13th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

A Few Thoughts To Round out the Week

Chris Kelly:
Chris Kelly, the fund raiser and associate of Governor Blagojevich was found dead yesterday, but not in his home; he was found in a lumber yard on Cicero Avenue in Country Club Hills Illinois, (the new Chicago style?). Now, being an engineer, I am a very logical person. I have to ask myself, if this was foul play, was it the long arm of Blagojevich? NO, Blagojevich couldn’t even save himself from an indictment and from being ousted as Governor. One would have to ask, if this was typical Chicago style politics, then who would benefit by Mr. Kelly’s death? My guess would be that it would be someone or ones more powerful, someone who not only stands to be hurt by the things Mr. Kelly knows, but even more so, stands to be hurt by the things that Mr. Blago knows if the prosecution of his case proceeds. How handy to have Blago ousted , but no one to be able to testify on certain matters. Maybe Mr. Kelly just took too much aspirin, because that’s pretty much what salicylic acid is. However, the interesting thing is that, in suicides men generally choose a more instantaneous form of suicide, like a bullet or slit wrists, and women are the ones who tend to deliberately try to overdose.
Forgive my cynicism, but I grew up in a suburb of Chicago where people were occassionally planted in corn-fields like grain. That’s how people were sometimes censured in Chicago.

Obama’s Health Care Plan:
This is a good time to talk about Obama’s Health Care. There aren’t enough doctors to step into Obama’s plan. Without tort reform, there aren’t going to be enough doctors. The democrats don’t want Tort reform, the republicans do. Why is that? Here’s the simple answer: The republicans tend to stand in the stead of Corporations, businessmen, LLC’s, and small businesses. They don’t want them to be able to be sued for uncontrollable amounts of money. Therefore, the Republicans do want tort reform in order to protect one of their most important constituencies. Without Tort reform, healthcare costs are never going to come down. Obama and the Democratic Congress profess to want to bring Healthcare costs down, yet they have sidestepped the most important issue. Why? Well, trial lawyers are an extremely powerful lobbying group. They can’t throw billions of dollars at the Republican law makers in lobbying efforts, because it too strongly conflicts with the interests and support of the Republicans. That leaves them the Democrats. Democrats are happy to receive the lobbying perks. It’s that simple.
{ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tort_reform}

Health Care Crisis:
Health Care reform can easily turn into a Health Care Crisis, and the President and Congress that follow Obama and the Pelosi democrats will be left cleaning it up. Here’s why the crisis occurs: Hospitals and clinics are already understaffed, and without tort reform, individuals are not going to start moving en-masse into the field, and those that are there are not going to alter their procedures, to ‘speed things up’ out of simple fear of being sued.
Worse yet, if the Obama initiatives do not include clear language to exclude abortion from the plan (which the bill before Congress doesn’t), and if the Democrats proceed to insist that parochial hospitals perform the abortions if they expect government payments under government plans (if there’s no exclusionary language in the bill – then this is the eventuality), and if the FOCA bill passes, which effectively puts teeth in the lawsuits against states, counties, and large hospitals that don’t provide for abortion (using interstate vending of hospital supplies as one of the premises for Federal pre-eminence in this matter), then we will see the shutting down of Catholic and other hospitals. This has already been pre-shadowed by statements of some North American Bishops. Catholic hospitals and clinics provide such a huge portion of our healthcare in America that the FOCA Bill combined with a Government Health Care plan that suddenly opens health care up to 40 to 60 million more individuals would precipitate a catastrophic Health Care Crisis. It seems that the creation of this crisis is in the works.

Censure this:
Joe Wilson is going to be censured publicly in Congress for his outburst wherein he blurted, “You lie!” during Obama’s speech.
It seems I remember a certain speaker of the house who made claims, which she could never substantiate about the CIA deliberately misleading her and other members of Congress. Criticism over her comments about the CIA sent the generally lucid Madame speaker scrambling for her dentures. It would seem that if anyone should be censured, an individual who makes such defamatory claims about an entire arm of our government involving people who daily risk their lives for our security, … should be censured. What’s good for the gander is good for the goose…

Who was the first person in history to be censured for blurting something nasty out to a powerful leader? Well, let’s see… Paul of Tarsus called the leader and high priest of the Sadducees ( a very stern and austere bunch) ‘a Whited Wall’* which was about the same as what Joe Wilson did. Paul was calling the leader a hypocrite. Paul, like Joe, apologized. The Sadducees, unlike the Democrats in Congress didn’t really pursue the matter further, realizing they had more important things to address…

-by Juan Zapatero
Copyright 2009 by Juan Zapatero

*(Acts of the Apostles 23:3)

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Yeepiphany

September 19th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

I had a startling epiphany watching TV tonight when I realized that Howard Dean and Linda Ronstadt have the same nose. Now, I don’t mean that they share A PHYSIONOMICAL SIMILARITY. No. I have studied the nose. It’s the same nose. They refrigerate it somewhere, and when one or the other needs it, they take turns checking it out. Epiphanies are supposed to be startling, or they wouldn’t be epiphanies.

What is with Nancy Pelosi shaking and trembling over the angry words being uttered? She complained that it reminded her of the angry words she heard uttered in the sixties and it ,,, it,,, it.. led to violence.

Yes indeed, there was violence in the late sixties and early seventies.. People like William Ayers of the Weather Underground and others of his ilk were making pipe bombs. People were injured and in some cases killed by activities of groups like this. But this wasn’t because people spoke their minds, even in angry words. I have a revelation for people such as our speaker: This country was built upon people yelling angry words at each other. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton disagreed fiercely on the role of the Federal Government. Hamilton tried, in a diabolical fashion, to have Washington sidestep Jefferson (the Secretary of State) in all matters of state that involved relations with the British, and then the French Government. That’s interesting, because that was Jefferson’s job.

The anger didn’t stop there. The members of the First Continental Congress disagreed fiercely over the role of slavery in the future Republic. Some felt it should be left alone, fearing that an attempt at eliminating slavery would endanger the newly born nation. Others believed in immediate manumission, like Washington, who freed all of the slaves he himself owned.

Others, like Franklin, near the end of his life, heaped kerosene upon the flames of the slavery discussion by making pronouncements against it in the press, pronouncements meant to shame the then Congress of the time. He was shunned up to the moment of his death by the members of the Senate and House in the nation he had helped to give rise to. The vitriol in the press was every bit as fierce as what we see today at tea parties and town hall meetings. Yes, some health care supporters did bludgeon a black man who opposed Obama’s Health Care, but then, Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel, a duel that found its origins in their political; differences.
Yes, a Health – Care aficionado and supporter did bite the ear off of an individual expressing his concerns and dismay with what Congress was trying to foist on the American people, but then, don’t forget the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks pursuant to an angry speech Sumner delivered on the senate floor, pointing out several states as –particularly evil, and several Senators of those states as willing participants in the evil. Brooks, the nephew of Senator Butler of South Carolina, who was one of the objects of Sumner’s fierce rhetoric, felt it necessary to defend his sick uncle. He caned Sumner, and not with bamboo. This act was really the exclamation point following months of angry rhetoric in Congress over the slavery issue.

