FREE TRADE

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CRITICAL UPDATE: JULY 18, 2016:

Billy Lee returned from vacation today to find his offices in shambles. It might take a few days to get our high-tech equipment working and to clean-up broken beer bottles in the offices and parking lot.

Apparently, Junior and Fannie Jean seized control of our web-site, fired our staff in absentia, and started publishing rogue articles, while we vacationed unawares at the abandoned Trump Casino in Atlantic City.

Billy Lee FaceTimed Junior on his cell-phone — just to see how he was doing (he was missing him, he said) — only to discover that Junior and his slut-girlfriend were drunk and partying with friends in our offices; celebrating what they thought was their successful takeover of everything Billy Lee has worked so hard to build during the past two years.

Junior seemed unsteady and agitated during the call, according to Billy Lee; he waved his iPhone round and round; he slurred his words; Billy Lee thought he might be seeing in the background an orgy going on; he demanded that Junior cease and desist; that he take his friends and leave the premises.

Junior and his Fannie threw a hissy-fit. Their feral friends trashed pretty much everything, including furniture; they even plugged the toilets.

Billy Lee does not know where Junior and his pals are right now, but he ordered us, his Editorial Board, to find Junior, somehow, and make him understand that he forgives him; that he wants him back — parking cars and emptying trash cans, just like old times. (Billy Lee actually broke-down crying, he misses his Junior that much.)

So, Junior, if you’re reading this, pay attention. The important thing — the most important thing — is that we, theBillyLeePontificator Editorial Board, are back. And we are staying. We’re not going anywhere. 

Junior, you can rot right now, wherever you are, for all we care. We don’t share the Pontificator’s misplaced confidence in your non-existent future. Our offices are an esteemed citadel of erudition and edification, not a sanctuary for your neurotic drive for drama and discord. You are a bozo-head. We hate you.

Yes, it’s true. Billy Lee told us not to delete your essay; and to leave Fannie Jean’s intro in place. We didn’t believe it at first; we didn’t want to — you shamed us, Junior; can’t you see that?  You and your putain malodorante humiliated us; you discredited the family; our organization; our equipe de freres-–yet Billy Lee summoned the grace to say he liked your styles.

That’s what he said. He liked your styles. Everyone knows you type with one finger and can’t spell your own name. If it wasn’t for your Fannie, you’d be useless. At least she can spell and type.

So how about this idea, Junior?

We’re leaving you and your girlfriend’s know-it-all, trash-talking essays in place. Billy Lee said so and unlike you, we do what he says because we’re loyal; we’re professionals; we’re team-players with skills and standards and values and born-in-the-USA work-ethic.

We type with all fingers. We understand spell-check. The mysteries of punctuation don’t intimidate us.

No, Junior, we aren’t going to kill you.

Your punishment is knowing that your essays will never be deleted; your essays are going to stand as permanent, unread, embarrassing reminders to every wanna-be; to every bonehead who lusts like you and your Fannie to control a famous blog-site.

Plots really do go awry; especially those directed against hyper-alert pontificators like Billy Lee.

The Editorial Board


My Very First Official Notification: (June 28, 2016)

Actually, Billy Lee — his writers and editors — are all on vacation right now until July 15. They left Junior in charge. He’s never been in charge of anything. He parks cars most mornings and empties waste baskets afternoons.

I’m Fannie Jean. My girlfriend and me hang with Junior, because we’re both hoping to get jobs at the Pontificator. Junior knows Billy Lee pretty good.

Yesterday, Junior asked me to kiss him for good luck and spell-check his stuff; he wants me to be his editor, sort of, because he trusts me, he says. Billy Lee never lets him write anything. He can’t spell, for one thing, but I respect him because he always tells the truth most of the time — at least to me and sometimes to my girlfriend.

With Billy Lee and the staff gone on vacation, Junior decided to publish something. Why not?  What’s the worst that can happen?  Get fired?  He already makes exactly $0 per hour so it isn’t like he’ll starve or anything. He lives free in Billy Lee’s basement and eats his food all the time so no worries. No worries at all.

We both have high school diplomas by the way but I used to crush Junior in spelling bees when we were in grade school together. Also, I twirled baton in high school marching band. So I’m completely qualified. So is Junior. He told me to spell-check his post so I did. It was pretty simple. I think he liked it. I’m an Editor now, he told me. It’s a dream come true.

Junior is a swell guy. He’s bona-fide. It don’t matter that he’s ugly and everybody hates him. My girlfriend is hoping to have the honor of working under him too some day if he’ll have her. Maybe, someday, he will.

We didn’t put any pictures in. No one trained us on how to do that. Junior’s dumb when it comes to hi-tech stuff. Anyhow, we published Junior’s very first essay with no one’s help below this note. Amazing, agreed? Junior said to warn readers that any spelling mistakes are totally my fault.

Fannie Jean


FREE TRADE

People wonder why Republicans control so much of the government when the majority of folks seem to dislike them. The most recent New Yorker Magazine contains an article, Drawing the Line, which explains how the process works.

The essay reminds us: in 2012 Republicans carried 3/4 of the congressional districts in Pennsylvania — though Obama carried the state by 300,000 votes and the Democratic congressional candidates garnered 100,000 more votes than the GOP.

During that same election cycle the Democratic candidate for senator in Michigan won his statewide race by more than 20 percentage points — Obama won by 10 points — but brazen redistricting by GOP Governor Snyder (famous for poisoning Flint City water) enabled GOP congressmen to win 2/3 of the state’s congressional seats.

Governor Dick Snyder put his newly acquired political clout to work by seizing control of nine cities — all having by some crazy coincidence black-majority populations; he in fact disenfranchised a million black voters. He then switched the source of drinking water for Flint city without voter consent and lead-poisoned thousands of residents, many of them children. But that’s another story for another time.

Violating basic constitutional rights of citizens never ends well. Throwing elections, like the Republicans did in Florida to deny Al Gore the presidency in 2000, or what they did in Michigan to redistrict voters and seize city governments that favored Democrats — pranks like these aren’t good for democracy. The melt-down of the Middle-East and the poisoning of infants are two concrete examples out of many where paranoia and disrespect for democracy and freedom ended in disaster for ordinary folks.

This un-democratic pattern is firmly imprinted into the majority of our state election protocols — almost always, it seems to me, by the GOP.

In the 2012 general election for seats in the House of Representatives, Democrats received nearly two-million more votes than Republicans, but the House Republicans secured a 33 vote majority anyway.

Imagine how big their majority would have been had the GOP received a two-million vote lead instead of the Dems. The Democratic Party might not have survived. Our two party system could have become one of the world’s biggest political jokes.

What does our un-democratic election process — some argue it is a corrupt process — have to do with free trade?  Here’s a question to ponder: Is anyone out there who thinks it is kind of strange that the party that advocates most vociferously for free trade and strict adherence to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights is now promoting a presumptive-nominee who advocates none-of-the-above?

The Republican nominee is an advocate of trade policies that are the exact opposite of free trade. Just a few hours ago (as I construct this essay) he read the seven parts of his trade policy from a teleprompter on CNN. He called it “smart trade.”

Anyone who has taken even a single college level course in macroeconomics knows that “smart trade” is a euphemism for “dumb trade.”  Smart trade works really, really well for business owners and oligarchs in the countries who practice it, while it degrades the wages and purchasing power of the vast majority of citizens who don’t own businesses.

It’s important for ordinary people to understand that during this election a fox is running for president of the hen house. We are the hens; the fox is the Donald. He is, he says, a billionaire who promised today in his carefully prepared policy-paper to renege on a number of trade agreements, which have enabled Americans over the last several years to buy inexpensive products built in third-world countries where wages are low.

What Trump plans to do (according to the transcript of his speech) is make it possible for his American billionaire pals to make more money by closing our borders to less-expensive products now being sold to us by overseas competitors. He seems to have forgotten one thing: we don’t have the labor force to make all the replacement products he intends to produce here.

It’s why he is building the wall. Yes it’s counter-intuitive. Readers who don’t understand should now squint their eyes and think really, really hard, until they get it. Trump hasn’t forgotten anything. He intends to use the wall to control the flow of South American labor — lots of it — into and out of the United States. The wall will enable him to keep the flow from getting out of hand; out of his control.

The wall will enable Trump to turn the flow of cheap labor on or off like a water-faucet to keep wages down while preventing our streets from being clogged with undocumented beggars who might otherwise end up stranded with no way home that doesn’t carry the risk of arrest.

Every worker who enters through the wall will have their picture taken and their fingerprints recorded with smart-phone-like ID apps. A swab under the tongue with a sterile Q-tip, and a DNA profile will complete the entry process. The word “undocumented” will disappear from our lexicon.

Trump is counting on what he believes in his heart is a truth about America. Most Americans are uninformed and easily manipulated, he believes. He actually said that Republican voters were stupid a few years back, when he wasn’t running for president.

If Trump tells voters that free trade is taking their jobs — if he tells this lie over and over — he knows that a lot of people might believe it; he might actually win the election. His family immigrated from Germany, where Adolf Hitler perfected the Big Lie technique to seize power. Hitler’s delusional thinking led to Germany’s destruction. Tens-of-millions of people in dozens of countries lost their lives.

It’s never good to be led by delusional liars, no matter how well-intentioned they insist they might be. It’s even worse to believe lies, especially lies that are used to manipulate people by playing on their fear of people who aren’t “us.”

The current trade agreements work very well for the United States, even when other countries cheat to make their products and currencies cheaper, because we can buy things for less. Under Trump’s policies, which he explained today, the cost of products is going to go up; American billionaires are going to become much more powerful than they currently are, because they are going to be better able to direct purchasers to their own (more expensive) products.

