I must say, being a blogger I like the comments I get on some of my posts. Particularly if the comments are relevant and not just “Me Too” posts. But over the last week or so I am seeing more activity on my blog by a very few people out there who write like five comments at a time, but they all seem to be of the “Me Too” type. This is not really helpful and it looks like it is time for me to crack down on this simply because THIS BLOG IS NOT FOR YOU TO ADVERTIZE ON.

I do not mind legitimate comments, really I do, and in fact I respond to them. But with each comment is the ability to add a link for the poster and they are supposed to be email addresses, instead people are using the link to add a URL to a site. I really do not mind this either if it were not for the fact that it is coming blatantly clear that the posts are just to get the links to the sites.

What kinda get me is that the times of the posts are so consistent. First off, you can’t read my posts in about a minute, I write long posts and not at a first grade level. Second, the titles are sometimes not related to the post in the ways that may be obvious. Someone responding to the title will not post a comment that is correct. Case in point… my last post was “Anti-Condom”, which was only about condoms in so far as it referred to Sarah Palins’ seeming lack of ability to inform her daughter of contraception usage. It was a political post, yet people are posting about condom use and such. They did not read the post.

So here it: I have the ability to massively delete comments… I know how to do this because I wrote the module and database query that will do it. So, first you are going to see most of the posts of that last week disappear except those that are on topic. Next, if I find you coming back and trying it again, you will find your access via IP blocked. If that does not work I will mark the blog to “Comment Approval Mode” and not allow any posts to be viewed until I have reviewed them.

Please, I like reading actual comments and interacting with people, but if you are posting just to get your link on my site, why not write me and ask me to include you in my blog roll. I post these links for friends of the site or sites that I like.

Be kind; don’t make me be a tyrant on my own blog.

So here I was, watching the morning political returns on Obama’s speech on last Thursday when McCain announces that he had picked Sarah Palin, a literal no one from Alaska to be his VP pick. Talk about shooting Craps, McCain has rolled the dice looking for a hard double 4’s on a center bet.

Now, McCain has pandered in the past, but here is the mother of all panders… he is pandering to women, pro life, pro gun, religious right, fiscal conservatives, and the confused all at once. Now mind you the pro life and pro gun stance always kind of struck me as a funny combo, but what the hey. But the stance that I find interesting is that even her being pro life, can’t she also be pro condom?

OK, in today’s world having five kids is out of the norm. According to the 2000 census, the US averages 1.86 kids per family. Alaska averages 1.97 kids per family. Now, I know she is pro life, but does she have to populate the state herself? Five kids is not family planning, it is wishful thinking and bad timing. What is she teaching the female children of Alaska anyway… go have sex and pray you don’t get pregnant? That seems to be her method. She falls into the old joke… what you call a girl on the rhythm method? A mother.

Worst of all she is imprinting this on her eldest daughter who is 5 months along and unmarried. I don’t have a problem with the unmarried part, it is rather that I am for contraception for people too young and too stupid to realize that results of fornicating before being in a steady and stable relationship. Again, I do not care if they get married, that is for then to deal with, but if this girl is going to get married just because she got pregnant, we got a morals problem and to be honest, an intelligence issue.

So, Sarah, future grandmother… did you never talk to your daughter about condoms? Did you never talk to your daughter about contraception of any type? Did you trust the schools to teach your daughter what she needed to know about pregnancy? Or did you just leave it all in God’s hands and close your mind to the upbringing of your daughter Bristol? Really, I think you got to answer this one because it shows your level of responsibility, because let’s face it, Alaska is not that difficult to govern.

As for the tragic rumor about your youngest son Trig, if it is true that he is your daughters child, you have some issues to deal with and where to you get off trying to be VP? If they are false, maybe you need to learn more about pregnancy and change your stance on abortion a bit. If you knew in advance that your child was to be born with Downs Syndrome, don’t you think it is unkind to bring a life into this world that will know little joy and too much grief? There are times abortion is worth considering.

