Where the Facts Lead

When asked if the House should set up an impeachment committee to investigate President Spanklyn T. Borderline, about 90% of  the House Democrats say no.  They claim we need a pre-investigation before starting the real investigation. At some point in the future, "we will see where the facts lead." (That is the Pelosi and Biden stance.)

While we wait to see where the facts lead, the President commits impeachable offenses on television in full view of the voters. "He betrays his oath every day," said Hillary Clinton recently. 

The House Democrats look timid, trying to hide until everyone else wants impeachment, afraid to do the right thing until impeachment is a proven winner. Be grateful they weren't in charge in 1776.

Harriet Tubman

There is nothing we can do for Harriet Tubman. She's been dead for more than 100 years. There is something we can do for ourselves, which is to put her portrait on the $20 bill. The purpose would be to remind us of who we are when at our best, when one of us is Harriet Tubman.

We would be taking a genocidal racist, Andrew Jackson, off the $20 bill. That's a good day's work. (Pres. Spanklyn T. Borderline will block the change until 2020.) 

Bum Storage

When I buy marijuana, I store it at home in a carved wooden box made by my father. Some people prefer to keep their weed closer. 

Cameron Wilson, 27, carried a pistol in one pocket. He was having a really bad day. As he bent over, the pistol accidentally fired and shot him in the balls, according to the Wenatchee World News and AOL.

"When the ex-con finally went to the hospital, a balloon of marijuana slipped out of his anus while a doctor was operating on the gunshot wound, court records show.

"Cops also arrived at the hospital when alerted of the gunshot wound and searched Wilson's car, where they discovered a bag of meth in the blood-stained jeans he was wearing when he shot himself."

At the jail, as Wilson was being strip-searched, a second bag of weed slipped out of his bum and fell to the floor, the newspaper reported.

Russia v. China

We pretend that Donald Trump is the American President of the United States. Our politics swing around an empty space in the head of a red-faced narcissist who inherited half a billion dollars. 

Soon Trump will be up for re-election. He might win again. Mussolini, Hitler, the monster in charge of the Philippines--they  came to power in reasonably honest elections. The dictator of North Korea has apparently endorsed Trump for re-election.

Russia plans to back Trump on the 'net and the electronic world in general. China, on the other hand, may back the Democrat. Trump has done his damnedest to screw up the Chinese economy. China and Russia may slug it out in 2020, using the USA as a cheap arena.  

May the better post-Marxist nation win.

We Owe Posterity

The impeachment of Donald Trump is an act we owe to the past and the future, our Founding Fathers and our grandchildren. The senate will not convict Trump, but I think posterity will see that lack of conviction as a betrayal, as an indictment of the decayed Republican party.

The Democrats took an oath to defend the Constitution, not to defend the Constitution when politically expedient. 

Our ancestors impeached and permanently marked Andrew Johnson when he tried to reverse the outcome of the Civil War. Nixon, a crook, resigned to avoid impeachment. Bill Clinton has been consigned to the shadowy halls of sleaze. This year we need to scratch a line through the name of Trump, a scratch that will last as long as history. 

Some people, shocked that a deranged criminal won our highest office, have attempted to react in a pragmatic way. They try to guess what might happen in 2020. For some reason they fear that the voters will rally to Trump if he's impeached.  But Trump is unpopular. No one new is apt to rally to him.   

Electorates make mistakes. Sometimes a Mussolini gets the most votes. But our Founders gave us a way to correct the errors we make. We elected a criminal President who is intent on saving himself by destroying what we have of democracy. Now we should do the right thing: impeach. 

Three Links of Chain

"Mary, Don't You Weep" is a black gospel classic, and when gospel groups sing it, a song they have sung ten thousand times, it's elaborately slow and so richly complex it disappears into gorgeous cascades of sounds. I'm thinking of Aretha. 

Bruce Springsteen brought driving rock to the song. Mary wore three links of chain, and every link bore Jesus' name. Some in the audience booed at the near-rhyme. Not me.

