Johnnymontana's blog: "Thoughts on the Sundry"

The election is tomorrow and I have been negligent in getting in here and talking about the issues so will try to do a few points in one blog this morning.  I am very concerned about this election for several reasons , primarily because half the candidates in this years election seem to want to throw science and knowledge about the world out the window and go back to something akin to burning witches at the stake and the days when we thought the earth was flat.  It is a shift in the Republican Party that is disturbing and backward thinking.  On the other hand the Dem's seem to think government knows better than we do...about everything.  So for an independent like me it is very difficult to decide who to toss and who to support.  Here are a few things I am thinking about.....

The Tea Party movement in the Republican Party, the idea that life is simple and government should have no part in it is ridiculous and overly simplistic. The proponents are big corporations who are out sourcing jobs to China, India and god knows where else, who are supporting candidates who say we need jobs!!!  Hypocritcal??? You bet. The US Chamber of Commerce is putting hundreds of millions in ads supporting these ishort sighted people and also supported legislation to outsource jobs ...so obviously elitist business owners ( the Chamber) with no concern for the jobless rate.  Great!!  Sharon Engle, Tea Party Republican Senate candidate in Neveda, like so many others around the country that share her limited view of the world, says that they know better than we do what to do about the right of a woman to have an abortion...even if it involves a father raping his daughter and getting her pregnant something that happens all to frequently.  Yet they want government out of our lives.  They have come up with nothing that tells me what they will do other than they are all opposed to Social Security which I guess means if you are not smart enough or make enough money to take care of yourself till retirement ( which they want to change to age 70 by the way) then you should just die and get out of the way.  They all hate Obamacare ( I do too in some ways) but have nothing to offer as to how they would help those who are disabled through no fault of their own or sick and can't afford the $400 premiums each monthy ( or more) to carry health insurance.  I have been listening carefully and they have no solutions for that...cause everything is simplistic!!!  Idiotic!

The Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, a disgraceful old windbag from Kentucky, says his only agenda is to see Obama fail...You never heard a Democrat say that while Bush was in office. Not when it came to the good of the cvountry and survfival for millions of people.   Meanwhile he supported spending trillions on wars and cutting services to people here who are sick and poor, while voting to outsource jobs overseas for cheap labor.  That is where your jobless rate comes from folks.  Quit blaming Obama.  This started long before Obama was elected.  Lets not even start with the deregulation of Wall Street and the abuse we saw there.  They about ran us in a ditch...in fact did. 

The on thing I know is that the American people are basically good  but very impatient.  They do not pay close attention to this stuff because they are busy trying to make a living.  Then they hear little sound bites on the news or on the internet and make judgements without a huge amount of thought.  They would rather spend time buying worthless shiny cute blings to stick on their page to feed their ego than pay attention to what is really going on.  In my opinion, as a moderate independent, if the Republicans take over one or both Houses of Congress in the election tomorrow it will set us back 50 years cause many of the folks who will win just want to get rid of any spending, let people in wheelchairs find their way down the path of life cause it is just "their own fault that they are sick" as Ran Paul, Tea Party Repub Senate candidate in Kentuckyt put it. Certainly we need to be cautious in our spending but we sure don't need to kick old people and sick folks.   They never talk about the bail out of GM that saved many jobs in this country and the loans which are PAID OFF...l Not my words folks..on the record with the government accounting office.  Of course bail outs are a big thing this year and those opposed to the present President cause he is a Muslim terrorist and doesn't look like he came from a white affluent neighborhood.  Idiots....

I am not a fan of the Democrats....but I do know it has nothing to do with the President.  It has to do with their policies in some cases.  The health care bill should have been more carefully constructed but the reason it was not was because the REPUBLICANS kept throwing road blocks in it because of their big corporate donors.  Same with many Democrats.  I do know it took 8 years of deregulation under Republicans to get in this mess we are in ...actually it started under Bill Clinton as our economy shifted from manufacturing to information and jobs began leaving for China etc...and to expect someone to solve this in two years is ridiculous.  And stupid.  I am willing to wait another couple years and see how things go....but I know I do not like people who have no care for the poor who shine their shoes and clean their houses and want to lower the minimum wage...which is what Republicans want to do...and then cut Social Security.  Guess it is better to die and get out of the way right Rann??

