A Guy Walks Into A Bar

A guy walks into a bar and applies for a job mopping the floors. The bartender, a loyal NRA member, says, "Okay, pal, I have to ask you a few questions to see if you fit in. First, do you favor the overthrow of the United States' government by force, subversion or violence?" "Violence," the man says. It was a lucky guess.

Mister Ed

Long ago, Mister Ed walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Why the long face?" In fact he is a little spooked by Mister Ed, a talking horse on TV, whose smile seems unconnected to his eyes, which stare blankly. He's a odd one, Mister Ed. You might think, given his ability to speak English, he would ask for more oats or comment on the position of women in society (definitely second class in those days). Instead he talks like a car salesman.

The Queen and Alan Turing

This morning the Press Democrat ran a story from London. Queen Elizabeth II has "exercised  her royal prerogative of mercy" (gag me) and pardoned Alan Turing, who committed suicide in 1954.  Alan Turing was the British scientist who, in World War II, led the breaking of the German code system called Enigma. No one made a larger contribution to winning that war. A former student of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Turning is credited by many as being the father of artificial intelligence and the age of the computer. In 1952 he was convicted of having sex with a man and chemically castrated. His security clearance was cancelled. He took his own life at age 41. To which I will add this: the Duck Dynasty can kiss my ass.

Latino vs. White

On the front page of THE PRESS DEMOCRAT this morning the newspaper printed a category mistake made by Associated Press. "A category mistake arises when things of one kind are presented as if they belong to another kind."  The newspaper, in its own words, set out to show "the racial and ethnic composition" of California. So the error was built in.  The figures turned out to be White 36.6%, Latino 40.8%, Black 5.6% and Asian 13.4%. Yet on my block seven Latinos have lived, all of them White. And it's not hard to find Black or Asian Latinos.

You can sort Californians by skin color or by culture, but if you mix these categories, you get misleading results. For example, I have known Latinos for whom English is their first language; and their Spanish is no better than mine (not good).

Ideology

When Albert Camus visited the United States, he gave a talk at Columbia University in French that was attended by 1200 people. One of his topics was an exploration of what had made Hitler's rise to power possible.  Camus argued that the most significant factor had been an emphasis on ideology at the expense of human dignity. What he meant was that Fascism rose out black and white thinking, out of ideological rigidity, out of a refusal to compromise, out of a total rejection of the other side's ideas, out of a rejection of some people's humanity.

President Obama came into office determined to listen to all sides on important issues. In theory that is what a good leader does. In practice things may not go well if you are faced with rigid ideology, whether it comes from the right or left. Obama's own humanity has come under constant fire, including attempts to deny he was born in this country and attempts to blame him for matters over which a President has no control.

(Also on FaceBook) 

The Shocking Khobragade

 India has been deeply shocked by the arrest and cavity search of Devyani Khobragade, an Indian deputy consul general, in New York. From what I read she was arrested for lying on a visa application about her housekeeper's wages, which turned out to be less than $3 per hour. Khobragade was treated, she claims, like a common criminal.

We have plenty of underpaid workers already. The last thing we need is a lying fool from India's 1% cheating a housekeeper. The plain lack of decency to a worker is the part I find shocking. India wants this creep back. As far as I am concerned, they can have her.

The Problem of Job from Uz

The problem of evil is familiar to us in one form or another.  Really bad things occur--why does a perfect God allow evil in the world? In the Old Testament the problem of evil was memorably presented in the story of Job, written about 2700 years ago.  God permits Satan to torture Job--and to kill Job's children, servants and livestock--to test the faith of a blameless man. In other words, God allows innocents to be killed. In the end, Job's God makes a kind of point. He tells Job that God has a mighty arm, that He can do as He likes and that humans can't begin to understand Him. 

I'm incompetent in theological matters, but I became interested in Job while reading an article by Joan Acocella in THE NEW YORKER, December 16, 2013.

Who is Job? That's what caught my attention. The Bible says that Job is from Uz, an unknown land no other source has ever mentioned (although Frank Baum came close). Job's lineage is unknown. Job is not a Jewish name. No one in the story has a Jewish name. The author or authors of the story are unknown.  So who the hell is this Job? And which God is he worshipping?

Ask For An Attorney

I have sometimes wondered about a fairly common sequence of events. A terrible murder takes place. The police arrest a likely suspect, and he confesses. At his trial, the suspect retracts his confession, but that impresses nobody and the jury convicts him. The judge gives him 50 years. Ten years later DNA evidence proves the convict innocent. Why did he confess? Why does that keep happening?

In the December 9, 2013, NEW YORKER, Douglas Starr explains why it occurs, enlightening people like me. Back in the 1950s a polygraph expert named John Reid invented a system of questioning that relentlessly pushes a suspect into confessing. That method has been adopted around the world. If you would like to learn this carefully structured and effective method, you can, today, sign up with Reid & Associates in Boston for the basic training course.

I don't have space here to describe the method, but you have seen it on LAW AND ORDER and so forth. It works. The only problem with it is that it leads to a confession, not to the truth. Keep John Reid in mind. If you get arrested, the first thing to do is ask for an attorney. After that, say nothing. 

Cannabis Convention in Santa Rosa

According to the Press Democrat this morning, Sonoma county's Cherry Kola won the Breeder's Cup at our yearly cannabis convention, attended by about 4500 growers and buyers. Kola came in second in the statewide Flower Contest, where victory was snatched away by an upstart bud from Monterey. This shocked the headbands off of competitors from the Emerald Triangle (Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties, the heart of the cannabis empire). Santa Rosa police officers patrolled the event, looking more cheerful than necessary.

Gay, Latino, and He Sells Drugs?

The Press Democrat had an upbeat story on its front page this morning, and I (a frequent critic) should admit it. Matt Brown wrote up newly minted Mayor Robert Jacob of Sebastopol.  Sebastopol is the Paris of the western part of Sonoma County, the area too progressive to brush with fluoride tooth paste. Black Bart, famous stage coach robber, used to hang out nearby. Anyway, Mayor Brown is gay, Latino and the founder of two medical marijuana outlets called Peace in Medicine. That almost makes me like Sebastopol (but no, it has too many one-way streets). 

The Lure of Ayn Rand

Adolescents, particularly weak outsiders, are sometimes fascinated by powerful villains and their cold ruthlessness. That is what Ayn Rand offers, a gross reversal of morality, an admiration for sociopathic evil. An outcaste teenager who adopts Rand moves into a position of secret glamor (she or he believes) and dark superiority to ordinary people with their feeble kindnesses to one another.

The Moderates

In the Dec. 2 New Yorker, Jill Lepore wrote about how divided the two main political parties are at present. "The more you know, the more likely you are to vote in an ideologically consistent way, not just following your party but following a set of constraints dictated by political ideology. . . . What makes a voter a moderate . . . is not knowing very much about politics." (Lepore here is conveying the ideas of someone else.)

That's interesting and a comfort to those of us with strong views, but I'm not sure what "not knowing very much" means here. It might mean that you don't know who your state senator is, or it might mean you don't know that your congressional representative wants to abolish Social Security. There are many kinds of low information voters, including those who argue that there is no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. There are moderates who understand politics but have values that favor moderation in all things, ranging from ice cream to racism. They work for PBS.

The Question No One Answers

Tom Belton, sage of the Senior Center, left Safeway recently, having purchased a small bag of chips, and found himself near a table in the parking lot. Many of us have seen this table before. It pops up in various sites around the county. The table calls for the impeachment of the President and sports some supportive posters of the President with a Hitler mustache.  Male and female persons stand behind the table, ready to engage the public, which hurries by with faces averted. Tom, of course, stopped to engage in some irony.

I'm not sure where the two people come from, but I suspect that they are followers of Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr., released from prison in 1994. They are the sort of people I like to see keeping busy doing useless work. In any case, the male impeacher told Tom that the President is a Muslim. "Is that right?" Tom asked, very interested. "Is he Shia or Sunni?"

Santa In Chains

Karl Hilgert is a large round man with a white beard, a retired social worker and peaceful activist. For many years he was a regular member of the Healdsburg Peace Project. We all respected him.  A couple of years back, he moved south, only to appear on the Daily Show (Jon Stewart) last night. 