Believe it or not, one more of my talents is singing. I am not sure I have ever really talked about it in this blog or not, but if not, here it is…

I started singing at Temple Beth Ami in Reseda California at about the age of 8. I then carried on through high school, playing trombone and singing scat for an ensemble called “Grey Smoke”. The highlight of that stint was the late night jam session with Dizzy Gillespie one hot summer Tuesday night at Dante’s in Burbank. I did 6 months with the LA Metropolitan Opera (Wagner’s Ring Cycle, oy) understudying Donald and Fafner. In 1999, I hooked up with The San Fernando Valley Valleyaires, a Barbershop Chorus, and eventually created a Barbershop Quartet call SOAP. That all ended a few years ago and now I am back on the singing scene looking for a new quartet, but not just any quartet…

So here I am in Vegas looking for a place to sing (thank god Nancy enjoys Barbershop too) and I find the Gambleaires. Ok, they are not the best around, but they are very non-political, and that is exactly what I wanted to hear. So you can imagine my consternation when others tell me I am too good for them and ought to be somewhere else. Really, all I want is to sing and here is everyone else trying to make me political within the group.

Well, to make a long story short (yeah, yeah… too late) another group tries to recruit me to sing the tenor part for their quartet. One of the other members of the quartet is a known name to me, but I thought I made it clear that I wanted to sing lead and tenor was out of the question. I guess that message did not make it through because I get an email with tenor dominate part for their repertoire. I politely turned them down, after all there is a tenor out there for them, but it is not me. (Besides, any good lead can sing tenor, I just don’t like the range.)

But there were other reasons for turning down the role, and maybe they were more to the point than me just not wanting to sing tenor. The current lead sings very covered and they are shooting for a “swing” feel for their group. Swing requires a very clear lead singer, the other parts can be covered a bit, but the lead needs a clarion voice. In swing the lead is a soloist despite the idea that Barbershop is a quartet. So what is it, a swing or barbershop group? Mixed messages, not good. Also, one of the members is very knowledgeable about music and barbershop, but his coaching seems to take precedence over the learning and singing of the music. Seems to me that getting the notes and words sung correctly first is foremost when learning new material; craft comes after the group is singing the song with familiarity. Lastly, to be honest, they were not at my level of singing even with my voice being out of shape (although that will change quickly enough), not that that would have stopped me had they at least let me sing the part I wanted. At that point I would have hoped to shape the group a bit and get them to understand what jazz and swing is.

I will give them this, for the most part they were organized with a repertoire and learning tracks. But they were lacking decent communicates and that is hard to deal with too.

But for now I live with this truism; there is a quartet out there for me; one that will be able to keep up. There are three other singers who are relaxed enough to be able to enjoy the experience that I want to have (any they too hopefully). And when it comes right down to it all, maybe that is the real reason I turned this last group down, it would not be fun when push came to shove with one other extremely opinionated person in the group.

I wonder if the other guys in that group have figured it out… they are not going to get rich singing so it had better be a lot of fun to do, otherwise the effort is not worth the meager returns it may offer.

You know me; if you read my blog it should be quite obvious that I am a middle of the road Republican; I certainly am not a Democrat, and I register as an Independent. So you can imagine that I am following this presidential campaign pretty closely, being a bit of a politics wonk. So when the John McCain campaign put out an ad trying to scare white fathers and mothers away from Barack Obama, McCain made up my mind for me.

I was truly looking forward to a straight forward, clean campaign promised by both candidates, but what did I get? I got the Republican smear three months out from the election… hell; the candidates are not yet even “rat”ified by the party conventions yet and the mud is piling up. To Barack’s benefit he does not sling it as well as McCain, but he is getting more politically savvy at the backhanded putdown that is more his style.

So what prompted this entry? The Spears/Paris McCain ad that say as subtext that Barack Obama is coming to get your daughters and have sex with them. It is “Birth of a Nation” all over again with darkies waiting in the shadows. The implication is that Barack is dating (or as a radio talk show host say “dating equals porking”) young, vapid white celebrity girls (your daughters; also implying your daughters are not too bright), and having sex with them using his really big black tool (the images of the “Leaning Tower of Pisa”, and the “Washington Monument”). This ad has no other value other than it is meant to scare the hell out of white folk.

