"Space. . .The final frontier."
-- Risky words introducing old Star Trek TV episodes
I guess the best part about the arrival of each new year is having a pulse. And forget all the romanticism about observing the first robins of spring, you're still better off just having a pulse. Can't write blogs without a pulse, either (and robins don't blog).
Okay, 2012. First of all, I've been thinking about Star Trek because science is discovering so much about the nature of matter and the possibility of other dimensions that I'm not even sure the word "space" has relevance anymore, and space is probably nobody's final exploratory destination. Captain Kirk's "out there" may be no more unreachable than "in here," except for the furniture and plumbing arrangements.
UFOs. I remember sitting in that grassy field in April of 1964, accompanied by a trusty, yet necessarily large and clumsily-sized transistor radio (they weren't pocket-sized then, at least mine wasn't). To a teenager, transistor radios seemed nearly magical, allowing one the freedom of venturing far beyond the restraints of plug-in electricity when listening to a favorite station.
During that April afternoon, radio signals near and far crackled with news reports of the Socorro, New Mexico UFO, most stations dependent upon news wire services and long-distance phone calls for updates. Erupting media chaos over UFOs excited the public from coast to coast before spreading internationally -- even to countries where "saucers" were old and almost routine news.
Almost as many years have passed since Socorro as there are states in the USA, and still UFOs come and go. What do I know about the phenomenon's true identity? Nothing. What do I THINK I know? I think that for all the impressive UFO maneuvers, encounters and near-collisions with conventional aircraft in the skies, there's much more taking place on the ground, and it likely has disturbing and maybe pronounced effects upon human and animal activity for reasons mostly unknown. Nor is it new. We may hold magnifying glasses over ant colonies, but that doesn't make us the sole observers.
I've had the opportunity to hear significant portions of the Betty and Barney Hill hypnosis sessions, truly fascinating as an early multiple witness case, but it was the bizarre Hickson-Parker UFO encounter case from Pascagoula MS in the seventies that makes my hair stand on end -- and no less so when Navy men possibly witnessing a landing UFO at the same time in the same area came to public attention years later.
"Sleep paralysis" may explain some instances of UFO abductions that never happened, but when we're referencing multiple witnesses to an abduction event, the sleep paralysis nonsense embraced by well-credentialed folk who, nonetheless, can't see beyond their own noses goes nowhere. I swear, all too often I fear that either the experts or the "digital revolution" will kill us off quicker than a nuke, I'm just not sure which will finish us off first.
What shall we look forward to in 2012? In the U.S. the population will continue to dumb down, engrossed more in sporting events than in education or the political process, and as a result we'll continue to get exactly the kind of government we deserve, currently pointing us in dangerous directions. Moderately disturbing is a little -- isolated, ha ha -- instance where the EEOC wishes to classify one's lack of a high school education and diploma as a disability, thus forcing employers to hire the superbly unqualified or be sued out of existence. Of course, these little outrages tend to catch fire and become federal legislation before one can react, and if anything will help to encourage the ignorance, lack of common sense and plain stupidity on the part of a growing legion of American idiots, imbeciles and moronic children sired by even more moronic parentage, this is it.
Nor must we fail to give proper credit to religious "relief" agencies which flood this country with untalented and religiously radical detritus, almost acting in unison with the illegal immigration industry for the same result. Sanctuary cities? Please, hand out prison terms for mayors and other public officials who allow this travesty, even though sworn to serve under the Constitution. Word is that, in California alone last year, illegal aliens sent 15 billion dollars back to relatives in Mexico. One hospital in the state -- just one -- complains that illegal immigrants cost them 100 million dollars last year. Guess who pays the difference?
You are aware, aren't you, that pregnant women from China and other countries who can afford to do so fly here to deliver their babies and, with dual citizenship, those grown children can someday bring all their relatives over to the United States? There is a bill in Congress to stop this practice, but the current crop of do-nothings will probably ignore it and the consequences of doing nothing.