So you see, it’s really just history repeating itself:
An abolitionist gets too angry and free with his speech, a pro-slavery person bludgeons him, an anti-abortion individual skeptical of the role of Obama’s health care, gets a tad too vocal, and a pro Federal Government Health Care individual bites off his ear.

And don’t forget, it was the wish of the founding fathers, at the very signing of the Declaration of Independence, that the day of Independence (which they believed would be regarded as July 2nd), should be celebrated with loud noises and bands, and fireworks, and loud cymbal crashes. But, shhhhhh… around the Current House of Representatives… we don’t want to startle anyone.

-Juan Zapatero
Copyright 2009 Juan Zapatero

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Just a Little Journey Through a Strange Reality

September 26th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

My apologies for a blunderous statement that I made. Apparently it was the finger that an Obama Health Care Supporter bit off and not an ear, but, you see, all that talk about Van Jones in the last weeks got me thinking about Van Gogh, and there you have it, chopped off ear… bit off finger. Quentin Tarrantino couldn’t have done a better job producing this month’s events, or this past 18 months events for that matter.

I don’t tend to fixate on things, not in the same way that, say David Letterman seems to have fixated on Sarah Palin, but I do get things in my head that seem to work their way over to related events in the past: Now this business about the children in the schools singing, “Barack Hussein Obama, mmm… mmm.. mmm…” is very reminiscent of the North Korean Children having to sing songs to the dear leader… and whenever I think of the Dear Leader, I think of Woody Allen’s movie “Sleeper” where the Leader has had some sort of a mishap and all that is left is his nose, and the nose is on some sort of a life – support system. Woody Allen and Dianne Keaton sneak in, pretend to be surgeons, and steel the nose. Now, all I can think of is how Jesse Jackson made the outlandish claim that he was going to steal, or take or run away with Barrack’s nuts. (I forget the precise words he used.) So now, we have the Dear Leader, whose nuts are about to be absconded with. And why shouldn’t Jesse pretend to be a surgeon?

So if Jesse is Woody Allen, then who plays Dianne Keaton, Hillary?
They stumble out into the woods, somewhere in Chicago or Evanston where they filmed Ferris Beuhler,
Hillary looks at Jesse and says, “did you know that Obama spelled backwards is Amabo” – say isn’t Nostradamus’ reference to Mabus just a Latinized version of ‘A Mabo’?

So, Chopped off ear, chopped off finger, absconded nose, absconded nuts…
Just a little journey through a strange reality courtesy of our own recent American History.

-Juan Zapatero

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“The One” Unable to Deliver 2016 Games – Chicago Taxpayers Win.

October 4th, 2009 by Mark Drong

- by MARK R. DRONG

President Obama traveled 4000 miles on Friday to meet the First Lady in Copenhagen, Denmark as they prepared to unleash their charisma & charm on members of the International Olympic Committee to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to their hometown of Chicago. Apparently members of the IOC were immune to the mesmerizing messianic effects of the “dynamic duo,” (a term used by White House members to describe the First Couple) because Chicago was immediately eliminated from contention during Round One of voting.

News reports of the failed bid were issued even before Air Force One could touch down back in the United States. OUCH – Talk about COLD!! When it was all over, Rio De Janeiro was crowned the victor, marking this the first time in history that a South American country will play host to The Olympic Games.

“Women’s Advocacy Maven” (Except-On-Election-Day) Oprah Winfrey was also along for the ride on Air Force One to make the Hometown pitch. However, to the chagrin of Mayor Daley, (but to the relief of most Chicago taxpayers), it appears the prowess of the Power Trio came up short. There was a report that tele-prompters were unavailable on site at the Committee Presentation!!

A jubilant party in Daley plaza where tens of thousands had gathered were stunned and silenced by the news of their 1^st Round elimination. Several party-goers spoke of how it was a forgone conclusion – Chicago had won!! After all, “The One” had gone to lobby on their behalf. Who could possibly resist the hypnotic mystique of “the One?”

Speculation regarding President Obama’s miscalculation on this one – may continue for years! It’s been said that instead of Oprah at his side, maybe the President should have enlisted a couple bus-loads of Community Organizers from ACORN. They’re supposed to be pretty effective with intimidation tactics and they have a lot of experience in stuffing ballot boxes!! Talents like those would have been invaluable to help push Chicago over-the-top.

Prior to the winner being announced, as Spain and Rio remained as Finalists, White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod spoke to Fox News to give his assessment regarding Chicago’s failure to land the Games. He proudly proclaimed that the President’s trip to Denmark to campaign for the Games for Chicago was justified. He went on to enunciate twice that there were “political” factors within the IOC itself which just couldn’t be overcome.

Axelrod’s comments eluded to the fact that former IOC President

Juan Antonio Samaranch from Spain was also in attendance at the Olympic Bid Presentation and undoubtedly his influence on other IOC members would have a favourable effect for Spain.

Little did Axelrod know, minutes later, Brazil would be awarded the Games – in apparent contradiction to his conspiratorial suspicions. Apparently Mr Axelrod, a Chicagoan himself, just cannot fathom a world where Politics doesn’t play a role in EVERYTHING. Not Surprising - considering his extensive political background & associations with many politicians in Chicago including Mayor Richard M. Daley himself.

Isn’t it just as likely that the International Olympics Committee voted to give the prize to a Country that had never hosted the Games? In addition, Brazilian Govt. Officials proclaimed they estimated the costs to host the Games at about $14 Billion. This figure is three times higher than the estimate that Chicago used for its proposal. Undoubtedly, the higher figure would be a more accurate account of costs – as previous hosts have found that the Olympic Games have been plagued by cost overruns which have tallied in the Billions of Dollars.

Athens budgeted $1.6 Billion for the 2004 Olympics but cost overruns inflated that figure by 10 times – to a $16 Billion price tag. And the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing cost $40 Billion – only a mere $38 Billion over the $1.6 Billion estimate they budgeted!!

Possible consideration may have been paid by the IOC to Brazil’s ability to sustain such cost overruns. The developing South American country has just begun to cash in on its rich new resources - oil & gas deposits off its coastline in the South Atlantic Ocean. What a concept – drilling off-shore for known oil reserves which may assist a country’s finances!!! Hey, I think those crafty Brazilians might have something there!!

Chicago, on the other hand, is rife with political scandal and budget deficits – those elements represent OUR “natural resources.” Almost annually, the Schools & Public Transportation Systems “threaten to shut down because they are broke. And our local governments lament that they are so deep in the RED that our City, County & State taxes are forced to be some of the highest in the Country. And in spite of claims to the contrary, does anyone really believe our City Officials that the Billions in cost overruns from the Olympics WON’T be passed down to the local taxpayer!!! . . Puuulleeeeezzzzz !!

Hey, when it’s all said and done – and the final event concludes in the summer of 2016 during President Obama’s final year of his second term, it may well be the City of Chicago and its taxpayers who rise up and declare themselves as the “TRUE CHAMPIONS” of the Olympic Games. We’ll have to wait and see what the bottom line ends up at in Rio. But if past history is any indication regarding the costs - This one’s a no-brainer!!

