Soon the national news will be covering the murder trial of a young fellow who sneaked behind an unarmed businessman in New York and shot him in the back.
Some old people oppose back-shooting on principle.
My father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather held certain principles. You never hit a woman. You never voted for a Fascist. You never shot a man in the back, if you didn't know him.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect, as many know, is the observation that some Americans are too stupid to notice they are stupid. They vote against their own interests. They've elected Trump twice.
In Trump's first term, more rational people, including key Republicans, managed things around the Orange Face in ways that partly mitigated his incompetence and cruelty. The consequence was that Trump got elected again.
The voters had learned nothing from the first term.
Should we try to mitigate the second-term disaster by opposing his cabinet choices? A few people argue that we should stand aside and let nature take its course. How else will voters learn?
Americans chose a stupid, degenerate fascist to lead western civilization. He's staffing his cabinet with know-nothing, brain-wormed drunkards.
Given Trump's choices, innocent people will suffer. Of course, that will happen anyway.
Disaster--maybe a sweeping climate or economic collapse--seems possible. But no one knows what is coming at us.
"The future is a curve that is constantly changing."--Wittgenstein
The dutch oven, invented in the Netherlands, was first mentioned in print in 1769. It took several forms, but today it is mostly a large metal or ceramic pot with a tight lid.
The flat lid was an innovation by Paul Revere. A dutch oven with legs (to stand in the coals) is called a camp oven.
The Dutch name for the oven is "braadan."
Yesterday two friends dropped by. Susan, an excellent cook, served them spaghetti for lunch. They ate several portions each.
In the process Susan used three Dutch ovens. Is that too many?
Explanations of when human language first developed have not lent themselves to conclusive testing. Estimates range from two million years ago to fairly recently. Languages left little trace until we invented writing about 5,000 years ago.
Our complex language separates us from other mammals. Humans alone can use language to make things up. We invent belief systems and then believe them.
Consider the following: animal rights, paper money, the 33 Hindu gods, Portland's governance structure, baseball rules, western civilization, human rights.
These things exist because we used words to make them up.
My wife summed up the weakness of the Democratic Party in one sentence: They don't know how to get the support they need from morons.
Consider a fact. Half of the people in the United States are below average in reasoning skills, and Trump got slightly more than 49% of the national vote.
I'm not claiming that all Trump voters are idiots, but many are as incapable of sustained rational analysis as a starving bear.
When I was born (1934) stupid Americans were divided between two major parties. The Republicans had small town Babbitts. The Democrats had Alabama. But, later, as Nixon developed his southern strategy, he gathered most of the stupid voters into one formidable party.
In democracies it is not unusual for resentful dumbbells to ally with the super rich and do combat with the educated middle class. Something like that has happened here.
This much is clear. To succeed in two years, the Democrats need to win back their fair share of imbeciles.
Carlos Cipolla, an Italian economics historian who taught at Berkeley, wrote "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" in 1976.
What Cipolla meant by "stupid," my wife would call "irrational." Cipolla did not mean someone slow witted (who might be slow but rational).
The first law of irrationality, applied to elections, is that we always underestimate the number of irrational voters in circulation. Always.
Irrational people, by definition, make decisions harmful to others and often to themselves. That's how we discover they are irrational.
For example, a man dependent on social security and Obamacare may vote for candidates pledged to end both programs. A woman may support a sniggering rapist for president.
The actions of irrational people cannot be predicted or understood by rational people, Cipolla argued.
Cipolla is not the first to point out that stupid/irrational people do more harm than evil people, who are, at least, predictable.
In the last century, linguistic philosophers and linguists focused in part on how language itself can mislead us.
In Genevieve Guenther's recent THE LANGUAGE OF CLIMATE POLITICS, I found an example I understood.
Suppose Susan Goss said, "We are all responsible for climate change." I've said that myself hundreds of times.
"We caused climate change." But did we?
Americans do contribute to climate change. I eat pears shipped from Mexico. The shippers use fossil fuels.
Pear-eaters created climate change. Or did they?
Guenther points out that when we agree that all of us are to blame, we support an ideology that protects the deeply guilty, the fossil fuel producers and their employees and their vast network of supporters. If we are all guilty, then no one is really at fault.
But we are not equal offenders. That gets hidden by the "we."
Human scum, the oil and gas people driven by greed, are making parts of the Earth uninhabitable. They do it for money. They block needed changes. They buy all the support they need to keep drilling.
Steve Maass founded a small supermarket chain called Oliver's in Sonoma County in 1988. He started with 13 employees. Today the chain employs about 400 people, and as of November 1, they own the whole thing.
Maass arranged for his employees to buy him out. He could have sold to a major chain. He chose to keep the chain local and part of the community.
Part of why American voters elected an idiot to lead western civilization was anger at our social/economic system, which has partly failed them and their children. The idiot, of course, will fail them more profoundly.
About ten percent of Americans own 95% of our wealth. The oligarchs suck up the profits. Maass has shown us one door we could open. Let employees benefit from committed work. Let them profit, too.
What science tells us about Irish DNA keeps getting updated. Some years back, experts told us that the Irish ended up culturally Celtic but had little to no Celtic DNA. So where did the Irish come from?
One answer is that they came from almost everywhere. The original settlers had dark skin. Four or five big waves of newcomers came after them. The lasting DNA core of the modern Irish came from a migration from the steppes of Ukraine, scientists say.
We elected an idiot to lead America and western civilization. He defeated a competent black woman thanks to support from a combination of white men, white women and Latino men.
Trump's absurdly painted white skin was a factor. But Obama won election twice.
The number one reason Trump won, according to Susan Goss, was sexism. The percentage of voters with a powerful aversion to women--to mothers, sisters, rivals, wives--isn't known. But it is big enough to elect a convicted rapist to lead western civilization.
Northern Californians take pride in the French Laundry in Yountville. Some rank it the best restaurant in the United States. I have it on good authority that the mac and cheese they serve is first-rate. And if you doubt they serve mac and cheese in their $1,000 meals, think again.