So, who played the race card? Well, to be honest, both of them, but at least Barack’s use of the racial issue is fairly self deprecating. Barack has been using the line that he does not look like the past Presidents on the money we use. This is true, and what it gets Barack is that he is new and different for a new and different country, now. Where as McCain use of the race issue is “By the way… he’s black” attitude has no redeeming value other than to scare white people away from Barack using latent racism.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the Republican tactics, they have been doing the same thing for a hundred years. What I am upset about I guess is that the candidate made a pledge to no go negative, was haranguing the other candidates not to go negative, and at the first opportunity flip-flopped on that pledge and went negative. But again, why should I be surprised, McCain has been flip-flopping on issues since the start of the campaign run to appeal to the current constituents he needed to win primary races. Now he is flipping both to the conservative left and trying to roll the center into one campaign and not being effective. Barack, by virtue of his stubborn nature is not really flipping so much as tacking his message to the center. He ran on a more centrist message anyway, now he is correcting course to include moderate and middle of the road republicans, as expected.

So, at this point I can make up a small list of the things that I do not agree with in the McCain campaign. They are:

1. McCain’s gas tax holiday is bunk. I would rather spend the $14 dollars I am going to save and let 300,000 people remain working. This does not help the long term problem; it is just a band-aid and not a very good one.
2. Drilling offshore and in ANWAR is not an answer both because it will take years to gear up and even then will not provide a significant saving to an oil hungry nation.
3. Yeah, the surge worked, but then again, it surely should have for what we are spending.

   (Let me state that at the time I was for going into Iraq and kicking out Saddam Hussein. Once we did that though we really needed to be out of there. And now that the Iraqi government that we installed wants us out too, we should be preparing with all haste to make a victorious retreat from there. Why victorious? Because we not only did what we came to do, we have even set up a government that thinks it is ready to stand on its own. It’s not, but we should not let that minor fact prevent us from getting out of a situation that is more and more looking like “revenge for daddy”. Honestly we should have been out of there six months after “Mission Accomplished”.)

4. Health care? What health care plan?
5. Education? What education plan?
6. Really, I am not sure where McCain is standing on anything lately, he changes positions so often it is hard to keep track.

That is not to say that Barack has articulated his cases any better. He does not have an Energy plan that is of any worth, there is some movement there on education, but not as much as I would like to see, and he dodges the health care issues with quick aplomb. He is on the right side of the war, he is an inspirational speaker, and maybe that is what the country needs right now.

So, here is my Ballot…

[     ]  Charles O. ‘Chuck’ Baldwin
(Constitution)

[     ]  Robert Laurence ‘Bob’ Barr
(Libertarian)

[     ]  John Sidney McCain
(Republican)

[     ]  Cynthia Ann McKinney
(Peace and Freedom, Green)

[     ]  Ralph Nader
(Independent)

[ X ]  Barack Hussein Obama
(Democratic)

I highly recommend you look at the bios for Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney and of course Ralph Nader (my vote in 2004) and make some decisions for yourself. Each has some interesting views that should be considered.

Remember, no one is ready to be president from day one, the amount of experience in the role of President is always zero on day one, so don’t let experience be a your road map. It may be that person with no experience that brings the greatest change and creativity to the office because they lack experience and thus have no preconceived ideas how it is all supposed to work.

In one of the best political moves that I have seen in years, Barack Obama grants a spur of the moment interview with “Access Hollywood” with him and his whole family. That’s right, Michelle and the girls are there too.

Why is this brilliant? With all the comparisons being made between Barack and JFK, Barack put another “JFK” image with him in the psyche of the American people. He showed that he was a young man with young kids and moving into the White House. In my mind this was such a “Camelot II” moment I was amazed at the subtly of it all. We all knew he had kids, a beautiful wife and an all American attitude, but it came off so well in the interview that it made me proud to see him as a candidate for President. As a person that was not alive while Kennedy was President, it recalled for me Kennedy’s legacy. This interview, more than anything else, has cemented a vision for putting Barack into the White House.

Now I agree with Barack that his kids should be protected from the glaring spotlight that is about to shone on them, but there is a limit to with that shield should be or must be used. A simple spur of the moment interview with the girls behaving like American girls, wiggling and fidgety and asking when is it all over just, shows Barack with a great family that ALL voters can relate to. In no uncertain terms, this interview humanized Barak like no other interview could.

Not to say that the interview should be repeated ad nausea m for every interviewer there is. Certainly that would be a mistake. But by letting one “softball” interview to reach the public will assure that interview, surely an excellent and harmless piece of tape, be the record for him and his family. Brilliant.