At that time – the Fall of 2016, we in Chicago will be singing praises to Mayor Daley like grade-school kids are taught to do to President Obama today – ” Mayor Daley, mmm, mmm, mmm.” We will all be counting our lucky stars when we discover that local city & state taxes in Rio have risen to a stifling 38 % - as its citizens are forced to cover the Games deficits. Compare that with projected city tax rates for Chicago in 2016 at – say 25 – 26%. What a bargain!!!

Yeah, then Chicago will have had the last laugh. We will have shown those crafty South Americans that you don’t sit down at the table with the likes of Barack Obama, David Axelrod, Mayor Daley & the City of Chicago – and walk away getting the best of them!! No, one should certainly know better. If you do sit down at a table with a group like that - one thing is critical. You better hang on to your wallet!!

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Caution. Handle with Care

October 10th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

The Nobel Peace Prize is filled with all sorts of ironies. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite as a way of stabilizing the explosive properties of nitroglycerin. Safer to transport, yet still, extremely dangerous. Both in peacetime and wartime it has claimed the lives and limbs of many. Jay J. Arms, a famous private investigator, lost both of his arms as a little child in an accident that involved dynamite. Yet he became a very accomplished martial artist, and private investigator.

Barack Obama is the most recent recipient of the Prize, yet in a very divisive move as he first took office he provided over 300 million dollars to 3d world countries to fund abortions during a time of economic duress for the United States, a move that rubbed his victory in the face of the pro-life conservatives after he had vowed to be a uniter, to end partisanship, and to heal the divide. It was a move that took the most explosive issue between Americans and set a match to it. Though it was termed as a political football tossed back and forth between liberal and conservatives in power, it was done in a time immediately following a severe economic downturn, a time when the flamboyant spending on a partisan political message could have been avoided.

Strangely revealing {in a sort of chemical irony} are the two main ingredients of dynamite: potassium nitrate and sulfur. Potasium nitrate, also known as salt peter, was used to render G.I.’s impotent, or incapable of sustaining fuerza, for the purpose of… maintaining order, during World War II. Sulfur burns and it stinks. Not unlike our Congress, we have one side, rendered slightly impotent, or at least limp after the election, and the other side stinks, yet, together, they are highly explosive.

The peaceful intentions, the flammable properties all combine to remind me of an old saying, “just when they are saying peace, peace … ”

-Juan Zapatero

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I’m Perplexed

October 18th, 2009 by John P. Schumake

I am a little perplexed about something. Hillary Clinton spoke in high praise of Margaret Sanger in April of 2009, comparing Sanger to Thomas Jefferson. There was no apparent outrage from the black community. Now, for those who don’t know, Margaret Sanger was an avowed eugenicist. She believed the black population polluted the gene pool. She expressed such views verbally, in her speeches given to the women’s auxiliary to the KKK and elsewhere. Her comments regarding ‘ limiting the black population’, even comments that would seem to indicate eradicating the population are published. Margaret Sanger is hailed as the founder of the Planned Parenthood Movement. Hillary received the Margaret Sanger award, which is given out yearly.
Why Hillary Clinton or anyone would praise such a person, is beyond me. Why the black population of America tolerates this from the left, as they tolerate so much veiled and overt racism from the left is an enigma to me. This item alone is one I have pondered, and I don’t have an answer to. There are some who have tried to defend Hillary on the grounds that she didn’t really fully know who Margaret Sanger was. I can’t conclude that. The idea that a professional politician, a person, so deeply entrenched in the politics of our time, so conversant with pro-choice groups and ways of thinking would not know what Margaret Sanger was about is not logical or sensible. Sanger’s movement resulted in the American Eugenics Society. This society, which believed in racial purity, and in eliminating members of society who were supposedly not fit to procreate, was one of the organizations that strongly influenced Nazi Germany’s own eugenics movement, and at one point were part of the same global movement.
The idea is the same: ‘eliminate the genetic information of people who are considered a drag on the gene pool. Don’t let them maintain the state of their genetic information. Don’t let them contribute this ‘bad’ genetics to humanity’. The easiest way to accomplish this was extermination of certain groups. Other ways of accomplishing this was by sterilization of certain members of society. This explains the Nazi movement to sterilize mentally handicapped, Jews, and other members of society. The forward push to do so in America actually preceded the Nazi movement, and was spearheaded by individuals like Sanger.

We also haven’t heard much outrage amongst Jewish groups, but again the comments supporting a racism that was an historical atrocity are coming from Democrats.
Is this an interesting history lesson on what trumps what?
Is it just a question of who butters your bread? I’d really like an intelligent answer, even if there’s a few nasty words mixed in.

Just an aside:
While Clinton tried to take a jab at the author of our Declaration of Independence by stating that ‘he owned slaves’, she is apparently unaware that he stated at the drafting of the document, “slavery is wholly incompatible with the new Republic.” Jefferson eventually took the position that all slaves should be freed and given their own territory west of the original colonies. Washington believed in general manumission. Washington did in fact free all of the slaves that he himself owned, and was evidently not able to persuade his father-in-law to free the slaves that he owned. Both Washington and Jefferson felt, “Let’s get the Revolution done first.” Jefferson freed ’some’ of his slaves. I’m not going to try to defend him. He was the first anti-Federalist. While in political philosophy he actually resembled today’s Republicans more: he was for stronger state power, less Federal power, felt that the Federal government should not have their hands in our private affairs. yet there is an irony in the lineage of his party. The Federalists became the Democratic Republicans, who became the Democrats, who are today’s Democrats. the lineage through party conventions, candidacies, and party memberships is fairly unbroken, meaning that Thomas Jefferson was actually the father of today’s Democrat Party.

I suspect if Hillary had known old Jefferson was a Democrat, she wouldn’t have said that.

History has answered at least one question for me: Why did all of the Jews and other people who saw the Nazi movement and the rise to power, and the horrible things that were said and done in such a conspiratorial, and then overt way let it happen almost unchallenged?

The answer, “For the same reason that the blacks, and the Jews and the rest of America are letting the very same groups with the very same histories and the very same agendas hand out awards today without even a few peeps of protest.”

-by John P. Schumake

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Concerns Scratched On the Wall

October 23rd, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

Jethro Tull was an 18th century author who wrote a book on horses entitle ‘Horse-Hoeing Husbandry…’
Uriah Heep was an evil twisted falsely humble character in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.

But who, who was Pink Floyd?

I remember written on the bathroom stalls at a large midwestern university the words, “Withdrawal is something Nixon’s father should have thought of. Nixon’s a psychopath.”

I was a psychology student at the time and, inspired by that wisdom, set about to find out exactly what was a psychopath.
A psychopath was a person who completely lacked a conscience. Well, that was easy enough.
Stanly Kubrick provided the graphics: “A Clockwork Orange.” Music by Walter Carlos, now Wendy Carlos.

Now, it was what a psychopath does, or thinks, or fears, or loathes that is more interesting. Where these studies came from
I’m afraid to ask,
but I learned in psychology that psychopaths tended to have an intrepid fear of embarrassment, humiliation, being the odd man out.