Even in mufti, Karl looks like Santa Claus, and when he puts on the red Santa costume, he's a dead ringer. Stewart ran a clip of Karl dressed as Santa being led away in handcuffs by the police. He had been demonstrating in front of  one of those Wallmart stores that refuses to pay its workers a wage they can live on without adding welfare. At Wallmart they never have a merry Christmas.

The War on the World

It used to be that the worst case of ideology trashing science in my lifetime came out of the USSR. Stalin and Lysenko (a fake biologist) decided, around 1948, that their political doctrines would benefit if plants and animals could inherit acquired characteristics. You could change everything for the better rapidly if that were true. The entire Communist community of leaders around the world was ordered to attack the gene theory of evolution. Some of those leaders were themselves biologists and others were rational. They had a difficult time of it. Around the same time Sartre's version of existentialism became popular--he argued that humans, alone among the mammals, had no essence. If true, then humans could be changed rapidly. As the years went by, the no-essence view was taken up by some feminist factions, looking for quick changes, and some postmodernists. They did not, as far as I know, set out to refute modern gene biology. They ignored it. Science marched on, and you know how all that turned out.

Today we see a related phenomenon at work in the Republican denial of climate change and of the role humans have played in that change. Once again we see ideology triumphing over science in the minds of fanatics. I will quote from a Nobel-winning French biologist, Jacques Monod,  back in 1948, talking about the Communist denial of the gene theory and the practice of severely punishing Russian scientists who disagreed. "All of this is senseless, monstrous, unbelievable. Yet it is true. What has happened?"

Bad Day In Black Rock

 Almost 60 years ago, I attended a talk at UCLA given by the man who had written the movie BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK. It was a classic "rotten town" movie. You know, a stranger comes to town and discovers that all the key leaders are corrupt or cowardly. HIGH NOON might be another example.

In the last 15 years Healdsburg, a small town (12,000), has shifted from being an old isolated farm community (like something you might find on a secondary road in Nebraska) into a world wine destination. That has an upside. The bakeries near the town plaza produce tasty cream puffs. You can buy a monogrammed linen neckerchief for your toy poodle. The city council switched from Republican to Democratic, but like nearly all city councils in this nation, Healdsburg's council continues to bow to developers. The voters, half-submerged in a tide of tourists and wine zombies from Paris and Tulsa, stumbling along the cracking sidewalks with glasses in hand, can hardly find a place to park in town or find a dinner out that costs less that $70 to $300. But the council is intent on converting the few remaining parking lots into new upscale hotels.

The voters want slow growth, but the people they elect unanimously support rapid development, increased property values, more beds, less parking, more wine, more town revenue. Most city fathers are so eager to hand out permits that the developers don't need to bribe them, aside from some campaign contributions and cushy local jobs for relatives. In a way the city is overwhelmed by the development corporations that come here from all over the world--corporations that have 1,000 lawyers for every attorney a small town can afford to hire. 

If a city father becomes a holdout, then he might get a little special attention from the professional permit-buyers, but for the most part the city fathers like to spread their legs and give the town away for free. It's the American Way.   

Totalitarian Regimes

Many of my friends take their vacations in totalitarian regimes, as opposed to Lapland, Tokyo, Dublin or Nigeria. It's hip to visit dictatorships. I'm afraid to ask why. Just asking might reveal something politically stupid about me. I have a bias in favor of democracies--although I'm aware that they aren't all that democratic. The truth is that it wouldn't occur to me to visit a totalitarian country when, for instance, I haven't even been to Peru.

The Odds on Oswald

Back when I first started teaching, I advised a student intent on using his undergraduate education on an investigation of the JFK assassination. In the end he failed to find a convincing conclusion. I was reminded of him today while listening to the radio. One caller asked what were the odds that Oswald would have the perfect job from which to assassinate the President? The answer, not provided by the host, is that the odds were 100%, because Oswald actually did have the job. No one doubts that. What we see in the endless different conspiracy theories is a disbelief that three armed pipsqueaks could wrench JFK, RFK and MLK out of our lives and drastically alter the course of American history. I mean, in the end we had Acting President Reagan. We'd like to believe that something bigger was going on.  But life is subject to all sorts of meaningless changes. (Check this out with Charles Darwin.)

A Losing Candidate

A nice guy named Keith Rhinehart walked into a bar . . . not really. He came to a meeting of the Windsor Democratic Club. He is running for the job of 4th District County Supervisor, along with Deb Fudge, who will win. Keith proved likable and vigorous. He refused to say what party, if any, he belongs to. He seemed to believe that party affiliation doesn't matter to voters. Anyway, Keith insulted no one and came out in favor of nearly everything that candidates favor in Sonoma County. He approves, for example, of agriculture. But I was struck by what he came out against, which was free bicycle riding. Keith believes that too much money has been spent coddling the pedaling class. He wants to license bicycle riders. I suppose children could get learner permits--he didn't say.

Presumably a new ordinance would apply only to county roads, and people could still ride their bikes free in towns. Keith plans to require riders from other counties--the visitors who stay at our hotels and eat in our restaurants--to pay a fee and take out a permit to ride bicycles. In return they would gain the right to use our excellent county roads, which are rated as among the most deteriorated in the state. The ordinance would be enforced by deputy sheriffs like the one who recently shot a 13-year-old seven times. 

Keith did not seem aware that most bicycle riders vote and their families and friends vote. He's kind of stepping on Tarzan's toes.

Deborah Fudge

No one running for office needs my endorsement, but so far I have endorsed Mike McGuire for the state senate and Jim Wood for the state assembly. They are progressive Democrats with common sense, a proved ability to win elective office and a body of  effective work with others. They understand how to govern in a representative way. Now I am going to add Deborah Fudge, running for Mike's seat on the county board of supervisors. She's been mayor of Windsor about four times, she's an expert in environmental planning, and (like Mike and Jim) she is going to win. (This is like shooting fish in a barrel.)

Deborah Fudge has been endorsed by former Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, by Susan Jones, the mayor of Healdsburg, and by many others.

The Basic American Joke

The basic American joke is deadpan. It goes like this. A guy walks into a bar, and the first thing he sees is a horse having a beer and talking with the bartender, and the bartender says, "Why the long face?"

I mention this because Simon Rich has come up with a variation in The New Yorker  (Nov. 18, 2013). I will paraphrase. A guy walks into a bar and the first thing he sees is a tiny man--about a foot high--wearing a tux and playing a miniature piano. So the guy asks the bartender, where on God's earth did you find him?  The bartender replies that a genie has taken up living in the men's room, and he will grant anyone a single wish. The guy immediately walks into the men's room and introduces himself to the genie and asks for his wish. "Okay, what do  you want?" the genie asks. The guy responds, "World Peace," and the room is immediately filled with whirling geese.

The guy returns to the bar and says to the bartender, "That genie must be hard of hearing. What did you ask for?" And the bartender says, "Well, I didn't ask for a twelve inch pianist."

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Paul Gullixson's Morons

Our sole daily newspaper, the corporate Press-Democrat, regularly publishes letters-to-the-editor sent in by morons. The editors do this to increase circulation. Moronic opinions incite rational readers to reply and encourage organized morons to buy the newspaper. Of course the newspaper cannot admit its true motives; this morning the paper published an official explanation for this troubling practice. "Because our fundamental belief in the importance of airing and confronting objectionable ideas--and our confidence in a reasonable public to properly engage the writer's sentiments--outweighed our desire to protect readers from dissent," editor Paul Gullixson lied in one of his usual sentence fragments. 

Mr. Gullixson manages to hint in his explanation that he does not agree with the morons who write in to say that it was understandable that 13-year-old Andy Lopez got himself shot seven times by a deputy sheriff because who can tell a toy gun from a real gun? (everyone I know?) and maybe the boy was cutting his last class of the day (what? what?). But if Gullixson believes that his rationale for publishing bat crap is convincing his readers, then he must consider us to be as moronic as his carefully chosen letter writers. 

(Also on Facebook)

The Sasquatch Argument

More on reactions to the death of Andy Lopez, a 13-year-old with a toy gun who was shot seven times by a frightened sheriff's deputy. The Press Democrat continues to print letters apparently written by Sasquatches lurking among the redwoods. The newspaper loves these letters. I quote a typical Sasquatch argument: "Yes, it was a tragedy. Nobody disputes that. But if the deputy had waited for, let's say, three seconds to confirm, and the replica AK-47 was real, we could have had two dead deputies."

