The Nick of Time

My wife's father (Harry) has been gone a while, but today I thought about him. My granddaughter has asked about her family history. I knew that Harry's parents had grown up in Ukraine and come here about 1909, but when I had tried in the past to find the town, no luck. It turns out that the problem was I couldn't spell the name right. This time the 'net got smarter and coughed up "Tetiev," which is pronounced Teteev. 

There it was, apparently a Jewish settlement about 70 miles south of Kiev, and I wonder if Tetiev is still there. To my shock, back about 1920, 75% of the population was murdered, and the rest fled. 

The Good Teacher

One problem teachers have to deal with is the basic  goal, which is to transform every pupil into an A student. It's not possible, of course, but if you come close, you will get fired for grade inflation. 

Manson and My Relatives

It was good to hear of the death of Charles Manson. During his 50 years in prison, he kept attracting idiotic cult members and, the guards say, planning murders.

My father had an indirect connection with Manson. My dad's sister, Ardith, had her first of eleven marriages to a man named Merle Curtiss, and they had a child together before divorcing. That was my older cousin Sonny. I never liked him.

My father was a teenager at the time of the marriage, and Curtiss gave him some useful boxing lessons. My father kept that fond memory, survived several street fights, and 40 years later he looked up Curtiss, by then the elected sheriff of Kern County. My father was invited to dinner with Curtiss and his wife. He learned at dinner that Curtiss and his deputies were the ones who had caught and arrested Manson, although they get little mention in the saga. Most people seem to think Manson was nabbed by some district attorney from his office in Los Angeles.

The California Difference

I haven't seen much comment on what follows.

Clinton won the popular vote in the United States by about 3 million. She carried California by about 4.3 million and beat Trump 2 to 1. She lost the other 49 states by about a million. 

What made California different? 

Is some ways it wasn't different. There were other states in which Clinton ran strongly. 

It wasn't the lack of third parties, which picked up about 6% of the California vote. In what might be the country's most progressive state, the Jill Stein voters and Libertarian voters didn't change the outcome. 

I don't know why Clinton took 61.5% of the vote, although that is about what you would get if you added 95% of the Democrats to 90% of  the independents. But how did the Democrats get so many independents to support a candidate with high negatives? 

My guess is that independents, about 30% of the voters, remain independent because they care more about the issues that affect them than about political parties. They vote for the candidates who support single payer health care, for example. If no candidate supports single payer, they vote for the one who backs the Affordable Care Act.

In California independents (who register as decline to state) are allowed to vote in the Democratic primaries, which tends to create a natural alliance. Maybe the national Democrats should try to earn the votes of independents who like Bernie instead of trying to exclude them or blaming them for Trump's victory,  But it's hard to learn something new. 

No Attempt To Unify

According to Jim Zogby:

"There are virtually no Bernie supporters on the DNC Rules and By-laws Committee and Keith Ellison is the only Bernie supporter on the new Executive Committee. We should have more representation, and it is fundamentally wrong that we will have such a diminished voice in party affairs when, more than ever, we will need 'all hands on deck.'”

I don't know what it will take to get the Democrats to allow progressives to have a voice in the party. So far the loss to Trump has taught them nothing. If the party is to unite, I suppose that will be up to the next Presidential nominee. The Wafflers will do their best to retain control of the party (a silver mine), and the struggle will be interesting.

When The Tsar Got Shot In The Basement Of The Kremlin

This is just a footnote. Many months back Trump’s son or his son-in-law, the more weaselly one, got a note from the Crown Prosecutor of Russia, who offered to meet with him to discuss information about Hillary Clinton. Or something like that. The Trump forces considered it but prudently decided not to act on the offer. Also they concealed the offer from the FBI. Now here is what earned my admiration. The last emperor of Russia resigned  in 1917. I assume that the Tsar had a crown prosecutor at the time. It’s fair to assume that this prosecutor was around 45 years old when he took office. You’d want someone seasoned but still vigorous. That would make the Crown Prosecutor roughly 145 when he contacted the Trumps. Compared to him they were children.  

Judge Moore's Bottom

Yesterday Judge Moore of Alabama held a press conference while surrounded by women preachers. They didn't mind endorsing for the United States Senate a man who gropes frightened 14-year-old girls. These women didn't mind that at all. As they see it, that's how little girls grow up in Alabama. And God bless Alabama. I've never been there, of course. My forebears left the South long ago--I mean they got the hell out. And they weren't particularly smart, either. 