Well, okay, that was Nixon enough, but even more, I remember the words my professor used,
“If they were to wear a neck-tie to a bow-tie affair, they would die a thousand deaths.”

So that blew my entire pre-conceived notions about a psychopath.
I thought that kid in grammar school who was non-conformist, had a beard 5 years before the rest of us,
and bought liquor for us when he
was twelve, and greased his hair back while the rest of us looked like the Beatles
was surely a psychopath, but, “No…” {He was just a greaser.}

Now, Bill Clinton was not my favorite person. He did like watching the polls. nevertheless, he did things that were not popular
with his own party. He
made welfare reform his mission,
he committed jets to help stop the decimation of Bosnian Muslims during the pummeling of Bosnia Herzegovina by the Serbs and the Croats.

He took the criticism, responded to it tartly, sometimes cleverly, often sullenly, but he did exact the job of being President.

George Bush evidently could care less about polls.
He reached across the aisle as his first move to invite Senator Kennedy to work on a New Education Bill,
people on the right cringed, and many criticized “No Child Left behind”,
he committed troops to Afghanistan when everyone thought it was a good idea.

He committed troops to Iraq when no-one on the left and few on the right thought that that that was ‘the War.’

He presented Harriett Miers as his choice for the Supreme Court when no-one on the right thought he was in his right mind.

He flew over Katrina Stricken New Orleans, not stopping to show he was concerned.
(I’m not a psychopath, but I think that it would have been a nice gesture), stating that he didn’t want to detract from the rescue efforts.

In short, he did what he believed was essential, even if many others thought he was wrong.

Now, I don’t know whether Fox News is tabloid or not,
and I don’t have any problem with a president coming back with a quick scathing retort, or a tart comment,
but I do have a problem with a government taking my tax money
to fund a Tass style news-agency from the physical building where our executive power lies.

I do believe a President should be concerned about his image. In fact, I was being filmed for a news program once,
and they filmed me walking in the yard with my dog.
“Why don’t you call your dog to you, ” the camera man hollered. ” I whistled for my dog. My dog curled her tail between her legs and slunk away. Now my dog had never done that to me before.
I never ever beat her.
“Man, looks like she doesn’t like you,” the camera man said.
Not only was it an incredibly embarrassing moment, but I suddenly realized how important must be the job of the Presidential dog - trainer.

Could you see if Barney slinked away from George Bush. The entire nation, even those on the right would have turned on him.

I don’t think we’ve seen a psychopathic president since Nixon (Nixon’s Henchmen sneak into the Watergate Hotel to the Tune of ”
The Thieving MagPie”.),
who was shortly on the heals of Johnson (Huntley-Brinkley report
on his Presidency daily to the tune of Beethoven’s ninth ),

both of whom wiretapped individuals and each had a gripping infatuation with what was being said about them,
or a great need to manipulate the people around them, the people responsible for their image.

I don’t think we have a psychopathic president now. In fact, I think we have a bright President with the potential for a lot of good,
but I do think a President needs to do the job of being President,
and a president needs to grow up
and stop worrying about who’s saying what. (Hopefully while he’s still president).

The last time we really got to see a President,
change mature, and become a better person throughout life was George H. W, Bush.
Even people who didn’t vote for him respect him. No one wants to tell him, “Please shut up and go back to the farm.”
He’s illuminated by his great war heroism in the past, and mellowed by his humility in the present.
We see him in recent years working side by side with a former rival on humanitarian interests,
then again we see him in old newsreels swimming swiftly
from the enemy after his plane is shot down, unlike his contemporary, Mr. Carter,
a sour and critical busy body whose greatest act of physical prowess may have been fending off a killer rabbit…
(To the tune of the William Tell Overture?)

Fox News may or may not be tabloid, however, Fox Business News ala Neil Cavuto, Fox Bulls and Bears, Cashin’ In, Forbes on Fox, etc,
are unparalleled
in presentation of business and the market, and the other Networks have had a revolving door of business personalities,
some who’ve come under fire for
pushing a direction in certain markets because they themselves had a vested interest in gaining from their promotion of those interests.

I’ve watched business on other networks and it’s so poorly constructed, so flimsily presented, that it really isn’t watchable.

There’s nothing to be learned from it.

What’s the Next target? The right leaning ‘Wall Street Journal?’
Or maybe the Internet,
Will they filter the Internet for American consumption as the Chinese do?
Damn! I’ve given them the idea.

Look, people on the right and independents aren’t fooled by attempts to marginalize a news agency,
Why? because these people read. Think about it, all of the best sellers are right wing authors.
Fox News is just what they do to rest their eyes.
Left wingers couldn’t sell a political or business book to save their souls, diving circulation of left wing newspapers,
and steady circulation of right wing books, weeklies and journals pretty much
testifies to that.

So back to business.

Now, it seems to me that this President was elected to repair the economy.
Remember? (To the tune of Timesteps)
which seems to have been entrusted to Timothy Geitner and Nancy Pelosi (Beethoven’s Suicide Scherzo is already playing in the background)

So, ‘Who does he watch?”
Please tell me not MSNBC. “And the Dow surged at the opening bell,
but then… the market…
…felt a tingle going up and down its leg…”

-Juan Zapatero

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Temperature’s Rising

November 1st, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

The more I read about the founding fathers, the more I like them.
They were men, and actually women who, with the possible exception of Hamilton,
believed in a totally free and unabridged press,
a Federal Government that had as little power as possible, and as little intervention into
people’s private affairs as possible.
Their goals and ambitions were nothing like the goals and
ambitions of the current
Congress and Senate presently in power.

At first, I was depressed to realize this.

I even was willing to concede, “okay global warming may well
be happening.”

But then, taking a look at the map of Illinois where I live, something occurred to me that I had never seen before.
The state of Illinois is split about 50-40 -10, fifty percent Dems, 40 percent Republicans,
but all of the Dems are concentrated around Chicago and the very tip of southern Illinois, all near the water.
I remember seeing some maps of what Illinois would look like if global warming continued, the ice caps melted and the seas rose.
All of the areas near the Mississippi and Lake Michigan would be gone, that is…
where the liberals live.
I thought for a second… the same is true of Indiana,
..No… Wait…
The same is true of the entire United States.

All of the liberals are concentrated near the coastal regions,

California, the Pacific Northwest, the liberal Northern Atlantic seaboard, even the inland coastal regions.

…so that means if Global warming and, melting of the ice caps really does occur,
the Democrats will… vanish

It’s not the polar bears that Al Gore is concerned about in terms of
extinction…

…it’s the Democrats.

Yeh, global warming.

Oh, now wait, that’s hate talk,
and we all know that that sort of talk in the newspapers
and elsewhere is soon to be outlawed by this Congress.

Shame on me.

You know what’s more dangerous than hate talk, though.

Hate silence.

The Fairness Doctrine and the so-called anti-hate talk legislation will completely
destroy James’ Madison’s dream that was real for many years of an unabridged press,
(unlike London, for example, where the BBC’s offices were broken into and documents seized by the British government).