More later...either way make sure you vote tomorrow ...and think before you do it please....

Ok, I have stayed out of the political fray here long enough and those of you who know my background can understand my frustration.  For those of you who might actually read this and are not aware of my past history, primarily because you have an aversion to reading profiles, I served in political office here for many years in various capacities.  I was non partisan and usually had the support of both political parties in some form. I got alot done and was finally voted out of office due to ...well apathy. Eight thousand registered voters in my district and 500 showed up...lost by 26 votes.  Then heard about it for months from people who wondered why I got beat.  When I asked them if they had voted they had some excuse about seeing the flowers growing across the street.  To be fair most people do not think about voting in a primary in September in a city election. The bad news is that because of that defeat people are now stuck in traffic jams on a few of the main thoroughfares in Missoula...MONTANA!!!!  We are not supposed to have traffic jams here....we have less people in the whole damn state than the population of metropolitan Salt Lake City!!! 

The on thing I learned in public office is if you tell the truth and try to get people involved in making decisions that effect them, you are going to be in big trouble....primarily from those you serve with because most have egos the size of the Eiffel Tower and hate those who rock the boat because they are not wearing a life preserver and will drown in their stupidity if confronted appropriately. The one thing most public officials know is that most of us do not have time to pay attention to anything other than wars and buildings getting hit by airplanes.  The days of reading the news are a thing of the past.  We get our information about the world around us in sound bites and small concise three sentence summaries.  A recent study done by the University of Southern California found that in medium income homes only 30% knew the name of their congressional representative.  We are busy watching kids, flowers and our body parts grow.  No time for that stuff. They all are a bunch of liars and thieves anyway.  Right??  

One of the reasons it is tough to get regular people to serve in elected office is that you have to raise alot of money and to do that, you have to promise to do the things the people with the money want.  If, like me, you say, I will make the best decisions I can and work hard depending on the circumstances, which is what we should want any elected official to do...you will watch as they put their checkbook away and wish you luck.  Usually a prescription for defeat unless you have your own money and can lie on tv ads in a way that cons people into believing what you are telling them, cause if you can't get them to read a profile here, do you really think anyone will check what you are telling them in a tv ad in a campaign.  I will answer that...no they won't. 

So for the next few days, as a person that does keep up with these things, and also cares about what happens to all of us, and as a public service, no I am not running for anything right now...in fact I am running FROM most things to be honest...anyway....as a public service I am going to talk about a few of the issues in the upcoming election.  Yes there is an election in a few weeks.  The first Tuesday in November.  It is everywhere because all members of the House are up for re election...and a third of the Senate is up for election too along with numer=ous positions in your state and local government depending on where you live.  I am not a Democrat nor a Republican.  I am a classic Independent...and think I have some common sense...do not ask the last person I was fu engaged to, who informed me that she wished I would quit talking about this stuff cause it was boring...clearly we were incompaitble intellectually...and I do not mean that in a bad way....yes I do..she didn't care about what was going on in the world and I did...not compatible.  Anyway I am going to talk about the absolutely retarded behavior I am observing on both sides of the political spectrum and try to help you make some sense out of the present state of our country and the world.  The one thing I can tell you is that there are some very bad and insane people who want to kill us whenever it is possible...men, women and children.  They think God wants them to do it....The problem is that our God whoever he or she is, has basically given us heat seeking missiles and night vision that can spot these jerks in their beds at night and zero in on them.....just ask Saddam's sons.  Well you can't, they are gone now to meet the real reward you get for being a jerk in this life whatever that is, but if that isn't enough there are economic concerns, corporations outsourcing jobs to countries where they only have to pay $.25 an hour and much more and I want to talk about it all. Hope you will come along for the ride and give some input along the way...will probably write it all week and into next week....see you tomorrow and we will talk about the political bickering in Washington....which is like being on the kindergarten playground most of the time...get your sandbox ready!!!