That's right, if you overlook the verb tenses. And if the boy had really been Sgt. York and Sonoma County had been a battlefield in France, those deputies would have been in big trouble. I have to join the Press Democrat in admiring the tight logic. It's a version of the Stand Your Ground position, which says that if you say you are scared, you have the right to kill anyone in front of you. That makes sense. If it later turns out to be a false alarm, no harm done. You will still be safe.

(Also on Facebook)

New Scandinavian Cooking

When my children were small, I cooked macaroni and cheese badly for them, and since then my skills and interest have declined. I now cook oatmeal (like Wittgenstein, who ate oatmeal several times a day). That's about it. Susan, my wife, is a first-rate cook who is obsessed with the idea that I learn to be her personal chef, but that is another story. It is unlikely to happen. In this story I want to recommend a TV show called NEW SCANDINAVIAN COOKING. 

I suspect that I am watching reruns of a show made about five years ago, but I find it surprisingly entertaining. The host of the show is a Swedish dude who travels about Scandinavia and so on, standing outdoors in the snow and cooking really fine looking food. I have no idea why he cooks outdoors. Maybe all Swedes cook outdoors. The rural scenery is excellent. Sometimes he travels by horse. Sometimes he is joined by a striking woman, and in certain shows it is summer, and open-faced sandwiches in a Finnish style fill the bill.

Who Won the War?

After retreating from Gettysburg, many of the Confederate foot soldiers wrote home and told their families that the battle had ended in a tie or perhaps a victory.  That's how powerful the will to believe in a cause can be. Facts often do not matter, and for a foot soldier in the fog of war, facts can be hard to come by. We see the same phenomenon at work today in the Tea Party's war on women. That war, like the wars on drugs and on gays and on students and on people of color, has been lost, but the Tea Party cannot believe it. As far as they are concerned, the Confederacy can not lose. Defeat is not possible.

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The Ground Has Shifted

In Virginia, a swing state, a very weak Democratic candidate for governor was elected while losing the independent vote to his women-suppressing Republican opponent. For some reason, married women supported the Republican, but single women voted overwhelmingly for the Democrat. Single women and black people created the winning coalition.

Nationally the Democratic base is suddenly larger than the Republican base. In a country that has become sharply and cleanly divided without much of middle, elections become a matter of which side gets out its base. If both sides get out their bases, the Democrats will win. And that is a recent development.

On paper independents form a large block of voters, but studies have shown that individual independents consistently support one party or another. They don't swing from party to party. They are independents in name only. Let's call them INOs. 

The Rise and Fall of Chris Christie

As you have noticed, the Democratic Party put up token opposition to Chris Christie in his run for re-election as governor of New Jersey. It was probably a strategic decision--and a risky one. Christie, an expert at faking sincerity, is already grabbing with both hands for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2016.  Fake sincerity has crossover appeal. What are the Democrats thinking?

1) The Democrats are counting on Gov. Christie to rip the Republican Party in two. While Christie supports the war on women and so forth, he is neither stupid nor baked in the bean. He will be backed by Corporate America. The Tea Party can't stand him, so maybe he won't win the nomination, but there's a risk that he will. 

2) So far the voters have paid little attention to Christie's past, but attention from the national media will change that. This man, expert in fake sincerity, once lobbied for Bernie Madoff.

3)  There is a lot of entertainment value in Christie's personality. He's a short, obese bully--a perfect candidate for mayor of Toronto--and when he's campaigning in Iowa, he will probably cuss out a rightwing preacher's wife on camera. Iowa may like that in a man but possibly not.

True Americans

This is what the Tea Party Republicans think. 

"True Americans are white males born in this country or Canada. See how inclusive we are? Voting restrictions on women and people of color are needed to keep True Americans in charge of the country. If True Americans lose control of the country, we will also lose the War Against the Poor."

Force Feeding Prisoners: Some Standard Operating Procedures at Gitmo

This is from Harper's Magazine, November,  2013. It is part of the current SOP for force feeding prisoners at Gitmo. 

"On occasion, a detainee undergoing enternal (sic) feeding (EF) will attempt to bite and swallow the feeding tube. The detainee may attempt to bite the portion of the tube outside the nose by turning his head and snaring the tube with his mouth, or may attempt to regurgitate the tube partially into the oral cavity and attempt to sever the tube covertly without opening his mouth. This is difficult to assess in the non-compliant detainee when it is necessary to affix a 'spit mask' over his mouth. If a detainee is actively attempting to turn his head to bite the tube between the nose and the EF bag, the RN will affix the tube to the midline of the detainee's nose and extend it upwards, affixing it with tape to the detainee's forehead."

Gelhaus and His Gun

A man named Westbrook was pulled over recently by the deputy who killed Andy Lopez. Westbrook reported the incident to the Sheriff's Department weeks before the 13-year-old Lopez was shot seven times by Deputy Gelhaus. This is part of his story, as published in the SF Chronicle. 

"Westbrook said he and a colleague were traveling south on Highway 101 near Highway 116 when Gelhaus pulled them over and then approached the BMW on the passenger side.

"There wasn't much room on the side of the highway, Westbrook said, so he rolled down his window and offered to move the car. That's when Gelhaus pulled a gun on him and yelled at him to turn the car off, Westbrook said. He said he responded that the car was already off.

"According to Westbrook, Gelhaus returned to his cruiser to write a ticket. Several minutes later, the driver said, Gelhaus asked him to walk back to his cruiser and then pulled a gun on him a second time, asking him if he had any weapons before frisking him.

"Westbrook said he finally asked the deputy why he had pulled him over, with Gelhaus referring to an illegal lane change. Westbrook said that's when he asked the deputy if he was OK. Gelhaus didn't answer, he said."

(Also on Facebook)

Obama's Secret

One of the President's many secrets is beginning to leak to the public. He kept us out of the civil war in Syria, a real job killer when you think of the slowdowns it has caused in the industrial-military heartland. So far Obama has managed to hide his failure to go to war from most of our major newspapers and big time TV news, who remain focused on a faulty web site. Even those who comment from the Far Left in weekly papers and the smaller media outlets haven't realized or don't care that we're missing out on a war. Also the President and Russia cooperated in seeing to it that Syria's poison gas got destroyed, which had its inevitable impact on the economy in the Middle East. This joint effort ruined our credibility among former allies. Let me put it this way. President Obama has had five years to launch a war and jump start our military jobs program, and the only people to even notice his failure are moderate Republicans like John McCain and his butt boy, that senator who looks like a raised finger with eyes. Not the minority leader, the other one. And no one else is paying attention.

I'm saying the same thing on Facebook.

The Stories We Tell

The other night some of us watched a recent Canadian semi-documentary called (I think) THE STORIES WE TELL. It's an attempt to reconstruct the life of a dead mother, her marriages, etc. It starts off slowly, but then it gets engaged in the fact that the various family members knew her in different ways--and then in vastly different ways--and who has the right perspective on her and so on.   An unusually complex film and the best I've seen in some time. 


                                          ***

Andy Lopez has become a story we tell. Yesterday I went to a demonstration at the courthouse. A 13-year-old named Andy Lopez, carrying a toy gun that resembled an assault rifle, was walking through his neighborhood. A deputy sheriff approached him from behind and yelled at him to drop the gun. When the child turned around to see what was happening, the deputy shot him seven times in eight tries, killing him. The demonstration cried out for justice, but what would that be?

The FBI

The FBI has decided to look into what happened this week when a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy mistook young Andy Lopez's BB gun for an assault rifle and shot Andy seven times, more often than he really needed.

I have been wondering what the officer thought after shooting the 13-year-old the first three times. He went on to fire four more rounds into the perp's body. Maybe he figured: (1) In for a penny, in for a pound. (2) Department regulations say always shoot a child seven times--they make small targets.  (3) Hey, I'll have to clean my piece in any case.  (4) You can't have too much lead in the air. (5) Keep shooting, you need the practice. Or (6) Gee, I might be unsuited for police work.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

 Now when I read THE ROAD NOT TAKEN,  I laugh.

                                                               ***

I have always wondered what the heck "The Road Not Taken" was about. I understood, of course, that our American convention is that it is a poem about a person who walks a yellow road, comes to a fork, takes the less traveled fork (the unconventional fork), and in old age celebrates the difference this choice made. Unfortunately that is not what the poem says, according to Sarah Goss.
 