This is all very unsettling. Very unsettling indeed.

Excuse me; I have to go check the thermometer.

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Cross Dressing is a Bad Thing

November 8th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

Supposedly, Thomas Edison refused to hire a man because the man salted his soup before tasting it. The same story is told of J.C. Penny. Maybe it’s true of both of them. They may have attended the same business school in the last part of the nineteenth century.
I have one for you. I was invited to interview with a company with the possibility of working for them as an independent programming contractor. When I spoke with the IT department’s leader over the phone he asked me several questions about SQL server transactions, extents,, and other things. The answer I gave him over the phone prompted him to say, “That was the best answer anyone has ever given us. Come meet with us!” I went.

I drove an hour up to Bannockburn, where I met with first the IT people, and then they brought in the president of the company. They seemed to be very interested in my ideas and abilities, yet through the entire interview I felt like I was getting ‘funny looks.’ The interview concluded with them asking if I would be open to the idea of receiving a laptop from their company and working remotely. I thought it was a great idea. They were going to talk it all over and get back to me on Monday.

I told my wife over dinner how well the interview seemed to go. She looked at me and said, “You didn’t go like that, did you?”
“Like what?”
“Go look in the mirror.”
I went to go look in a mirror, and “there it was” in the words of Hemingway. My shirt was cross-buttoned. I had buttoned the top button into the second to the top loop. I hadn’t put on a tie – bad me.

That Monday, I called the company.
“We’ve decided to go with someone else. …someone more local.”
“Oh,” I replied, “was it the cross-buttoned shirt?”
“Well, frankly… yes… You see, our president really was put off by that and the fact that you didn’t have a tie…”

I told this story to a friend of mine who owns his own company. “Wait,” he asked. “What position were you applying for? Programmer? I would think that the cross-buttoned shirt would have been a requirement for the job.”

Back to Edison. Many people don’t know that in his immutable stolid anal anger he fired the boy genius Nicolai Tesla, already responsible for developing many of the things that Edison is credited with inventing. Tesla, after a sad stint as a ditch digger ended up working for Westinghouse, where he received impressive stock options. He proceeded to invent the fluorescent light, the electric car starter, and, perhaps most importantly, he developed AC- alternating current, which ended up becoming the de facto system used in our country, beating out Edison Electric in most city by city bids to establish electric service.

Tesla’s list of patents and accomplishments are too vast for me to list here.

The old saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know is certainly true in some disciplines. It would of course be true in our present day Senate and Congress. Calling them a discipline is a stretch. I should have prefaced with ‘lack-of’. At any rate, it is becoming increasing evident that our government is being run, in the words of Archie Bunker, by “2 plumbers, a seamstress and a dingbat..” We have a growing technocracy with the complexities of techno-industrial decisions looming ever more saturnly over our nation and its environment, and we have an antiquated system whereby we choose our Senators. George Washington himself feared the introduction of party politics into our American system, and he expressed that party politics and factions would inevitably hamper the functioning of the system.
However, by the time of Jefferson, parties were well in place, with Jefferson’s group, the anti Federalists, pretty much opposing strong and influential central government. Washington was right. The parties have severely hampered the system. Two senators are chosen from every state, and, most often, they are from the same party, whichever way the state leans. There is no strict criterion for them becoming a senator. They don’t have to have run a company, or have a thorough understanding of Bio-physics, and the impact of disposed birth-control devices on our ground water, drinking water, livestock, plants and environment. They don’t have to have a degree in electronics engineering, and have worked with the power grid. They don’t have to have been well-published researchers in the areas of advanced horticultural, and our country’s most giving resource, our grain.
They just have to make sure that they have loads of contributors, plenty of spit and polish, and don’t cross-button their shirts. Shoot, they don’t even have to have done well in school. They can be so embarrassed of their college transcripts that they refuse to allow to have them released for the general public’s approval during campaigns.

I say, ‘let’s cut costs.’ The biggest burden on the tax-payer is the funding of the operation of the Federal Government. We don’t need two senators from every state. Let’s cut it down to one. When you consider the pensions, the pay, and the amenities senators get for the rest of their lives… that’s a drain the taxpayers don’t need. They aren’t even providing the balance that the original forefathers, like Washington, had hoped for, because they are almost always from the same party anyway. Increase their knowledge requirement in at least one area of technological expertise, and decrease the number of them that we have.

The Wall Street Journal ran an article referencing how the stimulus was helping to improve the economy. Excuse me, but there is no way that 300 million dollars to film producers to buy film, millions for the purchase of Harley Davidsons by police departments, constructuion of guard-rails around dry-lakes, and money for California swamp rats, and Florida turtle crossings has turned our economy around.

Our economy has turned around because Wall Street has pretty much always operated in spite of what our government does, and not so much because of it. While the rest of the nation is still showing poor economic signs, record job losses and unemployment, and very poor housing start indicators, Wall-Street has been rallying, in part, of course, because they have been trimming fat, contributing to the jobless numbers. Truly, it’s fairly clear that Wall-Street doesn’t need the government. We should return to Jefferson’s original concept: The Federal Government should have as little involvement as possible in our private or business affairs, and its only real job should be in providing a military to defend the nation.

…and let’s cut the number of top executives and legislators… less czars, one senator, cabinet members who actually know how to use QuickBooks to get their tax liability computation right… This is a time to bring intelligent operations to bear on a here-to-fore poorly calibrated governmental system… We need people with more brains, less nice-sounding voices and good looks, and much more knowledge to back hopeful visions…

So, if you excuse me, I’m going to unbutton my cross-buttoned shirt, take it off, even, sit in my tee shirt, read a good book on C ++, and have some soup.

Coyright 2009 by Juan Zapatero

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Walls of Weekness* and Gardens of Jellybeans

November 15th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

This has been a great week for the remembering of the history of Freedom.
Anyone who knows anything about the History of the Cold War, the Fall of Berlin Wall, perestroika, glasnost and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union knows about the significance of…
…jellybeans.

The greatest freeing, in shere numbers, of any enslaved and sequestered people in the twentieth century happened in part because some of the Western world leaders at the time refused to blink. “Mr Gorbechev tear down this Wall,” was declared in June of 1987, despite the remonstrations of Ronald Reagan’s own advisors. The wall began to come down in 1989, and then in 1991 balkanization of the Soviet States began with Latvia and Estonia declaring their Independence.
Not only did this mark the end of a great social exile for the people of East Berlin and, in essence, East Germany from family and friends in the West, but it also began the end of a great containment of Polish and Russian Jews, and many other peoples in the former Soviet Union.
Pope John Paul II was defiant and unflinching, in both his statements against the Soviet Union and his actual saying of Mass in occupied Poland.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were unyielding in their strong NATO presence, and, perhaps most significant were the phenomenal strides that Western Industry and technology were making towards miniaturization. The technological advances that allowed the United States to encapsulate the functions performed by much larger capacitors, resistors, relays and other objects into tiny little electronic components is one of the keys that broke the back of the Soviet Union. They were going bankrupt trying to maintain equal military footing. This strength was evidenced at Reykjavik, when combined with Mr. Reagan’s resolve to continue with the development of the Star Wars missile defense system, despite the Russian complaint that it was in defiance of the current ABM treaties, and despite their attempt to try to get Mr. Reagan to trade this in for a supposed Greater Hope of mutuality.
I think the internal strength may have come from the black jellybeans.
There was no Carter-ish vacillation in the administrations of Thatcher and Reagan. It is not often remembered that in Tehran the Russian embassy was also considered as a takeover target. The students opted for taking over the American embassy. One can’t help but to think that the students had in mind what the Russian reaction would be. The American hostage crisis began, a 444 day ordeal.
Carter’s crime was not the attempt of a military rescue that failed. His crime was in not showing the implacable resolve a President needs. There is no room for mistakes in that.