A New Indictment for Assange

As you know, the government is in the process of asking Britain to extradite Julian Assange to this country. Today we learned that he will be charged with publishing stolen material. Up until now, that has not been illegal in the USA. All the newspapers do it. Free speech and all that. 

Assange helped elect Donald Trump, and I wish the worst for the two men but not at the expense of the Ten Amendments.

Rachel Maddow seems to think the Brits will refuse to extradite Assange in order to protect free speech. I have no idea why she thinks that. Britain has never had the protections for free speech than we do. Quite recently they enacted a new and even more severe publication code, which will be headed by a regulator with strong powers. 

All three major parties supported the stringent regulation of the British press. They have no problems with nudity, but issues are another matter. Fines for defamation will be higher. There will be stronger rules about what may be published on national security.

Pelosi

It is now unanimous among Democrats in the national capitol that the President has committed impeachable offenses, often in public and on television. But Pelosi isn't ready to hold an impeachment hearing. It isn't because we're waiting for more evidence. That claim was always bullshit. 

Now the reason Pelosi gives is that impeachment might not be politically expedient.

Male Supremacy

My local newspaper, the Corporate Democrat, published a well-written letter this week from a citizen who described the abortion debate as a conundrum. One side believes that abortion is murder. The other side believes that no government has the right to force a woman to bear a child. The writer wants a compromise between these two absolutes.

Roe v. Wade is a compromise.

The core problem is not the absolutism on each side but rather what "anti-abortion" really represents.  There are some people, probably fewer than we think, who care more deeply about fetuses than the women who bear them. There are many voters who support women's choices. But abortion is the one issue (other than cutting taxes for billionaires) that the GOP agrees on. It unites them. To be blunt, for many of these voters  "anti-abortion" is a dog whistle calling them to defend the customary patriarchy. 

That's why there are so many anti-abortionists who don't care if children, once born, get nutritious food, good educations and health care. For them it's not about fetuses or children. It's instinctively about reinforcing male supremacy.

Feeding on Peace

Here's a question about our tax money. Why does our government spend ten times the amount that Russia spends on the military? 

We know the answer. The military-industrial complex has become integrated like cancer into our economic system. 

Eisenhower warned us. On average the military-industrial complex increases its federal budget more than 5% each year, war or no war. It provides jobs and profits in every congressional district. The system no longer needs war. It can feed on peace--at the expense of infrastructure, health care and education. We build extra tanks instead.

The Color of Music

When a young person in my family told the adults that different sounds produced different colors, I took that as a metaphor. Susan and I had raised two creative girls, and I’d heard many odd remarks along the way. But this time the remark was literal.

Synesthesia takes different forms. The brain somehow associates color with numbers or sounds or whatever.  Richard Feynman, noted physicist, had it, as did Marilyn Monroe and Vincent Van Gogh. 

People with music synesthesia may also have perfect pitch; the ability to see/hear colors helps them identify keys and notes. That turned out to be the case with my family member. If you ask her for her a C, she can sing it right at you. She’s a human tuning fork—and much more. This isn't a parlor trick. It's an added dimension for a musician.

Musicians with synesthesia include Franz Liszt, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Billy Joel, Itszhak Perlman, Jean Sibelius, Kanye West and Marian McPartland. 

A Mystery

This is a news report from Pinellas County war on drugs.

"Deputies say a man had three syringes in his rectum while being searched at the Pinellas County Jail. 

"When Westley Scott, 40. pulled the syringes from his rectum, deputies said that Scott told them they were not his and he didn't know how they got there."

The Craven

The voters of America will soon be facing a difficult task, choosing between the candidates of the Insane Party and the Craven Party. The choice might seem obvious—who would vote for Insane leadership? The answer is at least 45% of the registered population. They despise the Craven. Who doesn't?

The Insane have basic reasons for their antipathy. What sort of man prefers to be known as Craven? What sort of person wants to hook up with a Craven man or woman?  

The Insane get mocked on late-night TV and so on, but in the end they have something no comedian can take from them. They aren’t Craven. Sometimes that's enough to win.