The preachers also didn't mind that the judge told, on national TV, surrounded by genteel ladies, a joke about his butt hole. Fair disclosure--I enjoy some butt hole humor myself, and Judge Moore told a pretty good joke. What a rascal! Isn't he just what we need to help guide the Sentate, America and the Free World? 

Jeff Sessions Takes Out The Trash

Abbie Powe Sessions: Jeff, honey, did you take out the trash?

Jeff: I don’t recall.

Abbie Powe Sessions: I’m asking if you took out the trash after we asked you, son.

Jeff: I don’t recall you or anyone asking me to take out the trash, and I do not believe anyone in this family did ask me. I have no memory of that. 

Abbie Powe Sessions: Your father heard me ask you, and then he asked you, too. Jeff. Did you pick up a bag of beer cans and take it outside?

Jeff: Dad? He might have said something about beer cans, but that was this morning. I had a very busy day at school, and I don’t actually recall a conversation with Dad, but I believe I said to him that you should not be drinking Coors before breakfast. I have no memory of what he might have said, if he did. I talk to people all day long, just to say hello and so on. My day is confusing. You know how disorganized and underprepared I am at school. I’m failing chemistry, and It’s typical for me to speak to more than thirty people in one day. It’s a form of chaos.

Abbie Powe Sessions: Jefferson Beauregard, you’re lying again. And what have we told you about lying? Methodists don’t lie. When your father gets back from the dealership, he’ll have something to say to you.

Jeff: I resent that. You’re the one who’s lying when you accuse me of telling lies. That’s a big fat lie, a whopper. You did not ask me to take out the trash, and I’m not aware for anyone else who did, and I don’t believe it happened.

Abbie Powe Sessions: Never mind. I’ll take the trash out myself. Jesus H. Christ!

Jeff: You lose. And you’re going to Hell, Mom. 

How To Control An Election

Some of the Federalists who helped found this country believed that the nation should be ruled by the rich white men who owned it. That makes a kind of sense, of course, and it helps explain why our local newspaper has endorsed a new plan for voter districts. The plan was put forward by the Chamber of Commerce, dominated by rich white businessmen, and by the Sonoma Alliance, dominated by even richer white businessmen. They own Sonoma Country, in a way, and they own the newspaper, The Corporate Democrat. 

The City, until now, has elected its council members at large. This means that council members have nearly always come from one corner of the city, the ghetto where giant mansions face each other across broad avenues. Poor people and people of color can pound sand, as far as representation is concerned. (That’s in theory—in actuality some decent people win council seats at times.)

Frightened by a lawsuit, the city council now intends to divide itself into discrete districts. There might even be districts made up of ordinary voters, but who gets to shape them?

As I mentioned, the newspaper has strongly endorsed a proposal from the Super Rich, one in which no current incumbent will have to run against another. Is that a sweet deal or what? Who doesn’t like to see loyalty rewarded? I’d hate to stir up competition, maybe. I remember the first law of American capitalism: competition reduces profits.    

FACES PLACES

FACES PLACES is a French documentary about a well-known film director (an 88 year old woman) and a young photographer, male, who set out across France to meet and photograph regular people. They begin to enlarge the photographs and glue them onto buildings and so on. The project begins to get complicated, and the movie ends in an unexpected way. In a sense it is an exploration of the creative process, interactions and a human look at us. It's different. 

More Lies

I don't want to harp on the Donna Brazile revelations. The DNC should just issue an apology and get to work making the party apparatus more democratic. Try to earn credibility. But the Clinton soldiers have dug in like Trump.and insist on denying reality (along the lines of "I did not have sex with that woman").

Consider these two excerpts from THE INTERCEPT. (Google THE INTERCEPT TO to read the full article.)

____________________________________________

The Clinton/DNC agreement explicitly vested the Clinton campaign with control over key matters during the primary season: the exact opposite of what journalists on Twitter caused hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, to believe. Nonetheless, DNC-loyal commentators continue to cite headlines and tweets citing the legalistic language to convince huge numbers of people that the truth is the exact opposite of what it actually is:

(and)

What we actually know for certain – what exists in reality – is that Sanders never signed any agreement with the DNC that contained the control provisions that were given in 2015 to the Clinton campaign. In other words, the provisions cited by Brazile in her “rigging” allegation did not exist in any contract signed with the DNC by the Sanders campaign.