Average workers are going to get nothing except a lot of propaganda designed to make them feel better about a bad situation. (That’s where people like Rush Limbaugh come in — they agitate the hens to desperation when the fox is away; once he’s back, when he’s stalking the hen house for a meal, they help create a climate of optimism.)

The chorus of optimism could get loud, because all media outlets are led by people who have a lot in common with the Donald. Money and power make them happy; happiness can be contagious; especially for clucking hens, who have no clue how dangerous a fox can be. Most hens never see the fox that eats them.

Free trade works, both in theory and practice. It’s the first thing college economics courses teach. A typical course goes to great lengths to prove it to any student who is skeptical.

Free trade works even better when the other side cheats to “game” the system. That’s the beauty of it. We actually do better as a country, when competitors in other countries do the stupid and dishonest things they sometimes do to secure advantages for their elites, while they throw their working-poor under the bus. Our side gets to buy a huge array of inexpensive goods we couldn’t possibly produce on our own with our relatively small working population. Math, experience, and common sense prove it’s true.

Trump is advocating “smart trade” which is just another name for a system of tariffs and taxes, which work for individuals who own businesses in the countries where these tactics are used. They don’t work for average people, who must buy the more expensive products that these business-owners will offer under the protections of tariffs and rigged tax policies.

I hope people are smart enough to figure it out. The British are not going to do well in the coming years, and neither will we if we shoot ourselves in both feet like the British just did. Our billionaires will do well, but they always do well (don’t they?) and besides, they don’t live in the world where we live. If they did, we could visit a few of them, which we never will.

The walls that our billionaires live beyond are the very best high-tech-wonders money can buy. While we remain free (sort of), we should make a few tax-policy adjustments. Otherwise we will continue our drift into a world that is beginning to resemble ancient Rome.

It didn’t end well for Rome; it didn’t end well for anyone. Rome was a slave state, like the United States. It provided its common people just enough “bread and circuses” to prevent riots. The common people came to hate their country so much, they refused to defend it. Unwashed barbarians walked into Rome one day, and the world changed.

It took a thousand years to recover from that classical melt-down. The United States (and other industrial countries) have already exhausted Earth’s resources to the point that a quick recovery from a tsunami of military defeats that always follow economic collapse might not be possible; it might take thousands of years to get back to where we once were, if ever.

There is no such thing as a bad trade deal when those deals lead to trust, cooperation, and goodwill among the nations; when they improve the lives of hundreds of millions of suffering people; when they lead toward peace and away from war; when they bring love between peoples and turn aside the destructive burdens of hate.

Billy Lee Juniur

AFTER INDIANA: THE ELECTION SO FAR

As of May 4, 2016, 28 states have held popular-vote primaries; nine states and one territory have conducted caucus contests, where both parties participated. Two states held mixed elections, where one party conducted a popular vote; the other a caucus. Thus far, the Democrats have participated in 12 caucus contests; the Republicans, 10. 

To summarize: A total of 39 states and one territory have completed their 2016 primary process.

After the Indiana primary, the popular vote totals in the 28 voting primaries are:

Clinton    12,242,884       14 wins / 7 seconds

Trump       10,329,397           6 wins / 11 seconds

Sanders       8,955,271          6 wins / 6 seconds          

Cruz            6,673,520          1 win / 4 seconds

Kasich         3,649,845          1 win / 0 seconds

Rubio           3,168,147          0 wins / 0 seconds

Caucus state elections work differently than simple popular vote elections, which makes comparing the performance of GOP vs. Democrats in caucus states a little like comparing apples to oranges; the comparisons are not very useful and can be misleading.

For what it’s worth, Bernie Sanders has won 9 Democratic caucus states; Hillary Clinton, 3.  On the GOP side, Ted Cruz has won 6 caucus states; Donald Trump, 3; Marco Rubio, 1.


John Kasich
As I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith, deeper faith, that the Lord will show me the way forward and fulfill the purpose of my life. John Kasich, May 4, 2016

After the Indiana primary yesterday, Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out of the race to make Donald Trump the lone candidate for the GOP nomination. Barring an unusual event, Trump will be the GOP candidate in November. He said today that he will pick a Washington insider with close ties to Congress for VP; he says he wants to be able to move legislation through Congress.

Hillary Clinton has not said who she will choose for VP. It is known that she likes Elizabeth Warren, who our Editorial Board has advocated for and endorsed.

Is Trump going to be president of the United States in January? The results so far say no, because Hillary Clinton has demonstrated that she can outperform Trump with those sectors of the electorate essential to victory in past elections.

Some people on the left hope that Bernie Sanders will overtake Clinton and become the nominee, but his numbers show that the electorate is not ready to elect a socialist over a business leader; he can’t win a general election against Donald Trump, not in the United States.

This liability is one reason why 522 of the 561 party-appointed delegates support Clinton. Another, perhaps more important reason, is that Bernie Sanders is a junior senator from a small state (Vermont) who didn’t join the Democratic Party until 2015; he was an independent in Congress, though he tended to vote with Democrats on most issues.

Some party leaders believe he joined the Party for the simple reason that he wanted to run for president; it may have been more personal ambition than love of Party that motivated him. Who knows? He may decide to run as a third party candidate to help Trump defeat Hillary, if he gets angry enough. Then again, he might think he can win a three-way race against the two of them. Stranger things have happened in politics.


Donald and wife Ivana Trump
Donald Trump married Melania Knaus of communist Yugoslavia, now called Slovenia, in 2005. They have one son. Trump has two previous marriages; one with Marla Maples of Dalton, Georgia, who he married after fathering a child out of wedlock; his first wife was Ivana Zelnickova of Communist Czechoslovakia. the marriage lasted 15 years; she bore him three children.

Anyway, Donald Trump is an extremely attractive candidate for an electorate that worships celebrity. He is like the poison apple in the garden of Eden. Many Americans—like Eve—may be unable to stop themselves from taking their first bite. As the story in Genesis reveals, that first bite can start a cascade of events, which could ruin America.

Billionaires, like the Bush family, already have too much influence; worse, they live in a bubble, which renders their decision-making into a game by blind-fools. The Bush family, for sure, loves America, but they nearly destroyed it; they certainly unraveled the Middle East and precipitated the financial collapse of 2008.

Trump is surrounded by yes-people; let’s admit the obvious; he doesn’t tolerate dissenting voices very well. When Trump starts making foolish decisions—as he most certainly will—he will have to suppress dissent to carry his asinine visions to fruition. It won’t be a good time for people who think for themselves; it won’t be a good time for diversity. Donald Trump strongly advocates the use of harsh techniques against enemies. Should he turn his contempt on free-speaking Americans who oppose him, we could be in for a rough ride.

If history serves as a reliable guide, one component of the electorate Donald Trump can count on will be the evangelicals. Since they became an organized voting block in the 1970s, right-wing evangelical voters seem to have voted against self-identified Christian candidates more times than not. They opposed Jimmy Carter; they united against Barack Obama; and they are fighting against Hillary Clinton, who stood by her husband after he betrayed her; she continued to love him—something Jesus admonished Christians to do.


Jerry Falwell Jr.
Jerry Falwell Jr. is leading the evangelical movement to elect Donald Trump. He is president of Liberty University and the son of the late Jerry Falwell Sr.

Some evangelical voters tend to be legalists; many care nothing about love, forgiveness, charity, or non-violence. They pay lip-service to those qualities, but only when it serves their legalistic views; some could care less. And they will be voting for Trump in droves. Trump says he is honored by the evangelical support he is getting.

From where I’m sitting, Donald Trump seems to represent the New Confederacy. Some of his supporters who I’ve met paste Confederate flags on the back of their trucks and display Old Dixie in their living rooms. I can foresee a time under a Trump presidency (I would say it’s already started) when Americans aren’t going to see black faces on television anymore. We won’t be watching street demonstrations or riots or anything else that might threaten the social fabric on television, either. The technology of suppression is simply too advanced. Trump won’t hesitate to use it.

For people who aren’t directly involved; who watch television and live inside their own bubbles of safety, the world is going to seem like a pretty good place, at first, under a Trump presidency. The droning insects of right-wing media will stop flapping their angry wings; optimism will be projected from every billionaire-controlled media outlet; sighs of relief will be heard throughout the land; and once again the exhilarating drums of war will beat hypnotically as we take on the stragglers around the world who refuse to follow our vision; who refuse to dance in lock-step to our new tune.

It will be an exciting time to be alive, especially for those billionaires who own defense-industry businesses; for those who have a talent for building walls; for those who enjoy controlling and manipulating large groups of (sometimes non-cooperative) people. But will anyone permit me to interrupt this wonderful dream for a reality check?

Bad things happened under similar presidents, like Reagan and the Bushes. Reagan entrenched the power of billionaire families by changing the tax codes; he allowed the wealthy to earn unlimited incomes for the first time; the middle class hasn’t had a raise in pay since, because the wealthy keep the excess profits for themselves.

The wealthy have no tax write-off advantages or other financial incentives to encourage them to invest in their workers; in fact, it’s the opposite. Since the rich are no longer taxed at 92% on the unreasonable part of their unreasonably high incomes, they set aside their windfalls for their own families instead of upgrading their company infrastructures and raising the standard of living for their work-forces; neither do they pay the taxes that would solve so many of our internal problems—like the deterioration of our roads and bridges, our power grids, and the quality of education.

The Bush family took us into wars, which history shows were completely avoidable. The First Gulf War was a living nightmare, in case anyone has forgot. Remember the oil-well fires? They were terrifying. Remember our troops donning gas masks and hazmat suits during the Second Gulf War?

