MIckey Cohen, Attorney

I suppose everyone has noticed that Trump’s attorney is Mickey Cohen. Cohen has been out of the news since the 1970s. Born in 1913, he must be about 104 years old.

In the past Cohen represented, informally, famous Americans like Moe Dalitz, Owney Madden, Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. My wife says Mickey Cohen is not Mickey Cohen but only someone named for him. That seems unlikely to me—that there are two Mickey Cohens. Mickey Cohen is one of a kind. Why would someone as shrewd as Donald Trump hire an imitation?

Twin Peaks Again

There have been many attempts to do something new in the detective fiction genre. Dashiell Hammett, for example, invented the attractive woman killer. The detective has been  made the killer. Everyone on the train killed someone together, and so on. TWIN PEAKS was a TV series in which the killer was finally identified, but I can't remember who it was. The killer didn't matter. The show mixed in a lot of ominous fantasy and magic and dream sequences and soap opera. This odd approach generated analyses from some critics, who offered esoteric, entertaining rubbish as deep insights into our "real" and vicious nature. 

After 25 years, the  show has returned for its third season. Again there are many weird sounds (the director is hard of hearing, I understand). Many characters seem to have speech impediments. 

The show seems appropriate for the age of Trump, to whom reality has not mattered.

David Lynch, the director, is apparently someone who works instinctively. In a sense this show of mixed genres will go nowhere deliberately. It will be a series of striking scenes, a slice of life in a make-believe universe. In general what we like about fiction is that (unlike our universe) it means something. Fiction adds up. It has meaningful conclusions. You won't find meaning in TWIN PEAKS. 

If you ponder unrelated events long enough, you may begin to hallucinate connections. Or you can watch the show as I do, as meaningless entertainment designed to give you a few jolts. 

Trump Is Tired

Minority-President Trump seems to be reaching near-collapse on his trip. His stamina has wobbled. I can understand why. He's an aged blob with a backside of a size to block the Cumberland Gap. The fat dangling from his chin contains enough grease to lubricate the elevators in Trump Towers. He's more sleep deprived than an atomic clock, and consider how hard it is for him to pretend for days that he knows whether Europe is a country or a continent. He's been spending hours talking to competent people--the stress of pretending he can think rationally is too much.  It's killing him. His feet hurt. His wife is irritated. The poor guy has to remember not to fart, god damn it. He wants to go back to Florida.

The First Barbecue

My assumption  that most good things come from the Tain or, sometimes, from the Taino Indians, gained support recently. I was reading about the two white guys who visited Central America in the 1830s and found the remains of the Maya civilization. On this trip they came across a group of Mayas gathered around a fire and cooking meat on an open fire, food that the Mayas called "barbecue."  The travelers sampled this food, which they had never heard of before, and found it excellent.

I decided to look up "barbecue." It is usually listed as an American Spanish term, but in fact it came from Indians around the Caribbean, perhaps the Taino. Barbecue carries with it a sense of crudely primitive wilderness. Some European Americans became aware of it in the 17th century. A modern barbecue requires an open fire, lots of smoke, a sauce and beef, pork or chicken. Genuine barbecue is hard to find, but there is a place in Calistoga at the west end of Lincoln. 

Add barbecue to a list that includes corn, potatoes, tomatoes, vanilla, chocolate and tequila, developed in what we now call Latin America.

The Cost of a Life

You might be wondering how it is that Canada, with a population almost as large as California’s, can afford single payer health care while California can not. At least that is what the newspaper says. 

I never studied economics, but I have known a few economics professors, none of whom managed to make themselves rich. God knows they tried.

I don’t know why Canada can afford single payer (which costs less than our system) and California cannot. I suspect it has to do with priorities. Our health billionaires cannot afford single payer, so we must, in good conscience, let Americans like my younger sister die for lack of coverage. After all, this isn’t Europe.

Look at Newsome

Lt. Governor Gavin Newsome has been famous in my house for three things. He's handsomely rich. As mayor of San Francisco he pushed hard for gay marriage many years before it became accepted or legal. He got out way in front and led. Then he had a sorry affair with his best friend's wife. 

That's a mixed resume. Now we can add two more items. At the recent California Democratic convention, he was the only major officer holder to back the insurgency from the left. He sided with  the California Nurses Association. They lost to the usual business and once liberal power brokers, but it was a close thing. Newsome also endorsed the single payer health care plan. His main rivals danced around the issue, too cautious to state an opinion. 

Let's be clear. If we want our next governor to support single payer, Gavin Newsome is the man. He will lead, not follow.

The Democratic Party has to do something right to earn back my vote. No triangulation. Lead in the way FDR through LBJ did. Those Presidents were obviously flawed. but they led from the front.

The Death Bill

As you have probably noted, the latest Repugnican death bill will force 23 million people out of health care and give billionaires a tax break.