The Presidency of the United States is not a High-School Presidency. It is not reasonable to say, “Well, he’s human. Give him time. All people make mistakes.”
This is the real world where every move counts.

We have entered a time period when the President’s vacillation is strikingly similar to that of Mr. Carter. Our new President first distances himself from our only great alliance in the region, snubbing Mr. Netanyahu. He then believes he will garner support from Russia for sanctions against Iran by backtracking on missile placement of defensive missiles in Poland. Prime Minister Lavrov does not reciprocate. This is a lesson we should have learned all through the cold war. It wasn’t a conciliatory posture that caused the Russians to turn tail and abandon the attempt to place missiles in Cuba.
Someone please buy our leaders a jar of jellybeans.

The Iranians, evidently not encouraged to move into a new cooperative and friendly relationship with the United States proceeded to test long range missiles, right in Mr. Obama’s face.

During World War II many people planted Victory Gardens, at the urging of the President of the United States. It was meant to be a statement as well as a morale booster.
I am concerned that the public questioning of General McChrystal’s request for 45,000 more troops in Iran and the seeming lack of solidarity among our American leaders, i.e., the President, the General and the ambassador to Afghanistan, will more greatly undermine our military position, will signal a lack of unity to our enemies, and will thwart the ability to act with any resolve .

Most importantly, I truly hope that we are not going to be asked to Plant ‘Not So Much Victory as Apology, Conciliatory, Self-Blame Even Submittal Gardens.’

*If you’re learning English for the first time, this is not how you spell weakness. I, however, am learning it for the second time.

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Take a bow.

November 20th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

We have a tradition in the west about bowing. You would do it if you were in a Broadway Play or musical, only at the end of the musical, and only then, if you had done a good job with your performance. Evidently, when Western leaders defy that tradition, it becomes mutually embarrassing for both the Western leaders, and the leaders to whom they are bowing.

As I watched Obama bow before the Emperor of Japan, however, I experienced a new horror as I noticed president Obama’s lips moving. Now I may be mistaken, and this may require careful slow motion study of the footage, but I thought I saw him form the words, “Ah, sooo…” Horror gripped, me. In my terrified mind I saw him walking in the Prime Minister’s bonsai garden and at the first opportunity, unable to contain himself, whispering out loud to himself, “bonsai!”., and then chuckling as he pulled on his right ear. Worse yet, I hope, at dinner, after enjoying the music of Japanese stringed instruments, I truly hope he didn’t say, “Mr. Prime minister, can you… uh… say, Hutsit Ralston on the… uh… rillarock and a rawlup rawlup suit..?” Of course, he would not be the first president who could barely contain himself at the state dinner party thrown by the Japanese dignitaries.

I watched Mr. Obama, on CNN, speaking in front of the Korean Press core, and just when he was asked about his intentions regarding free trade and the hope of opening wide possibilities for Korean Car manufacturers to sell more of their cars in the United States CNN cut away from the Live Broadcast! I wonder, ‘why?’

It’s clear that CNN has never been the cheerleading team that MSNBC has been for the President (Newsweek should have featured Chris Matthews in a cheerleading outfit instead of Sarah Palin. It would have been a more timely and germane statement addressing the dominating political-news media relationship). Nevertheless, shedding themselves of the deeply opinioned Lou Dobbs, CNN is truly driving in neutral, and, it appears, on the left hand side of the street.

If you want truly fair and balanced coverage and full-coverage –all the way to the end of the story – start reading… That would be a good thing for all of the left leaning newspapers like the New York Times, whose readership is sagging. Evidently people on the right are still reading, or at least they are still buying newspapers…. (Is it just possible that individuals on the right housebreak more dogs and paint more?). I can’t say for sure. I lean right, but some of that is due to the fact that for years while working in construction I carried heavy oak planks on my right shoulder, and I’m that guy who reads the C++ Programmer’s Guide to the Galaxy.

At any rate, ‘Sayonara’, for now…

Oh, Gosh… I hope he didn’t say that…

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Happy Thanksgiving, or Deep Fried Turkeys cause Global Warming

November 26th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

Things to Give Thanks for:

Despite Al Gore’s Global Warming, the Almighty God, in his providence has provided that the polar bear population isn’t shrinking.

Despite The crucifixion of the CIA by the Obama administration (largely to help Nancy Pelosi save face for stupid accusations she made against them early in the year) they are still thwarting intricate terrorists plots …

Despite the fact that Janet Napolitano, director of Homeland security, characterized Veterans returning from foreign War as being high-threat potential terrorists, people still sign up for the armed services with the intention of defending our country…

People in this country are still willing to stand up against government that they do not approve of. They do it via tea parties and town-hall meetings, and blogs, and emails to Congressmen, but the grass-roots people are far from comatose and compliant. Thank God for that, because most of the media has entered into the hypnotized zombie state…

People are still willing to speak out against a government that lavishes favors in fascist fashion on secular action groups with dubious ethics, like Acorn…

People are still willing to study and point out the lack of jurisprudence in decisions made by individuals such as attorney general Eric Holder to try an entire nation that was once united against a common foe, instead of trying the terrorists that hurt them.

I am thankful to God for this great land, a land incredible with human and natural resources. A land with timber and grain and ideas and voices. A land with switch grass and flowing water and natural gas fields, though President Obama and Congress have put energy independence and private sector job creation on the back burner.
I am thankful to God for a land with abundant oil reserves, though President Obama rescinded President Bush’s order to begin drilling in Utah immediately, a move that would have really created real private sector jobs, instead of preserving the jobs of bureaucrats, which add nothing to the gross national product.
I am thankful to God for the vast coal deposits, though President Obama has stated that he would like to put coal mining companies out of business.
I am thankful to God for Freedom of speech in this country, without which no other Freedom could exist, though the current Congress will try in every way to pass the Fairness Doctrine which would essentially hobble the Freedom of Speech.

We have a lot and more blessings to be thankful for. Don’t let them slip away.
A people educated in the value of Freedom will always be willing to speak out against a government’s grasping at Power, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. To refuse to look for and see and expose the abuse of power is to choose enslavement.
Be thankful.
Be free.
And in the words of a very wise old cartoon:
“Never under-estimate the power of a shnook.”

Posted in National Energy, Social Issues | Comments (0)

Circus Comes to Town in Lower Manhattan!