The wealthy refused to pay for these insane escapades, which is why our country can’t shake off its huge debt. We got into these predicaments, because our wealthy folks seem to be out of touch, arrogant, and financially tied to companies who do business with the military. It’s pretty simple, when anyone takes the time to think about it.

Donald Trump has devoted his life to building safe spaces where the wealthy can live large, play hard, gamble, and entertain their friends; nothing is so terribly wrong or unusual about that. But he lives in a part of America that 99.9% of Americans know little or nothing about. He isn’t one of us. He never will be.


Hillary Clinton 6
Hillary Clinton is arguably the most qualified candidate to make the run for president, ever. A successful attorney, she married “Bill” who became Governor of Arkansas and a two-term president; she served two terms in the United States Senate for the state of New York. President Obama appointed her to lead the State Department as his Secretary of State.

We are a freedom loving people who can take care of ourselves. We don’t need billionaire baby-sitters to tell us where to sit and when to use the bathroom. We can fix our country by ourselves, thank you, and we have Mama Clinton to help us do it. She is one of us. She was raised poor and will never be a billionaire.

A billion is one-thousand millions, for anyone not good at math. It is a ridiculous amount of money. Were it a felony to possess a billion dollars, many of the problems caused by greed in this world would disappear over-night. Think about it.

I’m praying that the Good Lord will keep Hillary Clinton safe. I pray for all the candidates; that they and their families will be protected from all harm. It is a courageous act to run for president. Every single candidate has been threatened at one time or another.

Most qualified people won’t run for president. It’s good that a few capable people dare to step up to lead the fight for freedom and fairness. Hillary Clinton is one of those heroic people. She isn’t just another pretty face.

Billy Lee 

DEGENERACY

In 1949, almost a year after I was born, the latest edition of the 30 volume Encyclopedia Americana hit the streets of America. The collection of big books was the first multi-volume encyclopedia sold in the United States, starting way back in 1829.  Each year it grew in size, sometimes adding new volumes to cover more subjects. By 1949, it was truly comprehensive.

I own a complete set of the 1949 edition, which my wife’s dad passed on to me after his death a few years ago. By all accounts, the volumes were a sensation when first published. Not only were they successfully sold door to door throughout the United States, but libraries everywhere stocked them on their shelves for scholars and the public alike to explore and absorb.

1949 was a few short years after the end of World War II.  Colleges overflowed with legions of returning GIs who studied for free courtesy of the recently passed GI BillThe Encyclopedia Americana became a beacon of knowledge and enlightenment for hundreds of thousands of optimistic Americans who were ramping up their skills to conquer the ignorance and backwardness of a world they knew all too well from their recent exposure to the wars overseas.

After perusing these volumes during the past few years, I have been struck by how much we knew in 1949, and by how much we thought we knew but didn’t.  I was dumbfounded by racist patterns of thinking, which seemed to permeate the collection. It came as a complete surprise. Modern people could be excused for thinking that Hitler himself wrote some of the articles, I thought to myself.

People have said that racism is the original sin of America; that we have never come to terms with the bad things we did (and continue to do), because some of our European forefathers — scientists even — believed that Africans were medically degenerate. 

Our country enslaved blacks because ostensibly responsible people told our ancestors that Negroes were animals, like lions or tigers. Of course it was OK to work them like pack-animals, some thought. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.  Besides, slavery was in the Bible.

After slavery ended, whites continued to segregate the races. And they  still do.

Look at Florida if you don’t believe it. In the State of Florida, segregation is a way of life. Americans, some among us, seem to be oblivious to the evil of our actions and unaware of the demonic origin of many of our ideas about what is true and what is right.

We tend to repeat lies that hurt whole classes of people; lies that help no one but drive to despair and even suicide folks like South American immigrants, gays and, yes, Middle Eastern refugees who struggle to get by in a society that seems to value only excellence and perfection, money and power, symmetry and form, orthodoxy and moral rectitude.

We look down on, shun, and isolate authentic human beings who typically possess attributes we don’t admire like humility, lowliness, incompetence, average intelligence, awkward manners, social inadequacy, clumsiness, unreliable physical ability, psychological disabilities, ugliness, poor hygiene, ravaged skin, lack of hair, too much hair, unpleasant smells, thinness, fatness, and on and on.

We condemn millions to long prison terms who have done nothing more than act like fools; who have made mistakes, which with a little maturity and wisdom gained in the fresh air of freedom they might not ever make again.

Many readers can probably think of many undesirable attributes of human beings they find repulsive and would repress with long prison terms if only they could. It’s a desire best left unfulfilled.

Gated Arizona Community
Most are not permitted beyond these gates. They aren’t worthy.

Our inability to accept and live next to people who have less money, less education, different physical traits; who might be less attractive and less polished; who may not understand the world as we do; who are different in some way we find compelling is destroying our humanity; our ability to love and accept others.

Think about it.

We wreck any chance for happiness; any sense of well-being for tens of millions of ordinary people — probably hundreds of millions — who, it turns out, have very few advantages in this life of dog-eat-dog competition; it’s a fight that some lack the temperament to endure. Bigotry is demoralizing for those bullied by it; it is diminishing our country and our world.

We seem unable to even look at people with physical disabilities and handicaps; the blind; the deaf; the burned; the paraplegic; the paralyzed, the mentally incapacitated, the depressed, the hyperactive and the socially fearful.

Many Americans are hiding themselves behind gates, guard shacks, and walls to avoid facing the simple truth that people are diverse; God demands that we accept and respect everyone, because each person — even those who are unattractive and ungrateful in our own morally-damaged sight — are made from the stuff of God Himself and are in the reality we shun truly beautiful and deserving of respect and deference.

Jesus said that God loves the wicked. He loves people who are weak and powerless and undesirable. How can we do less?

Well… one reason is that we are degenerate, everyone of us, whether we are able to see the ugly truth or not. The most admirable person falls short of God’s glory.

Who believes it’s true?

Anyway, I thought that these two entries from the 1949 Encyclopedia Americana, reprinted below in their brutal original version, might help open the eyes of folks who are blind to the cesspool of ideas which have corrupted the spirits of our country; which have driven some people to avoid, ostracize, exclude, and kill people they think are unworthy to enjoy the advantages and privileges they demand for themselves.

These tombs of hate from our past sat on bookshelves and in libraries where they were read for many decades after their publication. Hatred poured forth not only from encyclopedias like the Americana, but from all forms of media and public discourse, it turns out.

The nasty rhetoric of race, exclusion, and the exaggerated elevation of our elites into a pantheon of god-like celebrities has poisoned our minds and our souls; it continues to poison our churches and schools; the military and our public institutions. It’s painfully evident in the rabid venom-spewing aspirants we find in our politics today who I won’t name.

Why demean a good essay by recognizing deplorable people? The president is a public celebrity who rose to power on an ocean tide of hatred. I guess it does no harm to call him out. 

People claim they mean well and are doing God’s will, but golly-gee, someone has to say it (it might as well be me): the movement to transfer children from public schools into homeschooling; the stampede to place civilians armed with concealed weapons into churches and schools; the attempts to scare women out of exercising their constitutionally protected freedom to make healthcare choices involving their bodies; fire bombing healthcare clinics that help the poor; intimidating writers like myself who publish views unpopular with morons — all are symptomatic of a country that has become less free, more fascist, less brave — certainly less accepting, less tolerant, less nurturing, and less forgiving.

America is a mean-spirited place for many people. Even upscale people in high places are afraid to speak their minds plainly out of fear for the faceless billionaires who pull their strings and determine their futures. Look at all the safe-talk on television. Some people call it political correctness.  What does that term mean?

It means people’s careers get ruined if they speak about certain subjects in a frank and unconventional way. When was the last time you heard a celebrity advocate for something as innocuous as a progressive income tax?  Shorter prison sentences?  Maximum incomes?  Estate size limits?  Limits on inherited wealth? 

What accelerates and widens inequality can’t be right.

Our celebrities are held in-check by tight leashes. And it isn’t the public holding the leashes. To remain in the spotlight, celebrities must wear muzzles. Does anyone think they are going to complain? 

Try to remember the names of celebrities who said something controversial and were never heard from again. You might remember their faces, maybe even some of the shows they were on. Few remember their names, more likely than not. They dropped off the face of the earth. They disappeared. The list is long, it really is.

I write about forbidden subjects all the time, but I’m not a celebrity. No one controls me, not since I resigned my memberships in certain organizations and work for free. But the public doesn’t read my blog. And, yes, some subjects are off-limits even for writers like me who want to believe they are free. 

I don’t write about Israel or North Korea or drug cartels; I don’t bad-mouth artists; I don’t condemn creative people, because people with unusual points of view who have talent are fragile and easily frightened to silence; money and fame drive people into isolation bubbles. I don’t publish articles about my sexuality. I tried once; it didn’t turn out well.

Sometimes I break my own rules, it’s true. But let’s get back on message.

I don’t feel like I’m overstating. Below are two examples of a vicious way of thinking, which was mainstream in the decades following 1949. Today in 2015 some folks continue to embrace crazy reasoning.  Who will exorcise the evil winds that freeze-dry hearts to raging cold?

Tolerance isn’t enough. It’s uncommitted and indifferent. 

Embracing outcasts in love is the way. 

It’s not possible to embrace the marginalized in love when advantaged people segregate themselves by income, class, and race.  No one can help when they push aside those who don’t think like them or look like them or act like them. No one who believes that diversity is a plague to be avoided can help desperados who need a hand up. 

Think about it.  