To be fair, I estimate (foolishly) that one million of those people would die anyway from mistakes made by doctors, even if they had good health care. Another two million would die from shark bites or car accidents or things having nothing to do with medicine. That leaves 20 million who will die earlier than their maximum life span because of lack of health care. In short, the death bill will kill 20 million Americans early, but the Repugnicans could not care less, as long as it helps the 1%. 

Have you noticed how many people get cancer? The Repugnicans are cutting money for cancer research. I don’t know about your family, but my mother and father died from cancer, as did my sister and my cousin’s wife and several of my oldest friends. I miss them. Maybe Donald Trump will not get cancer, in which case why should Paul Ryan care? (He  might want to check this out with his church.)

A Dump on the Desk

I missed Anderson Cooper’s now famous remark, and maybe some of you did, so here it is.

Cooper was interviewing one of the brain-dead professional Trump guys, who kept on explaining and justifying Trump’s foul ideas. Finally Cooper, of  CNN, said, “If Trump took a dump on his desk, you would defend him.” 

The defender denied this, but Cooper was right, of course. What CNN and all stations should do is ignore the talking point spinners on all sides of all issues.These creatures are brought onto programs to fill empty time and to rile up viewers pointlessly. They have nothing insightful to say. They waste our time. 

Driven From This Earth

Saturday Iran elected a leader who promised voters he would work to open the nation to the West. He defeated  an anti-Western candidate by 18 points. On Sunday our Minority-President Trump, addressing about 50 heads of Moslem states, most of them dictators, did his best to portray Iran as a Satanic hellhole of terrorism, lumping Iran in with ISIS, one of Iran’s worst enemies. 

In short, the people of Iran voted to reach out to us, and the brainless Trump’s response was that Iran is evil and we should “drive them out from this Earth.” (His probably motive? Well, Obama signed a treaty with Iran, so Iran must be crushed by Trump. He's that petty.)

A Wall Street Dope

You might want to keep away from the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, where some of the thinking is done by Kimberly Strassel. I started to read an essay she had written, but I didn’t get far. In the essay Strassel asked her five-year-old to define free speech, and the child said, “Free speech is that you can say what you want—as long as I like it.”

My guess is that the child said nothing of the sort. That's not how children talk. In any case, Strassel went on to claim that this answer showed her child was “a socialist with totalitarian tendencies.”  

Ha ha ha.  

As you probably noticed, there was nothing in what the child said that connected intolerance to capitalism, libertarianism, socialism, Marxism, anarchism or Christian Science. You can, of course, find examples of intolerance in any movement, Strassel apparently doesn’t grasp that, so I tossed the essay and went back to reading a book on the West’s discovery of the Mayas.

Why Trump Never Errs

The question here is “Can Minority-President Trump make a mistake as President?” The answer depends on what we mean by a mistake. 

Let’s say you have a two-year-old who has been shown nothing about how math works. You ask her to add 7 and 6. She gives you an answer: “Four.”  Has she made a mistake? Wittgenstein would say no. Or you put a chimpanzee in the cab of a locomotive and tell her to stop in Albany. Instead she stops in the middle of a raspberry farm. Has she made a mistake?

Before you can make a mistake, you have to know what the game is and how to perform it correctly.  

Trump Sits in a Chair

Yesterday downtown Santa Rosa was closed for much of the day to run a triathlon. I had planned to visit my cousin, who lives near RR square, but it turned out that the closest I could get in my car was about two miles away. All roads leading toward his area were closed (as far as I could determine). The perimeter roads were cut from two lanes to one. As I circled around, the roads became more and more clogged, squeezing two lanes into one. Traffic lights had been switched to a blinking red stop-and-go mode. Trapped drivers became frantic and refused to let other cars merge, which is unusual behavior in these parts.

Fortunately I had a bike with me, so I eventually parked on Stonypoint and pedaled to my cousin’s house. At times I found myself in the actual race, as much younger, fitter folks whipped by me. 

The police and race monitors were patient and helpful in getting me through barricades. But who planned this fiasco that badly inconvenienced maybe fifty thousand people? 

Of course, people like me don’t count. I understand that the hucksters in charge don’t give a shit if they inconvenience ordinary citizens. That might be why SNL noticed that, in every chair he sits in, Minority-President Trump kind of hunches forward and looks like he’s taking a satisfying dump.   Take a look next time he sits down. 

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

One of Trump’s implacably vicious stooges, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, informed us on TV that “countless FBI agents” had told her that they approved of firing the FBI Director, James Comey. She wasn’t lying. Nothing is more countless than zero. 

White Socialism

I've run across a term new to me, White Socialism. In  America if you have had a certain kind of job, you end up with good lifetime medical coverage, as Susan and I did.  These kinds of  jobs are mostly (but not entirely) held by white people. The way white socialism works is that the more money you make, the more help the government gives you.  This is more about being rich than about skin color, but it works out to be mostly a white thing.  

On another topic, I noticed that Marie LePen got the second-most votes for President of France, but someone else was declared the winner. I don't get it.