In the “Today Show” interview, that covers several topics, at the end Matt Lauer asks about the interview. In the quick interchange there is no use of the word “regret” as pertaining to the fact that he gave the family interview at all. That said he did say that they will not be repeating the interview, but he did not seem mad or regretful that the interview took place. If there is some use of the word “regret” then it was made by Matt and it got hung on Barack. Or maybe the reference was left in the editing bay. In any case he does not seem like a man who regretted the interview. And again, by stating he will not repeat the interview with his family he as set the record and set it on a high and humanizing mark. It is dirty pool for MSNBC to headline this story as “Obama: I regret putting my daughters on TV.” That headline makes it sound like he is ashamed of his family and has something to hide when obviously he is not and should not be. He has a lovely and completely normal family, all the way down to the “Daddy drops his briefcase on my shoes in the middle of the hall” remarks. So typical, so American, so human, and it makes you relate to this family better than any set interview could have.

So, MSNBC, why are you putting such a strong spin on such a good interview? Why add a negative spin to a simple human interest story? WHY ARE YOU MAKING THIS POLITICAL? I do not listen to CNN and FOX because they turn every molehill into a mountain and a shock piece. WHY IS MSNBC DOING THIS NOW? This was a brilliant piece of positive Barack PR, give it to him and let him have his day; there are certainly other topics you can legitimately twist to a negative spin.

This “spinning” has become more and more prevalent on MSNBC of late and I am finding it distasteful. Like I said, I have written off CNN and FOX as biased purveyors of the news and rested my hopes on the “oh so just left of center” MSNBC to keep me fairly informed. Not that I don’t get my info from other sources as well, (BBC, Jerusalem Post, etc…) but of late this spinning is becoming more obvious and not fair to those who they are spinning. (Is spin ever fair? I don’t have an answer to that.)

MSNBC, here’s a tip: Report fairly with little or no spin or suffer the stigma of CNN and FOX.

God help us if that stigma does get applied… getting real information will be just about impossible.

As the flood levels in the mid west continue to rise over the next few days, drowning communities and displacing farms and jobs, where is the world concern for the people of the US? Where are disaster relief workers from around the world to help us rebound from an act of mother nature?

Where are they? At home watching and thinking it is none of their concern. After all, it is America the Great with the woes, surely they can handle it themselves. Why should they bother lending a hand and expertise? After all, it’s the US and they don’t need help.

Sure, we don’t need help. At this point the thousands of displaced people will fend for themselves with the help of FEMA and other states. The rest of the country will absorb the family that do not wish to return to the flooded lands, and eventually life will go on and the shattered lives will mend themselves with time and the help of a neighbor. Not a neighboring country, just a neighbor. But it would have been nice to see some outrage and concern from other countries, some show of support and even offers to help.

But that is not the case. The US flies into Myanmar to aid flood victims, no real thank you, just red tape from their government. When earthquakes happen around the world, it is the US with offers to help as soon as possible. People in this country hold allies to create “Care Packages” in the tons to help out other people in trouble. Have there been any offers of supplies to the mid-west? No.

It is an amazing thing to me that the US will attempt to rescue any country in trouble regardless of political persuasion. We as a people do not see the differences in cultures, we just know we can help and this American community comes through for people, often. Yet when we have a disaster here, the world is reticent to help. Remember Northridge? Katrina? Where was the rest of the world then? I lives through the Northridge Quake, I lived just one mile from the epicenter. I know what it is like to have your apartment come crashing down on you. I know what it is like to live in a tent for three months eating army rations and standing in line for fresh water. Where was the world to help me out? Honestly, even today, more that 14 years after the quake I miss things lost on the quake and still freak out when a heavy truck shakes my apartment. I received nothing in terms of help from anything but US originated aid. Go Army!

So I wonder, what would happen if the US sat out the next disaster? Would all those other countries offer any aid? Oh, I am sure a couple would, but by in large they would see the US sitting it out and follow suit, not wanting to grow up and take a moral or non-political stance without the bold moves of the US setting the way. Pathetic.

So, when I hear of the advancements of other countries and the tech gains they have I know that it is nothing compared to the generosity of the US. The US is in my opinion still the best place in the world to live, the people truly care as opposed to the posers in Europe and such. They can take their high moral attitudes and shove them up their ass as far as I am concerned. Why, because if disaster falls they will be calling for aid, and it will be the US they expect to get it from. They will be begging us for anything we can offer, but you know what…I say let’s sit this one out and let them learn how it feels to need help only to find that is it not forthcoming. Like with these disastrous floods we are living through, where are they?

