Blue Velvet

Archeologists have traced warfare in the Middle East (West Asia) back about 10,000 years, well before writing was invented. The first detailed written account of a battle in human history describes a conflict that took place in Israel in 1457 BCE. 

Result: Egypt 1, Kadesh 0. 

Kadesh was a set of allies, mostly Canaanites from today's Israel and Syria. 

People have been fighting over Israel for 10,000 years. Sometimes Egypt wins, sometimes Kadish.

A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California stated that 61% of Californians believe we should not take sides in the conflict. 

Meanwhile there's a bad war going on in Nigeria between the herders and the farmers. Americans don't mind that one. And Ukraine and so on and on. 

I'm reminded of the key question raised in the movie "Blue Velvet,"  which is,"Why are there people like Frank?" 

No answer.

Mass Extinctions

Science tells us that a mass extinction killed the dinosaurs, except for those that could fly. A huge comet had struck the planet; that event created a deadly climate change, which some consider a liberal myth.

In the last 500 million years, five different mass extinctions wiped the slate on Earth almost but not quite clean of animal and vegetable life forms. The main cause each time: climate change. 

Western civilization first collapsed during the Bronze Age, about 3,000 years ago. The Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Cypriots, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Assyrians and Babylonians fell.  Probably from climate change.  

The Maya civilization disintegrated 1200 years ago. Likely cause, a local climate change.   

Mail

In the rain I went to get our mail. When I reached the mail boxes, I saw a middle-aged couple near the package concierge. The concierge is a tall metal structure with many boxes. You put in your individual code and one box will open its door so you can get your package.

The woman was punching in her code. The man was standing about ten feet away with his back to her.

"Don't look!" she barked at him.

"I'm not!" he shouted back. 

I got out of there fast. 

I hope it was a Christmas present. 

Nothing

When I was in graduate school, I had a friend who was writing a novel about nothing. That was decades before "Seinfeld," a famous sitcom about nothing. 

In those days the Fugs had a striking song out with memorable lyrics: "Monday nothing, Tuesday nothing, Wednesday lots more nothing." (You can find the Fugs on YouTube.)

My friend's novel was set in a small midwestern town (as I recall) in which the citizens feared nothing. In this fiction, nothing mattered. The civil authorities were asked to prepare for nothing. And then nothing actually happened. And so on. 

That first two chapters were memorable, but my guess is my friend never finished his project. That was a long time ago. We were in revolt against a war. And some thought that nothing was sexist. 

 

Ivy League

The presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn were in the news last week, trying to answer a question. Would a student calling for the genocide of Jews violate their university's code of conduct? 

My favorite presidential answer was the announcement that the decision to ban student calls for genocide would be "context dependent" at MIT. In other words, the meaning of a slogan like "Palestine must be free/ from the river to the sea" depends on its context.

The university president was right. 

The meaning of any sentence (including this one) is context dependent. By claiming that administrative  decisions were context-dependent, the president of MIT managed to say an impressive nothing at all. 

Unfortunately people noticed.  

From the River to the Sea

"From the river to the sea" has become a popular chant signaling support for Palestinian civilians trapped in the war between Hamas and Israel. The phrase was taken from the Hamas constitution, and many consider it a call for an ethnic cleansing: getting rid of the Jews who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. 

That's what the phrase means to me, but it means other things to some people.  

I suspect that many Americans who chant "from the river to the sea" do not intend to call for another Holocaust and the erasure of Israel. They believe they are supporting justice for Palestinians. But as Hafez al-Assad, former dictator of Syria once said, "We shall only accept war and the restoration of the usurped land . . . to oust you, aggressors, and throw you into the sea for good."

A slogan that some consider a call for the extinction of Israel blocks a path to peace. But leaders on both sides do not seek peace. They seek power. 

And "from the river to the sea" works, in different ways, to empower both Hamas and Netanyahu. 

Houthi

Last week the Houthi, a rebel group in the Middle East, fired on an American ship, using one missile and one drone. No one was killed. Insulted American TV commentators reacted by calling for an escalation. They argued we should kill Houthi in batches and teach them a lesson.  

Here is the problem. If we kill Houthis in batches, the Houthis will next try to kill us in batches. Another pointless American war will take off. 

Why not follow the Code of Hammurabi instead? The Code is the oldest legal system on the planet, and it is local, having been written in Babylon (Iraq). Hammurabi argued that we are entitled only to an eye for an eye. In other words, we are entitled to attack the Houthi with one missile and one drone, being careful to kill no one. We do to them exactly what they did to us. That's fair. Do not escalate. 

 

Leaving California

I have friends who found life in California too expensive, so they moved to Oregon, Washington or Nevada. That makes sense. I'd be willing to move to a cheaper but civilized state with decent weather, modern medicine and solid Internet connections. But most of my family lives along the California coastal plain, so I'm staying here.

The population of California is about 40 million, three times what it was when I was young. Too many people crowded in. But when a mere 51,000 people move from California to muggy, bug-ridden Florida in one year, and 28,000 move from Florida (where the state flag is a pair of orange-brown cargo shorts) to California, the pundits go nuts. It's like California lost a war.

In fact, California has gained 28,000 liberals. It has lost ladies and gents who hope to carry guns while attending anti-abortion rallies. They are leaving for Florida and Texas. They are the ones buying cheap,  homes in low places sinking under water as the oceans rise and hurricanes grow more mighty. 

Intelligence

I'm trying to understand what I just saw on television.

Apparently Israeli intelligence had the battle plan (in detail) of the Hamas attack about a year in advance. And the suits were warned when the opening stages of the attack went into motion. But Israeli intelligence leadership dismissed all that. 

The political leadership likely knew about the plan. Yet, according to The NY Times, Netanyahu moved his military away from the Hamas attack site and sent them to the West Bank instead. 

The result was an unchecked, catastrophic onslaught of torture, rape and murder. 1200 defenseless civilians killed one at a time by Hamas. 

The failure needs investigation now.

And Israel needs new leadership.  

Free Will

So why do humans believe in free will? 

