Roberts

Today's Supreme Court decision, which protects a women's right to choose, provides an example of a conservative versus the radical right.

The four rightwing radicals on the court voted to give the states the power to make abortions almost impossible. The four liberals voted the other way. John Roberts voted to maintain an earlier decision (which he had originally disagreed with), because the earlier decision--which he had voted against-- had set a precedent, giving women the right to choose. He upheld the status quo, the precedent.

Conservatives are cautious.  They want changes to be few, minor and slow in coming. We don't have a conservative party in this country. We have a raving loony party. 

Will tRump Withdraw?

For some time I've been saying that tRump is committing political suicide. I also think there is a chance tRump will withdraw from the race rather than take a savage beating. (You have probably heard that tRump is 9 points behind in Florida.)

If tRump withdraws, will the Repubs nominate Romney? My guess is that the current party isn't intelligent enough to save itself. But holders of elective offices might want to save their jobs. 

The problem is immediate. tRump is a raving loony, and his malicious incompetence during a pandemic is killing us. He's doubling down on that: killing us. To save lives, he has to go now. The House should take one day to impeach him again. (Andrew Johnson was impeached three times.) Then it will be up to the Republican senators: life or death. 

Sauce for the Gander

The school board of Berkeley, California, has decided to rename two public schools currently named for the father of our country and the President who made the Louisiana purchase. Both men owned slaves. Meanwhile, the philosopher George Berkeley, for whom the school district was named, owned slaves and supported slavery. 

Perhaps our focus should shift from symbolism to insuring equal treatment for people of color in policing, education, health care and employment. We can start by making sure that people of color can vote without standing in line all day.

Where Reforms Go To Die

Every 30 or 40 years Americans rise up against police brutality, but little gets done. The method used to deflect reform has been perfected. The authorities form a committee to investigate the problems and stall until the reformers tire. Eventually the committee publishes an exhaustive report. Then our community leaders praise themselves and forget about police brutality for three or four decades.

I note that a "watchdog group" to look into policing reforms has just been named for Sonoma County. Its members include centrist political leaders and--in your face!--the county sheriff. (In an oversight they forgot to include the deputy sheriff who got promoted after he mowed down Andy Lopez, a child with a toy gun and terrifying skin.)

This is the sheriff who threatened not to enforce the measures put forward by health officials at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. He will, however, enforce the laws he likes. 

The deflection has begun. There is a long-established proposal for reform, but according to Supervisor Susan Gorin, "We frankly don't have the runway, the time, to thoughtfully consider this and place it on the ballot by early August."  And see you in 40 years. . . . 

A Statue of Grant

On Juneteenth, demonstrators in San Francisco toppled a statue of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had once become the most famous American in the world by defeating the Confederacy twice. First, as a general, he won the Civil War, which freed the enslaved. Second, as President, he sent the American army back into the South and pounded the original KKK into particles of dust. 

As far as I can tell, no one has come forward to claim credit for toppling the Grant statue. We have to guess. 

I suspect that Grant was toppled by white descendants of Jefferson Davis. That means there are too many suspects. In the South, nearly all white males named Davis automatically get the first name of Jeff. And some Jeffs have never forgotten the way President Grant signed the 15th amendment, which gave black men the right to vote. Grant had pushed the amendment through. When it was adopted, he ordered a 100 gun salute in Washington, and he wrote: "The adoption of the 15th Amendment . . . constitutes the most important event that has occurred, since the nation came into life."

Pigeon Poop

Our daily newspaper, The Corporate Democrat, believes that the cognitively impaired deserve space on the letters-to-the-editor page. That's only fair.

Or maybe the editor prints moronic letters to stir up fun.

Today's paper contained two wonderful examples. One was from an all-lives-matter thinker who argued that "Black Lives Matter"  suggests that "there is a difference between black lives and other lives."  That outraged him--apparently he hasn't considered that racism might make a difference in certain lifespans. The second letter is from an analyst who believes that history teachers should take their classes on field trips to view statues of slave-whipping traitor Bobby Lee on horseback (painted extra white in pigeon poop).

The NY Times does not print brainless letters. Not a fan of the Times, but I will give the paper that much.

Riane Konc

In the June 22 edition of the New Yorker, Riane Konc has a piece called "Presidential Trolley Problems. These are word problems for the President to solve. Below is one example. 

____________________________-

The Contingency Plan

There is a runaway trolley speeding down
the tracks toward five people. But there is a
lever you can pull and change the trolley's
path so that it hits only one.

Whom should you put in charge of pulling 
the lever? I mean, it's easy: the guy who doesn't 
believe in trolleys, right?

Gribenes

You may have heard there is an astonishingly genuine Jewish deli now across from Railroad Square in Santa Rosa. You can sit outside on grass or sit inside. Grossman's is where you can get your kippered salmon, a lox plate, creamed cukes and dill, amba (whatever that is), a footlong hotdog, smoked whitefish salad, chicken kreplach or soft serve  labneh. With gribenes.

I doubt if Santa Rosa has ever seen a place like Grossman's.

Vera Lynn Has Left the Building

Vera Lynn, British, has stepped through the Big Window. She was 103 . Lynn was, along with the American Jo Stafford, the towering pop diva of World War II. 

What these two powerhouses sang about was how lonely they were with their men off at war--or killed in the war.  "I'll Be Seeing You" with Stafford, a lament for a lost lover, was probably the saddest song in this genre. That's according to my friend Lucy Jenson, who passed away a few years ago, having outlived three husbands. But  the more hopeful "We'll Meet Again" by Lynn was a close second.

Not to forget "I'll Walk Alone," "You Belong to Me" and "The White Cliffs of Dover." 