This is what the poem actually says. Some dude was walking along a yellow road, which forked. Both roads were "grassy and wanted wear." Other walkers "had worn them really about the same." Both roads "that morning equally lay/ In leaves no step had trodden black."  In other words, according to the narrator, there was no discernible difference between the two roads. Neither road had been traveled recently. (There was no unconventional road.)

Then Frost concluded the poem by saying that when he is much older, older than the Higgs boson, he will sigh theatrically and claim that the road he took "made all the difference." That is a nice turn.  He doesn't say if it was a good or bad difference, because that doesn't matter. And who knows, anyway?  (When you get really old, you can invent the past you want and make it comic or tragic.)

Sarah scoured the 'net and soon learned that she was the not the first to read the poem closely.


1. The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,   
And sorry I could not travel both   
And be one traveler, long I stood   
And looked down one as far as I could   
To where it bent in the undergrowth;           

Then took the other, as just as fair,   
And having perhaps the better claim,   
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;   
Though as for that the passing there   
Had worn them really about the same,           

And both that morning equally lay   
In leaves no step had trodden black.   
Oh, I kept the first for another day!   
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,   
I doubted if I should ever come back.           

I shall be telling this with a sigh   
Somewhere ages and ages hence:   
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—   
I took the one less traveled by,   
And that has made all the difference.

Why the Web Site Stumbled

 The basic problem faced by the Affordable Care Act Web site has been that new federal software, produced by the lowest bidder, is usually third rate and in need of fixing. According a column by Clay Johnson and Harper Reed in the NY Times, 94% of "large federal information technology projects over the past 10 years were unsuccessful." Then most of them got fixed.

Also from the Times: "In 2011, the British government formed a new unit of its Cabinet Office called the Government Digital Service. It’s a team of internal technologists whose job it is to either build the right technology, or find the right vendors for every need across the government. It gives the government a technical brain. It has saved the country millions, and improved the way the government delivers services online."

Real Men Don't Vote

Someone on TV recently observed that voting makes you gay. Instead of voting, go hunting or drink beer with bar flies. Wake up late and down a few shots to steady your hand. But don't vote--voting is for the ladies.

Xenophobes

 Below is part of an essay by Sean McElwee.

 "The Tea Party has all of the hallmarks of a nationalist xenophobic (dare I say Fascist) movement:  89% white, 58% keep a gun in their house, a faction believe that violence  against the government is justified, most believe America is a country in decline, they are anti-immigrant, authoritarian, opposed to social progress, anti-gay and anti-abortion. overwhelmingly support the death penalty, really dislike Muslims, very much dislike immigrants (to the point of militarizing the border) and they’re really, really racist. Obviously, the Tea Party is not a single cohesive group, but it’s clear that the anti-immigrant wing holds major influence in the coalition of crazy. Sinclair Lewis summed up the situation a century ago, 'When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.'"

Sean is wrong about the teabaggers being Fascists (Fascists worshiped the State). But the baggers are weirdly nationalist--as if the nation consists only of white males--and obviously xenophobic. They represent a political mental illness that has always been with us in one form or another. 

Idiotic

The Republican position on the Affordable Care Act is (1) it is the worst thing that has ever happened in the United States and (2) It's just terrible how long it takes people to sign up for it.

A Satisfied Mind via Ian and Sylvia

How many times have you heard someone say,
"If I had his money I'd do things my way,"
but little they know that it's so hard to find
one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.

Once I was winning in fortune and fame, 
had all that I needed to make a start in life's game.
Then suddenly it happened, I lost every dime,
but I'm richer by far with a satisfied mind.

For money won't buy you youth when you're old
or a friend when you're lonely or a heart that's grown cold.
The wealthiest person is a pauper at times
compared to man with a satisfied mind.

When my life is ended and my time's run out,
my friends and loved ones, I'll leave them, no doubt,
but one thing's for certain. When it comes my time
I'll leave this old world with a satisfied mind.

Passing Means Testing 43 Times

According to Kaiser, as reported by ABC, at least three federal agencies were already set to check all ACA applications, including the IRS, which has begun to verify the applicants' incomes. Of course. Of course. I have no idea why means testing was added to means testing in the stuff that congress passed yesterday. Maybe it was repetition or maybe a refinement. The point is that the Republican "win" on means testing, which everyone supports, seems a lot like passing 43 bills defunding the ACA. It's awesome. . . .

The Lindberghs

People keep asking me how many families the famous flyer Charles Lindbergh had, as if I would know. He was married to Anne Lindbergh, historians tell us, and they had six children, if memory serves. Along with that family, he had three German families, in which he fathered seven additional children, as established by DNA tests. Two of the women involved were sisters. That brings the total to 13,  but what about the many delightful if short encounters he had with women on darker continents? Lindbergh flew from place to place. He was a great joker who used false names, so he might have had another 10 or 12 children we haven't heard from. The important thing is that Lindbergh was a great hero, much like John Wayne. Anne Lindbergh wrote books and had an affair with her doctor, but the two had no issue.

Remaining Dead

According to the AP, Donald Miller went to court this week to ask a judge in Ohio to declare him alive. He had been declared dead after deserting his wife and children and vanishing for many years. "You're still deceased according to the law," the judge told him. And then things got odd. While the judge was following the statutes in Ohio, he was also doing the right thing. Miller's wife and children had lived on Social Security benefits during his death. If Miller is declared alive, his wife will have to pay back those benefits. (I think this is what my mother called "a good death.")

Wall Street Takes Command

I've been waiting for the tea party to crumble for some time now. In my lifetime, the Republican Party has always belonged--ultimately-- to the 1% of America that is unimaginably rich and greedy. Let's call them Wall Street, although of course it is not that simple. Wall Street decided which Presidential candidate the party would back: Dewey, Eisenhower, etc. Goldwater was the exception. The genuine Republicans might be small town bankers and Episcopalian grocery store managers, but their choices for President (with names like Bricker and Taft) seldom won the nomination. That is why I have not believed that the Republicans would refuse to raise the debt limit. Wall Street would not like that. But I was beginning to get nervous.

Today the billionaire Koch Brothers, primary financial backers of the tea party degenerates and neo-confederates, gave up on enforcing the debt limit, which they were supporting yesterday. I think there were two factors involved. (1) Although rich beyond measure, the Koch Brothers could not afford to alienate Wall Street, whose terrible swift sword they had reason to fear. (2) Enforcing the debt limit would crash the economy and reduce the holdings of Koch boys. Although they sponsor the John Birch Society (which means they are nuts), they now had to decide between ideology and greed. In that situation, greed usually wins. It might take a few more days, but Wall Street has taken command. And, yes, the President saw this coming months ago. 

An American Story

My Cousin Mary was visiting on Saturday. Our county sponsors a yearly bike ride called the Gran Fondo that draws nearly 8,000 people from all over the world; and we hold our annual family reunion around that event. Most of us ride bikes. At dinner Cousin Mary, who lives somewhat rustically on the edge of a national forest in Orange County, retold the turkey story. This is, unfortunately, a true story. Her husband, a retired fire fighter, is a nice guy, very handy with tools, and one of a kind.  He sometimes feeds the abundant wild life and so on, but some years back he decided to raise turkeys for food. A few weeks later he was carrying a young turkey around and accidentally dropped it, breaking its leg. After some thought, he decided that the leg was not going to mend, so he cut it off and  replaced it with a wooden leg he made from Popsicle sticks. As you might suspect, this story does not end well. The next morning the turkey was found drowned in an inch of water.  Mary claims it was suicide.

Great Books

I have never believed that reading ANNA KARENINA would make you a better person. I've known too many asshats who've read great literature. My friend Marlene took the opposite view, and at last she has been proved right. In an article in SCIENCE  researchers conducted a series of experiments (having subjects read a short piece of literature, pop fiction or non-fiction and then take a test designed to measure empathy and understanding of others). Those lucky enough to read the lit scored markedly higher in the good things. And there you go. Those like me who read popular fiction did not score well. . . . 

Let The Negotiations Begin!

You have probably noticed that Republican drones on TV have been calling for President Obama to show leadership. By that they mean that he should open negotiations with the neo-Confederate congressional terrorists. He should give them something, anything, so their countless attempts to scare us won't look foolish. The Democrats, on the other hand, see firm leadership in the fact that President has taken a no-negotiation stance on Obamacare. Can these opposing positions find a compromise in which both sides agree that the President is a leader? According to a local Letter-To-The-Editor writer, the answer is yes.