The main reason might be that free will is part of the foundation of the universal human survival system. Darwinian stuff. Remove  a belief in free will and society won't function. If Putin doesn't have free will, he is not responsible for his war. 

A belief in free will might be an example of what Wittgenstein called a foundational certainty.  By "certainty" he meant something no one doubts. People may say they doubt the reality of free will, but no one actually walks that walk. 

Foundational assumptions shape our thinking. They are basic to our interpretations. They structure how we evaluate reality claims.    

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Killing Strangers

A recent poll showed that young Americans tend to support Palestinians in the Hamas-Israel butchery, middle-aged  people mostly support Israel and the Silent Generation (those born from 1928 to 1945) condemn war.

My wife and I belong to the Silent Generation, which means little except that we're old. I'm thinking that maybe if you live long enough, you lose the drive to kill strangers. It begins to seem wrong. 

Rachel and Chris

Tonight MSNBC let us know that Rachel and Chris will be doing a podcast or something together. At last! 

The sparks are going to fly. What most of us hope for is that the encounter can be converted into a series of books ghost-written by staff, explaining America to us, maybe ten best-selling books, each analyzing the book that preceded it. What was the Boston Tea Party really about? What happened to the Mohicans? And how did psychology get started!

I look forward to Chris and Rachel guesting on each other's network shows to explain why seriously informed folk should read more. And then joint appearances on CSPAN, Kimmel, Colbert, You Tube and so on. Get the answers. 

Stay tuned. I'll be right back.

Command Centers

The rules of war say that you can flatten a hospital if the enemy has hidden a command center under it. The Israeli military has bombed a number of hospitals, killing helpless patients and medical personnel. Netanyahu claims that they found tunnels and command centers beneath the hospitals. The American government backs his claims. But the press has not found command centers or tunnels. If there are no command centers, then the attacks on the hospitals are war crimes. 

What if we are being lied to?

Some experts say that Hamas does not have command centers. As a terrorist organization without tanks, bombers or submarines, Hamas may consider a cell phone an adequate HQ.

I hope that Hamas fails off a cliff. But I also remember my government flat-out lying us into wars in Vietnam and Iraq. 

Are we being lied to by Joe Biden? If so, will that impact the next election?  

Joshua Fit the Battle

Below is the definition of genocide by the UN. We hear a lot about genocides these days. Good to know what the word (about 80 years old) means.

__________________________

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 

1. Killing members of the group; 
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Ms. Darcy

I knew it would be a unique experience, going to see our granddaughter perform in her high school production of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. 

I expected to suffer. The tiny folding chairs, elbow to elbow, leg cramps familiar to those in their eighties, etc. But our granddaughter played two quite different character parts, stealing the show. 

The play opened with many young actors milling on stage. I'm not sure why. I couldn't tell which one was Elizabeth (protagonist) or her counterpart, Mr. Darcy. 

One oddly prominent character seemed to be Mr. Darcy's sister, dressed in heels and a long black skirt. In earlier versions I'd seen, Darcy's sister had played a minor role, but in this version things seemed to revolve around her.  

Then, about a third of the way through the play, my wife whispered that the sister might actually be Darcy himself. It turned out that Darcy was a woman and Elizabeth was a lesbian.

We had gone to the play with a young lesbian couple. They'd been watching a little glumly, but now they broke into broad smiles. 

Backstage, my granddaughter told me later, some of the cast got into a big fight, and Darcy began to cry. In the scene where Darcy asks Elizabeth for her hand in marriage and gets rejected, Darcy took it harder than usual and stumbled out of the room weeping. 

Not long after that, Elizabeth was asked to play the piano to amuse a rich woman. With remarkable foresight, she pounded out Beethoven's ODE TO JOY, which he had written only 15 years after Jane Austen's death. 

Which goes to show that there is always a new way to look at things. 

Courthouse Square

Yesterday, at Courthouse Square, I joined about a hundred people standing in light rain. My object was to protest against the Hamas-Israeli war and in favor of a path to peace. 

The protest, I read later, was controlled by the North Coast Coalition for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. They held the microphone. No one else spoke.

I'd attended to protest against the killing of civilians, not to support one side in a war. 

I found several protestors who believed that if a soldier of Hamas cut up a living baby in front of its Israeli parents, that wasn't terrorism; it was patriotism. 

The sole speaker called for a cease fire and, at the same time, an attack to drive Israel into the sea. And so on. This was not a peace rally.

Keep in mind that Israeli bombings had killed more than 3,000 children in three weeks. War crimes.  

MLK told us that violence against children (or anyone) corrupts you. If you witness evil, speak against it. What would he say about the Hamas murders and the IDF bombings? 

When I got home, I watched, on TV, a man attempting to find a path to peace, Sec. of State Blinken. That is his job. He met with a series of corrupt regional leaders no one trusts, looking for solutions. Meanwhile America is not committed to peace. Biden is losing support.

I am 88. This morning I woke thinking about my mother, who died 40 years ago, lost in the war we call life itself. I believe she was disappointed in how her country was behaving. 

The Peace Movement

Tomorrow, if weather allows, I will go to Courthouse Square to join the demonstration against the Hamas--Israel War. 

I am not pacifist. I believe in selfdefense. I did my hitch in the army. But I am anti-war.

I've been demonstrating against wars of aggression for about 60 years. I've demonstrated a thousand times. This is the first time I've felt uneasy about demonstrating. 

At Courthouse Square will I find groups seeking vengeance?  Instead of peace? 

Six to One

 Where the Code of Hammurabi and Leviticus restricted retaliation to one eye for one eye and a tooth for a tooth, Netanyahu has so far required six eyes for an eye and six teeth for a tooth. That ratio will be climbing to seven to one, eight to one and so on in the next weeks. 

Hammurabi

Nearly 4,000 years ago, our legal system was founded in the

 Code of Hammurabi. Hammurabi was the King of Babylon, a Semitic empire. The code predated Leviticus, but he described it well in the Torah. 

“If anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done, it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him."

The  goal of Hammurabi and Leviticus was to limit violence. If you slap a man twice, he gets to slap you twice, not 15 times. He's entitled to justice, not vengeance. 