Who can save their children and grand-children when they lack the courage to confront the billionaires who built the gilded cell-block we call America? Billionaires built prison-America to protect themselves from us.

Here’s the problem. Most folks don’t know the names of the billionaires who rule them. Who can reason with the wealthy? Who can find them?

The truth is, they find us, usually when they need someone like a soldier to fight to protect their property or a worker who will add value to their estates by performing tasks for low wages.

The problem is: they don’t love us. Otherwise they would live in the world where we live, but they don’t. Then again, they might allow us to live in their world, where the water in their pools is blue and clean and the sun is warm. But they won’t do that either.

Maybe someday. Someday maybe if they change, they will. They will unlock the gates. They will throw away the keys. They will let us in.

On that day we will become one people, one nation, indivisible, under God.

While we wait, we change ourselves. We learn to live unafraid. We learn to share our advantages. We teach ourselves to love the unloved. 

What else is there? 

Billy Lee


[The following are excerpts from the 1949 edition of The Encyclopedia AmericanaBilly Lee does not endorse any of it. The Editorial Board.]

Degeneracy, pic of Encyclopedia Americana


DEGENERACY.  Unfavorable environment is now generally recognized as the chief cause of the failure of individuals to attain the physical, mental, and moral norm of the race. In certain individuals, however, a defective constitution may predispose them toward an inadequate development of mental, and especially moral, qualities. Such individuals are known as degenerates. 

In many such cases the basis of degeneracy is a lesion of the nervous system or of the sense organs. Congenital blindness and deafness can result in idiocy unless early measures are taken. However, the fundamental defects may be obscure and inaccessible to the pathological anatomist of the present day.  The neuro-sensory defects are often, but not always, accompanied by malformations of a more conspicuous character, known as stigmata. 

These include various distortions of the external ear, facial asymmetry, very early or very late closure of the cranial sutures, polydactylism and other digital anomalies and various signs of imperfect or abnormal development.  Individual stigmata may be present in a person of normal mental and moral make-up, but the concurrence of a considerable number of stigmata is a fairly good sign of degeneracy.

The forms assumed by degeneracy are very various. The mental defect varies from utter idiocy, where the patient is unable to protect himself from immediate physical danger, through imbecility, where he is still incapable of carrying out the daily processes of dressing and undressing, washing, etc., to the various grades of feeble-mindedness, in which he is able to satisfy all his immediate personal needs, but cannot earn an independent livelihood nor associate with his fellows on equal terms.

The causes of degeneracy are manifold.  The racial poisons of alcohol, drugs and venereal diseases are responsible for a large proportion of the cases, though in many cases alcoholism and drug habits may be symptoms rather than causes of degeneracy. Any factor which enfeebles the mother — poverty, illness or the like — may injure the mental and moral constitution of the child as well as its physical constitution.  However, the most important cause of degeneracy is in all probability the inherent inferiority of the stock.

That certain forms of degeneracy exhibit a pedigree conforming to the Mendelian law is now an established fact.  This hereditary quality of degeneracy, together with the fact that degenerates are often likely to have many children, owing to their immorality, makes the problem of degeneracy a most serious one. 

The so-called Jukes family cost the taxpayers of New York State millions of dollars in the course of the 19th century.  For this reason many States have enacted laws making it legal in certain cases to perform on degenerates operations designed to prevent their propagating their kind. 

See ALCOHOLISM; CRIMINOLOGY; DEGENERATION; EUGENICS; FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS; IDIOCY; INSANITY; PAUPERISM.

Bibliography. — Gillin, J.L., Poverty and Delinquency (New York 1926) ; Slawson, J., Delinquent Boy (Boston 1926) ; Glueck, S. S. and E., Five Hundred Delinquent Women (New York 1934) ; Chassell, C. R., Relation Between Morality and Intellect (New York 1935) ; Lunden, W. A., Juvenile Delinquency (Pittsburg 1936) ; Burt, C. L., Subnormal Mind (New York 1937) ; Karpman, B., Case Studies in the Psychopathology of Crime (Washington 1944).


DEGENERATION a work of Max Nordau (1895), which aimed at a scientific criticism of those degenerates not upon the acknowledged lists of the criminal classes.  Degenerates, asserted Nordau, are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, and pronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists. 

These, however, manifest the same mental characteristics, and for the most part the same somatic features, as the members of the above-mentioned anthropological family, who satisfy their unhealthy impulses with the knife of the assassin or the bomb of the dynamiter, instead of with pen and pencil…. 

Now I have undertaken the work of investigating the tendencies of the fashions in art and literature; of proving that they have their source in the degeneracy of their authors, and that the enthusiasm of their admirers is for manifestations of more or less pronounced moral insanity and dementia.


One word best describes my reaction to the above entries from the 1949 Encyclopedia Americana: Yikes! 

Billy Lee

LOSING MY RELIGION

The entertainment industry learned a long time ago that the way to appeal to the most people is to embrace ambiguity.

Ambiguity permits each consumer to put their own meaning on the art they buy; on music, paintings, theater, books, movies, shows, personalities, and stars.

Ambiguity, when combined with strictly enforced copyright laws — like those of the United States — can help establish a large paying audience, huge money, and wide-spread exposure and influence.


No facial expression is more ambiguous or popular than that of Mickey Mouse. It is vigorously protected by copy-right law.

People like to feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. Ambiguity promotes mass participation in cultural processes. This mass participation can alleviate the ennui of alienation for many people.


Elvis presley sweatyElvis Presley created mass hysteria in the USA. Some religious people thought his first name was a scrambled version of the word, Evils.
Elvis Presley created mass hysteria in the USA. Some religious people thought his first name was a scrambled version of the word, Evils.

Elvis Presley sang, you ain’t nothing but a hound dogWhat did he mean by it? No one knows, and everyone knows.

The same is true with Bob Dylan who sang, Hey Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me. In the jingle-jangle morning I’ll come following you.  No one knows what he was singing about. Yet everyone can tell you what he meant.

The ambiguity of these two artists — one from the nineteen-fifties, one from the nineteen-sixties — permitted both to accumulate the largest fan bases ever, until the Beatles.


beatles black and white
John Lennon once said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

The Beatles established an ambiguous sexual identity by wearing their hair long — unusual at the time. They deluged their fans with ambiguous lyrics such as, yeah, you’ve got that something, I think you’ll understand, When I’ll say that something, I wanna hold your hand and hey Jude, don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better.  No one knows for sure what they meant, but everyone knows what those lyrics meant to themselves when they first heard them.


jesus-wearing-the-thorn-of-crowns
Robert Powell, actor, Jesus of Nazareth, 1977.

Jesus presents ambiguities about himself which have attracted the largest following of worshippers in world history. The most obvious ambiguity is the concept of the Trinity.  Is Jesus God, or not?  No one knows. Everyone knows.


trinity light show
The Trinity is the central ambiguity of Christianity. God is somehow a combination of person, spirit, and creator.

The concept of the Trinity presents the central ambiguity of Christianity. It has drawn the attention of a spiritually hungry world for two thousand years. It confounds us with a dilemma of logic and meaning which to this day fuels the faith-wars of Christians who, in their quest for certainty, have segregated themselves into over 40,000 denominations.

Every attempt to define the Trinity, to remove its ambiguity and establish certainty, seems to result in a new denomination, a new religion.


white dove with olive branch
The Holy Spirit is sometimes portrayed as a white dove. The olive branch recalls the dove who gave Noah the evidence that the great flood (of judgment) was over.

Of course, many other ambiguities in the Bible have spawned controversies.  Abortion isn’t mentioned in the Bible — and homosexuality is barely mentioned — yet both have divided countless churches.  Gifts of the Holy Spirit — which are discussed at length in the Bible and should be non-controversial to believers — have divided churches. Some denominations discount gifts altogether, in contradiction to Scripture.

In the 21st century, those Christians who detest ambiguity and worship certainty war with one another in a kind of theater of the absurd. 40,000 denominations?

Really?

Instead of embracing a small amount of ambiguity to unify Christians, a few leaders advocate from time to time certainties of thought and Bible interpretation which divide the faithful. Unity is the last thing these modern Christians seem to want. They lust for certainty.


particle debris in cylcotron certainty uncertainty
Certainty is not foundational, according to quantum physics.

Certainty is not biblical, it’s not Christian, it’s not even Jesus. Jesus didn’t stone the woman caught having sex with her married boyfriend, though the logic of the law demanded it. He reasoned with her, encouraged her, and forgave her. He wasn’t logical. He wasn’t dogmatic. He admonished the woman and gave her hope. He acted with all the stupidity and uncertainty of true love, based on a relationship with a messy human being who would never be certain of anything.

The most unambiguous statement Jesus made was this: Here I am!  I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. 

No one knows for sure what Jesus was talking about when he made this statement. Yet everyone seems to know for sure what he meant. As unambiguous as the statement is, it can’t be literally true today.

No modern person has ever opened their front door and found Jesus standing on the front porch. Not one. Jesus’s meaning is uncertain. To different people, his words mean different things.

For Jesus, his statement had a meaning known to him, but it seems reasonable that his meaning might have nuances depending on the specific person he was talking to. And Jesus was talking to a lot of people, it turned out.


Praying-Defnding-the-Christian-faith-e1349305115650 faith
The amount of faith required to access Heaven is small, but uncertain.

The Bible plainly says that we are saved by faith. But no one has perfect faith.

So how much faith does it take to get into Heaven?

Jesus said the amount of faith required to do anything was on the order of a grain of mustard seed, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. How many people have this much faith? Not very many, it turns out. It’s not possible for us to be certain about the quantity of faith required to enter heaven. The amount is small, but uncertain.

