I am one of those people who has a difficult time remembering dreams. When I wake up, I usually have a little idea of what I dreamed about, but 30 seconds later I have forgotten it.
Mrs. Doud, on the other hand, can remember her dreams well. She spends a lot of time dreaming about being in college, or levitating. Sometimes, she levitates in college. When she levitates, she often flies above the town, and it is a wonder she doesn’t collide with birds. (Maybe she does collide with birds, and like the Federal Aviation Administration, just isn’t telling about it.)
I, too, sometimes dream about being in college, but I don’t levitate, at least not that I remember.
I also often have the same dream over and over again for several nights running, and I am never sure why, but it gets boring after while. What’s the use of dreaming if you know how the dream is going to turn out right when it starts?
I used to work with a guy whose brother made a lot of money as a dream interpreter. I read a book this interpreter brother wrote about dreams, and understood barely a word.
“I didn’t understand a word in that book,” I told my co-worker. “Thank God,” he said. “I thought I was the only one who was baffled by it.”
Some people say your dreams help you work out problems you don’t have time to solve during the day, and that may be true for some people. But if I can’t remember my dreams, how is that so helpful?
Actually, I do remember some dreams I used to have. In them, I would appear naked in a crowd watching somebody make a speech from the back of a truck. It was very embarrassing, both for me and the crowd, and annoying to the speaker. It has kept me from going to speeches that are given from the backs of trucks, so I guess it has been useful.
The rollout of the Tesla electric car in Hawthorne yesterday left me with a feeling of deja vu all over again, to paraphrase Yogi Berra.
I watched the rollout of an electric car in the 1980s, and I remember being most impressed.
This particular car could be charged by plugging it into a wall outlet, and also had solar panels on its roof. It had been built in an old dairy barn.
The fellow who built it and headed up the company he believed would make him rich took me for a ride in the car, and it was fun: quick off the mark —- it would accelerate half again as fast as a gasoline-engine car —- it also was quiet, with hardly any engine noise, although the road noise was about what you might expect with any car.
But it had a few problems, not the least of which was that it had no heater, no air conditioner, no radio, no power windows.
“The batteries won’t handle all that load,” the car man told me.
Well, that car never made it to market. I believe the one I rode in was the only one ever built.
The Tesla builders claim their car will have a 300-mile range and cost only $5 to recharge, but their claims make me wonder what they might be smoking.
Also, what about air conditioning, heating and all the electronic gizmos that are built into today’s cars? Will anyone buy a new car in California that doesn’t have air?
Most calculations of the energy it takes to move an electric car around would put the cost of running the Tesla at typical speeds at several times more -— probably about the same as a tank of gas.
Chevy is building the Volt, an electric car which it claims will have a range of 40 miles. Whom do you believe? I believe the Volt will be built, and some will buy it. I’m not sure about the Tesla.
No. 1: They pass a big stimulus bill to help the economy. Then Pelosi takes her friend to Italy and spends about $50,000 or more on a government plane. I guess that’s not money in our country. It’s money in Italy to help their country.
No. 2: President Obama takes the big plane to fly to New Mexico to sign a bill and also takes the plane to Virginia to talk when in fact he could have talked on television at the White House much cheaper than all that expensive gas they burned for the trip. All he did was talk to the people in person so he could hear all the screams and sign autographs.
If the economy is so bad, why are we spending money we don’t have.
They’re raising our taxes to pay for all these trips; at least the Republicans held down big spending and we are much better off.
The only ones I can see that the stimulus will help: (1) raise food stamps, (2) raise welfare, (3) Unemployment, (4) medical insurance for all welfare and unemployed people, not working class people.
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A man expressed “a comment on the bicycle (and pedestrian) path under-crossings at the bridges on D and Lake streets. There’s a lot of drug activity going on down there. We need to get rid of the people that are just hanging out down there and let the public use that area. I don’t even want to go down there because of that fact.”
“I can’t understand why politicians don’t legalize marijuana,” began a man’s call. “Either that or have people vote on it. They’ve spent millions of dollars trying to stop it, but it’s getting worse. It would save a lot of money if they legalize and pay taxes on it, like they do on tobacco, and make money.”
“I was downtown Tijuana, oh, I’m sorry, downtown Madera,” a man said by telephone. He “noticed that a building on the corner of Yosemite and C Streets had been painted a pinkish color. Which is right next door to the burnt orange building.” He was “just wondering, are Hispanic people color blind?”