As most of you know I have been talking about our place in the universe and how we can decipher some meaning for our lives from the clues given us by that unseen force that created this mess.  I have taken issue with a few aspects of the game plan as presented by that Creator as being not very well thought out and have been getting messages from some very well meaning people who want me to see the error of my thinking before I go straight to hell.  The problem is, as I readily inform them, I am already in hell so their warning does not ring true for me.  I am living on a planet that has been decimated on more than one occasion by other rocks flying at random and that have run into us basically wiping out life as we know it and if you watch the Discovery Channel we are told that is going to happen again....oh great!!! Have a nice day???   We have mountains spewing fire, tidal waves, the ground moves under our feet without warning, strange and very mean people who want to kill us for a variety of reasons that make absolutely no sense to any one with an ounce of compassion in their soul or even less than an ounce of tolerance. We have giant corporations who get us legally addicted to little white fire things that kill us and they know it and our government pays for them to do it through giant monetary subsidies and you religious folks want to threaten me with hell?  You get my point here and very sorry to be Mr. Happy Joy  Joy this morning but as always am trying to make a point in that obtuse way only I seem to be able to produce without trying.

The best we can do is take care of each other. Most religious thought is based upon what we see here and our perceived solutions to the meaning of it all. Most religions teach us to take care of each other. The huans come along and add little disclaimers such as, " if you find someone who doesn't believe the way you do, then either kill them to put them out of our misery or correct and legislate them. "  Pass laws to make them do what our belief system says is right and true. Even though we don't know any more than the rest of you we are going to make you think we do and then try to lord it over you.  Good!!!  Very..ummmm, religious of you.  Yeah let's go to church and sing a hymn to celebrate that. Unles you happen to be a Quaker as my neighbor is and then go to a "meeting" without a leader or minister and sit and wait to say something until you are inspired.  I could never be a Quacker because no one would ever get a chance to talk and I would be ridden out of the meeting house on a rail.  Why go through that kind of degradation?  Life is hard enough without having to ride rails.

So most of us immerse ourselves in our little world and don't think about these things until some idiot like me writes a blog bringing it all up and depresses the hell out of us first thing in the morning.  We try to find happiness in our corner of the world and that is really no different than the first humans were doing walking the earth thousands of years ago.  The only difference is they didn't have some right wing religious zealot telling them to "stop that" before they burn in hell and on a stake first.  They saw what we should see today, we are all in this together and things are tough enough as it is without telling us that we know nothing about what we feel within and our instincts are really not valid so they, the ones who know all things will tell us what is right and wrong for us. Now I realize of course that we have an obligation to use our gifts correctly and within some standard of order which is where things like the Ten Commandments came from , the idea there are certain principles that seem to hold true for all of us.  We should not be killing each other because we have enough other stuff out there trying to do that without us helping. Do not take what is not yours.  

We really are all in this boat together.  So pick up an oar please and help row.  We need to comfort each other and care about each other.  We may not always say what we mean or mean what we say, we may be influenced by the past experiences of our own life and move at different pace than the guy next to us. You folks that think you have all the answers are great.  Just quit trying to make me think I dont have any answers and that my  life experience is not valuable.  You can tell I have never worked in Customer Service.  I would not last for over 20 minutes.  Comments that I would make like, "How late did you have to stay up to think of that stupid question ?", are not looked upon with great kindness and I would be out the door in about two  seconds.  Yes people can be very trying at  times and no one knows that better than me.  Throw in the Internet, which we will talk about tomorrow in more detail and you have a recipe for real communication hysteria cause we can't see each other move for one thing.  

So quit telling me I am going to hell.  I am already here thank you and doing ok at it.  So far.  If you religious folks can get down off your lofty pertch long enough to join the rest of us in the boat we might get where we are trying to go faster and with a little less effort and aggravation.  This world is filled with a myriad of people and beliefs and it all makes the world go round.  Just get over here and have a beer with me and relax for a minute and then we will get to rowing again....more next time.

