The Fearbiters

There used to be a classification of dogs known as fearbiters. In short, these dogs had been abused or improperly trained, they feared strangers and they snapped at kids. They were dangerous to ordinary people and children, like some police officers today. I'm thinking of Andy Lopez, Michael Brown, and the many other unarmed children and young adults who have been shot a half dozen times by a public servant fearing for his life. But are these panicking shooters the central villains in street executions? What about the Sonoma County sheriff who trained the killer of Andy Lopez and then gave the man back his gun and sent him out to shoot again? What about the district attorney who let the killer off without a trial? Or the police chief in Ferguson and the county district attorney there who tacitly endorsed the shooting of unarmed Michael Brown? They could join together and produce a manual in  how to sweep government-sanctioned manslaughter under the rug.

It's not just that government officials thwarted justice. We're used to that. They also ended any hope of finding out what really happened, information that only a trial could have produced. So there is no closure. And the penalty for covering up? None.

Are Americans Stupid?

Recently several aged comedians agreed on TV that people are stupid. The context was a discussion of some truthful dude who helped invent the Affordable Care Act and then said that people were so stupid they had to be misled to give them health care. John Cleese, agreeing that people are stupid, said that what old age had taught him was that nearly everyone doesn't know what he is talking about.  (This is one of the great insights of philosophy, shared by the ancient daoists and Ludwig Wittgenstein.) 

I am now so old I might as well face reality, which is that nearly half of our population is of below-average intelligence. The upper half is mostly delusional by choice. They prefer to believe things like "Mary was a virgin" and "Woodie Allen is a great baby sitter." On a scale of one to ten, nearly all of us are dumb or deluded, especially our Supreme Court, and that is part of what is the matter with Kansas. (Did I mention that I am old?)

Ferguson, MO

Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., a few months back. The exact circumstances are in dispute, and I can't contribute anything useful to that discussion. I can say this. In our country, on average, nearly one black or brown male is killed by the police each day. In Japan the average number of people killed by the police is zero per day. It isn't fair, of course, to make a simple comparison between Japan and the United States. Japan is not very ethnically diverse. Both nations struggle with racism, but in only one country do the police shoot down unarmed teenagers with the backing of their bosses and the district attorneys. Something needs to be done. A lot needs to be done.

Obama in Hell

According to the NY Times, about 2.5 million undocumented immigrants live in California, and a majority of them have been here for ten years or more. One in six or 16% of the children in California have an undocumented parent from Asia, Latin America, Ireland, etc.  What President Obama has done is decide not to seek out and deport the adult members of these intact families.  He's going to let the old folks remain, so they can work and support the children and teach them manners. For committing this dirty deed, Obama will roast in Hell beside Hitler and Stalin, of course, but maybe he figures it's worth it.

Go Shoot Yourself

In the middle of the Civil War, Nancy Pelosi has reminded us, President Lincoln issued an emancipation proclamation, freeing the slaves in the rebel states. His act was clearly illegal.  His lawyers cobbled together a weird justification for what he was doing. They held that slaves were part of the rebel war machine and all parts of that machine were subject to federal seizure (or something like that). Lincoln freed the slaves in the face of the Constitution, many court decisions and the laws of the land. He took away from Southern white men about half their financial worth. But we don't mind that today because what he did was morally correct. (So he cut a few corners.)

Now President Obama, following in the footsteps of many earlier Presidents, has issued an edict that protects the status of families that contain American citizens and undocumented immigrants, and the Republicans are threatening to sue. Are you kidding me? Break up families? Why not just shoot yourself in the knee and acquire a permanent limp?  

Obama's Shoes

Both shoes have now fallen. Shoe One: the President set in motion his plan to grant temporary immunity to about 5 million undocumented people, many of them Latinos. None of them will get to vote, but they have friends, relatives and well wishers who support diversity. If the Democrats and Independents want to keep these five million people around, they will have to show up at the polls in 2016. The next President will decide the matter. Shoe Two: Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate, may be an empty suit, but she has endorsed Obama's plan 100%. The Republican candidate will pledge to reverse it. The side that turns out with enthusiasm will win.

The Democrats who ran away from Obama (elected President twice) also ran against his base in 2014. Some of that base just stayed home this year. The Democrats lost and then blamed Obama. Running with the Obama base might be worth a try two years from now.

Human Folly Is Endless

When my daughters were little girls, they got into a fight on the cement back porch. They were playing hopscotch, and both of them wanted to play with an imaginary friend they called Mr.  Nobody. I had to break up this ruckus.

In Israel there's a place called the Temple Mount that is sacred to several religious groups, each devoted to worshiping their own Mr. Nobody.  One part of the site is reserved for Muslims as a place for them to pray. Jews are not allowed there, but some Jews do enter and then kneel and pretend to tie their shoelaces while actually muttering prayers to a different Mr. Nobody. A day or two back, to avenge this insult, two Muslim men killed four rabbis. Then the two Muslims were killed.         

Tomorrow, another folly will take place. Check your local paper. 

Whiff of Evil

I watched a 2014 movie from Australia called "Lance Armstrong: Stop at Nothing" on TV.  Interesting. Armstrong learned how to juice up after he got smoked in a race by Indurain and found out what Indurain was using. So Indurain was a juicer (won five straight tours), and no one has confiscated his medals. But maybe Indurain wasn't also a sociopath--Armstrong is apparently a sociopath as well as a juicer. The film explores his relationships with other riders, Greg LeMond, etc. Revealing stuff. Real whiff of an unending evil will.