Newsom Adjusts his Position

I voted for Governor Gavin Newsom because he swore on the life of his designer jeans that he supported single payer health care for California. Six months after getting elected, he has switched to support for improvements in Covered California, aka the Affordable Care Act. That is not what he ran on.

Single payer will not help me. My wife and I were granted good health care when I retired. It's better than the ACA. But I'd like to see my neighbors covered, as they would be in a civilized nation. Canada, for example, has an economy about the size of California's, and Canada has long had universal health coverage. In Canada you don't have to die quickly if you're poor. 

I've never met Gov. Newsom, and I don't know his motivation. Maybe someone told him that single payer was complicated."Do something easier." Maybe key Democrats in the state senate and assembly told him to forget single payer. Many "liberal" politicians talk single payer but are careful not to let it out of committee. Maybe Newsom lied to us during his campaign. I don't know. What I do know is this: what people like me want ends up counting for nothing in Sacramento.

The Great Replacement

I've seen almost no network coverage of the yellow vest movement in France. It takes its name from the yellow vests French drivers are required to keep in their cars for emergency wear. The movement began on Facebook as a protest against a raise in the French gasoline tax, called for by the central government as part of a campaign against global warming. The yellow vest movement more or less pitted the white small-town and rural French against the rich, educated city dwelling elite, who use public transport or can afford gasoline at any price. 

If you don't live in a major city, you walk or drive a car in France. A gas tax can be punishing if you are poor. 

The movement quickly exploded into other resentments: a sense that country people are invisible and don't count; a belief that lower middle class white people are being replaced by immigrants; a claim that the replacement is a Jewish plot; a certainty that wealth in France has shifted lopsidedly in favor of the elite, while small-town white people have lost out. Gigantic megastores have replaced traditional mom and pop places. A way of life is vanishing.

A yellow vest cannot afford to move to Paris. The rent is too damn high.

The yellow vest movement has no leadership structure and doesn't want one. It has no political platform. It's an Internet phenomenon. No one speaks for it or represents it except for flash mobs that form to beat Jews or smash government offices. 

This movement is already fading, before we notice it, but we face something  related in the Trump voter. We have learned that there must be a better way to fight global warming than raising the gasoline tax.  

vegetables

People sometimes ask vegetarians why people should give up eating rabbit when coyotes in the hills are eating rabbit.  I assume there are many reasonable responses. Vegetarians can talk about health benefits or about empathy for rabbits or for coyotes. 

A few centuries from now, people may read about us eating burgers with the unease we currently feel about cannibals (a term invented by Christopher Columbus, who was attempting to say "Caribbeans," a people he thought were ruled by the Great Khan of China or "Khannables"). 

In the field of philosophy and animal rights, a few have written that vegetarians can achieve consistency by phasing out all the predators on the planet. No more coyotes. 

What do environmentalists think about meat-eaters? Predators have a role in natural selection. What should be done, for example, about swallows who snatch gnats out of the air? Maybe gnats aren't sentient beings? Are tiny forms of life contemptible? (Not in some religions.)

Pelosi

This morning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a press conference in which she said, in regard to our degenerate President, "We will do the right thing. It's as simple as that."  I don't think she fooled many people. What she meant was, "We will do the popular thing when it becomes politically safe." She's going to stall until a real leader forces her hand. One result is that many House members are obediently telling us that they agree with Pelosi, which is probably not true. It's no wonder voters, who value the truth, rank Congress below tooth decay.

The Impossible Burger

Sunday I ate an impossible burger, the new vegetarian beef substitute. I'm not a vegetarian, so this was a fair test. The patty had the feel and taste of hamburger. It didn't look 100% right, but in a meat sauce, it would go undetected. Basically the problem has been solved. I haven't tried the fast food version yet but will once it becomes available. 

The Police Obey the Law!

I like it when a police force agrees to obey the law. Yesterday the Santa Rosa Police Department announced it would comply with the state anti-secrecy regulations. They will no longer hide their investigatory findings in cases where the police shoot children, unarmed adults and so on. 

Santa Rosa may not be the first police department in the county to come clean, but they are the last.