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. 

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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.

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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."

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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.