The Republicans have a demand they want to discuss. The problem is that the Democrats have put no demands on the table. If we hold a negotiating session, the Republicans can demand, as they currently do, that the Affordable Care Act be postponed for one year. The Democrats can demand that the Glass-Steagall Act be reinstituted, that private funding for political campaigns be banned, that gun owners be registered, that oil and coal companies be taxed to fund green energy, that we return to the tax rates we had under Eisenhower and that the force of gravity be weakened by 9% over the next two years.

I say, let the negotiations begin. 

The Lilly-White Districts.

Today's Republican party has become neo-Confederate, Christian fundamentalist, and John Bircher, financed by a Birch founding family, the Kochs. And another large faction owes its heart to Wall Street. In an effort to keep power, Republicans have successfully Gerrymandered a majority of the congressional districts in America, rinsing all the color from them. In short, the Republicans represent lily-white districts. Meanwhile the country is becoming multi-ethnic and multi-racial. In California white voters no longer constitute an absolute majority. Soon that will be true for the nation as a whole. You can see the problem. Republican congress members live in white bubbles that are out of touch with the cities developing around them.

Classic Koch, Pronounced like Coke

If you are like me, you may have wondered where the Koch brothers dedication to sociopathic nuttery came from. Tim Porges had the answer. You can find it by checking out the John Birch Society. Fred Koch, the family patriarch, was, according to Forbes Magazine, a "founding member (1958)." Fred financed the Birchers, and his sons have financed the Birchers-Grown-Huge, aka the teabaggers. 

What was once the radical right 
Is now the Kochs' delight.

Tail Wags Dog

I'm sometimes tempted to think of the Republicans as the stupid party, but that is not the case. In general the Republican party of the past existed to help the 1%, where the money is. Getting rich by catering to the rich is not stupid (unless you are a male Christian, in which case you should keep in mind that Jesus said that sooner will a rope pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter Heaven).

Today's Republican Party, about to ignore Wall Street and shut down the government, is behaving stupidly but not from lack of intelligence. The GOP is paralyzed with fear.

I believe some analysts have traced how we got to this place.  (1) Nixon's "Southern strategy" stripped most of the racists out of the Democratic Party. They became Republicans and the party began its lurch to the Right and to Reagan. (2) Karl Rove helped to develop a strategy that emphasized stirring up the blood-lust of many separate groups, including the NRA, the nativists, the Confederate flag trash, the warriors against women, etc. In doing this, the Republicans mounted the back of a tiger, and now, if they dismount, they fear getting eaten. (3) About 35 Republican members of the House are so ignorant, angry and radical that they hope to shut down and crush the federal government, reducing it to almost nothing.  They come from super-safe Gerrymandered districts. They have the financial backing of balmy billionaires, so they do not need Wall Street. They do not like Wall Street. Most of the remaining Republican House members fear--with good reason--the wrath of the small nutter caucus, which will challenge in a primary election and defeat any Republican congress member who defies them. This might seem odd, but the rational thing for a centrist Republican member of the House today is to behave as stupidly as possible. (4) The House is now at a point where a shutdown seems almost inevitable. We may need a shutdown to shake up the voters and the House. Then the Republicans might feel safe enough to defy the minority teabaggers and do what is best for the nation. 

10,000 Years in the Desert

The other night I watched a TV program on a graveyard in the Sahara desert that is 10,000 years old. One of the graves held the bones of a ten-year-old girl and her bracelet.  This was not a tribe that had many bracelets. Think about that and 10,000 years melts away. Let another 10,000 years pass, and no one will remember us. They won't remember Shakespeare. But a family with a dead child will grieve as we do today.

The Conservative

America has seldom had any conservative political leaders. We've enjoyed numberless well-paid Big Business Stooges--they actively seek changes in the law that favor Big Business interests. There  is nothing conservative about that. It's just greed. More recently we have seen a lot of loony nativists called teabaggers. These brainless reactionaries seek ever more radical changes. Between them the two groups now struggle for control of the Republican Party, and they both claim to be conservatives, although genuine conservatives try to conserve things rather than fight to alter things in revolutionary ways.

I was reminded of this when I saw a genuine conservative speak on Bill Maher's TV show last week. David Frome explained that his disapproval of Obamacare was that it tried to do too much too fast. No one else on the panel even heard what he was saying. He took a conservative position. I disagree with it, but the position is reasonable and well motivated. I wonder what Sen. Ted Cruz thinks of David Frome.

Why, In One Sentence, We Should Fear Iran

We should fear Iran because Iran is catching up with us when it comes to allocating money to the military, having recently matched as much as 1% of what the USA spends. An even more terrifying reason is that while we have 8,000 nuclear weapons and Iran has none, they do generate electricity with nuclear power. Finally, in the last two centuries, Iran has failed to invade another nation, so think of the frustrated urge to invade they've stored up. You can see why the reporters on the Washington Post, CBS, PBS, and so forth tremble when urging us to do something about this startling menace.

The Hun

 About ten years ago someone asked me what I thought was our number one problem, and I replied that it was climate change. Among the issues that exist, climate change is the one most likely to harm, even kill, billions of people. That process has already begun in the United States. Getting a government to do something to mitigate the looming catastrophe has seemed nearly impossible, but today the Obama administration announced tough requirements for new coal-fired power plants--and power plants account for a third of all our greenhouse gas emissions. This move has, of course, made the President the enemy of the coal companies and the people who work for them or clean the workers' clothes or service their automobiles and so on. The problem is that if you can see consequences beyond the next paycheck, you are the enemy of our economic system and more villainous than Attila the Hun.

What Things Cost

The wife of a friend of mine has cancer, and this brought on an eating disorder, which had to be fixed before some of the cancer treatments could begin. Kaiser arranged for the wife to enter a locked facility here in Sonoma County that works with eating disorder patients. She stayed there for ten days and left in better shape. The treatment was paid for by Kaiser and Medicare, but my friend got a look at the bill, which came to more than $10,000 a day. Now of course we are talking here about maintaining a building, paying orderlies to guard the place, cooking up some bland food, short visits by doctors and nurses, some medications, maybe some use of an expensive machine that paid for itself in its first three months, etc. I figure that all that must be worth at least $2,000 a day. The other $8,000 a day was profit. We have a great system, eh?

Losing Badly

I am still digesting Sunday's football game.  I had no idea that the 49ers could play that badly or come out on the field so unready. The joy on the long visage of the opposing coach, the smile emerging in the lantern jaw, was a wonder to behold.

The Rubes of Jefferson

When you drive in the vicinity of the California and Oregon borders, you might turn on the radio and listen to NPR, which calls itself Jefferson Public Radio. That is because, for the last 70 years or so, there has been a movement in the empty rural parts of Northern California and Southern Oregon to secede from California and Oregon and form a new state called Jefferson. The state will represent the sorts of folk who are new to teeth brushing and resent it as a form of government interference by Michelle Obama. 

I believe that the NPR station took on the Jefferson cause with a smile, but in fact the Siskiyou  County Board of Supervisors recently voted 4-1 to secede from California and form a State of Jefferson. The new state will hold 44,000 of California's 38 million current residents. The main occupations will be mental health care and electing two teabaggers to the United States Senate. Luckily no one has given these rubes the permission slips needed to secede, so guess what?  We can forget about it. 

Ig Nobel and Diebenkorn

Once a year Harvard celebrates the Ig Nobel Prizes, a ceremony in which goofy research is rewarded. My favorite this year was the Probability Prize, which went to the Scottish Agricultural College in Edinburgh. After 11,000 observations, Scots determined that the longer a cow has been lying down, the sooner she will get up.

In an unrelated matter, an exhibition of the art of Richard Diebenkorn has been up at the de Young in San Francisco (aka Frisco to the unpretentious pioneers who built the place). Diebenkorn lived in Healdsburg the last five years of his life. He died 20 years ago.

25,000

According to the Press Democrat, by December 31, 2014, about 25,000 residents of Sonoma County with no medical help today will have health coverage thanks to Obamacare. On behalf of those 25,000 people, I have a question for the people who hate Obama or who claim that there is no difference between the two major political parties.  What's wrong with you?

Death Porn

Yesterday I watched parts of an hour program on MSNBC in which Karen Finney ran tape of dying Syrians on a split screen while talking-heads discussed whether we should join in on another nation's civil war. Death porn, designed to sway public opinion in favor of a useless attack on Syria. I finally turned off the government sponsored propaganda. Has President Obama lost his mind? The American people reject the proposed attack. The world has told us to stand down. If we attack we will not be acting as the world's police force. The world has told us to stay in our car. We will be acting like George Zimmerman.