A woman wanted to say how much she “enjoyed the color pictures on the weather page. They are really great.” She mentioned a couple of pictures that she really liked including “one a week or so ago that had a hill and a small tree on the right hand side and dark clouds in the background. It was really awesome.”
“It is such a small piece,” said a lady, “but with a lot of information. I don’t know who writes the Ramblin’ Rec that is in the paper on Monday, but since moving my family to Madera a couple of years ago I have relied on finding out about programs for my kids. I got them into after school programs and sports that I learned about in the paper.”
A man was “concerned about gangs and guns in Madera. I know sometimes they don’t get the publicity because a lot of it is undercover, but I hope the police department and gang task force is doing all they can. After what happened in Oakland (4 officers killed) this weekend, I hope it can’t happen here.”
A gentleman “just wanted to comment on the story of the moron that hung that little dog up in that tree. First of all, he can’t be a human being. But he will get paid back for that, somewhere along the line.”
A visitor to the Red Line Web site, self-identified as “Alex,” commented on two letters to the editor. Regarding a letter entitled “Cheers to police, they nabbed creep,” the visitor writes, “Why didn’t you have your daughter’s phone number changed when this guy first got her number?” Regarding a letter entitled “Cheers for naming a ball field,” he writes, “I would like to know when there is going to be a field named after Ken Taylor. Ken did a lot for baseball in Little League, Babe Ruth and the high schools.”
Another Internet guest, self-identified as “Donald,” writes, “Is anyone able to inform me as to why the City of Madera keeps approving plans for new shopping centers when the current ones we have are largely not filled with tenants? This includes all of the new ones as well as the older shopping centers.”
A third Internet reader took offense with a Tribune sports commentary entitled “A word with Obama and March Madness.” The person writes, “So a throwaway segment on ESPN that took all of three minutes on film is just too much to bear, right? I mean, come on, is he supposed to be completely cut off from anything of leisure since he’s elected?
“Let’s be realistic. Times are changing, and the president does need to be around, and what better way to be around than to do some things that encourage a view of the man as exactly that: a man. Let titles be titles, and acknowledge that a person can deal with presidential issues, have a March Madness bracket, and appear on talk shows. It’s called existing in the real world.”
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Thank you for your comments. Remember, the Red Line is open for your messages 24 hours a day by calling 674-4478, or by logging on to www.maderatribuneredline.com.
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Am I the only one concerned about the Obama tax-and-spend plans, that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says will hit $10 trillion and is not sustainable … even with huge tax increases?
The Obama Welfare Cadillac spending plan will make billionaires out of the money ink business, and as more jobs and industries go out of business and unemployment figures hit 17 percent to 20 percent in the valley, what will the average person do?
I’m thinking of asking the Mexican government to buy Texas, Arizona, and California, and having the rest of America support “Aztlan Territory” on the backs of the American taxpayer! Viva Aztlan!
With the Democrats and Obama spending billions of gringo tax dollars on Mexico Norte, we will never have to worry about money, property of the pesky migra! California, Arizona, and Texas can be open borders land and only Mexican law will prevail and only gringo American money will be accepted via the U.S. taxpayer.
What a paradise!
Our saviors will be Diane Feinstein, Pelosi, Boxer, Waxman, Obama, Arnold and every democrat in office who will enable “Aztlan Rancheria” From Mexico City, D.F. and we can all live happily after in the newly created area of Obama Land. Yes Vern, the circle will be complete with the liberation of Aztlan into Mexican government hands and the new Californians of Obama Land.
An item in the San Francisco Chronicle Thursday told about the awful time they are having in that city with graffiti. It seems as though some sections of the city are lousy with graffiti and it is getting worse.
One of the problems they have is that the citizens — unless they are the ones whose buildings are getting vandalized — don’t seem to care. In one case, a guy the police caught with the paint on his hands managed to be acquitted because the jury (which it took 60 people to seat) just didn’t think the case was serious enough to find the dink guilty.
San Franciscans apparently are plenty willing to complain about graffiti, but when it comes to doing something about it, it’s “don’t bother me.”
Let’s hope that doesn’t happen in Madera when the graffiti busters come to town.
You may remember that the city has hired a consultant to help quell taggers, and word is that the preliminary paperwork is almost done and it won’t be long before the full-court press is going to be put on graffiti vandals.
The consultants claim to have cleaned up San Jose to the point where graffiti are rare.
It will be good if they can help us do that here.