(the contracts are in the public record)

The Scandal

The latest Clinton scandal, the revelation by Donna Brazile that the Clinton campaign took control of parts of the party apparatus before Hillary was nominated, was something many voters already understood. A short apology for unethical behavior would have settled the matter. 

Instead, what we saw on Saturday was a major turnout of Clinton people arguing that buying control of the umpires was normal and there was nothing to look at. That saddened me. What we need right now is a younger, reformed, more ethical Democratic party that focuses on the future, not the past. But the exhausted old faces will not retire, because their lives consist of nada except manipulating political power. They have nothing else to do. 

Daylight Saving, a history

The other day Susan and I were driving somewhere, and we began to speculate on why we put up with daylight saving, a nonsensical, irritating law that does no good whatsoever.  It does not get us an extra hour of sunlight. That would violate the laws of physics. Despite no expertise in economics, Susan and I got as far as the realization that somebody in the 1% was making  big money from daylight saving, but we had no idea who.

It turns out, according to Book TV, that daylight saving in this country was first backed by major department store chains to increase afternoon shopping hours for people with jobs. Later on, daylight saving improved life for morning stock traders who wanted to buy and sell in Europe. (Daylight saving has had nothing to do with farmers, by the way. They’ve always hated it. I think they already knew when the Sun came up.)

The President who tried hardest to get rid of daylight saving was Richard Nixon, I am revising my view of him upward a tick. 

The expert on all this is Michael Downing, who pointed out that American time zones are reset up to strengthen various commercial enterprises, which is why they keep changing. It could be worse. He noted that China has one time zone, so in China some cities see the sunrise at one in the afternoon.   

Donna Brazile

Was the Democratic primary race for President rigged by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign? Yes, Elizabeth Warren said yesterday, after Donna Brazile’s revelations. Brazile served as chair of the DNC at the time, so she should know.

Of course many recognized the DNC bias during the race. It was obvious. Supporters of Hillary Clinton refused to confront it, because it contradicted what they preferred to believe about Hillary. We are all subject to bias confirmation, me especially. That’s how humans operate.

From the day Bill Clinton appeared on the national scene, I understood he was Snopeslike. The man reeked of sleaze. He and his wife ran for office to get rich—they started poor and ended wealthy. The Clintons weren’t crooks like Trump, just deeply unethical, and I have to say that ethics and American politics are incompatible. Some elected officials are more ethical than others, but you’d be pressed to find one that hasn’t betrayed others for personal gain. That’s how the game gets played.

In three national elections I voted for a Clinton.  

I’m writing about the Clintons in the past tense. Please, let them retire with their hundreds of millions of dollars. At long last, let's encourage  the Clintons to slink away.

(also on FaceBook)

How Power Corrupts

For most of us, our favorite President was Abraham Lincoln. One reason is that after he acquired enormous power, he still had empathy for ordinary people, perhaps because he had himself failed often. Empathy in someone in power is rare. In my lifetime I suppose the person who exemplifies that kind of empathy was Robert Kennedy, and he didn’t have it until life had crushed him.

If a person in power keeps in mind how often he has failed, Jerry Useem wrote in the July ATLANTIC, he may remain human. 

We know what Lord Acton said about power (that it corrupts) and Henry Adams wrote that a friend in power is a friend lost and so on. We know what power does to people, but only recently has the power syndrome become a field of study in psychology. The argument is that power changes the brain like a traumatic injury. Powerful people lose some of the ability to see things from another person’s point of view. In power, someone has less need to for a nuanced view of others. You just tell them what to do. People in power lump others together, rely on stereotypes, ask fewer questions and depend on their own gut instincts. They show contempt for others.  They act recklessly and with growing incompetence, Donald. That gets worse if the Donald is aging "bigly" and losing his vocabulary and contact with reality.

Compromising the Civil War

General Kelly, the dope who guards the White House for Minority President Trump, has said that the Civil War was brought on by an inability to compromise. It’s too late now, but an obvious compromise might have saved the lives of many loyal American troops.

White people and black people could have taken turns being slaves. That seems fair. Of course, there were more white people, extra white people, which would have created an imbalance, but if you reclassified the Indian tribes and the Irish as African-Americans, as some did, you’d get roughly equal numbers. (Note to self: everyone is, in ancestral terms, African-American.)

Or maybe men and women could have taken turns being slaves or vice versa.