About three weeks ago, Hamas launched a sneak attack on Israelis so insanely savage that Hamas will be forever linked to the Rape of Nanking, the fire-bombing of Tokyo and Hitler's genocides. Israel lost 1,400 people, many of them civilians murdered one at a time. 

The Code of Hammurabi has been superseded, of course, by newer laws that Hamas and Israel do not follow. 

The old code would have entitled Israel to crude justice, the deaths of 1,400 enemy people. Instead the Israelis have killed thousands of civilians, including several thousand children. The deaths were modern war crimes. And they aren't stopping. 

Anyone can see this broad stream of death. The killings are broadcast on television in Russia, Africa, India and Latin America. Antisemitism has surged around the world. New generations of terrorists are forming. Hostages wait for release.

Sen. Collins

After many years of not seeing or hearing from Senator Susan Collins, I was shocked to see her alive on TV today and disappointed. 

The Dead

You probably saw what I did Sunday morning on television. The bodies of four or five Palestinian children laid in a row. Dressed in shorts. On their bare legs their names had been written by their parents with a black gel pen. 

When War Stops

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."   

-- E.M. Forster

Along somewhat similar lines, Albert Camus once published an essay in which he wrote that if it were his duty to set off a bomb that would destroy important Nazis but also his mother, he would not trigger the bomb. That position got him ejected (to this day) from the Stalinist part of the French Left.

Camus worked in the French underground in World War Two.    

Do you owe your primary loyalty to kith and kin or to a nation, a religion, an ideology? Should you first be loyal to what Sartre called  "a leap of faith"? A leap that makes your life meaningful. You can dedicate your life to Christianity or to MAGA. You can make that leap. Or are friends and family more important? 

In real life I suppose the issue isn't clear. Hamas recently raided inside Israeli homes where they murdered children, old women and so on. Did they murder them for Islam or Palestine or for their kith and kin? 

Suppose, for the sake or argument, you live in a large universe with billions of stars and planets. The giant universe exists for no purpose you can determine. The universe exists, as far as you can tell, without a goal. But life seems good enough. That was Camus' view. No leap of faith.

Israel is about to invade Gaza. Some predict the war will last ten years. The Israelis say that the war will make Israel safe forever--that claim can't be serious.

So far in the Hamas-Israel war, about 5,000 people have been killed. Camus might ask if that number is enough. Or would 50,000 lives, mostly children and teenagers, be a better place to stop. 

Taking Sides

Last weekend two demonstrations about the Hamas-Israel war faced off in our town square, one in support of Palestinians and a much smaller one in support of Israelis. 

What is going on in Gaza and Israel is hard to process. 

Do these California demonstrations help create a path to peace in West Asia? Is a path to peace what matters?

What might create a path?

According to Captain Thirdrate, a path to peace will require a government in Israel that cares deeply about meeting the needs of Palestinians. And Hamas, with a history of unspeakable savagery, would have to be replaced by credible Arab leaders. 

Then negotiations for peace could start. 

Israel, Hamas and the Invention of War Crimes

Israel and Hamas (and their American followers) are accusing one another of war crimes. Is it a war crime to capture a baby and then cut off its head? Is it a war crime to deprive civilians of electricity, food, clean water and medicines? Yes. Today those are war crimes. But where did the concept of war crimes come from?

Aristotle talked about a just war. Muslim armies in the 7th century made a point of sparing the lives of prisoners of war.  But a legal code restricting military behavior was first published in the 1863, written by Francis Lieber for the American army and authorized by Abraham Lincoln. It banned the murder of babies but not starvation. That ban came later. 

In World War Two, deliberately killing civilians from the air was not a war crime. Airplanes had not been covered in the early manuals. Hence the mass bombings of Berlin, London, Dresden and Tokyo, in that order. 

In 1943 we knew that it was wrong to target children. Of course, we did. And today the deliberate targeting of civilians is forbidden but not always punished.

Gaza

I'm opposed to war except in defense of kith and kin, and I place the blame for carnage on the first side to pull a trigger. That applies to Hamas in the new round of everlasting battle in West Asia.

There will be many more pointless civilian deaths in Israel and Gaza. Or is the point of endless war--is the point to keep leadership in power?  

McCarthy

Today I heard NBC talkers referring to the fall of Kevin McCarthy as "a Greek tragedy." My guess is that they've forgotten their Aristotle. 

A tragic hero is someone well-known and decent who comes to an undeserved bad end. He or she must be someone we identify with.  A tragic hero does not offend our moral sensibilities.

McCarthy isn't decent. He isn't even a vertebrate. The dude has as much spine as a cow pie baking on a commercial street in Bakersfield at high noon in mid-July. 

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Murdoch exaggerated

Rupert Murdoch recently commented that Sean Hannity is "retarded  like most Americans."(Note that "retarded" has become an unacceptable pejorative word.)  

Murdoch exaggerated, of  course. Half of all Americans have above average intelligence. That is better than, say, Great Britain, where a Brexit majority voted for economic suicide. 

Also note that some below average Americans aren't stupid. Many are only somewhat disabled and genuinely contribute to society as high school wrestling coaches, border guards, tobacco venders and Republicans.  

There is, however, a price to pay for stupidity. Experts say that 40% of covid deaths could have been prevented if more Americans had been smart enough to get vaccinated and wear masks. 

Death rates have been disproportionally high in red states, which seems fair. 

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The Duties of Chief of Staff

Five Official Duties of Chief of Staff

1. Arrange for the printing of place cards for a presidential dinner.

2. Play polo in Yemen. 

3. Steal elections.

4. Try on Hitler's cummerbund.

5. Eat shit. 

The Rhinos

Is there a difference between the goals of Trump and the MAGA mob and the goals of the leaders of Russia and China? 

The dictators of Russia and China seem to have complicated goals and  things to negotiate. Their aims seem typical of Fascists. Reduce their own nation to one culture, one ethnic group. Capture any foreign lands where members of your ethnic group are citizens. And so on. The things Hitler did.

The MAGAs have something we might (by extension) call a goal. They want to smash into and trample society. The goal of a rhinoceros: to act out. Rhinos have nothing to negotiate. Just close eyes and charge. 

