Vaccination Schedule

 To get an appointment for vaccination in Sonoma County, go to this website.

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Culture War

The history of  North America illustrates how one culture (European) overpowered the cultures of the Amerindians of Canada, the United States and Mexico. But some tribes retained enough of their culture to keep it alive. In Ireland relearning the old Goedelic language became part of public education, and today about a third of the inhabitants claim some proficiency in Irish. In the 20th century the Jews revived Hebrew, turning it into a written and spoken language used in daily life. 

The drive to save their culture is what fuels the frantic tRumpians today. Their commitment to maintaining that culture outweighs religion, science, financial reality, patriotism and common sense.

I’m not sure how to describe the tRump culture. White supremacy is a major part of it, along with mashed potatoes and ham. But these people will fight minor changes to the bitter end. They believe that the survival of their selves—almost—depends on defeating everyone different. 

Lord Bakersfield of Kern

I had an uncle I never met, Merrill Helm Curtis,  who actually captured Charles Manson, somewhat by accident, and later was elected sheriff of Inyo County. I know the area a little, and I have heard that the minority leader in the House of Representatives is a goofball from the the next  county. Call him Lord Bakersfield of Kern. 

Right now Lord Bakersfield and the Democrats in the House are trying to set up a committee to investigate the riot of January 6. Negotiations are somewhat snagged by Bakersfield's loony insistence that the January 6th committee also investigate Black Lives Matter, Antifa and maybe the plot to replace us. The Democrats will not agree to the weird assertion that BLM  and Antifa are somehow related to the fascistic tRump nutters who smashed into the capitol, injured more than 100 police officers and emptied their capacious bowels on the floor.

Say His Name

Derek Chauvin learned today that George Floyd's life mattered. Chauvin may now understand that girls carry smart phones with cameras. We all can see that Minnesota elected Keith Ellison, a man of color, as attorney general. It seems that Ellison can put together a team of diverse, competent prosecutors. 

Derek Chauvin. Say his name.

The conviction of Chauvin is one step on a marathon run.

147

I'm writing this on April 17 in America; so far this year we have had 147 mass shootings. That's more than one a day.

I own several guns, but maybe we should do something before a stranger randomly shoots me. 

The Right Thing

Evil leaders occasionally do the right thing. Hitler got protection of animals laws passed in Germany and campaigned against smoking. Donald Trump, as far as I can tell, did nothing positive, but I may have missed something. 

I won't compare Joe Biden to Trump or Hitler. Joe Biden is recognizably human. I don't like his history with women or his centrism, but eleven years ago, he began telling people we should get out of Afghanistan. We were, in his view, finished there. We would not succeed in changing the culture. It was time to pack up and fly home. 

No one in power agreed. Eleven years went by. Americans kept dying in Afghanistan, and our forces kept killing local people. Same old thing. Now Biden is president and he's bringing the Americans back. We've lost another war. Some of the generals don't like it, but Biden is doing the right thing. 

Kill Fee

Is there any force in America stronger than racism? 

Greed trumps racism. 

You can see greed at work right now in the major corporations who have come out in opposition to the New Jim Crow. Some corporations cannot afford to alienate educated young adults, many of whom are anti-racist and unsympathetic to homophobia and transphobia.

Suppose we pass a federal law that says if you kill anyone at all, no matter how good or bad your reason, you have to pay a $50,000 kill fee. A police officer could still pull her handgun and shoot someone sitting in a car, and she still might claim it was an accident and get away with it, but she would have to pay the fee. Wouldn't she think twice? 

Mayor v. Mayor

The former mayor of Sebastopol, California, a marijuana merchant, seems to be locked in a duel for public attention with the current mayor of Windsor, a local wine maker. Sebastopol took an early lead when he was charged with lascivious assaults on children, but recently Windsor jumped in front following accusations that he date-drugged and raped a member of his own city council. Still to be heard from: the mayors of Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Sonoma, etc. 

Jews Will Not Replace Us

"Jews will not replace us" is now central to the messaging of Fox News, which has fallen behind MSNBC in the ratings race. 

It's hard to get a grip on the lunacy of white replacement theory. There aren't enough Jews in the world to replace the multitude of murderous hicks and violent white supremacists in small-mind America. But Fox has an explanation:  the Jews are bringing in "obedient" Moslems and other immigrants (like Rupert Murdock?) who will do as George Soros tells them and vote for the Democrats, who are cannibals.

Oops

 In case you haven't heard, the San Francisco school board has voted unanimously to reverse its decision to rename 44 schools, among them Lincoln high. The board did not consider Abraham Lincoln sufficiently woke. The board reversed itself when it came under pressure from a law suit joined by, among others, Laurence Tribe.

The decision to rename the schools had been made by a vote of 6-1 after a recommendation from a committee that included no historians. The board will now focus on opening classrooms as the pandemic recedes. 

The South

 When we became aware of climate change--about 20 years ago--we read the predictions.  Experts said we could expect major weather catastrophes and crop failures, particularly in the south. Some southern nations would become unable to sustain life. Social systems would break down. People would began to travel north towhere the food was.

We have been watching this prediction play out. Hungry people have attempted to travel from West Asia and North Africa to Europe; groups from Central America have been arriving at the American border. I guess we should expect to see families camped along our southern border for decades to come. What should we do now?

Kneeling on Remains

When the EMTs arrived at the George Floyd death site, they found three police officers kneeling on a corpse. You may be asking how long the three officers had been kneeling on a dead body. The evidence shows that they had been there for a total of nine minutes, but for some of that time Floyd had remained alive. I’m going to guess that Floyd died six minutes into the documented event. After that the officers knelt on his remains. 

In American law a corpse is not property, so if you kneel on one, you have not committed a property crime. Surviving relatives do have something called “pseudo property rights.” I don’t know what that means.

California state law requires anyone who sees a body to contact the authorities and remain 200 feet away from the remains to avoid disturbing evidence. But to whom should you report if three authorities are kneeling on the remains?