But Southern California has a strong claim in some of the lower apartments in the tower of cuisine. Consider a few of the dishes invented in Los Angeles. The hot fudge sundae. The California roll. Smoothies. The French dip sandwich. The Cobb salad. Chinese chicken salad.
The pride of San Francisco may be the Mission burrito, invented in 1961. This burro consists of a large wheat tortilla filled with rice, beans, meat and many other fine items. It comes wrapped in shiny foil. A complete Mexican meal, the mission burrito can now be found in all the blue states.
There are reasonable Europeans who disagree with Israel's policies, who support human rights for Palestinians, who reject Zionism. Some make a careful distinction between Jews and Israel.
And there are growing numbers of Europeans who shout or write on walls "Jodenjacht" or "kill Jews." What they have in mind is pogroms, mass slaughters of an ethnic group they call cancerous.
I live in California. In a sense my vote in the last election was pointless--Harris was going to win California without me or my wife, Susan.
There was no practical reason for me to vote for president.
I voted in early November because I remained committed to the constitutional system. By casting a ballot I agreed to the rules that make up our politcal game. I agreed to accept the outcome.
Fascist Americans now control all branches of our federal government: supreme court, presidency, house and senate. Their goal is to create a permanent one-party state, a Turd Reich.
I don't agree to be part of that.
Some time back I read that during the American revolution about a third of the population actively favored the democratic cause. Another third preferred to be ruled by a British king, and a third was indifferent.
Susan Goss is not sure how to compare that to what voters prefer today. Her guess is that support for democracy has grown over the years. Today it may approach 40%.
America just elected a rapist, a felon, an old man ruled by personality disorders, to lead the western world.
Perhaps this is America's version of Brexit. We might end up paying a steep price for an obvious folly.
Does Donald Trump hope to make America a Fascist state? Is Putin a Fascist?
A Fascist state has one viable political party and often one ruler, an authoritarian. Its capitalist economy is subject to the dictator's control. Opposition is violently suppressed. The ideology supports racism and nationalism.
In Fascism, I once said to Susan Goss, the outcome of elections is fixed in advance, and voting for the lesser evil is not a meaningful option.
In the White House, Trump commented that Hitler did do some good things. No-one has asked him to name them, so here are two good things I've heard other people mention.
1. As a youngster in Austria, Hitler attended grammar school with Ludwig Wittgenstein. They weren't in the same grade, so maybe they didn't know each other well. My point is that Hitler did not kill Wittgenstein as a school child. Hitler spared him, although the philosopher had some Jewish grandparents.
2. Nearly everyone now agrees that most positive act in the dictator's life came near the end when he swallowed a cyanide capsule, then grabbed a handgun and shot Hitler in the face.
w
Why haven't we seen brave medical doctors going to prison for performing illegal abortions?
A few doctors are openly breaking anti-abortion laws, and they are not being arrested.
Roe was overturned in 2022. Since then the abortion rate in the USA has increased.
About half the states have laws imposing penalties on doctors who perform abortions. Doctors are often unsure what is legal and what is not.
Before death with dignity became legal, some doctors helped desperate patients die, but they did it surreptitiously. It seems likely that some doctors are secretly disobeying state anti-abortion laws today.
We also have doctors who will stand around and watch a young woman die rather than risk breaking an anti-abortion law. These medical watchers are cowards.
I wonder if district attorneys are reluctant to risk their careers by trying abortion providers.
This is what happens when a Supreme Court loses touch with reality.
Someone recently pointed out that the surface of the Earth is not flat. Also the surface of the ocean is not flat. Sea level along the West Coast is higher than along the East Coast, science says, by about 20 cm, depending on local conditions.
Why does that matter?
Mt. Whitney in California is listed as having an elevation of 14,505 feet above sea level. Should that be 14,505 feet plus 20 cm?
Perhaps not. I don't know how mountains are measured. There is something called "mean sea level," a useful average. Meanwhile the many sea levels keep rising.
And the seas are rising steadily. As the planet warms, will Whitney lose elevation?
Yesterday morning I was sure that Harris would lose. By evening I believed she would win. And so on.
In The New Yorker I read about a class taught at the University of Chicago called "Are We Doomed." The subjects were nuclear weapons and runaway AI, not Donald Trump. But we are faced with Trump. What if he wins? Many Americans will react badly to Fascism.
According to a recent poll (?) Trump has been gaining lately and now commands 48% of the voters. It isn't Trump who might doom us, though. He's just flab with dementia and three personality disorders. Our Stone Age kin who love him are the problem.
If Trump is elected, the saner half of the country won't accept him or his posse. The fight will be on.
We can expect the economy to collapse--even decent Republicans bring on recessions. Eleven of the last twelve recessions happened under Republican presidents and their dangerous economic beliefs.
President Trump will do everything wrong, and then the conflict to restore democracy may last 30 years.
s
Toward the end of World War II, my father and I were walking along the Long Beach Pike, carrying sweatshirts. I tied mine around my waist. My father stopped immediately and taught me that girls tied sweatshirts around their waists, but boys tied sweatshirts around their necks. He was adamant.
To my knowledge, the secret book of manliness has not yet been made public, but I learned a new rule last week. A talking head on Fox called Tim Walz effeminate for drinking milkshake through a straw.
Real men, we know, carry pocketknives. They enjoy fistfights in the street. I have been passable in those areas. Also I had raised a wolf, which might count for something. On the other hand, I recently drank a milkshake through a straw. Quite recently.
Hurricane Milton is bearing down on Tampa, and a news host asked a climate expert why some people still won't face up to global warming. The expert did not know.
Most of us know.
We have among us people who get rich by ignoring climate change. Start with the producers of fossil fuels. Add those who manufacture something that uses natural gas or plastics or coal. Add people who make gas ovens or windshield wipers for automobiles that burn gasoline. Add some contributors to political campaigns.