I'm not impressed by anybody currently in the running on the conservative ticket -- and though often libertarian in my thoughts, in no way could I imagine Ron Paul as president if he thinks Iran's leadership and other global crazies will play nice with us if we just go away. The world is a vicious place and we humans, whether it's the 80-year-old grandma baking a pie down the street or the eight-year-old playing soccer. . .well, I know what we are, and it's not a pretty sight.
President Obama. Yikes. Nice guy, I suppose, but. . .go, please, just go away after the elections, assuming that voters do more than merely vote for familiar incumbent names. I don't know what this man is about once the teleprompters are turned off, but the professorial/intellectual dream-speak drives me nuts. His desire to regulate everything is a horror story. We the people, our power as individuals is spirited away, little by little. Why did he not issue orders to blow up the drone in Iran? Unless its contents self-destructed in some way we know nothing about, NOT destroying it -- no matter the risk to people around it -- may have put millions more in jeopardy -- and if China, Russia or another of our "good friends" get their hands on it, I guess our wonderful globalization and international partnerships aren't working very well, are they? No, better that the President bail out GM so they can build electric cars whose best consumer feature is their ability to be recalled.
The President who assured us long ago that energy prices must rise substantially. It's working.
The First Lady who admitted pride in her country for the first time in her life only when her husband was elected.
A White House functioning like a king's court, bowing to foreign leaders and apologizing for the U.S.
Will the nightmare end on Election Day, or will another emerge to build upon the basics of alleged corruption, incompetence and arrogance?
You sure you want to continue petitioning the White House for UFO information? This White House? Spinning your wheels uselessly in the sands of time, folks.
There's already war in the streets and the cops are out-gunned, overworked, under-appreciated and stressed out. The war on drugs is a joke. A federal agent is dead because of the "Fast and Furious" ploy and somebody needs to take responsibility. The borders aren't protected sufficiently and now the military itself may be gutted to a degree beyond rational. These are dangerous times, administered by a gathering of pretentious fools in D.C.
So it's 2012. A great time to strengthen not only the First Amendment, but the Second as well.
I am nobody's freaking world diplomat.
Oh, a big 2012 congratulations to the Muslim Brotherhood and particularly Iranian crazies who now have the ability to enslave the entire Middle East with radical Islam. They couldn't have done it without the encouragement of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Anderson Cooper and all the other political/media types who simply gushed over the emergence of some nebulous crap called the "Arab Spring." A third-grader could have predicted where all of this would go. The much worse is yet to come. Remember who cheered it on.
But look on the bright side, the Administration had its hooks and our money into that wonderful energy magnate corporation, Solyndra. . .which failed miserably and ate up tons of our money. So sorry 'bout that.
Meanwhile, the FCC chief wants cross-ownership of newspapers and TV to become easier so that, apparently, fewer companies can gobble up more media in order to restrict our desires to get all the news and all the views. This has been done before, and the implications are troubling.
Extremist Muslim terrorists are infiltrating our military, gang activity among enlisted personnel is said to be increasing, and if that isn't enough to worry about, "fake" parts from countries such as China are installed in our military equipment, endangering U.S. service personnel.
The global warming faction wants more support from President Obama and your bank accounts so they can pursue science's nonsensical evil research brother, and in the meantime climate will change as it has throughout the history of this planet, despite our activities.
For laughs, don't forget the 2011 revelations that "Sybil" and the multiple personality industry were discovered to involve lies and hoaxes. How many lives ruined? How many members of the professional psycho industry were enriched by treating wisps of nothing? I can hardly wait until sleep paralysis meets a similar fate among pro-fessionals who swear all UFO abductions can be explained away via half-awake minds, illusions and delusions under the bed sheets. Three important words to remember here: Multiple witness events.
Also in 2011, scientists reported that water seems far more abundant throughout the universe than once thought. Heck, I darned well promised the same thing in newspaper letters-to-the-editor decades ago when I said, look, if there's water here there's water there. I think I became convinced after watching all those westerns on TV where somebody always said, "Drink 'em up, boys," though at the time I didn't realize that water had nothing to do with it.
As we were saying, it's a new year. Lunatics everywhere will rejoice.