In their demand for certainty, many churches fight over doctrine. They fight, because they are populated by people. If history is a guide, we can say with certainty that people love to fight.

One of the amazing things Jesus said was this: God is kind to the wicked and the ungrateful.  As someone who has been wicked and ungrateful pretty much everyday of my life (and not proud of it), I love pondering those words. They give me assurance, not certainty, that God will be more gentle with me than I deserve.


galleon boat depart
God protects the boat and the people it leaves behind in the harbor.

Recently, my church friends, God love them, voted to leave our mainstream denomination to join a conservative denomination of the South, born in the Confederacy of the civil war. People unwilling to get on the boat for unchartered waters face the danger of becoming spiritually adrift. They face an uncertainty that might result in the loss of their religion.

I am one of those who have to face the unpleasant decision to get on that boat or face the dangers of remaining on shore. It’s not a good choice for me. My health has suffered under the stress of a change in my old age I didn’t see coming. The good part is this: people who love Jesus are in the departing boat and on the shore. And Jesus is protecting both the boat and the land it leaves behind.


communion
Sharing a meal with Jesus, and being reassured by him that everything will be set right someday, is a central hope of most Christians.

The comfort Christians enjoy is Jesus, himself, in their homes, eating with them and sharing their life. That’s it. Jesus is all there is for those of us who suffer in this life, and he’s enough. Inside our private spaces, Jesus reasons with us, encourages us, forgives us, admonishes us, and gives us hope. He helps us endure and embrace the will of God, which is almost never our own.

Billy Lee

Postscript: On July 1, 2015 Billy Lee resigned his church and aligned himself with a non-denominational congregation.  The Editorial Board.

TOP TWEETS

twitter 1Last month we published tweets from my first thirty days on Twitter. This month, we publish a sampling of my best tweets ever, gleaned from the three years I tweeted regularly. A lot of thought went into each tweet when it was composed, and more thought has gone into selecting the “finalists” which made it into this new collection.  I hope readers find them entertaining and thought provoking. 

I’ve come to regret tweeting some of my original tweets, which, in retrospect, seemed to me too emotional and extreme. My son once told me my tweets were dumb. After reviewing all of them, it’s clear he was right about at least some of them. I no longer tweet regularly on Twitter. 

Anyway, get ready for a controversial ride. These tweets are hot.  If you disagree or have doubts or if you’re simply curious, click on the many embedded links to learn more.  

Note: links have been added to some of the original tweets to provide readers with background and context. A few tweets have been edited for clarity. 


If acorns tasted better, there’d be no need for farming.

The squirrels in our neighborhood have opposable thumbs & sometimes stand upright.

An airline CEO told a friend that 24 Al-Qaeda crews were active on 911.  I know, sounds crazy.

Where’d daddy go? He died, momma.  When’d he die?  Two months ago, momma.  Oh, did I kill him?  Alzheimer’s 101 

In the old days cigarette butts were everywhere.  Now you rarely see one.

Living forever, or just one day, feels the same.  We live in the present.

Going for a walk.  Hope the packs of wolf-coyote hybrids NatGeo says are out there don’t eat me.

Has it occurred to anyone else that the Restasis lady may, in fact, be an alien?

We have freedom of speech as long as nobody listens.

If USA GNP was divided equally, every family of four would get $200,000 per year.  [($15.2 T/309 M) * 4 ].

Clean coal is only clean before you dig it up and actually touch it.

During the next 25,000 years, containment structures for nuclear weapons will corrode & release plutonium killing all life on earth.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 40 – Son: Dad!  Stop Twitter now!  You sound loopy!  Me: You don’t understand, son.  I’m free.

What we learned during the past 10 years: throwing an election has consequences.

Have waited 50 years to vacation on a Cuban beach.  Still waiting.

Love this animation showing how DNA/RNA works…  http://t.co/rYaG8cau

Michigan has thousands of clear-water lakes.  Fish got there from geese and ducks carrying sticky fish-eggs on their webbed feet.

Solar bottle-bulbs provide free light to folks in dark houses.   http://t.co/1Hk01AA1

Only a nation asleep would allow individuals to accumulate billions of dollars.  Are you kidding me?!?

Permitting the wealthy to go into the prison business presents incredible dangers to our freedoms.

If aliens are the size of grasshoppers, we might not notice an invasion until it’s too late.

Ayn Rand destroyed America.

Nuclear plant meltdowns are almost certain during earthquakes above 8.0.  Since 1900, 100 have occurred, none in the USA.   http://t.co/KUhuFw88

tend to lie about the effectiveness of their drugs.

USA GNP is 7% of its accumulated wealth.  It’s why small changes in GNP don’t affect us much.  http://t.co/PmHlp5xL

Billionaires harm democracies.  You know they do.  Set max. worth at $150 million.  Those who have more must divest.

During slavery, plantation owners were the job creators. They created millions of jobs.

Research seems to show that brains decide seconds before humans are aware they’ve decided… http://t.co/1yngCw7b

The only threat to our freedom greater than billionaires is a government controlled by billionaires.

How differential gears work is hard to grasp.  This video can help. http://t.co/GyR0ht6z

No such thing as trace amounts of plutonium.  It gets passed around in wind & rain forever.  You will never see the speck that kills you.

All drones are piloted by somebody.

I’m old and cold and not very bold; my teeth are inlaid with gold. My chin has a fold; I’m covered with mold; when I go, my nose I must hold.

We don’t need a revolution.  We just need to limit how much people can steal before they have to divest.  No more billionaires.   http://www.theguardian.com/video

Pre-Civil War plantation owners were some of the most effective job-creators in our nation’s history.

Ayn Rand Objectivism is a modern day Divine Right of Kings written to convince the gullible that billionaires have a moral right to rule.

Squirrels have developed agriculture.  They plant trees and store walnuts which they eat out-of-season.

Favorite Spartacus video clip…  http://t.co/IsedM4xD

Copyrights that last years after an author’s death are un-American.  People get money for what they didn’t write?

I love the smell of marijuana in the morning. It smells like freedom.

Capitalism is the plantation system of the old South renamed & repackaged for modern wage earners.

This explanation of ozone is very good…  http://t.co/cwRrYIQo

Chances of being eaten by a mountain lion are 1 in ten million — unless the lion is 100 feet away & hungry.

This notion that somehow people are entitled to unlimited wealth is destroying civilization.  Soon, we’ll be serfs again.

Big Tobacco — when they advertised in the 1950s — talked 70% of men into smoking. We can be brainwashed. https://watch?v=sxrCjmqRTz0

Advocates of nuclear energy are like the people of Easter Island who destroyed their civilization for a few more hours of campfire.

America has a permanent over-class. Until we deal with it, we are serfs.

Atheists would rob me of any hope against death.

Incandescent bulbs — now banned — are hot.  We need them in winter.

40% of electricity bill is wasted charging AC/DC electronic devices.  This fix is cool.  http://t.co/8gWRO1l6

Plutonium escaped at Fukushima.  How dangerous is it?   http://uploads/1997/07/no-3.pdf

At the heart of every fortune lies a dark secret.

The wealthy have divested the middle-class & limited our incomes.  It’s time to turn the tables.

USA politics consists of arguing about how aggressive the financial shake-down of the middle-class should be.

It’s the redistribution of wealth to a permanent over-class that we’re fighting against. #occupywallstreet

Fantasy-nightmare vision of Ayn Rand was a poison apple.  It ushered in a facist USA, where billionaires now rule us.  #ows

Gated communities are another form of segregation.

Homework in elementary school demoralizes students, short circuits passive processing, dampens creativity & makes kids dumb.

RT @pdjmoo: THE LIONESS AND THE CALF: Lovely Watch.  A short documentary that will open your eyes. –  http://t.co/S8okiyJ2

Baby Boomers are the Greatest Generation. They ended racial segregation & the Vietnam War.  They started the high-tech revolution.

Rage and old age make a sage.

If humans were the size of squirrels and lived in people’s yards, could they survive?

RT @nytimesscience: Bursts of Fission Detected at Fukushima Reactor in Japan http://t.co/lZsThJNT

JFK fired the CIA Director who later sat on the Warren Commission.

It’s easier to control un-informed people.  Education will never be cool while billionaires rule.

Nice one-minute explanation of GPS & effects of special & general relativity
http://t.co/T1z6gUm4

Twenty-three million government workers in the USA.  No way private sector can provide full employment.  See pg 30.  http://t.co/2Btdfbjs

Tea Party types don’t get that government is all that stands between them & tyranny by billionaires.  Divest billionaires.  #ows

Billionaires build their power by corrupting our representative government.  Divest them.  #ows

Well, Gitmo prison is going strong & we’re killing Americans with drones.  What good is Obama besides not being a Republican?  Just asking.

That country singer who used to crow, wanna watch some football?  & called Obama Hitler was on CMA tonight.  He got a standing ovation.

Billionaires seduce consumers into supporting “free markets” which they rule as personal fiefdoms. #ows

Billionaires used the tax cuts we gave them to solidify their vice-grip on our “democratic” institutions. #ows

Cults of personality never work out well.  #Paterno

MSNBC reporting that the District Attorney in the #Paterno sex crime scandal went missing in 2005.

How many of those who laughed at Howard Hughes for using Kleenex boxes as shoes ever tried it themselves?

USA psycho-terror:  Bahgram, Gitmo, SuperMax, rampant solitary.  Sick minds created these nightmares.

Many billionaires are tied to drugs (legal/illegal) & the military.

Earth is broadcasting itself on all EM frequencies.  If aliens are out there they will find us.