Gazillions

If you look up the current gross national products of nations, you will find something like this.

1. USA 25 Gazillion

2.  Europe about 21 Gazillion

3.  China 18  Gazillion

4. Japan  5 Gazillion

and so on. Russia comes in tenth with less than 2 Gazillion.

So in the Ukraine war, 2 Gazillion is going against more than 46 Gazillion. But Russia has some support from China and Iran.  

What do I see in person-on-the-street interviews in Russia? (You can watch these interviews on YouTube. There is no science to them.)

Apparently many ordinary Russians believe they live in the world's most powerful country, one with a manifest destiny: to restore the golden age when children were straight and obedient and women didn't speak.  

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The FBI

 

Trump and his MAGA gunmen claim the FBI has recently become an unfair political attack machine. Meanwhile the charming entertainers on MSNBC claim that the FBI is objective, not political.  

Is the FBI political? Ask Hillary Clinton. The FBI was invented by politicians, and it is paid for by politicians.   

But if my choice is between the FBI and MAGA, not a close call. 

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Pete

This morning someone reported on TV that the Hollywood artists' strike has been particularly hard on gay people in the entertainment industry. For a few moments I didn't get it, and then I remembered Pete.

A year after World War II ended, my father was working as a machinist in an oil refinery. We lived out of town on four acres, and we had two horses that had cost $150 total. Pete, another refinery worker, loved horses and was a frequent visitor.  Pete was Mexican-American. 

The oil workers union, which had foregone raises during the long conflict,  went out on strike for a pay increase. They would lose the strike, and my father would end up in a different union.  

Anyway, after a month or two of striking, Pete visited us and told my father that he had to cross the picket line and return to work. He was going to scab. His family was broke, and Pete, an ethnic outsider, had been unable to find a job to tide his wife and children over during the strike. 

My father said that he understood. They shook hands, and I never saw Pete again. My father tried to retain the friendship, but Pete wouldn't have it. He said he felt ashamed. 

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Fornication

A friend recently handed me a pamphlet on imperialism to read, an essay written by a professor of Greek history at Hillsdale College.  

For some reason the first 90% of the essay is a standard recital of what school children already know about Greece. Near the end the essayist suddenly attacks San Francisco as a place where the voters fornicate. 

I'm not sure what fornication has to do with imperialism, but the writer's charge seems well founded. A recent study found that about 79% of the Christians in America have fornicated, and the percentage of fornicating Jews is even higher. 

Hindus, not so much. 

Without making inquiries, I can't be certain, but I suspect that nearly everyone I know has fornicated.

No only have many in San Francisco fornicated, but the activity is legal within city limits and in some other places like Canada, Europe, etc. 

Hillsdale College, which "provides insights into the nature of God," is located in Michigan, where some forms of fornication remain technically illegal. The penalty would be four years in prison if the law were enforced.

Wolf

Susan and I raised a small Mexican wolf with a coat of many colors, including reddish hues in winter. We called him Colorado. He was well behaved and happy.

In 1967 I was walking Colorado along the esplanade in Redondo Beach, not far from Avenue C.  We paused near an old woman who asked me what breed he was.

"A Mexican wolf,"  I said.

She scoffed.

"You don't believe me?" 

"Do you believe I'm Jack London's younger sister?" 

"No. You're not."

Sometimes dog fanciers looked at me with concern, wondering how I'd gotten stuck with such a malformed German shepherd.

Colorado had been around both wolves and dogs and treated them the same. To him, they were the same. He liked them. Once a collie had jumped him. Colorado had knocked him down and stood on him in good humor, then let him up. 

From the esplanade I looked down at volleyball players on the beach, some surfers on boards, two brown lifeguards on a tower, people in cars driving by. No one seemed to notice the wolf. He went unrecognized (except once by a man who worked at the Los Angeles Zoo). 

Most of the time I was the only one who knew what Colorado was. He didn't know he was a wolf. 

The Importance of Listening

I don't understand my own time.  

Political leaders don't understand what is happening in their own time, which is why no one likes them. 

Putin, for example, has no idea what is happening. Trump has no idea. The Democrats argue that health insurance for 30 million is a good idea. But they don't include dental care. 

Our leaders don't listen. If you sit down and listen to a voter, how often will she say, "We need health care for some but not all and, please, no dental." 

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St. Jude's Arm

The Catholic Church announced that St. Jude's arm will be touring California at some point between September and May. Probably toward May, I think, because the arm will begin its tour on the East Coast. 

Saint Jude is one of the 12 apostles of Jesus. Today he sits in the presence of the Lord, face to face, according to Church doctrine.  

This will be the first journey the arm has made to America, but it has traveled extensively in Italy. 

JUDE THE OBSCURE by Thomas Hardy and the song "Hey, Jude" by the Beatles may reflect the lasting impact of the patron saint of lost causes. 

Note: Philomena Cunk recently claimed that the arm is so encrusted with gold and jewels that none of it is actually visible, and that no one cares about it anyway.  

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A Level Field

During the recent pandemic, California, a progressive state, received a ton of federal money to use in improving our internet infrastructure. Plans were written to help our students who were learning online. 

According to a reporter, Shomik Mukherjee, over time the plans somehow changed. In the beginning the emphasis was on providing good Internet for children living in places like the poorer parts of Oakland and Los Angeles. Students there are still having a hard time staying online. They are seriously handicapped by bad connections.

The private internet companies make good profits in rich neighborhoods, so they are already well served.

The alternative to a useful and profitable internet company is a useful government program that provides good internet connections for poor people. But something in our culture tilts the government playing field, so that the good things in life slide away from the poor kids and toward the rich, even in Sacramento.

According to Mukherjee, newer plans shift the state emphasis from fixing poor neighborhoods to enhancing wealthy neighborhoods that already have good connections. How did that happen?

Florida or Hell?

According to Corina Knolle, reporter, for 170 years the population of California grew. Now it is shrinking.