One of the great mysteries of the universe is how in the midst of swirling seas during the formation of the Earth, millions of years after the Big Bang, one tiny single celled life form, swimming aimlessly in that early ocean could evolve into every species of life form we have on this planet an especially lead us to people who drink huge amounts of alcoholic beverages and wave lighters around at concerts but that is exactly what scientist tell us happened as life evolved on the Earth.  If there is a force behind the creation of the universe and us, it seems they would have thought to maybe intervene in the massive alcohol part of our development. The only thing I can assume is to do an intervention like that would have violated some unknown law of the universe regarding humans.  Sound silly?  Maybe.  It is clear however that we somehow seem to have universal laws that guide us in our existence here as well as those principles of physics and such that control the universe and this is another important clue in this series to help discern what the heck we are doing here floating around in the vastness of space.

We have come along way since the time Ringo Starr played a sensitive caveman with sensual cave woman Shelly Long. Many archaeologists have invested entire lifetimes in trying to discover what life was like for the first upright creatures that walked the Earth.  Somehow we are skipping the dinosaurs and other developing life and for our purpose are now focused on people like us, the caveman.  Archaeological evidence recently uncovered in various parts of the world suggest that prior to farming and growing food humans were hunter gatherers.  They basically wandered around looking for food and did little else except have sex.  Sex was, according to a new book out this year by a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, random and without planning. We were a promiscous species. There was no need for marriage or identifying sexual partners and so there was no need for the family unit.  Men in those days basically went out and killed something to eat or gathered food that grew wild from vegetation and then tried to find the first available female, have sex and slept.  Not much different from today if you think about it.

What changed everything was beer.  Don't laugh.  Anthroplogists who spend their time thinking about these things, tell us that after mankind began to settle and farm crops rather than hunt, one of the first things they discoverd was fermented beverages.  We know this from excavations where containers that contained vast quantities of beer have been discoverd.  I am not making this up.  It makes sense if you think about it.  As our ancestors settled and claimed small pieces of ground for their own it was necessary to begin to identify a family unit so they might leave that piece of fertile land to their descendants. They obviously developed a liking for alcoholic beverages and began to settle on one sexual partner as they ceased wandering and randomly finding sex in the same way they found their dinner.  Now planning was in place and it made more sense to have one partner and identify offspring.  This also is a very logical explanation as to how attorneys first evolved if you think about it.  

So as we look at the laws of the universe in a simple way it is pretty clear that we were not given marriage and the family unit early on in our existence on this planet.  We have learned that behavior.  We have also learned to hate attorneys.  It is also pretty clear that many people have also not shed the random sex thing that was so prevelant with our early ancestors.  I guess it is true some habits die hard. This is the reason some cultures had to start developing some rules in society to keep everyone in line and prevent needless domestic violence.  That has not, unfortunately,  worked out very well either. This is where we will pick up tomorrow as it explains the formation of religious thought and rules that governed human moral behavior. What we can say is that it appears that we change and grow much like our physical counterparts around the universe with one major difference.  We have the ability to make choices.  Whatever force created this vast universe made certain that we had the ability to be free. Unfortunately that freedom was not limited to just wandering as we wanted in the world.  It also extended to the ideas that enter peoples brains about controlling others, having power and hurting or helping those around us.  Some make the choice to be angels, others seem to be on the opposite end of the spectrum and want to be complete jerks to anyone they meet.  Most of us fall somewhere in the middle.  