But then again, we are more mature than they are, so I guess help would find its way. And communities all across our land will rally “Care Packages” to help out where it can; because we are just that kind of country.

All I am going to say is “Were they out of their minds when they designed this place?”

OK, maybe I will say more…

For those not in the know, Las Vegas has become somewhat of a shopping Mecca. In fact Las Vegas’s economy is partly based on the shopping that the vacationing crowd does. To that end, shopping malls have become more and more in vogue, including the new Town Square Mall at the south end of The Strip. The thing is when you think of a mall you think of a covered area with stores inside. The problem, Town Square is an OUTDOOR mall.

Today it will hit 111° at 3:00 p.m. with cooling down to the mid 80°’s at night. OK, so you shop at night. But in a couple of weeks it will be 120° with cooling to 105° at night… so much for shopping. Whose brilliant idea was it to build a huge mall and not cover it? Are they insane?

Now I am not much of a high-end clothing store shopper, so there is limited appeal to me to walk around this place. But even if I were to walk the mall, there are some questionable decisions made here. Let me touch on a few…

First of all there are “Streets” between stores. This mixes narrow walk ways with car-lined roads and people driving too fast and people stepping out between cars. What jackass approved this idea? The point of a mall is that it is a safe place to walk and shop…. Now you have to dodge cars. I saw a minivan screech to a halt as a group a kids ran across the road without looking to get to an ice cream shop. The parents of the kids looked terrified and the driver was pissed off. I am really wondering how long this place will stay open because the lawsuits from parents of flattened kids will bring this place to a close. Carnac predicts: 3 years and the place will undergo a major renovation or close down.

Next, the place is “Pet Friendly”. There are “Dog Pots” that you set your pet into and let them do their business. Of course they provide doggie poop bags, BUT THERE ARE NO TRASH CANS AROUND TO DUMP THE BAGS! The upshot… the place smells from dog urine and feces. It was hot the day I went… and the smell was ripe. Again, whose great idea was this?

The heat as mentioned was repressive. The malls’ idea of cooling in the heat is misters. These little tubes wrap around palm trees spreading a small circle of moistened air are supposedly good enough to cool everyone there… the problem is that there were four people around each mister and everyone else be damned to the heat. Oh, and of course there were not many of those misters either, mostly just around the patio restaurants. BTW, there were no people sitting on the patios, it was too hot.

So why was I there you ask? Well I was there for the movies of course, a completely legitimate indoor activity during a hot day. But there was a problem with even that…

Most malls have an entrance that is very near the theater entrance (if the mall has theaters). Not the case here. Not only are there no close parking (all outdoors in the heat and not even covered), the theater is a good walk and up two flights of stairs… I am not a very mobile person, I have trouble with stairs, I almost just left. Then I noticed escalators… half way down the mall… even more outdoor walking in 105° heat. (This is not doing my blood pressure any good, that is for sure.) Finally I spot a sign… elevator. Good… looks like someone else complained they were not really mobile and thus prompted a big sign for the elevator. Thank god for the sign though, otherwise you would never have been able to find it. So to the elevator I go, press the button, enter the 120° heat box and up the level I go, broasting all the way; finally into the theater and luscious air conditioning.

During the summer this place is not a good place to be. The lack of covering a cooling makes this a oppressive venue. During the winter, I would not want to be here either. Can you imagine Christmas shopping from store to store in and out of the cold and the rain? (Yes we do get cold and rain here.) Then is spring and fall with the winds… no thank you. It was just an unwise decision all the way around.

There are other things like the “Kids Space” right next to streets and in the heat the equipment could actually burn young skin; the narrow walkways forcing you to get to know your fellow shoppers all too often; the store signs unreadable and unfindable in some case; and finally the prices are just way out of line for local shoppers.

Yes, this mall is meant to tourists, but I would not recommend it to anyone in anything other than the finest weather.

Oh, and leave Fido at home.

I can’t believe I am doing it again…

Now don’t take that to mean I am dreading what I am going to do, it’s just that anyone that knows me knows that my last marriage devastated me when it ended and I swore that I would not get married again unless it was really really right. Well, it is really really right with Nancy so we will turn our living in sin into an honest relationship and tie the knot…

Las Vegas Style Baby!!!