I knew something was afoot. Back when I attended Redonda Union High School, California had about a third of the population it has today. Now the overfilled state lacks adequate housing, and the freeways are parking lots. To backpack in Yosemite, you need a reservation. 

California is overcrowded. 

Why live in Bakersfield? Let's encourage more California Republicans to move out, heading for places they'll find warmer, cheaper and more congenial like Florida or Hell.  

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Extra

If lucky, you grow old. You become an extra, someone in the background of life's movie. That's fine.

Don't look at the camera.

Maybe you walk somewhere, part of a crowd scene, filling in, helping create a visible audience for your granddaughter, who stands on stage holding a mic. She sees you, calls out, "I love you." You now have a small speaking role. You call back.

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Blow on DeSantis

 Charles M. Blow wrote the following on DeSantis.

"He smiles the way a Doberman bares its teeth: it feels forced, aggressive and dangerous. You feel you should retreat from it. And when he's not forcing a smile, he reflexively scowls. He has a resting wince face."

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PO1135809

 Former President PO1135809 ( his official number in the Fulton Co. jail) has released his mug shot. He looks like a flamingo who's just downed a tumbler of rat urine. Among American presidents he now ranks about 1,135,809th.

Daisy

On Sunday Susan and I drove to the Log Cabin veterans' bar in San Anselmo, where our 17-year-old  granddaughter, Daisy Meritt, sang for two magical hours. Her father, Mark Meritt, produced, played guitar and accompanied her in covers from Taylor Swift to Merle Haggard to Peggy Lee. (A version of "I'll Be Seeing You" was added for World War II vets and me.) Not to speak of Aretha and the Everly Brothers. Or the duet Daisy sang with her friend Rachel. 

Between 30 to 40 people showed up, people from three or four schools, performances, jobs, etc.  Democrats and Republicans mingled. A remarkable group.

Rigger

Agent Orange, once America's leader, has been denouncing vote riggers. He loves the word "rigger," because it rhymes with more powerful words like "trigger." That excites his racist base.

Back when my family was in the oil business as manual laborers, my father and grandfather rigged oil derricks and so on. On days off, they built their own homes, rigging roof beams with pulleys and chains and hoisting them up in the air. But that was hard to do. Orange, riding from hole to hole in his golf cart, has never done anything hard. 

The American Island

 I heard a Russian say recently (bitterly) that America is an island. By that he meant that no one is going to invade the United States, protected by two oceans. America--unlike Russia--does not have to conquer its nearby neighbors to feel safe. (?)

Russian has been invaded from the east and west in the past, including once by the United States. The Golden Horde conquered Russia and the Crimean Tatars burned Moscow. Actually the Russians themselves were invaders from Scandinavia about 900 years ago. None of which justifies Putin's current murder of Ukrainians. Many in Russian understand that, but they have no say in the matter. 

Scapegoats

At some point the GOP discovered that it had nothing to offer ordinary voters. To hide that fact, it turned to scapegoating minority groups. 

Karl Rove later saw that if the GOP  supported the demands of every hate group, large and small, they would constitute something fairly close to a majority.  But not quite.

To gain a majority, Rove's plan has devolved into attempts to make the scapegoats non-voters.  

Now frantic, the GOP is scapegoating transgender children. There are few of them nationally, and they are not armed. Safe to scapegoat. But maybe not.      

Fumbles

If you live long enough, you reach a point where you begin to fumble for words at times. I can tell you about it. You still think and talk, but you run  into spots where you cannot come up with the ordinary word you need. Often your wife or brother can supply the missing term. Or you can dodge around it.

It's okay. 

Watching Nancy Pelosi on TV, I concluded that she has reached that stage. She resigned as speaker of the house at the right time (unlike some). 

I think of Pelosi as the best representative of the progressive San Francisco political machine built by Phil Burton and Willie Brown.  

Death

Pat: Where do people go when they die?

Mike: Everywhere. 

Occam's razor

With all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be right.

---William of Occam

Soon Donald Trump will be on trial in many different jurisdictions for many different crimes. The explanations for this phenomenon are:

1. A gigantic conspiracy run by Democrats, district attorneys, judges (some Republican judges appointed by Trump), a conspiracy combining federal and state courts, has set out to persecute an innocent Donald Trump.

2. Trump is a crook.  

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Trump in Prison

Donald "Borderline" Trump has promised to continue his campaign for president from prison if he ends up behind bars. 

I'm not sure he means it. He may go into one of his rare but real silent periods if he feels humiliated. But a campaign from prison? That  that will make him a legend 200 years from now, while the Clintons will be forgotten.  

The DumbSantis Argument

The governor of Florida wants the children of that state to learn that the enslaved, in some cases, benefited from slavery. He cited black smithery. An enslaved black man might be taught how to be a blacksmith. That would make him more valuable, and he might get better shoes and socks from his owner. Or he might be freed in a civil war (750,000 dead) and have a trade that would support him.

One potential problem with that argument is the trade-off. Suppose you approach a free man, a grounds maintenance worker, and offer to send him to college where he can learn engineering, bettering himself. 

In return all he'd have to do is agree to be a slave and agree that his children could be sold to cotton growers in Mississippi. 

The Lawnmower Sisters

What follows is from a compelling story reported last Tuesday in The Press Democrat by Edward Booth.

A woman I will call Karen Lawnmower (not her name) rose at a public meeting in Napa to protest the staging of a jazz festival. According to Booth, she was concerned that people attending the festival might threaten the neighborhood's security. She characterized jazz enthusiasts "as the type of people" that "we would not like to invite to our homes," as opposed to better choices, "golf enthusiasts."

"We're going to have people jumping over our fences into our pools.We're going go have people walking all over our yards we work so hard to keep up."

Enola Gay Lawnmower, Karen Lawnmower's sister, later explained that the comments had had nothing to do with racism. "What it has to do with is . . . rap. It's going to be hip hop. It's going to be controversial language."

Enola added, in awkward English, "The acts that are booked are very sexually explicit; they waggle their tails all the time. I mean, it's pretty much vulgar to me."

Napa is not famous for its support of diversity. Even so there's something surprising in the candid way these sisters of privilege express themselves in public.