It's about the love of money. Of course.
Today I heard a well-educated reporter on television pronounce "soften" as "soft-Tun."
It's always the well-educated--they believe they are finally mastering elite English when they spot and pronounce a silent letter.
I predict that in 20 years you'll be hearing this new pronunciation often.
English is made up of rules, which Wittgenstein grouped and called "language games." Games are made up of rules.
In baseball the batter is supposed to hit the ball and run to first base. If, instead, he runs directly to third base, he is not making a mistake--he does not know the rules of the game.
Consider the baseball rule that allows someone who has hit a single to overrun first base without being called out. Why is that?
Baseball used to be played outdoors in winter. The fields back east were icy. In winter ball a runner was allowed to overrun all four slippery bases. Today a runner can overrun only first base and home plate. Rules can change.
In the army we swore allegiance to the Constitution, which is a set of rules we follow while governing. The rules provide a framework for discussions and decisions 340 million people will accept.
One kind of a personality disorder is a defiance of the rules that make your own society work.
And that is why we say, "Fuck you, J.D. Vance."
Jeremy Hay reported in the Press Democrat that Eliza's Village, a key homeless shelter in Sonoma County, has cut the residents to one meal per day (often a salad). The goal is to prod the homeless to greater self-sufficiency.
The residents report that it's hard to sleep on an empty stomach.
Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48, rises 14,505 feet above sea level. Or does it?
According to science, the mean sea level is changing. The glaciers found at the poles are melting, despite what Republicans tell voters. The sea level is rising. If all the glaciers melt, the sea will rise 230 feet, and Healdsburg will be under water.
I think the oceans are flat--and I have inspected both the Atlantic and the Pacific. But scientists disagree. They claim that even in the absence of waves, the oceans have, on their surfaces, small hills and valleys.
Astronauts argue that our planet is a flattened spheroid. For some reason this shape causes a depression of 348 feet in the sea level of part of the India Ocean. (That must be wrong.)
Of course, land also rises and falls over time. Mt Whitney is rising about an inch every 20 years. In 240 years it will be 14,506 feet above mean sea level, depending on what the sea level becomes.
I have read that winds, currents, river discharges and variations in gravity and temperature make local sea levels differ. High and low pressure areas in the atmosphere change the surface level of the oceans.
The sea level off San Francisco is about 8 inches higher than the sea level off Boston. Of course it is.
Yesterday is dead and gone,
And tomorrow's out of sight.
It's so sad to be alone.
Help me make it through the nght.
What do I need to know about Kamala Harris to vote for her? Almost nothing. Her opponent is mentally ill.
Kamala Harris has two jobs to do: defeat Trump and preserve western civilization, which has treated us well.
Harris will defend the West against Fascism. Trump will not.
And Harris will act against global warming.
Mr. Tub of Guts has come up with a solution to our housing crisis: deport 20 million people of color. Then a surplus of houses wil drive down costs.
A leading authority in a fine suit told us that the January 6 riot that attacked the capital was the worst crime in American history.
So January 6 was worse than our fire-bombing of Tokyo, which burned 100,000 civilians to death near the end of World War II.
And worse than George W. Bush's pointless war that killed about 200,000 civilians in Iraq. Some were children we shot at point blank range in the forehead.
q
The most important issues in the coming election are those that threaten the existence of our species.
1. Global warming
2. Nuclear war
3. Authoritarian attacks on science
4. Pandemics
5. Social injustice
If you have a functioning cognitive system, you will vote for the candidates best suited to help us cope with some of these issues.
A minority will base their votes on a single issue like opposing gun control, keeping white males dominant, etc.
q
Senator Vance claimed that Haitian immigrants in Ohio, like Johnny Rebeck, are stealing and eating their neighbors' cats and dogs.
Sunday Vance admitted that he was "willing to create stories so that American media would pay attention." In short, Vance is a false witness.
One of the basic tenets of western civilization (and its religions) is: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." If we spread ridiculous and dangerous fictions about the neighbors, our society will come unglued.
Vance and his masters do not care, but we'd better care. There's a lot at stake.
David Frum pointed out that when someone punches a narcissist, his defense may be to pretend that nothing has happened and no one is standing in front of him.
We saw that last night. Kamala ate Trump's lunch, so he pretended he wasn't hungry. And she smiled as she fed, so no one blamed her.
It was cold-blooded tough. Kamala, I think, comes from Oakland, where everyone is tough.
Kamala and her team had decided to attack a stupid, spoiled, weak, mentally ill Fascist by pushing his buttons.
He could not look the racially-mixed woman in the face. He kept closing his eyes. He never used her name, refused to admit she was really present.
Trump got mad and shouted at the two ABC reporters but not at Kamala.
Kamala had memorized about ten of Trump's buttons. She pushed them one by one, smiling, spacing out the debacle until his balding head exploded.
I have never seen anything like it.
Well, Kamala played Trump like a yoyo.
Oh, Mister Johnny Rebeck, how could you be so mean?
I told you you'd be sorry for inventing that machine
Now all the neighbor's cats and dogs will never more be seen
They'll all be ground to sausages in Johnny Rebeck's machine.
Today Agent Orange will "debate" Kamala Harris. An averaging of polls shows that Orange is viewed favorably by 43% of American voters, although he has been convicted of a sexual attack on a woman and of more than 30 felonies.
Orange behaves in public like a disintegrating elderly man who is mentally ill.
It's unlikely that 43% of Americans approve of rape or felonies. Much of the Orange support probably comes from people unable to locate or weigh evidence. They never learned how to reason.
Thinking is a form of work they dodge. It's too hard.
I did not understand why MAGAts, who want white women to bear many white children, have been attempting to outlaw IVF (in vitro fertilization). That seemed to contradict the MAGA breeding program.
Finally someone explained it to me.
Because we have IVF, women are often able to have children later in life, which enables young women to enjoy early careers, make money and shape their own lives. And then bear children if they choose.