But it will take citizen cooperation. Citizens have to be the eyes and ears of the program along with police and code-enforcement officers, the consultants said during their pitch to the City Council earlier this year.
Yes, we still have graffiti problems in spite of spending what now has gone over $250,000 a year on graffiti eradication. But if you remember what the town looked like seven years ago when the graffiti program started — it was a graffiti toilet — compared to today, it is much improved due to the program.
If citizens get on board, it will be looking even better.
Just when you think the fringe of the environmental movement and its political supporters may have wrung their sponges dry of goofy notions, along comes Earth Hour, which will be observed Saturday.
You will know it’s Earth Hour when some of the big cities around the world turn off their lights for an hour, to symbolize the need to reduce energy consumption and the greenhouse gases which generation of electricity produces. Don’t go anywhere during that hour, or you are likely to bang into someone, or someone will mug you.
Earth Hour will be noticeable for its publicity value, but it will do nothing to demonstrate what life might be like if we actually shut down enough coal-fired plants and stopped burning enough gasoline to make a difference.
If you really want to do something for the environment, here is what you can do — but all of you will have to do it:
Unplug your computers.
Unplug your refrigerators.
Unplug your televisions and radios and microwaves.
Shut off your furnaces.
Unplug your air conditioners and swamp coolers.
Put your cars, trucks and tractors up on blocks.
Don’t go to work, or shopping, or to school or church unless you can walk there.
Throw away every gas and electric power tool.
Disconnect the power from your sprinkling systems.
If you do all that, you will actually prevent the burning of fossil fuel in large enough quantities to make a difference, perhaps to slow global warming, if in fact it can be slowed at all.
It would return us to what life was like at the end of the 19th century, when, well, global warming was under way, in spite of our ancestors’ best efforts not to cause it.
President Obama’s offhand joke last Thursday night on the “Tonight Show,” about how he bowled as poorly as a Special Olympics bowler, raised some hackles. Some people thought the remark, which poked fun at the developmentally disabled Special Olympians, was just an amusing slip of the tongue, while others thought it was rude and insensitive.
I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure he was only grabbing the comparison out of the air in an effort to be funny — not to insult anyone.
Of course, if President Bush had made the same slip of the tongue, 90 percent of the editorial writers in the United States would have written at length about what an insensitive S.O.B. he was.
But that was then, this is now. Obama’s 100 days of honeymoon aren’t up yet.
But there is one thing that bothers me: What in heck was he doing on the “Tonight Show” in the first place? He’s the president of the United States — not the entertainer in chief. Does he hold the office in so low a regard that he equates a late-night talk show with the serious discourse of government?
The campaign is over. The days of appearing on late-night comedy shows and letting Jay Leno — or any comedian, for that matter —make fun of him in order to schmooze a few idiots for votes should be in the past.
Would Washington, or Lincoln, or either of the Roosevelts, once they were president, have thought it a proper role of the commander in chief to spend time making fools of themselves on TV?
That isn’t to say Obama shouldn’t develop a sense of humor, or that he shouldn’t display it, or that he shouldn’t make use of television.
But to a president, a sense of humor is like the nuclear briefcase that follows him around — he should know how and when to use it or it can do a lot of harm.
I often wonder what Dr. Pinkney C. Walker would have thought about today’s economic problems and President Obama’s plans to solve them.
Walker was my economics professor at the University of Missouri, and at the time was regarded as one of the foremost economists in the country.
In one memorable lecture, he described inflation as being the result of too many dollars pursuing too few goods, but he also said inflation can result when the prices of goods or services become higher than their economic benefit.
He liked to lecture in front of an extra-large blackboard, and to illustrate his point, he would throw the chalk to a point higher on the blackboard than he could reach.
That is where inflation is likely to go if government starts printing money to force short-term solutions to long term problems, he said.
Then he would pick up the chalk and throw it at the ceiling, saying that’s where inflation would go when too much government-printed money was used to buy commodities that were priced beyond their current value.
I think Dr. Walker would say inflation was on the way very soon. The Federal Reserve decided last week to buy billions of dollars worth of Treasury bills — in other words, to lend the government money.
Keep in mind that the Fed is not a government agency. It is the central banker for banks and other enterprises that make up the financial system.
But no longer. It now is becoming a backup lender to the U.S. Treasury, which in turn will use some of that money to lend money to banks and other big companies flirting with failure.
This, in effect, is printing money to buy money to buy bad investment paper.
It may not be long before the chalk hits the ceiling.
