I Can See, No Matter How Near You'll Be. . . .

Patty Andrews died yesterday at 94. She was the lead singer in the Andrews Sisters, a brilliant swing group that made a very long string of hits in the 1940s, the war years. I keep several of their songs handy on my computer, "I Can Dream, Can't I?" being one of them. "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" was an anthem for jitterbuggers, which led to the boogie we danced in 1969. "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" was their first huge hit--a bit of Yiddish. "Rum and Coca Cola" (also called a Cuba Libre, folks) was a hit song about what seemed to be a mother/daughter team of hookers. "The Lady from 29 Palms" might not be the musical monument the first four songs remain, but it ends with a shockingly innocent touch of 1940s pride in our nation's nuclear prowess. "She's a dynamite dreamboat, a load of atom bombs, the lady from Twenty-nine Palms."

A Senile American President

There is a gap in recent history. Something I never see mentioned in mainstream media is the fact that Ronald Reagan was senile during his second term in office. The Republicans don't mention it. The Democrats don't mention it. Investigative reporters don't mention it. PBS, of course, is too frightened to mention it. The reason I know about it is that on occasion I read the autobiographies of foreign leaders who had to work with Reagan, and they found him gaga. I am currently reading MY LIFE IN POLITICS by Jacques Chirac, former President of France. He writes about a meeting he had with Margaret Thatcher.  "Ronald Reagan did not seem capable to her, either intellectually or physically, of undertaking a long negotiation. For her, the last year of his presidency was going to be very dangerous for the security of the West." That is careful language. Others have just said flatly that Reagan had a young keeper who followed him from room to room in the White House to tell him the names of his cabinet members. It would be interesting to read that keeper's autobiography.

RationalizingTorture

The two main sides in a discussion of the rules of war take these positions. (1) Wars should be made as humane as possible, and civilians should not be targeted. Or (2) "The more awful you can make war the sooner it will be over."  The quote is from Sherman, and he did not kill civilians on purpose, as we did in World War II. 

In the history of the rules of war, one side actually does take the position that wars should be made a horrible as possible, because that will shorten wars and save lives in the long run. That is how torturers justify themselves and so on. Torturers also find justification in imaginative fictions: "What would you do if by torturing a Muslim you could save a billion children from a nuclear bomb?" 

 

Healdsburgites

I read the paper and then told my wife that 2.8 million years ago a meteor one mile wide hit the ground in the Healdsburg area. It threw droplets of molten meteor and earth high in the sky, where they froze and rained down, creating a carpeting of small ovoid objects in the Dry Creek Valley, for example. These objects are called Healdsburgites. This sort of event is quite rare, and now it is under study by some geologists. "Oh yes," my wife replied. "Go look at that little gray rock on my bedroom bookshelf."

Fear Obama!

When the Right (or the Left) needs money, they send out emails to scare us. I receive the scary ones from the Left, but it is interesting to look at what the Right is reading. See below:
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In what Newsweek hailed as “The Second Coming,” Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in on Sunday, January 20th in his second term as President. While it was not a joyful day for conservatives, at least we have the comfort of knowing it cannot happen again. Or can it? New York Rep. Jose Serrano introduced H.J. Res 15, which would eliminate presidential term limits.

If it passes and Barack Obama wants to, he could seek a third term … or a fourth. He could remain president for life, as long as he has the financial muscle of someone like George Soros behind him and the thuggery of the New Black Panthers to make sure no one else’s vote counts.

These Are The Good Old Days

These are the good old days for those on the Left, and I hope you are enjoying them. The New Deal ended with the election of Richard Nixon, and then Ronald Reagan (pronounced REEgan at the time) came along and shifted us into a long ugly era of greed, racism, voter fraud, corruption, hate politics, union-busting, pointless war, etc. Reagan turned us into a right-wing country. The Clintons swam with the tide and survived. President Obama has finally reversed the Reagan movement and built for us a powerful new coalition of women, Latinos, Black voters, union families, Asians, gays, intellectuals, and people like me. I love it. Yes, I understand that Obama did not turn out to be the Magic Christian who would solve all of our problems by pointing with one finger. He's just a dude who makes mistakes. But the political future is looking better. Reagan might as well be dead. We are living in history. These will become the good old days.  You will be glad you were present, just as I am glad I was there when Hitler bumped himself off and Truman beat Dewey and a Catholic was elected President and people of color became voting citizens.  I'm sorry that some on the Left remain bitterly unhappy, but what the hell--that's their natural condition.

The Usual Idiots

Paul Krugman pointed out why, as I age, I think,  "What fools we mortals be." The common wisdom in Washington these days is that if nothing is changed, we will have to cut back social security payments in 20 years. That is the problem. The Washington solution is to cut back social security payments now. That's some solution. ("Bring it on!")

I can't explain why Washington is a moron or why Washington looks smart compared to state governments. Maybe it has to do with ideologies, the belief systems of idiots.