We will go get the license in a Pink Cadillac, we will take it over to Viva Las Vegas and have Elvis hitch us up, with Frank Sinatra singing “It Had To Be You”, as Nancy comes down the aisle. No big room for the reception… lunch at the Pepper Mill… Ending with pictures in front of the Las Vegas Sign with the Caddy and everything else.

We have a bunch of other “kitsch” things in mind too, so it should be a fun and wild Las Vegas Wedding. (Oh, how bout a piglet with wings leading the procession… get it...) We are determined to have this be a light and fun affair, no serious moments, because we think people take events like this way to seriously. We just want it to be fun and silly.

So… here is the invite…

May 26, 2009, about 1:00 pm
(that’s a Tuesday, but it is half way between our birthdays so we won’t forget)
Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel (more info later)

Come in your most outrageous 60’s cloths, because we want this to be an old school Las Vegas Wedding.

Let me know, there will be “Pink Champaign On Ice”. It should a fun day!

PS… We will probably be registered at Target.... more info to follow.

... But I guess Hilary has not gotten the message yet. Maybe it needs to be spelled out for her. So, just in case Hilary is reading my notorious blog or even one of her sycophants, here are the reasons it is over:

• Obama will win the popular vote
• Obama has won the most states and you cannot catch him in this.
• Obama is leading in elected delegates and you cannot catch up.
• Obama is leading in super-delegates and picking up more every day.
• Even your wins are losses at this point.
• Edwards delegates are likely to move to Obama now.
• You’re out of money.
• No one is contributing anymore.
• Do you really want to fund your campaign from your pocket? Because if you do we all know you will find some way of gouging the tax payers out of the money so that you can pay yourself back, and lady, I am not a democrat and I do not want to pay for your campaign.
• Everyone else has moved on, your the only one fighting for a position that is not attainable. Just look around you, you’re being abandoned.
• I want to have it over so I do not have to hear your and your whiny voice and the deluded spins from your equally deluded sycophants.

I bet that there are pundits that could find a lot more reasons to have you quit. But you don’t care or you are so self deluded that you are the only one (and maybe your equally deluded, lying, intern diving husband) who doesn’t see that the campaign is over. Just look at you on the interview… I swear you think it is still January or something. Wake up!

Maybe you do not see the damage you are doing… every time you speak you are risking a chance to misspeak and offering the Republican a talking point. Every day you go on you add to the swing vote the Republicans will get as you convince another white urban woman working hard that the black man can’t handle the job so fervently that she will vote McCain rather than Democratic. You are loosing brownie points by the hour, you’re not even going to be offered the VP position (that you would turn down anyway because your ego can’t play second banana).

The wounds that you have created because of your negative campaigning will be felt through the whole year. You have basically written the play book for the 527 groups that will attack Obama; you’ve shown them the way, they will see the light and smear him hard because we now know that Obama is the kind of guy who would rather see the bully walk away than engage too vigorously. He’s going to get slammed so hard that McCain will just have to sit back and watch the whole thing happen and we will be subject to months more of Jeremiah Wright and ridiculous “elitist” accusations. Thanks so much.

So maybe I should do a Karnak and pull this from the pickle jar: [drum roll please...] “Swing some clout, just one shout, then home to pout” and the question is… what are the next three things Senator Clinton will do in this campaign?

Yeah, you’ll be on the road in September, on the road home to obscurity. You won’t bother to campaign for Obama and that will ensure that you will forever after be a non-entity in politics as people remember and see your pandering for what it was ... pandering, and we all realize we are beyond that pandering politics of the past. And you, Senator Clinton are the politics of the past. Study some history, study some sociology, then look back at the changes that happen after century marks and now especially the millennium transitions… you are the past.

Well, well… seems that the folks in England have seen the censored light and have released a bunch of documents about their own UFO sightings. Not that it will do any good to prove any case at all, I am sure the documents are heavily censored and reports from only the finest crackpots. So what are we going to learn? HAHAHAHAHAH yeah… right…

Personally, I think there are billions of galaxies, and billions of stars in those galaxies, and lots of planets around each of the stars so somewhere there has to be life other than us, even if it is only by monkey chance. (You know, get a million monkeys together and have them pound on typewriters and eventually they will spell out the genetic code.) Whether there is one of these other cultures in our area, who knows. If there is another culture out there, what are the odds they are more advanced than us? If they are more advanced, why would they bother with us? And if they did bother with us, what makes us think that we would be here to talk about it.