December 5th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

Come on down to Eric’s big-top
Buy your tee-shirts
Bring your cash!
We got firemen burned in airbrush!
Tee-shirts of people coughing ash!

We want the world to really like us!
Oh please, Oh please don’t be offended!
We sort of lost our heads on 9 – 11,
But our torn-up flesh is easily mended!

We wash and scrub our (libral) faces
To look like we love all the races.
The silent truth hides in the hanger
and the black Syringe of Margaret Sanger.

Though this may sound (quite) really zaney
We just want to nail Bush and Cheney.
We don’t care your dearest wife
Fell out the window with her life
So drag your stomach through the gravel
We want to show an honest looking gavel

Come on down to Nancy’s nuthouse!
Where we can try the CIA
Look inside our hall of mirrors
Distort the truth
It’s fun to play!

The former air-force lawyer blazoned
When asked if he would try the nation
He clenched, he glared, you best believe it!
One wonders what revenge occasion
Made him brush right off his suit-sleeve
The broken hearts that cry and still grieve.

Come on down to the giant crater!
Buy your hotdogs, see the dust
Of all unburied victims made here,
A civil trial is a Must!

We want the world to really like us!
The trials fair! (Though we said they’ll hang!)
Can anything be more civilian!
We read their rights. It’s just a game!

We didn’t win the Great Olympics,
So a hundred mill for this is cheep!
They’ll forget this is a breech of practice.
Their mindless! Give them Games! They’re sheep.

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2012: Flipping the Switch

December 12th, 2009 by Juan Zapatero

It’s easy to see the doom and gloom in the direction being taken by global governments. I’m a big fan of doom and gloom. Doom and gloom has made Al Gore a very rich man. It’ll make other people rich. Economists who predict the meltdown of our economy will sell many books, as will astrophysicists who predict the asteroid of destruction’s near brush with the earth and all of the subsequent upheavals in tides, brains, wind currents, mindsets. None of this is scary enough for me. The possibility of the heavens being caught on fire, or giant boulders falling into our oceans is not that troubling. The outcome of huge tsunami’s thrashing inland for many miles and covering land and wiping away portions of the population is not the most horrifying possibility of 2012.
There is something far more auspicious, far more rumbling. It has haunted me for many years. It has haunted me in its promise.

I fully expect the year 2012 to come and go with its own share of physical, natural and economic disasters, but nothing that we could necessarily attribute to a black hole at the center of our galaxy.

There are bigger plans for us, huge plans that are contained in a tiny little mechanism that was set into motion just as our DNA sets our physical growth, and, in effect death into motion.

This mechanism can be seen in many places, and I’ll look at it in one place, a written form. First, though an analogy: Whenever I find myself driving on the expressway, there invariably comes the point where I must get off. That point is usually a ramp. Or a split in the road, or some sort of divergence. Generally I become aware of this ramp or divergence at some point preceding the time when I will have to turn. If I don’t it’s particularly annoying. If I do, I have a decision to make.

The decision is actually a composite of decisions,: “get over into the correct lane, watch the signs, move into the appropriate merging or diverging lane. Sometimes it requires a quick lane shift before it’s too late.

Now, ‘before it’s too late’ is in itself a clever construct, with intriguing attributes, methods of its own, and consequences that are sort of return values. Here’s how ‘before it’s too late, or ‘bitl’, works: You put into it the speed you are traveling at and the distance you think you have to travel. Bitl takes this information and compares it with its own knowledge of the distance you have to travel and the speed you have to travel at. It attempts to provide you with a variety of visual or mental cues, some of them locked in your own brain, to get you to make that move into the next lane before you find yourself either stuck in the wrong lane, trying to slide dangerously between two fast moving trucks, or far worse ricocheting off of that concrete divider that separated the left from the right.

BITL exists in many forms. You can imagine, visualize, and look back at many of the forms and shapes of BITL. If you have ever had that recurring dream that you are back in school and you have been going the entire semester without showing up for a class, because you really didn’t even know that you were signed up for that class, that’s BITL talking to you in a very creative way. Being a Creationist, I believe that God created BITL. However, there may be some who will theorize that BITL was actually an outcome of the Big-Bang and one of the laws of thermodynamics, probably the law of entropy.

My absolute favorite spot to look at, commune with and maybe even have a cup of coffee and enjoy BITL is in the book of Revelations. (If you don’t read Christian writings, bare with me. It should be painless and still allegorically pertinent). Remember, I said that I am a big fan of doom and gloom. Let me clarify. I am really an observer of the lowering skies of impending clouds that will roll back to open the corridor for the irreversible… storm.

So, Revelations: We have four angels that are holding back the four winds so they will not hurt anything on the earth until the servants of God have been sealed in the forehead. Now let me be clear about one thing, no one has been vacuumed off of the earth. Just as Noah had to go through the flood, though protected, so, these people are still on the earth.

I say this because there is a belief taught, known as the ‘rapture’. This also is not the source of my wide-eyed petrifaction. I have educated reasons for believing that that could not possibly happen anywhere near 2012, though I do subscribe to the eventuality. The entire set of rapture verses is a fascinating writing, no matter what your belief set. It’s a tiny collection of about 28 verses in St. Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians chapter 15 verses 20 to 58. St. Paul writes that at the last trump the dead in Christ shall rise, and those who are alive shall be caught up in the air to meet them. Since I believe that God is not a God of confusion, and that the same Holy Spirit who spoke to St. John spoke to St. Paul and many other prophets, then both of their last trumpets are the same last trumpet (It would be odd for there to be a trumpet after the last trumpet, wouldn’t there? – which is what would have to be the case if St. John’s last trumpet, wasn’t St. Paul’s last trumpet. )
Okay, from a logical and chronological standpoint, the rapture can’t have occurred yet, at the time of the ‘sealing’. So, these people will still have been on the earth, which makes sense, because the last two inspired prophets will still be yet to come and preach their admonitions to the whole of humanity. And you are, at that juncture, either sealed in the forehead…
…or you are not.

So what does all of this have to do with 2012? A little BITL of a warning here: Just watch the road signs, because, the most ominous threat is not the asteroid that is going to wipe us all out, or even the tsunamis that will overflow the earth, and wash away all of Al Gore’s polar bears, who were already dying, or even the staring empty seats on the subway. It’s the class you forgot to attend, the lane you were not quick enough to switch into, the last lane, on the last off-ramp.

Posted in Religion, Social Issues | Comments (1)

Dr. Livingston, I Presume?

January 9th, 2010 by Juan Zapatero

(With Corrections)

I HAD THE PRIVILEGE and pleasure of attending a prayer breakfast this morning at Saint Victor’s Parish in Calumet City, Illinois, south of Chicago. Bishop Perry spoke along with several other speakers, including Father ‘Rocky’ (Fr. Frank Hoffman) of relevant radio. Part of the purpose of the breakfast was to gather support for the ‘Catholics Come Home’ initiative. He cited that there are over 2 million Catholics in the Chicago land area and diocese alone who no longer attend Church.
The Bishop included in his talk a topic I have heard him speak on before, and that is the necessity for Catholics to ‘speak out’. – not to be sheepish at work and in their daily lives, but to be willing to speak out and not to be quiet about their core beliefs. I found myself pondering. This brings me to that Catholic thing that I would like to speak out on. Ready for the ride?