Stan the Man

Stan the Man died yesterday. Back when the stars of baseball included Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson, only one player was called "the man." That was Stan Musial, who won the NL batting title seven times--without drugs--and seemed to most of us kids to be the dreaded clutch hitter we did not want at bat against our teams in clutch situations. We'd groan when he came up with men on base.  He played 22 years for one team. He was MVP three times and led three teams to world series wins. He could play the harmonica. He was never accused to molesting someone. He didn't build a career on lies or bullying.  No one disliked Musial. He was The Man.

Gorgeous Gussie Moran

My largely uniformed local newspaper today carried two obituaries. The first and more important one covered the death of George Drake, a retired deputy sheriff who had graduated from a local high school. The second and lesser obituary, reprinted from the NY Times, covered the career of Gussie Moran, the first major tennis player to wear a white short skirt with lace-trimmed panties onto the court at Wimbledon. It was all terribly shocking and made her, for a few years, the most famous tennis player in the world. That happened while I was in high school.  Moran was a decent player--at one point she ranked number four in America. After that, from what I've read, she had a rough time of it, lived "in near squalor," and now has died forgotten at 89.

Black Bart, A History

My favorite bike ride runs from the river beach at Monte Rio on a quiet road along the south bank of the Russian River to Duncans Mills, then uphill to Cazadero and back. We stop for a bakery and for hot dogs at a Quonset hut. Fine stuff. I mention this because Black Bart used to enjoy holding up the Wells Fargo stage at Duncans Mills. He hated Wells Fargo for some reason, maybe the same reason we hate it. Black Bart specialized in holding up Wells Fargo, and at Duncans Mills he left behind the bit of doggerel that made him infamous:

I've labored long for bread
For honor and for riches,
But on my corns too long you've tread,
You fair-haired Sons of Bitches.

After a long and prosperous career, Bart (who robbed stage coaches on foot and then ran off into the woods and up steep hills no one wanted to climb) was caught and went to prison, and he was eventually released and disappeared.  Bart was a well dressed, middleclass bandit. He never killed anyone.

Movie Summaries

COMCAST  provides a summary of the movies they run. I have a copied out a few of the summaries, because these are movies I really want to watch.

1. THE WAR AGAINST MRS. HADLEY: a selfish society woman learns to accept World War II.

2. VIBRATIONS: a musician's faith is restored after he loses his hands.

3. A BREED APART: a mountain climber is hired to filch eagle eggs.

4. CHICK MAGNET: a loser and his two friends discover a shirt that makes them irresistible to women.

5.  BARRY MUNDAY: Munday wakes up in the hospital after an attack in a movie theater minus his testicles.

Obama's Style

President Obama held a rare news conference today, and as I watched I became aware of the obvious. His style in a news conference is that of a friendly and sober professor conducting a class discussion. He knows a lot more about the topics than the students. The students make absurd comments and ask inane questions. He pretends that the comments and questions are adult and reasonable, and he responds to them seriously (while steering the talk to the points he is attempting to convey). He's serious. He pauses at times to shift what he has to say into less colorful language. He's respectful where no respect has been earned. That's the way to go.

An awesome level of discussion

On the beach at Avenue C in Redondo, I overheard three young men discussing gun control. One was an NRA member; another was a liberal; and the third was a dude holding a volleyball.

Dude: Why aren't these mass killers using hand grenades? That's lots faster.

Liberal: Hand grenades have been banned.  You can't buy them. 

NRA: What? When? Look, guys, you can't ban guns and live free. The second amendment was written by our representatives to guarantee that each of us has the right to shoot our representatives.

Liberal: Wrong. The second amendment is about militias. It guarantees the militia's right to keep and bear arms.

Dude: They amended the Constitution to grant the army the right to bear arms? Awesome, man. A stroke of genius. 





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Richard Blanco

The inaugural committee has picked as its inaugural poet Richard Blanco, a gay Latino. That's two firsts. (This week the TV Left has become hysterical in unison because Obama has picked several straight white males to serve in his administration.) The Motion Picture Academy has nominated for best film a movie that (apparently) justifies torture of prisoners. I'm skipping the film. And it has nominated Robert DeNiro for his role in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, which I did see. DeNiro was so over-the-top and awful that I would close my eyes and just wait for him to exit the scene. He came close to ruining a good movie. I blame the writer, but the performance was really really really bad.

Diamond Lane

A friend told me this story, which she said had appeared in the SF Chronicle. A man had legally incorporated his family. He then drove in carpool  lanes, which require two people in the vehicle, for several months with the incorporation papers riding shotgun in the front passenger seat. Finally he was stopped by the police and cited, although he carefully explained that there were two legal persons in the automobile. The case is pending. Someone else chimed in that in personhood states, a pregnant woman was two persons--wasn't she free to drive in diamond lanes? Let's hope that someone takes that question to our ridiculous Supreme Court.