If you believe that young women should work in kitchens and be submissive cleaners and sex workers, IVF is a devil's tool. It lends itself to personal choices and disobedience.
s
I no longer listen when American politicians tell us that they totally support Israel's right to self defense and also are committed to justice for Palestinians.
It's time to act. No more talk. Do something.
Thousands of years ago, Hammurabi laid down the rule of an eye for an eye, a rule designed to limit the range of revenge. So impressed by this commonsense were the ancient Israelites that they included the rule in the Torah. Christians adopted it in the Old Testament.
The rule is not ten eyes for an eye.
Our leaders can stop the war in Gaza. They should do something. The Overton window has shifted. Act now.
With hindsight I can say that of course a backlash would follow the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. With every advance there will be a backlash. (Hindsight is wonderful.)
A wave of racist hatred threw a vicious, mentally-ill billionaire into the White House. But the backlash receded.
The election of Kamala Harris will cement a change for women, for people of color, for all of us.
d
Getting ready for the Democratic Convention.
Demonstrations are good. People should make known what they want. But single issue voters are making a mistake. There are many important issues, with global warming and the war in Ukraine at the top of the list.
Issues vital to the survival of our species and our civilization should come first.
a
Voters are motivated by emotion
Compare Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. Hillary presented us with carefully argued positions on all the key issues. Kamala offers big smiles and hope.
That makes Kamala the stronger candidate.
Today Kamala will present some positions. I hope it goes well.
Robert Kennedy Junior's presidential run was funded by a Republican billionaire. The idea was that Kennedy would cut into the votes for Joe Biden, whose age was making his campaigning ineffective.
Now that Biden has passed the baton to Kamala Harris, polls show that Kennedy's votes are coming from people who were supporting Trump, whose cognitive decline is making his campaigning downright weird.
The moral of this story: The future is a curve that is constantly changing. (Wittgenstein)
Sergeant Tim Walz is the first enlisted man I recall running for president or vice president.
Many officers have run. Trump's fakebilly, whose current name is Vance, once served as a marine corps press suck-up officer.
Vance has changed his name three or four times, hoping to find his real self.
As a former enlisted man, I am encouraged by the nomination of Sgt. Walz. I know he has been labeled a radical because he supported a school lunch program for children. But he and I were misled by free lunches in the army. Let it go.
w
Maybe 60 or 70 years ago, we watched a stand-up comic called "Professor Irwin Corey, the world's greatest authority." His stance was that he knew everything. He could answer any question. Of course, Corey was playing an ignorant buffoon. The stupidity of the character he played was funny and harmless.
Today Trump is the world's greatest authority. it should not be a shock that he claims to know when Kamala Harris became black. But I was shocked.
William Calley died in April.
During the Vietnam War, Calley led his army platoon into the village of My Lai, where the Americans raped and killed 504 civilians.
Calley was tried for war crimes, convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but President Nixon, a weird creep, let him off.
Calley went on to lead a normal life, unlike the 504 he'd murdered. He eventually apologized for the massacre. He was probably sincere.
ters) - William Calley, who during the Vietnam War led his U.S. Army platoon into the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai and carried out one of the worst war crimes in American military history, has died, according to media reports. He was 80.
The Washington Post on Monday first reported Calley's death, which happened in April, according to a death certificate the newspaper cited. The New York Times, citing Social Security Administration death records, also reported Calley's death.
Neither paper reported a cause of death. Calls to numbers listed for Calley's son, William L. Calley III, were not returned.
American soldiers killed 504 people on March 16, 1968, in Son My, a collection of hamlets between the central Vietnamese coast and a ridge of misty mountains, in an incident known in the West as the My Lai Massacre. The killings shocked the U.S. and galvanized the anti-war movement.
I'm somewhat confused by J. D. Vance's proposal that humans who do not give birth should pay higher taxes. It might be his way of helping out a girl who becomes pregnant after being raped. Vance would lower her taxes. But men like me (I have never given birth) would end up paying extra. I'm not sure that I can support that.
Maybe the most successful popular song ever, recorded more than 1,400 times in the last hundred years, is "Stardust" by Hoagy Carmichael.
I knew a woman Carmichael once tried to pick up in a bar in 1937.
Someone else added lyrics to Carmichael's melody, lyrics focused on which of the options below?
1. The singer's mother
2. Dreams
3. A death in World War One
4. A different song
5. A lost love
JD Vance has launched the early MAGA attack on Kamala Harris. Republicans have begun to denounce her as a weak, uppity woman of color, a mix of Asian and Black.
Granted, that will invigorate the MAGA base, but it may alienate others, including some voters who prefer racism to be unspoken.
Some Democrats complained this morning that Republicans deliberately mispronounce the first name of Kamala Harris. Probably true. Republicans deliberately miscall the name of the Democratic Party and so on. It's a dipshit's form of virtue signaling.
But the Democrats went on to mispronounce "Kamala" themselves.
It's been hard for me to keep the name straight, but I finally noticed that "Kamala" sounds like the name of a punctuation mark, the comma.
To politicians expert at counting votes (Pelosi). Biden's stepping down today must have seemed inevitable. Elevating Harris was also inevitable--not elevating her would have cost the Democrats about a third of their votes.
Biden's faltering voice and walk meant that he could not campaign and win. Not complicated. He was disabled. And that was concealed from us for months, maybe years.
The current political question is "Can Biden beat Trump? What are the odds?" My sense is that, if you are an optimist, the odds are 50-50.
That is not good enough, given that the we are betting on the survival of western civilization.
s
Vending machines selling ammunition have been installed in grocery stores in Alabama and Oklahoma.
Stupid does more harm than evil.
At no point in my life have I wanted Joe Biden to run for President. Why would I? I did vote for Biden once (when he ran against the Orange Turd).
If you look at what Biden was like five years ago, well, in those days he had air in his lungs. He wasn't whispering. His stride was a yard long.