Our Corporate Governance

Now I am trying to figure out the secret TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership, a kind of NAFTA for 12 Pacific Rim countries. It's a secret treaty that is apparently being negotiated by representatives of corporations from the nations involved. I read that the USA has about 600 people on its team and 590 of them represent corporations. I might be paranoid, but I don't entirely trust them. The object might be to increase corporate profits at the expense of ordinary people by raising some standards and lowering others. Some of the negotiations have leaked. For example, 12 nations blocking generic drugs will help America's Big Pharma, and in return America will lower the safety standards on food imported from the other treaty signers. I doubt if there is any way to stop this treaty. The governments will support their corporate oligarchies. President Obama and the Republicans, who control both houses of congress, are pushing for the TPP. Bernie Sanders and Paul Krugman oppose it.

St.Vincent

For those who appreciate Bill Murray's acting, ST. VINCENT is a crotchety, sentimental entertainment and a pleasantly uneven visit to a theater. It held my interest throughout.  Just saying. . . it is sentimental. 

On a completely different note, more than one in seventy children born in America today are burdened with autism to one degree or another. That's a high rate. There are two in my block alone. Science does not know what causes autism, but something does. There is currently no known correlation with gluten, vaccinations, astrological signs, GMO foods or fluoridated water. We badly need scientific research and useful results. 

Brace Yourself

According to the NEW YORK TIMES, "American business is gearing up for a major push on long-sought goals like an overhaul of the corporate tax system, building the Keystone oil pipeline, lighter environmental and financial regulation and winning congressional backing for trade deals with Asia and Europe." In other words, as climate change worsens, the fancy people and their corporations will grow richer, and the purchasing power of ordinary people will shrink. When ordinary people cannot afford to buy new water heaters, we will slip into a recession. Jobs will continue to be exported to places where people are lucky to work for a dollar an hour. 

The only person who can slow this process in the next two years is President Obama. Brace yourself.             

The Brave One

The anti-fluoride movement in Healdsburg, which has its roots in the John Birch Society, failed to repeal fluoridation today by a 2-1 vote. That's a victory for science, common sense and poor children, and I'm happy.  I'm happy to agree with the Press Democrat on this issue. But I noticed that the political figures I usually look to for leadership mostly failed to speak up. They knew fluoride is safe and useful, but they hedged around the issue, pretending to be reconsidering it.  The one exception that I know about was Jim Wood, our new assembly member. He was bluntly in favor of fluoridated water. Jim is a retired dentist. Jim has to look other scientists in the eye. Others might have decided that the issue was too toxic for discussion. Jim did the right thing and took a stand--and then he won big. (Jim Wood will be the only scientist in the state assembly.)     

The Glutenous

Wheat was the first crop humans planted and harvested, about 11,000 years ago, and after that brief taste test, we can see today what a disaster it has been for our civilization. That insight is why you can now go to Safeway and buy gluten-free dog food. 

Gluten is a protein, of course, found in wheat, barley, etc. This protein can do great harm to the bowels of people with celiac disease, about 1% of the current American population, and it has already done immense damage to another 39% of the population who blame gluten for their sensitive stomachs and so on. This second group--the sensitive 39%--have not been diagnosed by our failed medical doctors, who claim to have found no link between gluten and physical ailments. 

We are much too smart these days to let western science fool us about gluten or climate change or vaccinations or fluoridated water. Scientists--what are they good for?

The second group of suffering Americans--the 39%-- have mostly been diagnosed by talk therapists, diet authors or by themselves. Self-diagnosis is inexpensive and easy. Simple reasoning helps you detect what has gone wrong. For example, if you drink a glass of water and later on you get a stomach ache, you should stop drinking water. The key insight here is that correlation is causation.  What comes first causes what comes second. The final step comes after you stop drinking water when you realize you no longer have a stomach ache. (See the key insight above.)

Western medical science--and for that matter the Asians, who adore gluten--has found no reason to link gluten to health problems, but there are possible medical problems with wheat. Apples, wheat, honey, watermelons, mangoes, milk, ice cream, garlic and onions contain fermentable oligosaccharides and polyols, which actually can cause mild discomfort in some eaters on occasion. You should give these foods up, leaving them to the likes of the Chinese and me, who are immune. When I see a chocolate eclair it is almost my duty to eat it quickly and keep it out of the hands of my friends, unless they are from Asia, where gluten (not wheat) is often baked into chewy little balls in a red sweet sauce. I admit that gluten balls taste good. I order mine with extra gluten.

Today you can buy almost anything you want to eat in a non-gluten form. The gluten has typically been replaced by fat and sugar to improve its ugly non-gluten taste. Nothing beats fat and sugar. You can probably recall when talk therapists and dietitians were saying that fat and sugar and MSG were bad for you, but now scientists are telling the truth. MSG is chemically harmless!  Good God! Who knew? Things change. Now you can't eat enough junk food, just stay away from gluten. 

I know what medical doctors claim, which is that there is no test of any sort that can confirm non-celiac gluten sensitivity, which they claim is probably an imaginary disease.  Forget science. Just stop eating gluten. A billion Chinese will thank you and more will be left for me.