After Vietnam, anti-war activists were black-listed from top jobs.  The consequences for the USA have been devastating.

If billionaires won’t agree to tax fairness, what other reasonable requests will they crush?

TWITTER-LOG: Day 117 – been following some celebs like Vonnegut & Von Braun.  Even tweeted them.  Wife just informed me, they’re both dead.

Portraying oppressor as victim is as old as human tyranny. #ows #OccupyEarth

Quantum physicists & priests approach absurdity in different ways: one through reason; one through faith.

Am passing by hundreds of hyperactive squirrels on my walks.  Thus far, none have mindlessly attacked me.

Successful revolutions never have popular support until they’re won.

Rupert Murdoch of Fox News bought the Wall Street Journal.  It’s Fox propaganda now.  Don’t read it.

You treat us like dirt & live safe behind gates.  The least you could do is pay some taxes. #ows

The Bush tax cuts gave more money to the average millionaire than a lifetime of social security checks.

Cuba has one of the best health care systems in the world.  Our sick can’t go there.

Bell’s theorem is irrelevant if entangled particles are single wave-particle objects (like oscillating bubbles).  http://t.co/qzWRDLqx

Carbon dioxide is heavy, so the little there is stays close to the earth where plants can breath it.

The notion — main-streamed by Ayn Rand — that taxation is theft ruined all that was fair & good about the USA.

If life is distributed over the widest range of temperatures then typical civilizations might be cryogenic & radio-wave sensitive.

The dilemma of the rich is they can only live in one place at a time, operate one transport at a time, make love to one person at a time.

People understand the Universe the way smart goldfish might understand the Earth.

Earth’s neighbors are small with little gravity. We can visit & come back.  We have the perfect spaces to learn.

First thing women did after getting the vote was enact Prohibition — because their husbands drank & beat them.

This could be huge — esp. regarding intelligence & learning.   http://t.co/8OEbNOtd

How did paper planes launched from a small number of boats & dropping unguided munitions sink so many ships at Pearl Harbor?

GOP repealed Michigan unit-pricing.  At check out, we can’t tell if stuff rang up right.  At home, we can’t review what we paid.

No black man has ever led a major world power until Barack Obama.

Kirk Douglas reflects on life in letter to Christopher Hitchens…  http:/?2011/09/kirk-douglas-201109

Billionaires will be passing 30 trillion dollars to their kids in coming decades.

Somewhere in the oceans are a few genius dolphins.  We should find them.

When looking into the eyes of war-dogs returning from Iraq, one can’t help feeling that some have seen too much.

Christopher Hitchens said his biggest fear was — near certain death & in pain — he might cry-out to Christ Jesus to save him.

North Koreans fake-cry better than citizens of any other country.  http://t.co/qg3LFCWz

If private companies could create full employment, they would have to hire 13M unemployed & 23M govt workers: 36M people.

Government should provide free basic-food to anyone who wants it: potatoes, rice, beans, oil, corn.  It would cost almost nothing.

Drew USA flag billowing in the wind. Teacher said: you can’t draw straight lines?  Art career died that day.  In kindergarten.

You never hear about good marriages, because the people in them aren’t talking.

All trees fall down, yet few people have ever seen one fall.

We could put direct-current fuel cells in every neighborhood in the USA for the cost of a few nuclear power plants.

People who make sure they eat at least three balanced meals per day are usually fat.

25 dimensionless constants make our universe work the way it does.

Nothing smells better to me than my own armpits.

If the current Social Security tax rate was applied to all income, it would provide $25,000 per year to every old person.

Genes, like those for intelligence, can be passed between species by viruses.

Didn’t watch GOP debate but am certain it was the stupid-est thing on television tonight.

RT @cracked: 5 Absurd Solutions to Huge Problems (That Actually Worked): http://t.co/RpJpSWYL

Einstein’s statement that God does not play at dice flies in the face of Proverbs 16:33.

Billionaire propaganda station, NBC News, is reporting Romney family origin was in Mexican poverty.  That should work.

The Siberian wilderness in Russia has 35% more land mass than the contiguous USA.

Billionaires destroy democracies.

Assume reality is an [n x n] matrix.  Then the least expensive # of dimensions is when (n^3 / 3) = n^2 .  So n=3.   http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Romney said his speaking fee ($375,000) wasn’t much.  It’s about what the President is paid per year.

RT @QuotesByArtists: There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love. — Christopher Morley

The Romney Flat Tax (15%) works out to a 300% increase on low wagers; 50% decrease on the 1%.  Typical GOP idea.

Obama can sing like Al Green.  Makes me feel happy.  http://t.co/GspEqOEd

Never understood why anyone would put themselves on a boat with thousands of people they don’t know.   http://www.cnn.com/travel/carnival

We don’t know the names of the billionaires who rule us.

Until we get it — that billionaires we don’t know rule us — nothing political will  make sense.  It not about us.  It’s about them.

Insiders who killed Kennedy want us to know he was a monster.

The conspirators sat on the Warren Commission.  They put a Secret Service agent on the grassy knoll.  Oswald was a patsy.

Workers need a Bill of Rights.  Take away employers’ power to fire “at will.”  Due process required.

The public lives inside an information bubble created to entertain, not inform.

Politicians are not the best people to teach us about Jesus.

20% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth.  Kudos, USA.   http://t.co/wWdEmDNv

Ronald Reagan accepted a $2M gift from the Japanese after his final term. Why?  Auto imports?

Iran can get a nuclear bomb anytime by buying one from another country.  What they can’t do is buy hundreds.

Expansion of space means our current vehicle technology — given unlimited fuel & time — can take us no further than 1B light years from Earth.

All cars in Iran run on natural gas.  All cars in Brazil run on sugar cane flex-fuel.  Why?  The oil is running out.

Don’t kid yourself.  If you are worth less than $20 million, you are one of the little people.

Most of USA’s best food is exported to wealthy nations.  We import from poor countries to make up shortfall.

12% of voters who earn less than $25K/ yr have no photo ID.  GOP says they shouldn’t vote.

RT @thequotemaster: Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. -Abraham Lincoln http://t.co/J1mB7Eoa  #quotes

The Bible is written for the wretched.  It gives hope to the powerless, the exploited, the poor, the despised, the unloved.

Billionaires have the USA in a vice-grip. They control the media, courts & Congress.  Everyone works for them.

In case you didn’t notice, Florida is still segregated.  They have gated (segregated) neighborhoods everywhere.

The space between Earth & 1B light/yrs from Earth is expanding faster than our fastest spacecraft can travel.

Many Americans seem oblivious to the huge sums spent on ads to get them to accept the agenda of billionaires.

USA police forces are increasingly being manned by Iraq/Afganistan vets.  Caution: these men are “militarized” and “weaponized.”

When someone says they totally agree with you, odds are they totally don’t.

The Bush family unleashed more hell on Earth than any family in recent memory.  Kuwait, Iraq, Afganistan, 2000 election, 2008 crash; etc.

Anyone still remember when Enron & GOP drove Calif Dem Governor out & put Arnold in?  Enron bankrupt & Calif a mess.  Thanks GOP.

Enron’s Ken Lay sat next to Bush at 2000 Inaugural.  Jack-boots in street, protesters on sidewalks.  Anyone remember?   https://www.youtube.com/

Anyone who can donate $100,000 to a politician is, in all  probability, a crook.

Hunger Games shows a world where the wealthy use government to torment the common people for fun. Sounds like the USA.

USA is run by permanent over-class who inherited money, reputation and power from their parents.  Divest billionaires.  Tax them.

If everyone drove cars with Chevy Volt style power plants, we could dismantle pipelines.

Tea Party “christians” let negative ads manipulate them into nominating a Mormon billionaire.

President Obama’s statement about Jesus this AM… http://t.co/NX2ZYha8

Let’s calm down.  No Court worth its salt is going to overturn health-care.  That would be insane.

All wars are wasteful. When we left Vietnam we left billions in air-conditioners, office furniture, vehicles, buildings, etc.

Fibonacci series in music with astronomy graphics in case you missed it…  http://t.co/JbsSsBuO

Either tax twillionaires 92% like Eisenhower did or divest them.  Otherwise lose the country to a permanent over-class.

Even in the contest between beast & man, the outcome is not certain.  No Country for Old Men.

RT @keepingitraw: Radiation from Fukushima Disaster Found in California Kelp http://t.co/E9qNMokO

Earthlings: your puny brains have created a simplified approximation of reality you call “mathematics.”  Free yourselves.

Revolutions never have popular support until they’re won.

What did Castro do?  He threw the Mafia out of Cuba & set up an egalitarian society.  No wonder billionaires hate him.

The Coal Cartel is right about one thing. They have a lot of coal to sell.  They are wrong about this: coal is not clean.

Can’t we all just stop eating bacon…?   http://t.co/HwOCP3gL

Imagine a 28 yr old black man with a gun on neighborhood-watch picking a fight with your son & killing him.  Manslaughter?

Hannity is reporting a Fox News poll that shows Romney beating Obama 46% to 44%.  Might as well forget about truth telling for a while.

RT @Art_Guy1: FACT: Obama’s tax plan raises his tax rate. Mitt Romney’s plan cuts his own taxes in half.

Churchill: I like pigs.  Dogs look up to you.  Cats look down on you.  Pigs treat you like an equal.

We had a leader of the NY Stock Exchange who made more money in one day than Obama makes in a year.

Rush said Secret Service hooker scandal is Obama’s fault, because he overworks agents & keeps them from their wives.

According to Gallup & Fox polls, the election is over.  Romney will be President.

