Jesse Can't Swim

Jesse Can't Swim

When JJ was running for president in 72, there was humor with the ridicule:

Jesse Jackson on a press boat in the middle of the Red Sea Dead Sea Mediterranean, whatever. He's on a boat with reporters, the pope and Netanyahu.

Pope's hat blows off away from the boat. Jesse hops out; walks across the water and hands the pontiff back his topdeck.

The headlines read: "Jesse can't swim."

Best science lesson ever:

If the Earth were a grape, the Moon would be 16 inches away.

The Sun - 163 yards away.

Jupiter - a little under half a mile away. 

The nearest star - 24,000 miles away, and the Great Andromeda Galaxy -- our nearest galactic neighbor in an unimaginably large universe -- one trillion miles away. If we were a grape. Which we are not. We are every calculation in this example times 250,000,000. My head just blew up again. 

Anyway, we are in a great place. Especially since it seems to be the only shelter between us and forever.

http://ssastros.org/grape.htm

Why I feel sorry for myself and how my therapist helped.

Why I feel sorry for myself and how my therapist helped.

I had a therapist who was a retired Israeli ship commander. He was tough but fair, I thought.

I went to him for a long time. First as couples therapy with my ex, and then for individual and finally group counseling. My attendance wore into years. There were many breakthroughs, but it was slow and time consuming. This was because I am a dick.

I decided to leave. I had been with this group for about five years. Nobody wanted me to leave, but I was committed.

The week after I left, my gun-toting, Israeli fighter called me up on the phone. At work. Unprecedented. Dean, who I was closest to in the group, missed my exit night because he had eaten cyanide and killed himself.

Uh, thanks for calling, dickhead. Why did I have to know this? How many ethics violations is he trying to ring up?

Oh, and he did tell me I would need counseling for the rest of my life. He didn't tell me I was a dick, which might have saved me a couple of decades of soul-searching.

Recession nonsense 2008

A republican blaming a democrat president for the weak economic recovery is like the Lakers blaming Luke Walton for the team's crap performance the last decade. (Good luck, Luke. You'll need it. Go Clippers.)

A republican administration - and, post 9/11, one with as free a hand as any since Lincoln's - was on watch as the banking industry, with the help of relaxed regulations, care of the business friendly red team, burned itself to the ground, taking two and a half million of us with it.

And, of course, no one from the administration or the financial industry has been held accountable for any part of the collapse*, though Americans all over bear the withering effects of it still.

*Oh, wait. One guy is in jail Kareem Serageldin was tried and convicted of theft for bundling Credit Suisse crap loans and selling them as prime, but even that is hinky for a couple of reasons. 

First, the banking industry is an inbred lot. That money has been managed by old-guard interests from back in the East India Trading Co. Skull & Bones, stuff. Kennedy, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller stuff. Half of the guys in the industry went to the same prep school. You think a guy named Kareem is really part of the pulsing heart of this industry? Sacrificial Lamb, for sure. 

And another thing: why one guy? 

Did one guy bring down Bear Stearns?

Was one guy responsible for the more than 10,000 suicides as people crawled through the wrecks of their and their families financial lives?




http://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/06/12/more-than-10000-suicides-tied-to-economic-crisis-study-says/#781503b31cbb

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top-banker-jail-financial-crisis.html?_r=0

Recession nonsense 2008

A republican blaming a democrat president for the weak economic recovery is like the Lakers blaming Luke Walton for the team's crap performance the last decade. (Good luck, Luke. You'll need it. Go Clippers.)

A republican administration - and, post 9/11, one with as free a hand as any since Lincoln's - was on watch as the banking industry, with the help of relaxed regulations, care of the business friendly red team, burned itself to the ground, taking two and a half million of us with it.

And, of course, no one from the administration or the financial industry has been held accountable for any part of the collapse*, though Americans all over bear the withering effects of it still.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/06/12/more-than-10000-suicides-tied-to-economic-crisis-study-says/#781503b31cbb

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top-banker-jail-financial-crisis.html?_r=0

Janice Hahn

I was proud to hear my representative speaking truth to stupid today, and for reminding me of something else that is going on while we stare at this train-wreck of an election cycle:


"Mr. Speaker, it has been almost three months since I joined John Lewis and my democratic colleagues right here, for a sit-in on the House Floor, to demand a vote on common sense gun violence legislation.

"Instead of letting us vote; instead of confronting this issue, Speaker Ryan and my republican colleagues left town.

"Now we're back in session and there is still no talk about holding a vote. 

"There is a lot of talk coming from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle about punishing us for protesting on the House Floor. 

"I hope they do.

"But I am not going to apologize for what I did.

"I am proud that I did something to try to save lives.

I think they should apologize--to the American people."

"Because they have not allowed us to vote on common sense gun legislation.

"I think they should apologize that they continue to do the bidding of the gun lobby.

"And I think they should apologize that during our seven week recess, 2015 americans were shot and killed.

"My democratic colleagues and I took action.

They continue to sit on their hands."

Janice Hahn, Representative, 44th District CA, on the House Floor.
Open speeches

9/14/2016 CSPAN

Short list of worthy reading stuff:

The professor and the madman, by Simon Winchester
madman link here

The shining, by Steven King

Damned if I can't remember any more just now...

P.S. South park over Futurama



Thanks for a great time in Waikiki!

DJD