Now the Democrats face the electorate with a weak smile, hoping to be liked. Their opponent is a felon, a rapist, a lunatic, but somehow the faltering Democrats have become the issue. They blame this on the news.
If you don't like the news, make bigger news.
And nominate candidates most voters will like at first sight. Remember JFK and Obama? That's the ticket.
Some wars are us against them. Others are them against them.
In most wars both sides lose.
Yes, Donald Trump's scowling face and nasty (absurd) lies added up to the worst debate performance ever. Gigantic turnoff. Biden's feebleness was likely the second worst.
On to the next thing.
Just in case, yes, there is a straight pride flag. I saw one on the John Oliver TV show, and then I found many for sale on the 'net.
Vinbtter makes a powerful flag. Very straight black and white stripes with the woman symbol and man symbol arranged in the center in the missionary position. It costs $12 at Amazon.
Not a joke.
I just learned how to tell a native speaker of English from someone who has mastered English as a second language.
In English we don't pronounce words the way they are spelled. And some words (in some contexts) get a weak pronunciation.
As a native speaker, I might say: "I'm driving to Healdsburg." Unless I seek a special emphasis, I will pronounce the "to" as a barely audible "tuh." A second language speaker will usually give "to" a full-on treatment.
I guess we give about 25% of our words the weak treatment. We absorb how to do this as young children, and we don't give it any thought.
A man with a chainsaw, a man with a leaf blower, a man with an accordion and a woman with bagpipes go into a bar. The bartender says, Okay, okay, but no more "Ode to Joy."
Jack de Selby once wrote that California's mountains should not be referred to as "the Sierras."
De Selby's attempts to change how people talk seldom succeed, but I became curious enough to check check out his claim.
"Sierra" is Spanish for a carpenter's saw. By extension, I suppose, it is also Spanish for a sawtooth mountain range in Spain.
"Nevada" means snowy.
"Sierra Nevada" means snowy, sawtooth range. Range is singular. The plural (if you saw two ranges) would be Sierras Nevada.
For years now I've watched Stephen Curry get knocked down by basketball players who can't guard him. The fouls have seldom been called. There are stats: no one gets hit more often than Curry, and many players shoot more free throws. Why? I don't know.
Caitlin Clark is now getting clobbered in the WNBA, although she is the league's biggest draw. You might think that the NBA and WNBA would protect the health of the players who sell tickets, but I remember Jabbar having to wear goggles to keep his eyes from getting scratched by the nails of defenders.
How to slow down a Jabbar or Curry or Clark? A finger in the eye.
I've read that defenders bounce Clark around because she is white and straight. But nearly 20% of the WNBA is white, and only 30% are out as LGBTQ.
I think the motivation is more likely to be envy. In her first year, Clark is setting rookie records. She is the number one draw. She's making a fortune in endorsements.
So knock her down, injure her, let the ticket sales slump. Less money for everyone.
s
One of my young relatives is about to start college. She has to choose between a single room or having a roommate. Everyone has told her to get a single, except me. I attended several state universities in the 1950s. There were no single rooms. I had roommates:
Dennis, who went on to become an editorial cartoonist for a newspaper chain.
Mike, who helped found the biology department at a state college.
Sam, who later played professional football in Canada. He was the first black person I met.
Jack, a baseball pitcher who, like me, became an English professor.
Makoto, a much older student from Japan who had volunteered as a kamikaze pilot during World War II. In formation before take-off, he'd been pulled back--because he was the only surviving son in his family.
In Westwood, Makoto obsessively watched "Victory at Sea," an American TV documentary on the Pacific war. During the war he'd seen only propaganda. He'd been certain Japan was winning.
It is fairly common for a family to trace itself back to one recent ancestor, often someone who defines the family's ethnic background inaccurately. In my family it was Grandma Mary. She was my mother's grandmother, not mine, but as a small child, I knew her.
Mary was my granddaughter's great-great-great grandmother.
Mary (Berry) Strickland's parents were born in County Westmeath. They found work in Scotland, where Mary was born. At 16 Mary came over on the boat, married Vet (Sylvester Streeter Strickland), raised children in DesMoines and ended up in Compton, California, which she called "the armpit of the universe."
Mary smoked a clay pipe. She drank coffee. She stood about five feet tall. Once my father asked her why Irish-American men were often quite large. "We left the runts at home," she told him.
Donald Trump has always been, as Stormy Daniels said, an orange turd. He's used enormous inherited wealth to block out orange reality by surrounding himself with paid yes-men and Euro-trash.
Wealth enabled Trump to make those allowed near him agree that he is handsome, witty, intelligent, successful, etc. The rich can, like Gatsby, make their own reality at times.
Trump eventually forced a corrupt and vulnerable political party to accept his terms. But these last few weeks he has been hunched in a drab New York courtroom, unable to leave. Not allowed to talk. He has been told to his face that he is an orange turd.
Trump's reaction could hardly be more primitive. He sits for hours with his eyes closed, pretending to sleep in a room where no one sleeps.
What if, facing more serious charges in the years ahead, he is sent to prison? Will he do time with his eyes shut?
When people ask about my army service, I tell them I spent years in the 4216th Mess Kit Repair Unit. We were part of the old brown boot or black boot army--I no longer remember which, although it used to matter.
We lived in wooden barracks back then, so we set a fire watch at night. That was no fun. To pass the long nights, we told one another yarns. You had to stay awake and look for fires. But you could smoke cigarettes and talk.
The unit had big old tomato cans hanging from interior posts. These cans were half filled with water. You were supposed to drop your cigarette butts in the cans or spit in them if you wanted. Then, if you were man enough, you could pick up a can and drink it in front of your friends. Hence, "A butt can a day keeps the doctor away."
Local people have been holding a 20-minute silent peace vigil since the first week of the Hamas-Israel war. They oppose killing strangers. Simple.
The group meets on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. next to the Living Peace Wall in Sebastopol. Everyone is welcome, but the group does not allow flags, signs or speeches.