Are we going to throw out a sitting President to satisfy the lunatics…?  Ted Nugent threatens Obama… http://t.co/TeBX54wE

USA has been war-ing Stone-Age peoples since Vietnam.  It never tires.

Make it a felony to possess more than, say, $150M, in cash, property & assets.  Limit yearly incomes to $15M.

RT @JeffDauler: RT @CassandraYoung: Just remember, kids: every time you make a typo, the errorists win.

Communism, Socialism, Capitalism are utopian fantasies that don’t exist & never will in the real world.  The USA is what it is.

The problem with the USA space program was lethality to employees. At least 82 died during its tenure.  http://List_of_spaceflight-accidents

Obama doesn’t look American.  You know.  Fat.

Most prosecutors in the South don’t bring charges against whites in racial cases due to chance of being disbarred.  Like the Duke rape case.

RT @YourAuntDiane: I like to talk to everyone like they’re dying of a dreadful disease. It makes me a better listener.

One thing to remember about the BP screw-up: there are thousands of wells in the Gulf.  They all leak.

Taxes on the one-percenters are one-third of 1960; one-half of 1980.  https://www.yhoutube.com/watch

Mexicans are beautiful people.  Why can’t we open the border & let folks drive back & forth freely?

If we divested billionaires & divided their wealth equally to every citizen, a family-of-four would get $1,250,000.

The price of two wars & tax cuts for the rich has been $60,000 per family.  Could use the money right now.

Does anyone find this explanation of consciousness compelling?  It is certainly fascinating in the extreme.  http://t.co/OqWiKSz4

It would be nice if the equation for the Theory of Everything was found to be less than 140 characters, so it can be tweeted.

Money loses its promise at the point of dying.

Have been hearing that Social Security is going bust for 50 years now.  It’s like a broken record.  The 1% don’t pay Social Security taxes.

Most gazelles in nature never get eaten by lions.  They never even see one.  https://www.youtube.com/

We never hear anyone on television talk about divesting billionaires.  Why is that?

One of the good things Bush did as President was to popularize the now famous lexicon, Mission Accomplishedhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?    https://www.youtube.com/watch

There is always some new disease to worry about and a drug dealer on TV eager to sell a solution.  Only in America.

Americans don’t know the names of the billionaires who rule them.  Who will tell them?

How do they keep black folks out of the Derby?

GM makes the best cars.

There’s this CIA guy named Rodriquez who is going on right-wing television slamming our elected officials.  Weird.

When the wealthy push down wages, skilled labor evaporates.

Safety regulations, which auto firms once fought tooth and nail, have saved over 200,000 lives.

Leonard Susskind said it will take an accelerator the size of our galaxy to see the smallest particles.  We aren’t there yet.

We had hamburgers tonight with no pink slime in them.  What a difference.  So good!  https://www.youtube.com/watch

The game of pushing black men until they finally stand their ground and get killed or imprisoned is as old as America. #trayvonmartin

Honest people who have integrity and are not greedy cannot be cheated.  They can be robbed and sometimes are.

It should be a felony for a private citizen to possess a billion dollars.

#ThoughtsLiberalsHaveAroundConservatives  This guy’s a lunatic.  Hope he doesn’t shoot me.

RT @therightblue: Antibiotic residue in seafood purchased at US grocery stores, experts say:   http://t.co/mIPRDzFX

USA dropped equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb per day for 25 years on Bikini atoll.  Ruined tourism.    http://www.youtube.com/watch

Do you self-censor tweets, because your employer is watching?  That’s not freedom.

God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.  Jesus.

Should we be fishing from the same pond we drill our oil and dump our garbage?

Long after humans, and all we’ve built, have vanished, alien visitors will know we were here from the plutonium we left behind.

Thirty-seven old nuclear plants on the Great Lakes with no place to store high level waste.  http://t.co/Iasqrjn3

A country like the USA comes along once in ten-thousand years.

First Silent Majority, then Moral Majority, now New Majority.  The GOP is always trying to start a bandwagon.

Still remember nuclear engineers telling me in 1977 that nuclear power was safe, and waste storage was no problem.

Seems like China is going to own the moon, it’s helium and rare-earth metals.

This Colbert quote about Christian Nation is pretty good. http://t.co/lZIMNw7j

Yes, it’s hot.  But look at the bright side.  In the next few years, it’s going to get a lot hotter.

RT @QuoteRevolution: The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. ~John Hay

If you can discourage 1 out of 100 voters from voting by requiring photo ID, you can throw a lot of elections to the GOP.

Are Focus on the Family execs calling the USA to pray for rain at Romney nomination speech like they did for Obama 2008?    http://t.co/XIdXcclo

How they hate Obama.  What’s he ever done to them?

We learned how much the GOP wanted America to succeed when they refused to be led by a black man and trashed our country’s credit rating.

Billionaire-owned media portrays a failed President.  But he saved the USA from collapse, killed OBL, passed medical-care.

We knew the Vietnam war was lost when USA soldiers fragged their officers.  Afghan green-on-blue is same thing.

The political dominance of billionaires is USA’s biggest problem.  GOP’s solution?  Make one President.

The only thing not better than four years ago is right-wing media.  Those morons never shut up.

Everyone fights for the middle-class.  But they’re in the top 20% of income earners.  What about the vast under-class?

It feels like the GOP/right wing/media/billionaires are sucking the air out of America.  They are relentlessly negative.

As we age, our bodies become less like prisons and more like torture chambers.

It is disrespectful to bear-hug the President and lift him off his feet.  The man is lucky he wasn’t shot.

USA should pass amendment making anyone who serves as President more than 3 years a natural-born citizen.  Would shut-up birthers.

Tell the truth.  Weren’t you scared of the Axis of Evil and Saddam’s WMD’s?  GOP scared the crap out of us.  No way we let them back in.

Only one person knows what it’s like to be the first black President.

The six Billionaires who own 85% of USA media have convinced most Americans it is a “liberal media.”  Wow.

Romney said he will end estate taxes, which are the last defense the USA has against the establishment of a permanent royal-class.

GOP hack, John Sununu, called Obama “lazy” on Fox News.

Obama said he wasn’t perfect to counter GOP websites that are saying he claims to be Jesus and, therefore, is the anti-Christ.

Can’t remember an election with no GOP bumper stickers.  Haven’t seen a Romney sticker yet.  Anywhere.  Strange.

Ambiguity is a tactic artists and politicians use to attract a mass audience.

It’s hard to believe that the land of the free and home of the brave would let 400 people sequester 1/8 of our national treasure.

Imagine Obama losing 241 Marines to a terrorist attack; losing an entire Shuttle crew; flooding the USA with Japanese cars…that was Reagan.

If the tax rate was at Kennedy levels, the USA would be awash with surplus cash.

To put things in perspective, Romney will get $4,566 from his annuity during the debate.  Obama will get $91 from his salary.

Romney says his dad was born in Mexico.  I remember when his dad ran for President.  He said he was born in the USA, I think.  https://www.youtube.com/

Today, Federal investigtors revealed more Secret Service agents using prostitutes while on duty overseas.

I don’t want to believe the GOP is strong enough to overthrow a President who hasn’t done anything wrong.

Many Christians turned on Jimmy Carter with a vengence.  Now they rally around a Mormon to destroy Obama who is a convert to Christianity.

I keep waiting for conservatives to come to their senses about Obama — a brilliant and decent man.  They never do.

What good is democracy if the billionaires always win?

Employers threatening to shut-down if Obama re-elected reminds me of  threats to close shop if Civil Rights Act passed in 1964.

Today my pastor preached that Obamacare forces church organizations to participate in abortion or go out of business due to fines.

People think taxes will go down on the middle-class if Romney is elected.  No, taxes will go down on the billionaires.

No one on television or radio or in newspapers or magazines will ever tell us to tax or divest billionaires.  No one.  Never.

How can anyone say USA is free when 400 families have sequestered 1/8 of our national treasure?  Our country is a plantation.

Obama, a born-again Christian, must feel like Jesus himself as Christian leaders desert him for Mormon Romney, a compulsive liar.

Christian leaders showed their true colors this election.  They took sides with the rich and powerful.

Put a Mormon missionary billionaire with strong ties to Mexico who won’t financially disclose in the White’s House?

Romney/GOP convention disrupted by hurricane.  God making statement?  http://thecolbertreport — hurricane-isaac

Seems like during every storm we find hospitals that put their back up generators in the basement where they are disabled by floods.

Four more days until Romney goes away.  Can’t wait.

Female CNN announcer just said “atta boy” to Don Lemon.  Young people don’t get how racist that sounds.

Do white people in Florida stand in four-hour lines to vote, like they make their colored folks do?  Just asking.   https://www.youtube.com/

On C-Span, just heard South Carolina woman say, Obama is the best candidate; and, yes, I am white.

#LieLikeMitt   Jesus is Satan’s brother. Look it up.  And thank you to all Christians who are voting for me.

Hope Romney and Ryan have a sense of humor, because the election tomorrow is going to be a joke.

Romney just lost in NH and Mass. where he has homes; MI where he grew up; and Wisc. where Ryan is from.

Thank you, Jesus.

Christian leaders hate Obama, because “sinners” love him.

Evangelical leaders sided with southern racists and the rich and powerful.  https://www.youtube.com/watch

Romney was going to do a fireworks show in Boston Harbor after being declared winner.  Thank God, it didn’t happen.

RT @A_ThinkingGirl: Boehner and McConnell Dissed Obama on Election Night; Refused Phone Calls from the President   http://t.co/Pw4JkhpE

Thomas Ricks just told CNN that if you haven’t had an affair your not a player in the CIA.  That is disturbing to me.