Zagat

Apparently Zagat has rated Healdsburg's tasty foods in the top 20 worldwide. As a wine destination it ranks second to Tuscany. That's interesting--the Sonoma wineries reflect the fact that the area became home for many Italian immigrants.  I suppose there are 200 wineries, and most have Italian names.

New York as Dog

I caught the middle of a conversation by two men, probably Canadians, on the van radio. They were talking about asymmetrical relationships. For example, the relationship between a woman and her dog is asymmetrical. The woman has many interests: cooking, politics, her dog, literature, movies, friends, relatives, jogging, etc.  The dog is fixated on her. She has his devoted attention; his eyes, his nose, his ears are tuned in on her most of the time. She is much more important to him than he is to her.  Canada, they said, joking, is America's dog.

I've come up with another example, the American Revolution. Great Britain was engaged in a world war, fighting all over the globe. They cared about their American colonies, but that was a small sideshow. Americans were fixated on their cause. We know the result of this asymmetry. (The Vietnam War was a similar example.)

My family has been in California for many generations, but, when young, my wife and I moved to New York for graduate school and ended up on Long Island, where we were employed for about 35 years. I liked it a lot. While there I heard and read numberless times about the rivalry between New York and California. I noted at the time that I had never once heard Californians mention this rivalry--or talk about New York at all, except for one young woman I dated who planned to visit New York to improve her wardrobe.  Since moving back to California 12 years ago,  I haven't heard a word about the rivalry or come across any interest in New York. Nada. I do remember one comment made by a friend of mine at UCLA in the 1950s when someone asked him if he wanted to visit New York. "What for?" he asked. "Ethel Merman sings there."

I'm Not As Paranoid As Oliver Stone On Crack

I usually miss seeing Chris Hayes on MSNBC. In California he's on from 5-7 AM on Saturday and Sunday, I did catch the last 20 minutes today, and I have to retract my stated belief that you never see anyone from the left on commercial TV. Try Sunday morning before dawn. 

In any case, Hayes had four or five guests, including the raddled Oliver Stone, and Hayes closed the program with his usual (interesting) schtick: he asks each guest what he or she knows today that he or she did not know last week. This time around each guest obliged by denouncing President Obama in a different way. Keep in mind that this was the week in which Obama got the first tax raise on millionaires in a generation and pulled us back from the "fiscal cliff" (saving the world economy from a massive depression). Not a positive word for the Democrat. 

I think Oliver Stone compared Obama unfavorably to Stalin, but I might be jumping to conclusions. Anyway, I'm kind of a fringe guy myself--for eleven years I've been attending a peace vigil once a week (why not). ) Hayes isn't just Left. He's fringe, man. People suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome should look Hayes up.

The Legacy Term

This morning I heard some TV blabbers talking about the President's need to turn his second term into his "legacy term."  I had to agree. For one thing, in his first term Obama did not always act exactly the way I wanted. I voted for him. He should have done what I wanted, but instead he did what some other people wanted. He even attempted certain things that people who voted against him wanted, claiming he represented them, too. Summing up,  in his first term all that President Obama did was avert a worldwide depression, found medical care for nearly every American who lacked it, and end the balmy war against Iraq. Piffling stuff. He'd better make the next four years count, or history will rank him below James Buchanan. 

Ma Barker Jr. High

About ten years ago my wife and I were driving south of Oakland and came upon a small building with a sign on it that told us it was THE TIBURCIO VASQUEZ PUBLIC HEALTH CLINIC. I burst out laughing, which I admit right here was an example of cultural insensitivity. 

For those unfamiliar with California history, Tiburcio Vasquez was a bandit who operated from around 1852 to 1874, when he was caught, tried for the murder of three innocent bystanders during a robbery, and hanged after Governor Romualdo Pacheco denied him clemency. Whether Vasquez actually shot the bystanders or someone else in his gang shot them is unclear. 

Vasquez was colorful, charming and much too successful with Latinas, which troubled their husbands and fathers and probably led to his final capture. Even before his death Vasquez had become a folk hero of the sort familiar to Americans, who made giants out of Jesse James, Sam Bass, John Dillinger, mafia dons and so on. "They stole from the rich and gave to the poor." Vasquez portrayed himself as an avenging revolutionary figure as he roamed from Sonoma County to Los Angeles holding up stores in small towns.

There is no doubt of the legitimacy of the anger among the original Californios, who were cheated and very badly treated when California was taken from them by force.

Today I read in the paper that an elementary school in East Salinas, a neighborhood known for gang activities, has been named by its school board for Tiburcio Vasquez. They did this to honor our nation's Latino heritage. I support this, of course, and I suggest that to honor strong independent women, we should build a Ma Barker Junior High. She was colorful. A Machine Gun Kelly High School might signal our support for innovative technologies.