Jerks

According to a 2005 study by the National Institute of Health, 3.7 % of our population is sociopathic and 6.2% is narcissistic. So if you go to a baseball game, and 50,000 people attend, nearly 5,000 of them will probably be jerks. 

We all learn about jerks the same way, through encountering them in schools or at work. The learning process is quite painful, but we get so we can identify jerks and avoid them and, with luck, do them some harm. 

Kozlowski Farms Rubber Pie

I have avoided buying Kozlowski Farms pies, because a woman of that name is frequently published in The Corporate Democrat, our local newspaper. Ms. K writes brutal Republican  prose.  (To be fair, she may have no connection to the bakery.)

This week a good friend served me a piece of Kozlowski pie, not a bad pie, except that I encountered a bite that was too chewy and fished a rubber band out of my mouth.

Asteroid City

"Asteroid City" is a Wes Anderson movie about everything that offers no insights into anything. 

Fifty years ago the film would have been called self-reflexive. Today it is called meta-something.  That means it talks about itself. So people began leaving at halftime. 

Scarlett Johansson and Jason Schwartzman are pretty good, but they aren't on screen enough to hide the dim mess at the heart of the endeavor.  

A movie about everything is a movie about nothing.

Questions for Pence

Along the campaign trail, Pence frequently meets rural folk who ask him if Trump is still the real president. No one asks if Pence is still the real vice president. Or why he calls his wife "Mother."

How To Cool The Planet

According to science we live in a major cooling period, part of an ice age that began about 70 million years ago. Several major factors brought on the ice age, scientists now say. Among them was a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide, about a 30% drop. Data suggests that the CO2 was trapped in the deep ocean. 

From what I have read (I am not a scientist) we know how to remove carbon dioxide from the air and sink it in the deep ocean. This happens naturally in the ice age cycles. We have the money and technology--some say--to cool the planet in a few decades. If true, why aren't we talking about it? 

In The Affirmative

When I was young, I sat on a college admissions committee. There are more than 3,000 colleges and universities in America. I would guess that about 12,000 professors sit on admissions committees today, and nearly every one of them is smarter than John Roberts.  

A Republican program has populated the Extreme Court with a four people dumb enough to still be Republicans. And two malicious vacationers, Alito and Thomas. But remember that the stupid do more harm than the malicious.   

This week the Extreme Court banished considerations of diversity from the college admissions process. But how will six justices, six dopes, go about policing 12,000 people smarter than John Roberts?

Let's say you serve on an admissions committee, now bound by the Court to ignore diversity in your admissions process. 

That already happened in California, and committees are finding ways around it.

You find a stack of student folders on your desk. You open one. The first prospective student is named Noemi Gonzales. She went to grammar school in a part of town called "Little El Salvador." She requires financial aid. No one in her family has ever gone to college. Her father is deceased. She chaired a high school club dedicated to supporting trans-gender rights. She doesn't mention race--that has been forbidden by the Extreme Court.  

You pick up a second file, one about a prospective student named Draymond Jefferson. He's from Compton, California, and he led a Black Lives Matter demonstration. And so on.

People on admissions committees can vote any way they want. 

When we get bad orders from malicious or stupid crackpots, we should rebel. We can free ourselves, find loopholes, do the right thing. 

Are Women Citizens?

Are women citizens of the United States? They are, according to Jack de Selby, except when pregnant. In many Republican states, once an American woman is pregnant, her citizenship automatically transfers to her fetus. The woman becomes a ward of the state. The state may require her to carry the fetus-citizen to term, even if it kills her. 

In Republican states death from pregnancy is more common than in states that allow a woman to choose. Anti-abortion law kills women.

The problem can be addressed, de Selby says, by taking the following pledge: "I will never vote for a Republican as long as I live." 

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Cheating

Katie Porter on corporate practices: "It turns out that cheating people is incredibly profitable."

I'm voting for Porter, who is running for the Senate.  There are three excellent candidates, but Porter seems to me to be the one who will make a difference. She keeps her eye on what is real for ordinary people. 

Honest

 

Nicknames matter in politics. Former VP Pence's nickname, "Weathervane," gives him an edge among undecided voters. And a contributor to the sudden political rise of Abraham Lincoln was his snappy nickname, according to Claude Dukenfield.  

As a young man, studying law in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln supported himself as a cleaner and server in a small beer hall. One customer there, a man named de Selby, had a glass eye. He came in nightly and ordered a glass of beer. He would take out his artificial eye and drop it into the beer, which he'd then proceed to drink. Next he'd order a refill and so on.

One night de Selby drank a beer too many and staggered out the door without his eye. The next evening he returned and asked the server if he knew where the eye was. Lincoln returned the glass eye to its owner. From then on he was known as "Honest Abe." 

Third

The Japanese have mastered the art of frying things in batter. That's the kind of information I hope to pass on to younger diners. 

Driving east on Third after a gratifying Japanese lunch, Susan and I came across about 25 people demonstrating against pedophilia. I have to say that pedophilia is really unpopular around here.

These people held signs blaming pedophilia on gay people. The demonstrators were misinformed, but I suspect that's how they like it. 

Donald Trump Arrested

DONALD TRUMP ARRESTED!

The arrest seemed inevitable from the moment Trump slid down a moonbeam and ran for president. But newsfolkers like Jake Tapper were shocked to the cockles of their brainflab. 

"This is a sad day for America," Jake cried on CNN.

Compared to what, Jake, VJ Day?

"This is not who we are."

Good to hear, Jake. Who's doing this then?

Covid

Back when covid first waded ashore in California, a friend and I discussed our options. My friend suggested that it might be best to get covid as soon as possible, because then we would be immune (which turned out to be untrue). I suggested that it might be best to avoid getting covid as long as possible, giving science a chance to find medications. 

My plan worked well until about ten days ago when my wife hugged a friend who was innocently infectious. So I finally have covid (and Paxlovid). 

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Pine Flat Road

I like to take visitors up Pine Flat Road. It's unusual scenic, the site of a famous killing, a steep, wild place to walk, etc. I saw a mountain quail there once. A patch belongs to the Audubon Society. But who owns most of the place?