Sports Racism

This Sunday the Press Democrat asked how spectators should react when someone sitting nearby yells racist comments or throws things at black players. Good question. 

Nearly 30 years ago my wife and I faced that question when we took our small children to professional baseball and basketball games in NewYork. I shoved one guy, but our basic answer was that we stopped buying tickets. You can't take kids to an event where you are guaranteed to sit near a foul-mouthed drunken racist and his slobbering friends. 

In the Bay Area we haven't run into the same problem. That might be luck. 

Jailed for Laughing?

If it were true that Desiree Fairooz was convicted by a jury for laughing at our KKK-type Attorney General Jefferson (Davis) Beauregard Sessions, I would give up on this country.  But Fairooz was convicted of struggling with police officers sent to evict her from the hearing--and that is sad.  

I assume that the authorities had the right to expel people, but people also had the right to engage in a nonviolent protest. Fairooz should not have been charged. She should not have been tried. The jury should not have convicted her. She should not face jail time. But the jury failed us, as did the prosecutor. I hope that the judge has read the Constitution. The right to dissent, when faced with lies and authoritarianism, is crucial. 

France

The French Presidential system winnows the final candidates down to two. It must be something like the system here in California, where the top two candidates in an open congressional primary end up as the two finalists, regardless of party. 

In the California system you can sometimes end up with a tough choice between two candidates you don't like. For many French citizens that's what is happening today. But I keep in mind the slogan that influenced a French election some years back. "Vote for the crook, not for the Fascist." The crook won 80% of the vote.  

If our Presidential election system winnowed candidates down to just two, we would not have a malignant narcissist running the Western world today. 

Silvet

In our household I do most but not all of of the dishes. My wife Susan, working hard, cooks and does some dishes. This system has gradually revealed, over 52 years, a difference in how to arrange the clean silverware.

I stack the clean silverware with the heads facing toward me. All the spoons go into one divider; all the forks, in another. When I open the drawer, it’s obvious which group is spoons and which is forks. (The handles of all the silverware are identical.)

Susan prefers to put away the silverware in groups but upside down so that only the handles are visible. That way, when she reaches in the drawer for something to eat with, she can surprise herself.

In the past this has led to extra work for me, in that I had to go through the silverware drawer from time to time and straighten out the forks so that they all pointed in the right direction. That was foolish work, right? It finally occurred to me that if some of the forks in the fork section were visibly forks, it didn’t matter if other forks could be seen only as standard handles. I could still determine where the forks were. Having all the forks facing the same direction was unnecessary. What am I, obsessively neat? Today the fork section is a cheerful jumble, like a typical marriage, with forks pointing any which way, and I have a new aesthetic. 

What Is Certain

Today the PRESS DEMOCRAT ran two columns worth comparing. The first was by George Will, reprinted from the Washington Post. Will points out that the problem with Trump is “that he does not know what it is to know something.” 

If you say that you know something, you are claiming to have a reasonable argument or a set of facts that prove you are probably right. Trump doesn’t grasp that. His notion of evidence is to claim that many people are saying that the earth is flat or whatever. 

Knowledge isn’t certain. That is, knowledge can always be doubted. By definition, what is certain cannot be doubted (and it isn't knowledge). 

Wittgenstein clarified the difference between certainty and knowledge. If I say I know my wife has brown eyes, I can produce a photo to prove it. But what if she always secretly wears brown contact lenses? I might be mistaken. That’s knowledge. I know my wife has brown eyes.

The second column is by Bret Stephens, the New York Times’ new babbler. He argues that because many people predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidential election and turned out to be wrong, we can’t believe people who claim to know that climate change is a 100% certainty. They might be in error.

Like Trump, Stephens doesn’t grasp what it is to know something. Scientists (and those who believe in science) know that global warming has begun and that humans contribute to it. Lots of evidence. They also understand that there is some tiny chance that they might be wrong. Knowledge is never certain. Scientific knowledge does not consist of certainties. Newton’s theory of gravity was superseded by Einstein’s theory. Eventually Einstein’s theory will be replaced. Stephens is attacking a 100% straw man he invented to sell copies of the Times. 

Certainties (sentences it makes no sense to doubt) exist, of course. I am 100% certain that language exists. 

Separate but Equal

White, Black, Muslim, Latino, Asian, Gay—we tend to be attached to whatever we are and the culture that comes with it. On a certain progressive site recently, we were asked to list some area in which we differed from the orthodox left. I wrote  that I believed in integration. That kicked up a storm. I was called the worst polite name possible on the left, “a white man.”

I was aware, of course, of the split between those who believe in integration (mixed marriage, mixed neighborhoods, mixed schools) and those on the left who prefer identity politics, a form of separate but equal. The questions include which is a more useful long-range strategy? Do we need both? Is American racism, as some now write, an unsolvable problem forever?

The separate but equal approach was once found lacking by a progressive Supreme Court (Brown v. Board of Ed), not because it is impossible but because “separate” is unconstitutional.