It is my opinion based on these facts, and I have absolutely zero archaeological evidence to back any of this, that attorneys then are the cause of all that is bad in the world.  Along with farmers who got tired of hunting and gathering and having random sex and found it was better to have one sexual partner rather than 365 a year.  This is what caused the creation of religious thought and ultimately led to things like the Ten Commandments and Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea.  It is really esxciting to se this isn't it??  More tomorrow...sorry have to get out of here cause I have a need to gather something..LOL    

One thing I have learned in my life is to never say never which is why I keep doing that all the time.  We don't really learn to not say that we just say it cause we all know things constantly change in this life. I have always said I would never eat insects.  Except if involved in a plane crash in the jungle with no food and was really really hungry!! I will cook them if I can find fire.  I will never have a pet snake. Many people have them but somehow they just don't have the same look in their eye that a doggie or kitty does.  I will never, never, ever go out with a Pittsburg Steeler fan and I will never get Fu married on this site.  Seems to be the most ill named concept for sharing points I had ever seen....just call it sharing points.  Well I was wrong on both of those last nevers and now appear to be somewhat of a hypocrite.  In fact I not only appear to be a hypocrite..I am one I guess.  But my heart was in the right place.  Then I met someone that just came barrel assin in and changed all that in about two seconds for me. 

Now as most of you guys who read this blog know, there are tons of beautiful women on this site.  Even better they have lots of cleavage to show and look awesome. I have been blessed to have some very good friends here who are not only great people but also have awesome cleavage. Men love great cleavage.  It is not our fault, we just do because God made us that way.  The difference was that I never really wanted to touch any of them in a big way because I know that it is the way you relate in your heart that really makes a difference in a real relationship.  I can hear the guys out there..."which heart are you referring to Johnny?' Pervs!!!  The one you feel with...ok I guess that could go either way too. What i am trying to say is something that makes your soul have constant orgasms of happiness.  We all want it.  It takes work and building and time.  It is not easy to find.  

So I swore I would never get Fu engaged, married, have Fu children or have Fu retirement. The one that changed my mind I saw my first day on Fu..she seemed so beautiful and made my heart skip a couple beats.  That was all I remember till she showed up on my page.  The rest is history.  I could not see straight.  I could not think clearly.  I could not do anything.  I did go around the house running into walls and wondering where I put my  truck keys, ( after two hours of searching I found them  in my pocket...that is what Kim does to me)....things like that.  Next thing I know I am Fu engaged. 

You can't help but get engaged here when you meet someone special.  It happens all the time and then they get divorced.  Come to think of it that happens in real life all the time too.  It is just a lot cheaper here cause there is no alimony!!! No child support cause the kids are not real.  When I saw I had something that was real for us both...I jumped without a parachute and feel like I can fly!!  It is a remarkable feeling and makes me feel like I am on top of the world.  Of course online you have to learn about each other and grow together. You both have to want it...if it was not that way for me and her I would never have done this...cause I want the real thing..and this is the real thing. The great thing about being online is we would never have met any other way.  I am in the mountains and she is by the ocean in New Jersy..the odds of running into each other at WalMart is minimal. 

So call me a hypocrite.  I would rather feel that feeling within than never have a chance to do this....thank you Kim...you are the best..and I am very proud of you!!!  Thank you for giving me a chance to get to know you...you make my heart smile...and much more... the rest of you laughing at me..and you know who you are..LOL  have at it..meantime I will just on this path and be happy I can change my mind about something when it is staring me in the face....a good quality for us all to aspire too...back to the regular blog tomorrow..

I received a message from someone yesterday saying that I am not being specific enough on this blog. I wrote back and told him I can operate a wheelbarrow and everything else is instinct and intuition.  Those of you that follow my thinking, and I have a huge amount of sympathy for you and don't think there is a cure for that, understand the point I was trying to make to this man.  We are talking about issues and facts that are sitting right in front of our face.  So I am not going to bore you with the scientific theories about evolution.  I am going to point out that science has discovered a species called dinosaurs and that the Bible, the Koran and most other religious texts say nothing about them.  Not particularly scientific but true.

