Where is the information?
I will assume that Bill Kettenhofen did not read my response to Mac in the RB 11/7 where I pointed out that nowhere did Hillary Clinton connect the video with the Benghazi attack. If he knows of a source that contradicts this, please post it for all to see.
Kevin Bracken, Kelseyville
Enough, already!
A short while back, after the last Benghazi hearing/performance, Mr. Bracken provided a review of the 21 hearings and noted that the cost of the 21 was $4.7 million dollars, a figure I have heard before. My thought was that it was a waste of time and money better used elsewhere. My take was that the embattled ex Secretary of State was the only rational, consistent, and serious person in the chamber. Hearings, after all, are fact finding mechanisms, not ideological, subjective outings, but others seem to differ.
Actually though, that “hearing” provides a model of the ineffectuality of the House of representatives and a better understanding of why nothing positive gets done. To me, the subcommittee represents a sample of the House, and should be able to be presumed competent. A competent committee probably should have found (at least) 95 percent of relevant information in (at most) five sessions with a cost of (5 X $4.7) $23.5. But no, the political/ideological had not been exhausted and sixteen more hearing have been held. For a subcommittee led by (very) conservatives not to be able to make decisions on 95 percent of information and to feel it is in our nation’s interest to spend $73.2 for maybe another 2 percent seems questionable at best, particularly when part of the conservatives’ mantra is less spending. Surely they have better things to do! But maybe not!
As my mother used to caution her son when he went over the line: “Know when to stop!”
Guff Worth, Lakeport
Random thought
Man has been slow to grant honesty to the deceptive placebo, which is made to deceive, but is applying now for credence. However, man’s sleuthing tendency is making it hard to maintain this honest dishonesty.
For example, one Dr. Sternbach in 1964 conducted an experiment with a group of volunteers to each of whom he gave a placebo, telling them it would cause a strong churning sensation in their stomachs. Later he gave them each another of the same placebo, telling them it was a different pill that would calm their stomach activity and make them feel full and heavy. Still later they were given the same placebo and told it was a placebo used for controlling the experiment.
In this experiment, two thirds of the subjects demonstrated the stomach activity predicted. Two-thirds is more than chance. In this particular experiment it is at least two times more than chance … probably; I am no mathematician.
The big question now concerns the mechanics through which all this happens; here I am a bit more with it. The answer to this question was given to us five or six decades ago without even the finder’s awareness of what he had found. He had found how thinking something is so, can make it so. However, he has not even yet discovered what he found all those years ago — at least not to my limited knowledge.
We have to accept a huge caveat with this discovery: it is valid only under very limited conditions; for the brain has not quite yet completely been accepted into the category of materialism. It still seems given just the least bit to magic, sorcery, or at least to a little legerdemain.
The gist of what the brain scientists had discovered tomographically was this: whatever one is doing, his or her cerebral neurons adjust to make doing it better and easier. If one starts doing something else, his or her cerebral neurons immediately adjust to make this new activity better and easier. Sometimes what one is doing is resisting illness through his or her immune system.
Dean Sparks, Lucerne
Deficit day
At 12:01 a.m. Monday (11-8-15) the U.S. ran out of money to finish the year (12-31-15) after collecting $3.2 trillion in taxes
Brent Pomeroy, Lakeport