So, what can we conclude from this admittedly absurd line of logic? Wel, if there are aliens out there and it looks like there are, we are not alone. If they have come here, they probably have been here for a long time or at least looking in for a while. If they have been looking in for a while, they sure do not feel hostile.

So… come on aliens, proclaim your presence and take me to see Elvis!

When congress asked the oil companies as to why the prices of gasoline were so high, they said that there were two elements, the rising price of oil per barrel and the lack of production facilities. When asked if the oil companies were planning more refineries they said “No, we can keep up with production.” I guess not a single congressman understood that reply was the tip off to why they were making BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of profit per year.

The problem with using the price of oil per barrel as an index is that the costs of refining the oil IS NOT tied to that index. In short the cost to refine is constant and while the cost of the oil may rise. The oil companies want you to think they are spending money on development when in actuality they have paid their development cost and are pocketing the profits that would go into new development. They don’t want to open more refineries, they don’t want to search for more oil, and they certainly do not want to perform research that would maximize the efficient use of non-oil based fuels. Some of the oil companies may want you think they “think green”, but really, the amount they spend is a joke compared to what they make in profits. (Also, if they do happen upon a really efficient way of using some other form of energy they can patent it and keep it off the market.)

The oil companies want you to not blame them for making BILLIONS AND BILLIONS because it is “THE MARKETS FAULT”. They want you to think that with all the record profits that they are NOT raking in enough! They are being so self sacrificing by having to accept these BILLIONS AND BILLIONS in profits they do not know what to do… Oh come on…

I heard a new term the other day and I figure that it make perfect sense to apply to the oil companies; WINDFALL TAX! How about we tax the profit to Kingdom Come and see just how fast the price of gas falls.

The problem is that on the quarterly FEC filings under expenditure they can claim things like “exploration and development” as costs of doing business, and who know how much of that is totally made up. Where is there proof of exploration. Where are the results of development? I do not see it making a difference in the cost of gas, so what good is it? Meanwhile the oil companies haul in BILLIONS AND BILLIONS in profits…

I got to buy stock in Exxon or Chevron, because god knows I am paid for the shares at the pump already!

So why is Barack Obama not hitting Hilary Clinton in the race for the democratic nomination? Do you think it is because there is nothing to hit her on? You think that the past is just the past and if that were brought up it would be ignored? No, it is simpler than that. He can’t use negative campaigning because then it will be the big black man attacking the white woman and that does not play in white America.

You think I am wrong? You think that white America has outgrown this type of racism? If so you had better ask yourself if what I say is not true and be honest with yourself.

Barack has no choice but to take the hits and play softball with the attacking remarks. He has to be certain what he says it true and even then it has to have some relevance. Of course it helps when the press points out Hilary’s lies and misstatements then Barack can just “Yeah, that’s right” the stories and not be the attacker. Very neat. But to initiate really vitriolic negative advertising would sink Barack’s chances in a blink of an eye. It is bad enough he has to justify everything and everyone in his life and has done an incredible job of countering every (most) criticism.

But you have to give him credit for keeping his cool. I swear I hear this stuff and I get mad at Hilary for him. More and more women that I know are all moving over to Obama because they are ashamed at the attacks Clinton(s) keep making. Hilary insists the campaign is not about race, but Bill takes every opportunity to point out that he’s black. If the Clinton campaign is a two for one sort of thing (and I pray that in the end it is not) then you got two messages coming out of two different holes. So who do you attack, a former President? It is a no win for Barack.

It is bad enough that the Clinton strategy seems to be do and say whatever you can to get nominated and then apologize later, but he has to contend with two fairly untouchable people. But to his credit he has kept calm and restrained his people and has kept message on target and cleaner than it needs to be.

All I know is that every time Hilary opens her mouth the more and more I’m in Obama’s camp. I am fed up with the whining and conniving. I have had I up to here with the “misspoken” statements by both Hilary and Bill. They know they are lying when they speech, and you know what, it is becoming real obvious to everyone else. I certainly will never believe and “folksy” story she related, and of course that mean how can I believe a word she says.

I’m done… I mean I am really done… is TV Land showing reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies? … No, but MSNBC is.