As we talked about yesterday, it is clear there is some order to the universe.  As a friend pointed out this morning in a message, if the moon and its orbit was off just a fraction things would be as romantic as they are when we stand on the beach with someone special and look up at the moonlight and feel all kinds of chemicals bouncing around.  We would feel chemicals bouncing around but not from romance..it would be from the fear of that green cheese orb coming straight at us. It is hard to be romantic when you have a giant celestial body coming at you.  Fortunately though, we can be romantic under the moonlight because somehow our nearest neighbor and creator of moods to stays where it is supposed to.  The sun, for example, is 93 million miles from the earth.  If it were just a few miles closer we would not have to worry about making coffee this morning, paying bills or having a romantic moment under the moonlight.  There would be no moonlight and there would be no us.  So it is pretty clear to my feeble brain that in this Big Bang that science tells us was the opening salvo of creation, things turned out ok for a random act. That is the kind of good fortune that would make any gambler in Las Vegas green with envy!  

The problem is that despite the seemingly ordered nature of the universe around us we have stuff flying around out there that is not in the right place at times.  Astronomers were gleeful to be able to photograph a comet hitting the surface of Jupiter a couple years ago and are still observing the rather sizable dent it left.  I would like to see how gleeful they would have been if that stray comet was headed for earth. There is evidence that we have had encounters like that with some rather off course celestial bodies. One in particular hit what is now the Gulf of Mexico and anialated the dinosaurs and whatever else was alive on our planet at the time. This is only a theory of course because no news crews were around to cover that event in history and I am not clear the video would have survived anyway.  Clearly things are not as perfect as they appear and in fact, we know that the universe in  constant flux, stars being created and others in their death throes all of which is about as big a fireworks display as is possible to imagine.  So if there is some celestial boss in all this , it was not very considerate in making things a little more stable for us. Kind of makes me wonder if things were planned as well as it seems at first glance.

I am going to suggest that the answers we seek are not going to be found in looking through a telescope.  They will not be found in understanding the laws of the universe, physics or chemistry although it certainly is a great help to know that these laws exist and that they operate in a way that are consistent and never violated.  That is why a comet, reacting to the law of gravity, hit Jupiter.  It had no choice.  If I were a comet and saw myself speeding toward a collision with an immense planet and my subsequent doom I would change course and take a slight detour to avoid disaster. Unfortunately it appears that all guidance systems, as they say in space lingo, are set on the same frequency.  One that can not violate the laws of the universe that someone or something put in place.  Whoever or whatever created this system has not come and apologized for putting us in this situation which seems to be the least it could do and just basic good manners. Many religions teach that Gos is the creator of the universe and is a loving being that cares for us.  Get out of here!!! That kind of plan, that puts in the way of randome flying objects does not seem very loving to me.   My Mom and Dad taught me to apologize for much less offensive behavior than putting a planet in jeopardy. Come on whoever you are out there, get with it, show some love!!!

If there is a force behind the creation of the big bang, the orgin of what we see as reality and the universe in all its complexity, right down to the little lady bug crawling up our leg in the grass at a summer picnic, it is clearly something that is not concerned with our best interest.  Our best interest from the perspective of living on this planet, is to stay on this planet as long as we can. To continue to exist.  To continue to function Will Robinson!!! As we all know for a fact, that is not what happens either.  We know our existence here is not permanent.  It is not something infinite which is a concept we can not understand anyway.  Each day is an eternity to many of us, especially when we are doing something distasteful or going through difficult times. We only have this limited view from the surface of one planet though. One telescope with a very weak lens and it may be that what seems to be apparent by observation of the laws of nature and the scientific facts around us, revealed through the course of history by our own persistence as a species in uncovering basic truth,  may not be all there is to the story of our place here.  As pointed out above it may be that some of the answers may lie within us.  If the universe and all that exists in it is controlled by these laws, and we are certainly no exception to that rule and therefore do not go floating off the ground because of one of them ( gravity), is it not possible there may be some rules of the universe that govern our thinking and feelings within also?  We will talk about that tomorrow...It is interesting to me at least and I appreciate any who are following this.  I have a law of nature right now that is calling me..first stop bathroom, second stop, mow 2 acre yard I have outside before it rains..we will continue in the morning...