According to a well-written article by Austin Murphy, a reporter for The Corporate Democrat, much of the land in the upper reaches of the road belongs to the Bureau of Land Management, a federal agency. But, according to Murphy, the BLM claims that the area is owned by a mix of private people and the State of California. The county, however, states that the area is federal land. But a BLM specialist argues that the area was given to California in 1853. Maybe.

I don't think of the Bible

From 1 Timothy 2:12: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain silent."

The Bible is often cited as the source of male chauvinism, but it might be more accurate to think of the Bible as an expression of something deeper, something already there.  When I see the reactions of forced-birth Republicans after a ten-year-old girl is raped and made pregnant, I don't think of the Bible. I think of lizards. These people have the empathy of lizards. It's a minority point of view but not a small minority. Some lizards own media platforms. 

Tatars

I first read about Tatars in tales by Tolstoy set in Crimea. For many centuries Ukraine mostly consisted of Cossacks in the North and Tatars in the South. Both groups were tremendous fighters. 

Tatars are today the largest minority group in Russia. 

About 900 years ago, the Golden Horde (Mongols led by Genghis Khan) overran Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, etc. Most of the Horde eventually left, but among those who stayed were the Tatars, a mix of local people and the original Tatars, whoever they were. They converted to Islam, joined the Ottoman Empire and ruled Crimea for many centuries. At one point the Crimean Tatars sacked Moscow and burned it.

In 1944 Stalin rounded up the Crimean Tatars and shipped them east and out of sight. About 25% died during the trip and exile. Russians confiscated their land and homes. Later Gorbachev allowed the Tatars to return to Crimea, where today they are a minority. 

I'm guessing that descendants of the Tatars and Cossacks are not fond of the Kremlin. 

Diversity

White supremacists, backed by Republican billionaires and think tanks, support a well-reported campaign to turn our fact-based educational systems into propaganda outlets. 

Educated people tend to vote against Fascism. 

Part of this campaign depends on the Supreme Court ruling out diversity as a possible factor in college admissions. 

As a raw undergraduate at UCLA, my roommates included a future editorial cartoonist for a major newspaper chain, a starting Black tailback from Oakland on an undefeated football team and an older student,  a Japanese pilot who had fought for Japan in World War Two. 

Meeting these people made a difference in my life. Diversity is education.

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Combined Arms

 

"Ukraine hopes that its counteroffensive will end this stalemate. . . .  The troops have learned a technique known as combined-arms warfare, in which different parts of the military work together to take territory. Tanks punch through enemy lines by rolling over trenches, for example, and infantry then spread out to hold the area."  from The NY Times. I have read that combined arms warfare is how Grant won the Civil War, by the way, inventing modern strategy and tactics. That is why Grant (not Lee) is studied in military institutions, except in Russia, apparently.

Old Age

It's hard going through old age without my parents here to help me. 

Thinking About It

Donny Trump's claim that he could declassify a government document by "thinking about it" might be true in a dictatorship. In our rule-based system, declassification is a process with objective requirements.  One is a paper trail. Pathetically claiming, after the fact, to have a super power, will convince few adults. If Trump, a famous liar, does have this strange ability, he'll have to prove it.

37

California, where politics are controlled by the Democrats, must rebuilt Highway 37. It runs next to San Francisco Bay, and the road is going under water as our snow and ice melt. 

As far as I can tell, the road exists partly so that the men who trim hedges and women who scrub bathtubs for a living can drive from Vallejo to Marin County to clean for the wealthy. Workers often can't afford to live in Marin County. They commute from cheaper areas.

The Dems have decided to finance the repairs by turning 37 into a toll road. That will transfer much of the cost to minimum wage workers, the shrewdest form of taxation. Let the poorest among us pay for the new 37. There's nothing they can do about it, say some. 

800 Billionaires

A food critic recently ate a $600 lunch at the French Laundry and remarked that the meal was excellent but not worth the money. .Jack de Selby has said something similar about America's 800 billionaires, that some are good at what they do but not that good.

A country doesn't end up with 800 billionaires without cheating the people who trim hedges and clean bathtubs.

MAGA Thinks Ahead

At the moment America has more jobs than workers. In some states child labor laws have been altered so companies can put 14-year-olds on night shifts. Meanwhile tens of thousands of people seeking hard work are lined up at our Southern border, but we won't let them in--because many of them are not of 100% European ancestry.  

The Corporate-MAGA think tanks plan decades ahead. Part of their plan is to keep people of color out of our country and its textbooks. 

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CNN

My wife caught me watching CNN this morning, or she thought she did. Actually I was watching YouTube, which carries a few bits of CNN at times. 

Until recently I followed two commentators on CNN. The new owners fired one and shuffled the other into a closet.  Not MAGA enough, I guess. Did not fit the new business plan. 

Your Money Or Your Life

Climate change is making parts of the USA less safe. But which parts? Which sections of the nation will suffer most from humid heat, storms, hurricanes, floods, etc? 

To answer that question, experts ask which states are gaining population. Americans are moving to the worst possible climate places, mostly the Gulf Coast of the USA, including Florida and Texas. Many voters are drawn to regions where life is cheaper in every way and cognitive inadequacy goes unnoticed. 

People are leaving overpopulated areas with mild climates like San Francisco and Sonoma County. Too expensive.

 

 

   

 

Paperclips

John Roberts (Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court) and Justice Clarence Thomas are, reporters tell us, afloat in the river of cash being funneled to their wives by billionaires. In short, Roberts and Thomas are as bent as paperclips.

Both men and their wives got rich thanks to the old Republican Party, which was saner but even more corrupt than the bug-headed MAGA types. 

I've seen a Democratic senator defending the right of the Supreme Court to not regulate itself.  Most likely the Democrat is defending his own wife, who is also helping herself at some rich dude's ATM. 

There are around 800 billionaires in America. If one billionaire gave every spouse in the senate a million dollars, he would still have at least 900 million dollars left. And his oil field investments would make up the loss. 

Can we have billionaires and a democracy at the same time? 