Why Ayn Rand?

I recently read a thoroughly researched book on the "heavenly creatures," the two 15-year-old girls in New Zealand who murdered one of their mothers by slowly beating her to death with half a brick. That happened about 50 years ago. You might have seen the movie or read some mysteries later written by one of the young ladies, Ann Perry (a name one girl took after being released from prison). This sensational case proved second in commentary only to Leopold-Loeb in the 20th century. The matter of interest is why did the girls do it? They had stupid motives, of course, but what freed them to commit matricide? 

As near as I can tell, the two girls were social outsiders, awkward, reasonably bright, angry nerds, if you can accept that term. To give themselves the illusion of importance, they created a two-girl bubble to live in, a bubble of nonsense in which they were enormously gifted superfolk, living far above the rules of mere conformist society. They were the smartest, most gifted people on the planet. They loved self-centered, sociopathic movie villains and the actors who played them. They turned evil men into their heroes, which is what Ayn Rand did in her writings. Her readership is nerdy adolescent losers, which many people are at one point (many later become successful), but most never commit to evil or they grow out of a mild flirtation with evil without killing a parent or they remain adolescents forever like Ron and Rand Paul.

Boy, Are We Dumb!

I guess I am getting old. The main impact the TV arguments about striking Syria with missiles have had on me is astonishment at how dumb we are. I have heard a few intelligent comments on both sides of the issue, but most of the comments have been dumb. Yesterday I watched Amy Goodman and Bill Richardson debate. Dumb and dumber. Goodman argued that we should not go after the Assad regime because 65 years ago our country had used nuclear weapons. I was dumb with admiration at her dumbness. But then Richardson took the other side, making arguments so dumb my mind went blank, overwhelmed. I can't even remember what he said. I do recall he looked shaken by his own lack of conviction. He couldn't convince himself, which is the first step you take before attempting to convince someone else.

The Horror of Memory

 According to the morning newspaper, researchers have discovered a protein people need to keep their memory sound. Eliminating the protein, RbAp48, leads to senior moments. For example, you forget where you left your glasses or forget your own phone number. The good news is that this has nothing to do with Alzheimer's disease. But how do you combat a protein deficiency? Do you eat more steak? Do you buy a protein supplement? Do you avoid vegetarian lunches? Or do you lean back, like Donald Rumsfeld, and enjoy forgetting the horrifying mistakes you made when younger?

Bombing Syria

I might be misreading the comments, but it looks as if Iran and the USA have nudged each other into the position that a minor slap in the face of the Syrian government, which won't change the status quo, is tolerable to both sides. Iran really does not like nerve gas (Iraq used it against them), but Iran will continue to support the Shia side of things in the growing Shia-Sunni conflict. The American government talked itself into a place where now it has to retreat or act in some way. This is a mess on top of the mess we call the Middle East.

Polls show that the American people do not want to intervene in Syria between what amounts to Islamic terrorists on one side and Fascists on the other. Our plan to intervene in a calculated way that has no impact on the status quo is absurd. True enough, our navy has ten times more fire power than all the other navies of the world combined. Our tax dollars paid for that. We have the guns. But we do not want to serve as the world's unauthorized police force. The problems of the Middle East should be settled by the people who live there. Or not. It's on them.

Martin, Bobby and John

As young man at UCLA, walking across campus one day, on a grassy slope I saw MLK addressing a group of about 50 students. I ambled on over. I got within 20 feet of him. He looked compact, smooth as a pebble, well-dressed. I wasn't religious, and he was a preacher, and he preached in a style different from what I was used to. The style struck me, a kind of surfer, as strange--yet of all the American leaders of my youth, King was the one I respected most. 

I'd met JFK, and of course he was a phenomenon. He's the only President I recall who actually interested people. I'm not talking about his major speeches, which had a manufactured craft to them. His press conferences, where he spoke off the cuff, were actually funny. He seemed amused by them.  Bobby Kennedy's rise came later as he learned more empathy; he was crushed by the murder of his brother, which somehow translated into a fresh aware of the economic injustice built into the American system. He would have been President, and then he was murdered, too.

No one doubted the courage of the Kennedys, but King's courage awed me. I didn't understand how he and the people marching with him could risk their lives. They walked peacefully into attack dogs and clubs and shotguns. I still don't know how they did it. The most I ever did was walk into tear gas. They were committed to die, to give up their lives if need be, in the name of nonviolent change. And they did die, and change came. 

King was, among other things, more multidimensional than I could quickly follow. It wasn't hard to see that his position of civil rights was right. But then he added a commitment to economic justice. To some of his followers his support of unions diluted the civil rights push and alienated several of the big shots who had supported civil rights. And then he came out against the Vietnam War, almost the first important figure to do so. He did this too early, so to speak. Most of the country wasn't ready yet. Many liberals asked, "Why doesn't he stick to civil rights?"   And then he was gone.

The Race Card

Many Republicans resent any reference to racism in politics. They do this in the belief that their party supported the Civil Rights Act (true) and that they personally are no more racist than most Democrats (true) and that Martin Luther King's dream of a society where people are judged by their character rather than by their skin color has been achieved (false). They can point to the election of a black President as proof. In short, more than 50% of white Americans think we've reached a colorblind status, more or less like Stephen Colbert's TV character. My guess is that these believers seldom interact with a black person, and the whole question is fairly abstract for them. They get upset at complaints against racism, which they see as "playing the race card" to get votes. (Of course, there is another sort of person who is simply a pro-lynching bigot.)

Less than 20% of black Americans believe we have achieved MLK's dream. For them--I am guessing--the question is not abstract. Instead people with black or brown skin see bits of racist behavior on a daily basis, maybe noticing that white people avoid sitting next to them on the bus. They know where they are wanted and where they feel out of place. 

When the Feds Took Away Our Arrows

In some of the wild parts of America, usually in a desert, you might be hiking along and come across a large but deteriorating concrete arrow on the ground, maybe 70 feet long, in the middle of nowhere. If you follow the arrows, they will lead you to San Francisco.

In 1920 these arrows ran from New York to the west coast, one arrow every ten miles. Of course many of them are gone now. Question: Who made them and why?

The arrows were built by the federal government to guide early airplanes carrying the mail. They were decommissioned in 1940.

Rinse? Ryence? Rhiennse?

I know I don't have the name of the chairman of the Republican Party right--I remember that his name reminded me of a movie on personal hygiene I once watched in the army. . . .  Anyway, Chairman Rinse Penis has recently declared that NBC and CNN will not be allowed to host Republican Presidential debates because they and Fox News are about to make a film about a woman who may run for President. The Republicans consider the premise absurd, even for TV. No woman will ever be elected President. But given how badly the networks treat Republicans in general, submerging them in a loathsome soup of Marxism, shouldn't Chairman Penis be boycotting all the networks, not just two?  I mean, down with CBS and ABC, with Fox and the Latino networks and all the others and with those who watch them and then attempt to vote.

The Hero

Let us assume that a hero is a person of great courage who is admired for his noble deeds and bravery. Some of my progressive friends consider Private Manning and Edward Snowden heroes.  Other progressives disagree.

Manning is known mainly for two things. He released footage taken from an American helicopter as its gunners shot down innocent people, a genuine atrocity but not news--we'd been talking about this assault for several years. Manning is also known for surviving a remarkably ugly incarceration by the military after they discovered his information dump. Manning apparently released about 700,000 secret documents without reading them first. This act was a crime.  My hope was that Manning would be sentenced to time served and then released, but today he was sentenced to 35 years and made eligible for parole in ten years. During his trial Manning stated that he had done the wrong thing and regretted it. He has my sympathy, but I don't think I'm ready to call him a hero yet. He may become one. He's 25 and facing an ordeal of the sort that makes heroes of some people. 

Edward Snowden dumped a ton of unread information from the NSA's program to spy on Americans. The dump was treated as news, although similar information about the NSA had already been published in books and magazine articles written by investigative reporters. They had been largely ignored by the mainstream media, I guess, but Snowden got media attention because he had broken the law and, even more compelling, because he had run away to China and then to Russia, where he now lives. Running off is not the act of a hero, but Snowden has computer skills, obviously, and he should be able to find civilian work and live well in his new country. I hope that works out.