In contrast, some but not all campus protesters seek justice. They wave Israeli or Palestinian flags. This is not a criticism. I, too, demand justice for others.
A new show in town is "Bodkin" on Netflix. It's a black comedy-mystery with a strong cast that includes Will Forte. Set in Ireland. A wolf keeps appearing. I will watch anything with a wolf in it.
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You probably know this, but a bluegrass group called The Dead South put out an astonishing video of "You Are My Sunshine," the ancient standard by Jimmy Davis.
You can see it on YouTube. Look up The Dead South.
They do the song right. It has always been an angry, bitter song.
"She spoke quickly, unspooling so many salacious details that the judge overseeing the case balked at some of the testimony, implying that it was gratuitously vulgar, and the defense unsuccessfully sought a mistrial."
--from The NY Times
For the first time under oath, Stormy Daniels described spanking President Trump with a magazine. Now 8 billion people know.
I understand that spanking used to be widespread among widespread English schoolboys. Spanking came to America in a movie called "The Quiet Man" in which John Wayne spanked Maureen O'Hara in Ireland, making it wholesome.
In Trump's favor, I see nothing wrong with erotic spanking if both parties consent and the magazine is no weightier than The New Republic.
I'm having a hard time making sense of the war in Gaza. It should end immediately. Today there is talk of a truce.
What makes Trump's current trial strange is his attitude toward the jury. He denounces its members (and the judge who will sentence him if the jury convicts him). No one in his right mind would attack his own jury. Trump, of course, is not in his right mind.
In any situation, Trump must see himself as the invulnerable winner. He has to hide from himself his frequent losses. To do that he explains away his losses in advance.
Trump begins each confrontation, including the ones he wins, by claiming that the other side is cheating. Then, in the end, he can tell himself that he has either won or been robbed of a win. He plans to die undefeated.
W
What matters most is whether America will elect in November a MAGA regime of Fascists. A MAGA takeover will shift the balance to dictatorships world-wide; consider a working coalition of China, Russia, America, Turkey, North Korea and India.
Young single-issue voters (who mean well) threaten not to vote for Biden. Maybe Taylor Swift and Bernie and some changes in policy can win them back.
also on FB
President Trump, a mare and David Pecker limp into a bar. The bartender says to the mare, "Why the long face?"
I watched Apeneck Greene denounce House Speaker Mike Johnson this morning as a traitor and so on.
Johnson had set up things so that all the members of the House could vote on funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, etc. He allowed the members to legislate. Four bills were passed by margins of about 3 to 1.
The Democratic Party leaders cooperated.
The House, representing the United States, finally got something done. I did not like all of it, but that is often the case.
I don't want to go overboard here. Johnson is a MAGA crank--but he saw his duty and did it. It will likely cost him his position. He has enraged the uninformed and brainless. But Johnson rose, used commonsense and did his job.
Wilmer Flores, a timely hitter, is my favorite SF Giants baseball player. He is named for his father, Wilmer Flores. Wilmer has two brothers, Wilmer Flores and Wilmer Flores. Recently Wilmer had his first son, Wilmer Flores.
Joe Biden seems unreasonably attached to Israel, a nation (like Assyria) invented by people concocting a shared fiction. These national fictions matter. Millions die to defend them.
The world's first superpower, the Assyrian empire, conquered the Middle East 34 centuries ago and kept going, They took Egypt, too. They raped, tortured, slaughtered whole cities. And for some reason this behavior never stopped happening among Samaritans, Babylonians, Israelites, Moslems, Christian crusaders, etc.
Consider ancient Jericho, where the walls fell down. The invaders murdered every man, woman, child and beast of burden. You can read about it--it's in the Book.
Netanyahu (or Ashurbanipal) today seems to be seeking new killing fields. I think Biden, behind the scene, may be trying to slow that search. But he should get out front. It's time.
also on FB
My wife, ever alert, took me to three doctors, and the third found my problem, CAP (community-acquired pneumonia). This villainous set of lung diseases consists of almost everything bad. In my case I developed a shattering cough. Pills exist to fix that. I am recovering. But be alert. Pneumonia is known as "the old man's friend."
The Nazis were devoted to science, particularly to a misreading of Darwin's theory of natural selection. They--and many educated people in the 1920s--believed that evolution had produced a superior race in Germany, Britain, etc.
Not content to let natural selection slowly prove them right or wrong, the Nazis set out to hurry the elimination of lesser humans by murdering them.
A hundred years ago, America's racism and eugenics were openly admired by Hitler.
In 1776 many of the Founding Fathers understood that slavery was an abomination and wrote to that effect in private letters (Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton). It also seemed obvious to the Founders that people of color were inferior in intelligence, morality and creativity, despite evidence to the contrary.
Decades later, Thaddeus Stevens was openly living with a black woman and Clarence King had secretly married one. Beliefs slowly changed. Yet we now have Trump commanding our stage, intent on making America white again, fending off the immigrants we need to keep our system going.
Trump's argument is that in countries of color, the governments have culled their worst genetic stock and sent it to our borders to join us and weaken us. He projects his mental illness in all directions. The man is mad.
President Biden last week sent a load of 2,000 pound bombs to Israel for use in Gaza. His claim is that Israel, stockpiled with about 90 nuclear weapons, needs our bombs for self defense.
About 55% of our voters disapprove of Israeli war crimes. They want the bombing of civilians in Gaza to stop. Biden should listen. If he loses the next election by stubbornly supporting a tiny, useless war, what price will Trump make the western world pay?
When were good things bitchin? About 1952.
In 2015 an unusual achievement was called "next level" or "one hundred."
These days you can show strong approval of something a friend just said by replying, "Word."
For example, someone might say, "Donald Trump is the Charles Manson of presidents."
"Word."
s
Most people these days seldom read newspapers or Doyle McManus, a columnist; so here is something McManus quoted from Trump about California.