In southeast Asia and various outlying islands there are groups of apes known as gibbons. Now the gibbons that live in one area, particularly island areas, differ considerably from gibbons of other areas. It has been said that there is considerable chromosomal diversity amongst the different types of gibbons, pointing to an unusually great and rapid amount of change from one group to the next. From an ‘evolutionary’ standpoint the changes amongst gibbons has been ‘too much, too fast’ to have been accounted for by Natural Selection, random mutations, adaptive acceptance of mutations, etc. So, various theories and combinations of theories have arisen to account for this. One of course, we have all heard is the Cataclysmic theory. That’s where some highly radioactive object passes the earth, or even collides with it, and causes massive changes to occur in next generations because of the radioactivity. Okay. Another theory is this: Within the genetic code of the gibbons (and other life forms) there was mathematically built in a sort of timed change matrix. When a certain offspring of any species ‘arrived’ that particular offspring possessed a change that was guaranteed to happen in the timing and math probability of things. The change is DNA’s way of saying, “Here’s something new, try this! If it works we’ll stick with it. (By the way your exact mate is mathematically somewhere nearby)”;

I absolutely believe that Noah’s Ark is still sliding around on Ararat. However, there is no doubt that God Almighty is also the author of the marvelousness of genetics as King David so sonorously endeavored to explain more than 2 ½ thousand years ago (I’ll leave you to find out where.) I believe that man is a species created by the hand of God. Yet, I do believe in the great diversity and survivability that God built into each species.
My own father likened God to a great sculptor, “Okay, that statue’s …a nice! Now I make one like, it, only he’s a going to be standing looking over the shoulder. We usa the same marble! Everyone going to say, “Sure Thatsa made by the hands of Michelangelo! It almos looks lie the one statue came form the other one! But it didn’t! It coma from the hand of Michelangelo!’”
Okay we’re hacking (making) our way back to the Bishop’s prayer breakfast:
So the gibbons went through this massive quick and totally unaccountable genetic change and diversification. I like the matrix theory, and, being a programmer and a great aficionado of mathematics, it works fine for me.
Here’s the issue, though. If you haven’t been listening… I mean, if you haven’t been reading up till now, then… start reading:
If any quantity of those gibbons had been consistently destroyed, the new species, and the derivative species and the sub-species would have, mathematically speaking, been doomed. After all, when the probability built into the sheer mathematics of genetics pronounced a change, that change, though not solitary in its differentness, might never have occurred if, the species had, say taken to ‘eating their young.’ (Oddly, there’s been little change amongst sharks and polar bears over the ages, except that the polar bears have adopted Al Gore.) Both are known to eat their young (polar bears and sharks, that is).

My point? Species survive, and grow taller, and shorter, or louder, or quieter, because their great creator has built into their ‘possibilities’ some change… Take as much as you like, a huge dose if you believe in evolution, a small dash, if, like me, you are planning that trip to Noah’s ark. Yet, we are destroying our survivability. You see, all joking aside, abortion is not only the ending of a life. It is the dooming of the necessary tools for the species to live breathe, change, adapt, and continue to glorify God, (or redistribute wealth if that’s where you are at). This is more dire than the Ozone depletion, more time critical than the imminent demise of the polar bears, more urgent than the crisis of global warming. It is the physical and mathematical damning of our own species based upon the most current findings and surmises of the people who have studied the chromosome changes of singing primates. You see, that little humanoid (one) in the womb might not have been the inventor of the cure for cancer, or the comedian who would make us all laugh in a difficult time, but that little one might have been the ‘instance’ of humanity with slightly different fat cells, ones that were able to survive a period of global warming. But we may never know, because, in the words of Orson Welles acting as the child in the womb, “today I died..”
So, there, I’ve said it. But why did I say it?
I said it because a year or so ago I was in Church (a Catholic Church) before the election that elected Barack Obama, and the deacon had chosen to use his preaching pulpit as a bully pulpit, “I hear a lot of talk from parishioners about ‘the right to life’ and how we need to vote for Conservative candidates who are pro-life… Well, I’ve got news for you,” he said, ” It’s been over thirty years and Roe vs. Wade hasn’t been overturned, but there are other issues that pertain to life, like the war….” He went on with what to me was tantamount to his advertisement for voting for the left.

Back to the earnest, good and inspiring Bishop Perry, whom I commend for this outreach, which I believe God will unquestionably bless. I would like to provide an observation as to why some Catholics haven’t come home. I have been in many Catholic Churches at many services. I have left the Church to become a Pentecostal, and I have come back. Invariably when I go to mass, I hear a sermon that would greatly please Obama-Pelosi-Reid supporters, and occasionally I hear one that would bring a smile to people who have more conservative values. (After all, the Catholic Church was a Church for the masses’ back when voting on the left, didn’t mean a vote for ‘Pro-Choice’ and the secularization of our land to the point that it would take luminol to find God’s remembrance). I go to Church largely for the Eucharist. I often dread the homiletic message. It often isn’t the message that so many of us in the heartland would hope to hear, a message of pro-life, a message of help thy neighbor out of thine own heart.  Instead, I occassionally hear the insidious ‘give to Caesar so he can help thy neighbor.’ I am not the only member of the laity with well-trained ears. Many incognito Catholics have nestled in to small Bible-Reading Churches with Bible toting congregations, and I have just told you why.
As for that deacon who gave the message that it’s been over thirty years and we have gained no ground in the courts,  if he were truly a pro-life advocate, from the beginning, he would have known we have gained considerable ground. He would have known that the Federal Courts ruled that if an individual harms a pregnant woman such that the child dies, the individual can, in some cases be tried for murder. This is tantamount to saying, “Under some circumstances, the unborn is human life… at least if the mother wants it to be.” Not all gains can be comprehended under one big sweeping change like the rolling back of Roe v Wade. But then, the person with the gene for great neuron development, who was meant to get through the unusually thick skull of a particular deacon, was never born, so the deacon went on his way, misleading congregations and we’re all sitting in trees scratching our heads and wondering, “Why did Catholics wander from the Church?”
They aren’t all sitting in bars or bowling. Some have gone to seek their wisdom elsewhere. It’s sad, because the power of the sacraments for those of us who have gone on the Jeremiah 33:3 ride is far greater than any Indiana Jones Experience, but that faithless, leftist doubt in human nature which has crept into the Vanguard of the faith, and faith in the mechanisms of a forced ‘Village of Utopia divvying up the sweat of a few for the mollification of the conscience of many’ which has tip-toed into the bastion of that which was always, at large  ‘Pro-Life’ have left some sitting in their rocking chairs with their dawg, their blunderbuss and their Bible, sayin’, “I just don’t know. Mebee one of these days I’ll go back home.   Ahm thinkin’ on it… Mebee”

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2012: Flipping the Switch

Dr. Livingston, I Presume?