My view of government leakers is that they become heroic when they commit a crime (for a good reason) and then do the time; doing the time is what proves their seriousness and keeps the lightweights on the sidelines.

 

Support Your Local Council

 Howard Dean, whose national Democratic party chairmanship created the political network that first elected President Obama (for which Dean got no credit), is now trying to get Democrats involved in very local politics. That is where you can take the starch out of the Teabaggers. I just want to add that it can be done. 

About 12 years ago, some of us noticed that our small town had a majority of Democratic voters but a Republican city council that refused to take up any issue that might annoy George W. Bush. We set out to change the situation by finding better candidates and supporting them through volunteers from our peace vigil and the local unofficial Democratic club. The hardest part was getting rational people to run for office. Anyway, 12 years later, last night, the city council voted 4-1 to support a proposed federal bill that will ban guns resembling assault weapons and ban large capacity magazines. The only one to vote against lending support to sanity was Council member Gary Plass, an out-of-touch Republican functionary. He gave his usual reason: "We were hired to keep the water running and the sewer going, and that's what we should do. It (anything of national concern to local citizens) does not belong on this dias."  Somehow he has missed why we elected the other four council members.  Apparently Gary Plass believes he's still surrounded by obedient Bushniks.

Egypt, Do As We Say

I've been watching American experts on Egypt talk about the conflict there, and I have come to a conclusion: we have no experts on Egypt. Some of these experts tell us to support the military and the majority of Egyptians in a revolution against a religious dictatorship. The other American experts tell us we should support the Islamists because they won an election a year ago and they constitute at least part of the future of Egypt. My thought is that we should try butting out. American experts in how other cultures should conduct themselves ought to close their pie-holes. Just shut up. Shut up. I mean this in the best possible way.

Another Facist Conspiracy

In a democracy if you have 70 million voters, you have 70 million different opinions. To get something done, you have to compromise. There is no other democratic option. Yet there are citizens on the Right and on the Left whose ideology forbids compromise. I have, for example, a far-left friend whose ideology has led him to the conclusion that Sen. Elizabeth Warren is part of a vast Fascist conspiracy and the President Obama is--I will clean this up a little--human fecal matter. Warren compromised on something (I forget what), and of course the President has compromised on many issues. I'll admit that the Presidents I have voted for have disappointed me. That will continue unless we elect a leader who has exactly the same opinions I have. Will that happen? What are the odds?

A Moment of Genius

The USA has produced four political statements that resonated all over the world: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, the Founders' Constitution and Bill of Rights, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and, in my generation, Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. There are two memories from my youth that I treasure. One is shaking hands with JFK. The other is standing on a slope at UCLA with about 50 other students as MLK talked to us in the open air. The curious thing, which I learned from TV this morning, was that when King stood up to deliver his most famous written speech before a huge audience, the talk contained no reference to his dream, which some of his friends had heard him talk about. But the speech, as written, was not working, and Mahalia Jackson said to him, "Tell them about the dream, Martin." King went off script and began to improvise.

Amy Goodman vs. HIstory

Over here on the Left, Amy Goodman is a hero, and for good reason. I doubt if anyone questions her courage or hard work. She has, clearly, a great heart. Now she wants to take Obama to task for not fulfilling his promises, and she can make a case in some instances. But consider the following comment she published a day or two back about President Barack Obama's vow to end the American war against Iraq. "Has Obama ended the war in Iraq? Certainly not for the Iraqis. July was one of the bloodiest months there since the height of the insurgency against the U.S.-imposed Iraqi government. So far this year, more than 4,000 Iraqis have been killed. . . ." And so on. She lists the many atrocities committed by the Sunni against the Shia and vice versa. Apparently Goodman believes that Obama once promised to end the Shia/Sunni conflict in the Middle East that has been going on for 1300 years. I don't remember him promising that. Instead he promised to get our troops out of Iraq, and then he did it. Did not most of us on the Left predict that the original Bush invasion of Iraq would end in a Sunni/Shia conflict? Blaming Obama for the struggle going on in Iraq today is kind of dumb.

A Narrow Victory

Today the Chaucer Boys, who have read their Ayn Rand, biked to Riverside Park in Windsor. The park used to be two gravel pits and a grove of redwoods, but, as many of you know, now it's a grove, surrounded by grapes, with two nice lakes except that the water contains a lot of mercury. The lakes are not lively. Anyway, we rode around the big lake. Had to walk two short stretches. On the way home we got passed on the road by other bikers. That is to be expected. Everyone passes us except for small children, but this was the first time we got passed by a trike ridden by an old guy with no legs. He was using hand pedals. Geez. Fortunately we came to a long hill and managed to catch him at the top when he paused to rest. We raced on down the hill--that was his weak spot. He could not coast really really fast downhill on a trike. We left him in the dust.

Matt Saving Freedom

The old white men of America are a patient lot. Yes, we knew that black men in New York were being stopped on the sidewalk and frisked for no reason.  That was public policy. We were patient. When Latinas shopped in the mall, security followed them from store to store but only to keep them from stealing things. We put up with it. If people who looked like Arabs were hauled off of commercial airline flights, well, you have to be careful. I just want to say that today, with the government keeping a log of the phone calls made by old white men like me, that's an outrage. Has our government gone mad? Matt Damon spoke for all of us old white guys when he said of the President, "He broke up with me." That's telling him, Matt. And, of course, thanks for saving freedom in your movies.

American Students: Below Average

 In New York State last year, 55% of the students passed the reading test. But this year only 31% passed. The average student was below average. I should point out that the test has been changed. The Board of Regents adopted national standards pushed by the Federal government called the Common Core. I will grant you that no one really knows what this test predicts. No data is available. Nevertheless I think it is clear that in a single year, American students have suddenly become stupid; teachers and schools have failed en masse. Or we are stuck with the unfortunate alternative, which is that when it comes to education the Federal government and the NY Board of Regents can't tell the difference between their own flabby bottoms and random pairs of hot rocks.

Mike McGuire for Supervisor

Mike McGuire, the young progressive supervisor from the north end of  Sonoma County, is about to run for re-election and win. It's fun to win. Anyway, he is starting with some expertly handcrafted beers from the Bear Republic and Ruth McGowan and an array of award-winning Kendall Jackson wines plus help from Ken Rochioli.

For the children in attendance, there will be a water balloon toss, potato sack races, face painting and a petting zoo hosted by the Gateway 4-H Club. The chili feed will also feature live music by Chris Rovetti and the Meatballs.

The event takes place at Richard’s Grove & Saralee’s Vineyard on Sunday, Aug. 25 from 1:00 to 3:30 pm. There is a suggested donation of $25 from attendees. People interested in attending should RSVP here or contact the campaign by email at Kay@MikeForSupervisor.com.

Erotomania

About a month ago Susan and I went with friends, Dennis and Marty Renault, to hear a rehearsal of Berlioz in Monterey. Before the music began an excellent docent talked about Berlioz and took questions from the very elderly attendees. The final question came from grizzled shrimp who wanted the speaker to explain the connection between the symphony and Berlioz's "Clara Bow syndrome," which is asshat-speak for erotomania. The speaker refused. Now this was an old bunch of people, but Clara Bow had made her last movie before most of them had been born. I had actually seen part of one of her films on TV, and I understood why she had been a major movie star. She was like, well, the young Shirley MacLaine or like Amy Adams (but better).  Back in her prime, in an attempt to blackmail her,  a tabloid had falsely accused her of exhibitionism, incest, lesbianism, bestiality, drug addiction, venereal disease and alcoholism. She had been accused of everything but running for mayor of New York. The charges were false, and the tabloid editor ended up serving an eight year sentence, but apparently news of this outcome has yet to reach parts of Central California.

The Maltese Bippy

Some of us rate John Huston's THE MALTESE FALCON as the best private eye film of all time. It was a forerunner of film noir, introducing for the first time the murderous young beauty to detective movies. The spare prose was excellent in a minimalist way. Sam Spade was totally hard boiled, and I loved the ending, in which you realize that Spade knew the killer as soon as he saw his partner's body. But until recently I had only watched the third version, the classic Bogart and John Huston remake, which came out about 1941.  Recently I watched the first two versions, and it was informative.