Trump once said: "Rich people in Beverly Hills (are) only allowed a small amount of water when they take a shower. That's why rich people from Beverly Hills, generally speaking, don't smell so good."
In the California I grew up in, "rich people from Beverly Hills" was a euphemism for Jews.
Trump also claimed (falsely) that in California the state can "take children away from their parents and sterilize them."
s
Agent Orange seems to be temporarily out of the cash he needs for a huge bond. Maybe Saudi Arabia or Russia will bail him out, but his best bet might be to sell the GOP. He's sole owner of the party and there's no mortgage. Potential buyers include China, North Korea and Taylor Swift.
My father's family was Orange Irish. My grandfather pulled on an orange shirt on St. Patrick's Day and went to bars in San Francisco seeking trouble.
In America and Canada another name for his ethnicity was Scotch-Irish. This Anglo tribe was thought of as trash when they reached Canada and English America; they soon began producing Presidents from Jackson to Clinton.
The Scotch-Irish were from Ireland, and my father called himself Irish.
My mother was Catholic Irish. The Catholic part didn't stick--her mother had been excommunicated-- but her favorite relative was her pipe-smoking grandmother, Mary Berry, who had come over on the boat. The Catholic Irish Presidents have been Kennedy and Biden.
My father's mother arrived in California driving a covered wagon. My own mother arrived in California when she was six. Her mother had driven an automobile on dirt roads from Des Moines to Compton.
So when people ask what my ethnic background is, I tell them I'm Californian. And I once accidentally stepped on Audrey Hepburn's foot.
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Consider two questions. What is going on? What should I do?
We find out what is going on by studying music, physics, anthropology, language, astronomy, history, art, etc.
What we should do (the second question) is do the right thing. That can be obvious. For example, do not kill 15,000 children.
also on FB
I hope the Democrats don't make Orange Man the main focus of the next election. They should call him dangerous scum and move on to the main thing, how they can make our lives better.
They can restore Roe through legislation. They can restore aid for poor families and pay off loans for students. They can stand up to Fascism here and abroad. They can work on sexism and racism.
We need a positive future.
Trump's political success illustrates why Socrates preached that democracy can't work. Socrates argued that ordinary people are too ignorant to elect competent leaders.
For teaching authoritarianism to young people, Socrates was put on trial in Athens, a democracy. He faced a jury of 500 citizens. In the end he lost his case by a narrow margin. The verdict was that he could leave town or he could kill himself.
So, in support of authoritarianism, Socrates bumped himself off. By now you might be wondering how wise he really was.
History describes worse forms of government than democracy.
To be fair, I suspect Socrates lacked access to the big picture. He hadn't read much about the Bronze Age, other than one or two long poems about the Hittites and their allies. To him Troy was ancient history.
The Republican argument against D. A. Fani Willis goes like this. She indicted Donald Trump, once president of the USA, to create a cushy job for her lover, so he could afford to take her on fancy vacations.
To me that sounds unlikely.
But I am not a Republican. If I were, the motivation they ascribe to Wilson would seem normal, the usual moronic greed that dominates sinners.
s
"Ethnic studies is not a descriptive curriculum that speaks to various ethnic and racial groups' experiences. That is a bland form of multiculturalism. Instead the discipline is a critical analysis of the way power works in society," according to one educator, who argued that the Palestinian cause should be taught in American high schools.
I am unsure what the teacher meant by the Palestinian cause. He might have been taking the position of Hamas, which calls for an ethnic cleansing of Jews from the river to the sea. I did see one poll (?) that reported 51% of American students want Hamas to win the war against Israel.
Some historians say that the world's first superpower was Assyria, which conquered most of the Middle East and Egypt.
Assyria's last great leader, Ashurbanipal, compiled the world's first great library. When Assyria fell to the Medes (Iran), the library was covered with rubble. Thousands of years later it was dug up, giving us an ancient history of the area.
What is happening now is what happened in the time of the Assyrians. Atrocities. War crimes. The same rhetoric. The same tactics again and again for thousands of years. Deliberate wanton murder of civilians. Forced migrations. Entire cities erased (see Ukraine). We repeat and repeat. It is what we do.
In Alabama judges have declared that frozen embryos are children, giving embryos the same legal status as corporations. We can expect that in Alabama masturbation will soon mean life in prison and people convicted of using contraception will face the death penalty.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine is planning to create ten embryos to use as tax deductions and two more to keep in the glove box of her Ford, making her eligible to drive the HOV lanes on Alabama highways.
About 65 years ago, I played chess; so I drove into Santa Monica to see a mighty chess match between Bobby Fischer, perhaps the greatest ever, and Sammy Reshevsky. It took place in the ballroom of a giant hotel (I think), and during a break I headed for the men's room. When I entered it, I found myself alone with Bobby Fischer, who was using one of the ten urinals. He looked young, pale, slight, wearing a nice, loose suit.
I waited until he finished, then went to the same urinal and peed on top of his, making my mark.
LIFE AT 89
I decided to look for Bob. I hadn't seen him for 40 years. I wanted to talk with him, but I didn't have his address.
Bob was a truly good man, an intelligent, trusted old friend, but we'd parted ways one day in Buffalo when our wives had gotten into a discussion of different approaches to child rearing, and my wife had told his to fuck off.
On the 'net I discovered that Bob had sold his house twenty years ago. Then that he had died three years ago.
At my age searching for lost friends has been unrewarding.
gary1234goss@aol.com
Last week the Supreme Court, the customary collection of dimwits, crooks and weeping boofers, took up the question of whether a lunatic in the pay of Russia should be allowed to run for president and maybe win. Justice Elena Kagan, one of the better thinkers, asked if a single state, Colorado, should get to decide which man will be the next leader of the West. (Colorado has barred Donald Trump.)
Kagan was sitting in a room with Justice Clarence Thomas. A few years back, Thomas, a richly paid hireling of our big business oligarchy, had been part of a five to four court decision that had made George W. Bush president, although Bush had finished second in the voting, which proved close enough.