Getting old.  Tweeted “your” instead of  “you’re.”  Sorry.  Please forgive me.

Officers serve subject to the Code of Military Conduct.  It prohibits adultery.

People who are good at maximizing their personal advantages over others often consider themselves worthy of further advantages.

Any business owner who lays off his workers because Obama won is mean-spirited.  We need a bill of rights for workers.

Always thought embracing Bush holdovers like Betray-us was a mistake. Imagine if he’d been Romney’s VP choice.

Romney thought he was the savior on a white horse foretold by .  Maybe next time.

RT @MariaLiaCalvo: Obama cries as he thanks his volunteers and campaign staff; Romney fires his staff and leaves them stranded.

From our adversaries point of view, Petraeus — who led the fight against them on behalf of the “great satan”  —  is an adulterer.  Ouch.

Paula Broadwell might want to apologize to the nation and to her children and to her lover’s wife.

Never admired Petraeus, because Cheney and Bush pushed him into top leadership.  Obama should have cleaned house, but GOP prevented it.

Got my skills going to school while on unemployment.  Kids can’t do that today.  GOP regulations destroyed this option in Michigan long ago.

Of all the top biographers Petraeus could have picked, he chose Paula Broadwell.  It was a clue.

Would like to know if the Muslim militia got their prisoners back during Benghazi attack.

People love to go to war.  Years later they complain about how it ruined them.

General Allen of Afganistan is now under investigation for links to Lebanese-American, Jill Kelly.  Wow.

What we are witnessing is a high level purge of Bush protégés as Obama finally takes control of USA military and intelligence agencies.

RT @keepingitraw: Sky-high levels of radioactivity in fish from Fukushima means inedible seafood for at least a decade.  http://t.co/vM3IyCbH

The Monica-Benghazi scandal is in full swing on the Hannity show.

Dear God, Barack Obama is in the belly of the beast fighting for what is right.  Thank you for your holy angels who guard him.

Friend of my sister went back to her New Jersey apartment a week after Hurricane Sandy to find it ruined, not by water, but by rats.  Everything lost.

I hate war because you have to choose sides, everyone suffers and, in the end, you compromise anyway.

GOP Generals underestimated Obama.

We need to help our Conservatives heal.  They came within four-million votes of electing a lunatic.  What is the cure?

John McCain, under torture, signed a confession and attempted suicide.  No one blames him, but that’s what happened.

Limiting doctor salaries to $400K/year would discourage greedy people from becoming doctors.  It would help everyone.

Obama cried after election, just before news broke on Petraeus.  It may be an indicator he really was just finding out and dealing with it.

Am hearing that Hostess execs looted the company before firing the 18,500 folks who created the wealth they took.

Letting individuals keep unlimited wealth and field private armies is a bad idea unworthy of a free people.

You’d think Obama would have carried more southern states, since large black populations voted 90% for him.  He didn’t carry any.

Surprising to learn that people who couldn’t say who ran for President in the last election knew all about the Hostess Twinkie crisis.

Billionaire media owners drone endless negativity until they get the President they want.  Then messaging gets positive.  Remember Reagan.

The big problem for America is the voracious appetite of our billionaires and the vast underclass they have created in their wake.

What DNA actually looks like.  http://t.co/msEjIPEG

In the 40’s and 50’s most white people saw nothing wrong with segregation.  Today, they see nothing wrong with gated communities.

Executive gangs who pay themselves huge salaries are not creating value.  They are looting.

Billionaire owners of NFL teams don’t get traumatic brain injuries.

NBC reported that Boehner avoided receiving-line at holiday party last night, so he wouldn’t have to shake Obama’s hand.

At the root of our fiscal-cliff crisis is the belief by the GOP that the country is not worth saving as long as Obama remains President.

RT @ReformedBroker: “If Buffett didn’t exist, the rich would have to invent him.” http://t.co/Xz3HHVCj

Billionaire media owners want Americans to think there is something cute and innocent about British-royalty.

The GOP is fighting a war, not for freedom or fairness, but for the idea that a handful of families are entitled to own everything.

All the good jobs go to the children of the wealthy.

Want to limit corruption?  Make it a felony to keep more than $15M per year or own an estate larger than $150M.

Billionaires are every bit as wicked as anyone else.  The difference is, they have a billion dollars.  That’s scary, or it should be.

GOP named Right to Work law to hide its intent to weaken/wreck unions and drive down wages and benefits.

If athletes and actors make millions, what do you think the people who pay them make?

Michigan GOP exempted cops and fire fighters from Right to Work law.   Cops won’t get the “benefits” of working for less money.

Hundreds of cops are standing guard around Michigan State Capitol through Thursday.  Cops exempted from Right to Work by GOP bill.  https://www.youtube.com/watch

Someone said boxing is morally wrong, because one human has to inflict injury on another human to win.

Billionaire advertisers in Michigan are calling RTW “Freedom to Work.”  Yet they won’t free cops and firefighters.  They need them on their side.

Can we please raise taxes on the wealthy to stop the looting?  If you are greedy, go to Russia or Mexico and loot there.

I remember that in the 1960s most Americans thought Nelson Mandela was a black communist thug who should rot in prison.  Times change.

If America was free, most companies would be employee-owned and most companies would have unions.

Lack of limits on the personal wealth of its rulers is what wrecks Capitalism for the vast underclass who must endure it.

GOP leaders are charging protestors who crossed police-lines with felonies.  So, now we have political prisoners in Michigan.

If Right to Work is so great, why did the GOP exempt police and fire unions?  GOP is not interested in fair play, apparently.

The way to balance our budget is to spend more money on the poor, elderly and disabled.  It’s counter-intuitive but always works.

If it weren’t for six billionaires who own 85% of the media, we would be arguing about how much to increase Medicare and Social Security.

GOP deficits are always the result of looting.  Think of all the money wealthy families stole from the USA during Bush years.

Since the Reagan era the wealthy have had no limits on what they can make and keep.  It’s why they loot.

Unless limits are placed on personal incomes and estate size, capitalism always devolves into a kind of feudalism.

GOP advertisers are flooding Michigan with this message: Protect collective bargaining.  Support Freedom to Work.  Right out of Orwell’s 1984.

Amazing how Michigan GOP sprung Right to Work on us at the very moment a mega-million dollar ad campaign for its passage appeared.

It’s already impossible to start a Union in Michigan.  Right to Work will enable business owners to kill off the few that still exist.  https://www.youtube.com/watch

Surprise attack on Unions by Rick Snyder and GOP was well-planned and executed. Felony charges against protestors is the frosting on their cake.

The wealthy work overtime to undermine confidence in elected government.

Billionaires, some tied to drugs and guns, know how to get their way.  It’s not easy to speak truth to them.

People think unlimited wealth is an incentive for innovation.  Not true.  It enables looting and the suppression of competition.

Regular viewers of Fox News don’t get that the joke is on them.  Sad.

It’s un-American to let kids inherit vast wealth they didn’t work for.  It threatens our freedom.  http://t.co/8tsf3aPj

There isn’t a gun made that can defend against a government-sponsored SWAT team.  Get real, NRA.

More Guns = Less Crime; Clean Coal; Right to Work; Virtue of Selfishness; Gated Community; Genetically Modified Food; all wrong.

MI GOP passed a law to allow concealed guns in church, schools, stadiums and daycares.

Am told the shooter was draped in Kevlar.  Teacher with a gun would have been helpless.

Was doing good until the President mentioned a six year old who knew karate and wanted to lead everyone to safety.

Reagan closed the mental hospitals.   http://t.co/D2E9mZ5Z

The Lord sides with the oppressed; feeds the hungry; sets prisoners free; gives sight to the blind; lifts up those who are beaten down…

Jesus was born a baby, so as not to frighten us.

Old age has ruined me, physically and mentally.  But #Jesus renews my spirit, and somehow, I feel better.

Will someone invent an iPhone that can be charged by body heat?  #goodIdea

Would NASA position some colored lights in the sky so everybody can navigate by sight?   #goodIdea

The right to accumulate unlimited wealth has brought corruption and looting on a massive international scale to all areas of human endeavor.

An NRA family member murdered 20 six-year-olds, and they threaten the President’s kids?

It’s time to amend the Second Amendment.

Obama tries to protect kids from gun violence, so the NRA vilifies him and drags his kids into it.

Make a list of legal guns.  Guns not on the approved-list are illegal.  Will prevent work-arounds by gun sellers.

Am reading Oliver Stone’s Untold History, a Christmas gift.  Have yet to read a single page where he hasn’t blown my mind.

Gun makers should be required to get a license to sell each gun-model they manufacture.  If it’s a weapon of war, no license.

This is an impressive crowd — the haves and the have-mores.  Some people call you the elite.  I call you my base.  Bush, 2000.

In 2006, the 25 top US hedge-fund managers earned an ave. $570M each. In 2007, it jumped to $900M.  Oliver Stone, Untold History.

GOP says they are against tax increases, but in Michigan the GOP raised taxes on seniors by $1,000s / year.

Everything written or broadcast is recorded, stored and analyzed.  It’s been going on since the 1950s.  It’s raison d’etre for the NSA.

RT @MiaFarrow: JFK Report to the American People on Civil Rights, 11 June 1963
http://t.co/jZNo5UgYMz

Google has pics of the outside of our homes. The government has pics of the inside — taken through our computer camera-lenses.

Obama taught us, unwittingly, that bad people with ugly thoughts and hate-filled hearts really do live in America.

twitter 1Seems like CNN covers the weather while FOX covers Obama-Care.  Who covers the news?

Christians bearing false witness against a President who says he belongs to Christ makes no sense to me.

Billy Lee