The original THE MALTESE FALCON came out in 1931 and starred Bebe Daniels and Ricardo Cortez. In this movie and in the first remake, the actress got top billing. Una Merkel played Effie. Spade is portrayed as a smart-mouthed, jovial womanizing dude, and the secondary roles are fairly well cast (you can't help comparing them to the brilliant cast of the Bogart film). This movie was shot before the Hollywood Sex Code came into effect, so the interaction seems a bit like a modern film. It's worth seeing for fun, if you get a chance. The next version was very loosely based on the novel, and it was titled SATAN MEETS A  LADY (I think).  This 1936 film stars Bette Davis (!) and Warren William as a smirking dude out for the money and sexual favors. A young Marie Wilson makes a memorable Effie. A stout woman takes what we consider the  Sidney Greenstreet role.

In the second remake, the one we all know, Bogart brings gravitas to Spade. The character actors exude genuine menace. John Huston wrote and directed--this was the first film he directed--and the tale of how he wrote the script is worth summarizing. In those studio days, the first step in bringing a novel to the screen was to ask a secretary to type up the entire novel, word for word, in a screenplay format. Huston asked a secretary to do that. And then what the secretary had typed (unedited, not worked on) was accidentally sent to the head of the studio, who okayed it. My guess is that Huston made a few changes later, but his version remains remarkably faithful to the book.

Heroes or Traitors?

Some on the Left seem conflicted about Manning and Snowden, grateful for the key information they leaked but not ready to call the two young men heroes. In Manning's case ambivalence seems to spring from the fact that he sent out 700,000 documents. Either he read all 700,000 or he doesn't know what he released. To some that might seem injudicious. Manning's confinement by the military has apparently been grim. If I were the judge in his case, I would sentence him to time served and release him, but no one expects a humane military solution.

Snowden has a related problem. He took a huge amount of unread data on three computers to China and Russia, where their spy agencies undoubtedly copied it when he went downstairs to lunch. Also he ran away like a cheetah.  This morning we hear that he has been granted a permit to stay in Russia. That's a good place for a libertarian. Maybe Rand Paul will be the next to move there. In the meantime, our legislators can--if willing--get to work on privacy issues in both our government and corporate systems.

Women as Gobs

In the First World War, members of the American Army were called doughboys and members of the Navy were called gobs. But a curious thing happened by accident. The Navy began the war by setting up some elaborate standards for joining. These standards were golden but someone forgot to add that you had to be male. When this oversight was called to the attention of the Secretary of the Navy,  Josephus Daniels, he had the good sense to respond by enlisting 11,000 women. After the war, they were all mustered out, but the door had been opened for women to serve in the next World War, and nothing has been the same since. 

The Italian Justice System

I understand almost nothing about the justice system in Italy, but I've read three entertaining books that give examples of cases where prosecutors in Italy have constructed elaborate cases based on paranoid conspiracy theories. Foreigners and natives in Italy go to jail for decades for reasons we might consider absurd. But of course prosecutors bring good cases, too. The Sunday paper had an interesting article from the McClatchy news service. In 2003, under orders from President Bush and Condileezza Rice, the CIA stupidly renditioned (kidnapped) a radical Muslim cleric in Milan and flew him to Egypt, where the Egyptians somewhat reluctantly tortured him and held him in prison for a few years, finally releasing him because there was no evidence he had committed a crime. The Italians coped with this incident by conducting a trial in absentia of  many Americans (not including Bush and Rice, of course, who skated free). In the end 23  absent Americans were found guilty and sentenced to terms in prison. The catch is that 19 of the Americans on trial didn't exist. Also they lacked adequate legal representation. 

Kissinger

According to Terry Eagleton, our "American satirist Tom Lehrer, declared that he abandoned satire altogether when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." (Writers learn that it is difficult to mock a mockery. But Lehrer seems to have pulled it off in this case.)

Bacon and Weiner's Junk Mail

I have no problem with Anthony Weiner photographing his own junk and sending the pictures to consenting  young women on the Internet over a period of several years, but I wouldn't vote for him in a Democratic primary. I don't mean to be picking on him. We have elected an astonishing variety of people to high office of late. Perhaps the most striking example was Ronald Reagan, who led the Free World while senile. That, even in retrospect, seems not to worry us. But I draw the line at voting for a photographer. Of course, I admire the work of Ansel Adams--I think of him every time I pass a certain church in Bodega--and I deeply respect artists in general. But they make their contributions in a different way and on a different plane. Someone has pointed out that Weiner's root problem is that he is addicted to running for public office. He needs a good therapist to help him control the urge to seek votes. As a private citizen he would be able to focus on his talent, his natural endowment. He could develop his editing skills. As Bacon once wrote, "Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study."

Opinions on Every Issue

For Democracy to work, the voter must have an opinion on every issue. That way she can cast informed votes. Yes, it is true I have never met Michelle Obama, but in my opinion she is a good person. Her husband is a weak waffler, a Fascist murderer or a thoughtful advocate of gay rights. I know George Zimmerman is a coward and murderer, although I have yet to set foot in Florida.  Without doubt the Palestinians or Israelis deserve my support. I grasp little about fracking, but I'm against it. El Salvador is a mystery to me, but like Noam Chomsky, I am prepared to tell the workers there which political party they must support to avoid being idiots; I say, vote for the one Chomsky prefers. I understand that he has not visited Central America recently, but like me he has opinions, and he is bitter about them, too.  I would write more here, but it is time for me to go into the next room and listen to Pacifica. This afternoon I must decide whom to support in a three-sided genocidal war in Central Asia. I can do that. I have an opinion on every issue.

The French Dead

In World War II, I learned today, German air raids killed many British civilians. The Allies' air raids on Europe killed even more French civilians. Oops.

The George Zimmerman Story

Now that Zimmerman is free to kill again, maybe some of the dust will settle and we can see things his way. What we know is that Zimmerman took a gun to a fist fight. He did that because he's a natural born coward.  He got punched a little, so, as Zimmerman himself claims, he screamed like a banshee for a few minutes.  Next, according to Zimmerman, he got loose (did the boy back off, appalled by the screaming?), and Zimmerman pulled his gun, which probably had a round already in the chamber. Then he thumbed off the safety. Then he killed a teenager. He has no regrets.

The (deservedly) Lone Ranger

As you probably don't care, THE LONE RANGER,  a current film starring Johnny Depp as Tonto, has been subjected to a lot of deep political analysis. Forgetaboutit.  The movie is a well-intentioned farce of a sometimes hallucinatory type. It is leadenly ironic (irony escapes serious political people), and my is it badly written. The ranger is one of those sit-com characters who cannot learn from experience, so he lives out the same joke repeatedly. Johnny Depp is the only interesting thing in the film, and that is not enough. Do not pay money to suffer through 2.5 hours of wild and wacky tedium.

Two Heroes

When Ed Snowden asked me to return his library books--he was leaving for China in the morning--I said, "Sure." Also I paid his fines, which amounted to a dollar or two. My wife claimed he was using me, but I disagreed, reminding her that Ed had taken the time to show me how to smoke unfiltered cigarettes in the tenth grade. I argued that if Martin Luther King, that great man, had run away and gone to China, he'd still be alive today. Or maybe not.
 I agree that Ed is a different kind of hero than, say, Eleanor Roosevelt or Audie Murphy. Ed is modern, more like my other hero, the bonnacon, once found to the north of ancient Greece. The bonnacon resembled a thick-boned horse with the head of a bull. It defended itself by running away and releasing a fart strong enough to blow the helmets off an army of men. The gas was flammable and scorched a path for 100 yards behind the heroic steed. That might not be my grandfather's idea of a hero, but I move with the times.

Not Borked

THE NEW YORKER has an interesting bit on the people who helped the gays on their road to equal treatment.  The most credit is given to Joe Biden, for the following somewhat obscure reason. You might remember that Robert Bork, brain-fried wingnut, was once nominated to the Supreme Court.  To put this in perspective, Bork is nuttier than Ant-nee Scalia. Imagine a court that has both Scalia and Bork--and then try to sleep. Can't be done. Anyway, Biden led the movement that blocked Bork, and the Republicans then decided to go with someone not entirely crazy: Anthony Kennedy, swing vote who swung the right way.

A Rhine Nixie

For those who like _Tales of Hoffman_ or Rhine nixes (sirens) in general, here is a rocks-in-pockets, wade-into-the-river death poem: "Lorelei."


Lorelei
by Sylvia Plath

It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear’s listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling –
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.