Before there were pop divas, the nation had pop divas.

Defunding the Police

A friend pointed out to me that Steve Jobs, at a meeting one day, decided to install a camera on a cell phone. And today that may change how we police people of color.

White people like me were already aware--on some level-- that people of color were sometimes harassed and beaten or killed by the police. But today we can see the violence on television every night. Seeing is believing on a different level. 

Despite the flood of televised images, the killings continue. Every week we see a new police homicide. It keeps happening. 

Fort Bragg

One argument I see against removing equestrian statures of whippers of enslaved women like Robert E. Lee is that all of our Founding Fathers were racists. Should we also take down statues of slaveowners like Washington and Jefferson?

We know that America's founding fathers were racists. A few racists supported abolition at some future date when (it was hoped) it would be easy. John and Abigail Adams considered slavery loathsome and refused to own other people. Benjamin Franklin owned slaves for a time but toward the end of his life became an abolitionist. But he remained a racist. 

According to Kendi, people are racist. But we can act in anti-racist ways. That's the difference.

Washington and Jefferson owned many enslaved people, considered slavery wrong and dared not oppose it openly. Neither considered people of color  their equals. Their belief that black people are unintelligent and uncreative seems unfathomable today. How could they--surrounded by intelligent, creative black people--remain that ignorant?  (Humans are expert at ignoring facts they don't like.) 

But Washington and Jefferson did found a new kind of nation. They didn't whip women. Washington freed his slaves in his will. Jefferson mortgaged his slaves but managed to free the ones he had fathered. Some of  Jefferson's children were so white-looking that they moved north, changed their names and disappeared from history,

I used to walk in the shade
With those blues on parade
But I'm not afraid
This Rover crossed over

  

Santa Rosa Maimers

Since the murder of Mr. Floyd in Minnesota, Santa Rosa police have shot three unarmed voters in the head with non-lethal bullets. These maiming assaults were authorized by police supervisors, who should now be fired.

For that matter, the Santa Rosa Police should be defunded and replaced by a force stripped of sadists, cowards,  military gear and tear gas. It should be stripped of a culture designed to push down or gas ordinary voters (using barking command voices, of course). 

We need police, but the job should be redefined, and it should be staffed with people with a better grip on how to help.

Why Do Republican Leaders Continue to Enable Trump? - The Atlantic

Batja Cates emailed to me an article in the July/August ATLANTIC on why Republicans have collaborated with Donald Trump. It's by Anne Applebaum and may be available on the Internet. 

Applebaum discusses authoritarian regimes and collaborators of the past, including those who went along with the East Germans. Collaborators tend to have a standard set of motives and a standard set of excuses, including the claim that they are working from within to try to keep things from getting worse. 

Applebaum points out that tRump does not tell lies in the hope of being believed. No one believes him. He lies to frighten people into obedient collaboration with evil. it works--unless you are McCain or Romney or Frum or a handful of others. 

The article is long. You might want to buy the magazine and pass it around.

The 600

Last night the Healdsburg Peace Project threw a party for ten people and 600 attended.

The story I've heard is that long ago a small group of college students came to Healdsburg with a project they were doing for credit. Healdsburg is a town of about 12,000 people situated near the heart of America's fine wine counties.

The students came, called themselves the Peace Project and went, and the assembly vanished only to be revived years later by local people when wars became too frequent. 

My wife and I joined about 20 years ago. The group has demonstrated in the plaza every Thursday since then until recently  blocked by the coronavirus. 

I think the Peace Project became a minor tourist attraction. You could drive by it on Thursday and see a tableau from 1969 with signs protesting war, racism and environmental degradation.

So last night the PP, which is nearly all old activists, met at the Plaza for the first time in months. My wife and I decided to stay in quarantine. Other groups had heard about the vigil and showed up in force. Instead of ten protesters there were 600, and they made the news. The Healdsburg police, as usual, defended the right to peaceful protest.

Oliver's Supermarket

The other day I was shopping at Oliver's Supermarket, something of a chore because my coronavirus mask fogs my glasses. I stumbled along. When I was checking out, the man in line ahead of me paid by inserting his bank card into the card reader. Then he attempted to punch in his code with his right elbow. 

1969

By 1969 I had finished my military service and enrolled in graduate school about a hundred miles from Woodstock. When hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington to protest the war in Vietnam, I joined in. Those were the days, eh? (Have I ever told you about Creedence?)

Like many others, I got teargassed, but unlike most others, I had been trained in teargas by the army. Not a problem.

In comparing the protests in 1969 to those today, I have to say that the movement today is bigger, more diverse, more dangerous (in a pandemic) and more important. 1969 did have better music and stronger Thai stick, but what is happening right now is awesome.

If you are young and healthy, you might want to get out there. You don't want to miss it. (I missed on Woodstock. I was invited but said that i had a paper due and that I'd catch the next concert.)

National Leadership

I see news talkers on my TV asking why so many demonstrations have turned violent. Why are they still puzzled?

The demonstrators are violent because people have lost faith in government. They don't trust government to do the right thing. Is that plain enough?

Nixon broke the law and got pardoned. LBJ lied us into a war with Vietnam. Reagan told people that government was the problem, not the solution. Clinton lied about oral sex. Bush launched a war against the wrong country and blew up the Middle East. We now have a troll-President with no credibility or standing as a human being. 

Americans are unemployed, in a pandemic without universal medical care, crushed by student debt, and the rich get richer. The police are murdering citizens of color in front of cameras. 

I say it's time to free Joe Biden. He's been in quarantine for months. The nation longs for the voices of his speech writers.