 

White House Plumbers

WHITE HOUSE PLUMBERS, an HBO series, has aired its first episode, and it is funny. The fictional E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, incompetent bunglers, are molded from the stuff that made Laurel and Hardy legends.  

At the time we did not find Hunt and Liddy amusing, but 50 safe years later they have become ineptly hilarious. And you can bet that many years from now Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis will be major roles in a comedy series, two squabbling goons unable to find their own butts with both hands. 

Nikki Haley's Goal

Yesterday politician Ms. Nikki Haley told us that if we re-elect Joe Biden, he will likely die before finishing his second  term. Her unspoken point was that if President Biden dies in office, he will be replaced by a woman of color! And what could be worse.

Susan pointed out that Nikki, a woman of color, is running for President to keep a woman of color from becoming President. 

Gender Queer

Two nights back Susan and I went with Marty Renault to attend a tribute to her late husband, Dennis Renault, the former editorial cartoonist for the McClatchy newspaper chain. This was a small event made up largely of people devoted to artistic printing, setting type by hand. Dennis, once my roommate at UCLA, had owned an ancient press, and he had printed wonderful items that people appreciated. 

About 30 people showed up at North Bay Letterpress Art in Sebastopol.,One of the informal speakers was a printer named Maia Kobabe, author of GENDER QUEER. She was quite interesting. She told us about her work at the printshop and about how GENDER QUEER had been something of a success until attacks on the book by crackpots had propelled it into a major event.

This morning I read that the American Library Association has named GENDER QUEER as the most banned book of the year. Susan and I feel like we've  met royalty. 

Melodrama

My local newspaper had a subhead this morning that read "A tragic moment in some ways." It referred to the arrest of Donald Trump for 34 of his minor crimes.

A tragedy is about the downfall of a good person, usually someone of importance. He's brought down by a personal failing and circumstances he can't defeat. In a sense a tragedy teaches us a truth: even the best among us is imperfect and faces death.  

The downfall of a shitty crook is not a tragedy. It's melodrama. I don't feel fear and pity for Trump. The candle of the wicked shall be put out. With pleasure. 

Falling

I am amazed by how fast I fall. My bike flips or I step in a hole, and I am flat on the ground before I can blink. Then comes the shock of pain, which usually lasts only, say,  5 or 10 minutes. After that I get up, and I'm okay. (I did break my ankle once, so I now employ, while walking, a half-numb foot that cants a little to the right.) 

When you get old, you start falling. I had a friend named Lucy who reached 100; she fell and lay on her kitchen floor for 14 hours. 

When I got into my 80s I began to fall from time to time. And then my wife fell. But we are fine. 

(Report from Old Age)

Talking Points

I sometimes wonder what our elected officials are doing in committees, making good deals behind the scenes, I hope. 

I did read that Gov. Newsom is pushing to modernize how California treats its mentally ill. He'd like to provide more hospital beds and treatments, something the state has needed since the day that Ronald Reagan forwarded the mentally ill into local communities to be homeless.

Newsom also wants to turn San Quentin, with the nation's longest death row, into a rehab and education facility for prisoners. 

We can solve problems. Or we can keep problems as political talking points.  It's a choice.

Authentic

In a loose sense, an authentic person is one who lives up to her own belief system. Putin is an authentic fascist, although he doesn't know it. Trump is an authentic narcissist, although he doesn't know it. Bernie is an authentic democratic socialist, and he does know it.  

I don't think authenticity is rare. We respond to it favorably much of the time. People who are painfully inauthentic (DeSantis, Nixon, Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley, Pence, Marco Rubio) may or may not attract enemies, but their friends don't like them (Oscar Wilde). 

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The Anti-Semite

Gov. Ron DeSantis recently said: "The Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor, and so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety."  

Attacks on George Soros and on "the Hollywood elite" are part of a Nazi political analysis, one that posits a hidden agenda created and enforced by Jews, who supposedly run the western world with the help of women, gays and inferior races. 

I have no idea what DeSantis really believes about anything, but in the GOP race to the bottom, DeSantis sounds worse than Trump. If Trump goes to prison, the yam-faced DeSantis may become the GOP leader. Right now DeSantis is burning books. And next? 

Republicans have a year in which to right their institution. 

Very Proud Boys

At the trial of five louts, the Proud Boys' book of rules came into evidence. America got a look at the organization's rule for masturbation. 

"A Proud Boy may not ejaculate alone more often than once every thirty days. That means he must abstain from pornography during that time and if he needs to ejaculate it must be within one yard of a woman with her consent. The woman may not be a prostitute."

Why this rule? Prouds may believe that holding a full bottle of precious fluids enhances the masculine virtues. 

Biden's Oil.

While running for President, Joe Biden repeatedly promised not to allow new oil drilling in Alaska. Two days ago he confirmed that he intends to sign off on some new Alaskan oil wells. That surprised no one. 

I've never thought Biden was authentic. No one--other than George Washington--has won the presidency by being authentic. Probably can't be done. 

I will vote for Biden in the next election. The Publicans will nominate (as someone suggested) a cocaine bear, a murderous, salivating lunatic.  

The Hatred of Women

We see movements in several hick states to make abortions punishable by death. In South Carolina a bill giving zygotes "equal protection under the homicide laws of the state" is in process. The bill currently has 21 legislators supporting it.  (I assume that the bill will fail thanks to common sense.)

The main emotion driving death for abortion seems to be a hatred of women. Primitive stuff.  

Dr. Sundari Mase

Dr. Sundari Mase, a scientist, may have saved my life. I'm in a risk category. During the first Covid years, Mase, who led the Sonoma County health response, helped keep the death count to about one in 1,000 people. Nationally the count was about one in 340. That means Mase's strictness helped save many lives in Sonoma County. 

She's resigning. She took a bucket of abuse from business owners and nuts in general who demanded a laxer approach to public health. She stood up to racist attacks. The media dug up a story about how, years ago, she was once arrested for drunk driving. 

Mase did have the support of many ordinary Sonoma County people who wanted to survive.  We wore masks. Thank you, Dr. Mase, for not letting anyone stop you from doing the right thing.