Without Thomas, Bush would not have won. So, in a sense, Thomas--one man--got to decide who would be president. That's what I call real power. And now Thomas may get to pick again.
It is my unfounded opinion that Agent Orange will not be elected president again. I expect him to be found guilty of ugly crimes and to be out on appeal next November.
But suppose Trump wins.
Batja sent me an article by Asli Aydintasbas, written for Politico. In it the author discusses how long it usually takes for an elected leader to grab total control of a nation's media, judiciary, city mayors, state leaders and related institutions. That is the process that installs a dictator in a democracy.
Aydintasbas measures how much time it took recent aspiring dictators to get that sort of thing done, and he concludes it usually takes a lot more than four years.
Orange's proposed attempts to make himself El Supremo of the world will encounter stonewall resistance from the mayor of Chicago, The NY Times, the governor of California, the courts, the nurses' union, the small town librarians, etc.
Remember, Orange is a fading fool, who tends to surround himself with incompetents.
Life with President Orange will be awful. He will do immense harm to billions of people. But he probably won't be able to make a dictatorship stick. He's too stupid, too confused, too disconnected from Western civ.
According to The NY Times, librarians in America's heartland are being threatened with violence by armed Christian hate groups because the libraries carry books about gays.
About new 150 bills in 35 states set punishments for librarians who don't remove books that the hate groups dislike.
The most banned book is GENDER QUEER, which I mention because I once met the book's author, a really nice young person and an expert setter of type.
All modern nations are hierarchical. One of the divisions is between males and females, with males privileged as the more intelligent and wiser caste. When something like that is universal, it almost has to be based on something tangible. It can't be just made up. But there is no convincing evidence that males are smarter than females.
The most thoughtful and fair male thinkers appear baffled by how men came to be privileged. I believe there is an easy way for us to find out why modern society is controlled by elite males. Ask a woman.
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Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding (Bob and Ray) were satirists for five decades. Mostly they did absurd interviews of one another in a deadpan manner. For a while they focused on an imaginary rival of the then-new International House of Pancakes.
Bob and Ray called their rival business the House of Toast. It was franchised widely over the state, ready to serve all varieties of breads, including pumpernickel, toasted lightly or darkly, well buttered, along with special prune-flavored shakes.
Bob and Ray's satire came to mind this morning when my wife forced me to enter a small breakfast place called the House of Bagels. Basically the same idea. The problem was that I did not want a bagel.
I do eat about 75 bagels a year. The best come from Grossman's in the Old Italian Section. But I was not in the mood. I had a cup of hot chocolate as my meal, and I thought about Bob and Ray.
Susan became unhappy when a talking head on TV used the term "discontentment." Why not say "discontent"?
Experts sometimes split hairs attempting to develop a slight difference between the two words. I think the two words mean the same thing: (not) content.
I'm fearless when it comes to agreeing with my wife and Shakespeare, who did not write: "Now is the winter of our discontentment."
The Constitution contains several emolument clauses. The Presidential version (art. II, § 1, cl. 7) states that: “The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation which shall neither be encreased (sic) nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”
President Trump violated this clause often, made millions of dollars, and nothing will be done about it. In effect, one of the emoluments clauses in our Constitution is dead because one nutter ignored it.
The Constitution is not real in the sense that my pocket knife is real. The Constitution is real only when we believe in it-- in the sense that Tinker Bell is only real when we believe in her.
We are Wendy.
The purpose of the Ineligibility Clause is to preserve the separation of powers and prevent executive influence on the legislature (and vice versa). The Clause thus prohibits federal officers from simultaneously serving as Members of Congress. Moreover, a Member of Congress may not hold an office if it was established during his tenure or if the emoluments of that office were increased during his tenure.
Officers Subject to the
Emoluments Clauses
In terms of the persons to whom they apply, the scope of the Domestic Emoluments Clause and the Ineligibility Clause is clear from the Constitution’s text: The Domestic Emoluments Clause applies to the President, and the Ineligibility Clause applies to Members of Congress.
The scope of the Foreign Emoluments Clause is less clear. By its terms, the Clause applies to any person holding an “Office of Profit or Trust under” the United States. The prevailing view of the Clause is that this language reaches only federal, and not state, officeholders. According to the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which has a developed body of opinions on the Foreign Emoluments Clause, offices “of profit” include those that receive a salary, while offices “of trust” are those that require discretion, experience, and skill.
There is disagreement, however, over whether elected federal officers, such as the President, are subject to the Foreign Emoluments Clause. Legal scholars have debated whether, as a matter of original public meaning, the Foreign Emoluments Clause reaches only appointed officers (and not elected officials). The OLC has generally presumed that the Foreign Emoluments Clause applies to the President, and the only district court to consider the issue (in District of Columbia v. Trump) came to the same conclusion.
The Meaning of the Term “Emolument”
Black’s Law Dictionary defines an “emolument” as an “advantage, profit, or gain received as a result of one’s employment or one’s holding of office.” There is significant debate as to precisely what constitutes an emolument within the meaning of the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses, particularly as to whether it includes private, arm’s-length market transactions. The only two district courts to decide this issue (in District of Columbia v. Trump and Blumenthal v. Trump) adopted a broad definition of “emolument” as reaching any benefit, gain, or advantage, including profits from private market transactions not arising from an office or employment, although higher courts have not weighed in on the issue.
Standing to Enforce an Alleged Violation of the Emoluments Clauses
Whether the Emoluments Clauses may be enforced through civil litigation is an open question. The doctrine of standing presents a significant limitation on the ability of public officials or private parties to seek judicial enforcement of
The Foreign Emoluments Clause (art. I, § 9, cl. 8): “[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
The Domestic Emoluments Clause (a.k.a. the Presidential Emoluments Clause) (art. II, § 1, cl. 7): “The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”
The Ineligibility Clause (art. I, § 6, cl. 2): “No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Off
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