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.
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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.
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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.
w
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.
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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
q
Long time standup legend Steven Wright is the Aristotle of sad, one-line jokes. Apparently he goes out for coffee and sits there and lets lines pop into his head. Then he writes them down. Here are two.
1. The earth is bipolar.
2. Jesus loves you because he doesn't know you.
One of my daughters observed that everyone she knew had at least two personalities except for me. I only had one. She saw this as a limitation, like a broken leg, and she was right.
Some of my family, for example, have second personalities reserved for social occasions. In society they bubble with enthusiasm, laugh hard at weak jokes and smile like "My Last Duchess."
I can barely manage a single dour face.
Why does this matter? Humans have become the dominant mammal on Earth for several reasons, but one major reason is our skills in socializing. We can work together. Even I managed to serve in an army.
It takes a patient tribe to raise and educate human children. We had to become extra-social.
This is a good day to remember the time I was walking across the campus at UCLA. My goal back then was a teaching credential. As I started down from the central square (Royce Hall), I came on a small group of students standing around MLK. I joined them, and he talked with us.
This must have been almost sixty years ago. I don't remember what he said, except that it was what you'd expect. And his immense presence.
According to my morning newspaper, Joe Biden "is walking the fine line between deterrence and escalation" in our conflict with the Houthis. But there "is no science to the calculation." Several people on TV referred to Biden's attack on the Houthi as "tit for tat."
In fact, Biden's retaliation escalated the conflict. It was tit for TAAAAAAAAT.
There is a famous method for avoiding escalation that goes back to the Old Testament, the Torah and the Code of Hammurabi.
This is how it would work. The Houthi might fire five missiles at random passing ships and miss. In retaliation, we would fire five missiles back at the Houthi and miss on purpose. In short, we try to duplicate exactly what they did.
The Houthis might next fire ten missiles and hit something. We would do the same.
The lunacy of this chain of automatic responses might become obvious even to leaders living in the Bronze Age, when Hammurabi's Code limited retaliation to a tooth for a tooth.
Ethnic cleansing is the mass killing or expulsion of an ethnic or religious group from a region by a different group. Genocide is the extermination or attempted extermination of a group. Expelling isn't the goal.
I'm trying to understand what is happening.
Ethnic cleansing and genocide are not the same thing, although they are related. (South Africa seems intent on changing what "genocide" means.)
The first recorded genocide occurred when the Israelites attacked the Canaanites at Jericho, where the walls came tumbling down. Men, women and children were put to the Bronze Age sword, along with their domestic animals. (If the ancient story is true.)
In the current ruinous war in West Asia, Hamas has vowed to cleanse the area of Jews, and some leaders in Israel have vowed to cleanse the area of Palestinians.
Our government can and should stop the war. It's a road to hell.
Okay, I guess I understand the claim by Trump and Nixon that when the President does something, it is legal. It's like when an American President picks his nose, what he finds on the end of his finger is creme brulee.
Tom Smothers attended my high school. I believe he started about the time I was leaving. People say that Tom stood in the hall and cracked jokes that weren't funny. Students avoided him.
Tom kept getting better and the Smothers brothers shook up the dusty comedy of their time, mostly with folk music and an improv version of sibling rivalry with a bit of political edge to their work.
Tom ended up settling in Sonoma County; so did my family. Our paths did not cross.
It now occurs to me that hardly anyone is funny in high school.
n
