Going to the movies

The last time my mother saw her father, she was six years old, waiting in front of a movie theater in Des Moines, Iowa.  It was 1918. A neighbor had taken her to see a film. 

Joe Farley, recently divorced, was standing in line ahead of them. He ignored them until the neighbor tapped him on the shoulder.  She said, “Damn it, Joe, say hello to your daughter.”

“Hello, Margaret, ” he said. 

At six Margaret began to suspect, like Zhuangzi, that life goes better if you do not force things. But she didn’t fully grasp what this entailed until she reached the edge of old age. 

While I was in college at UCLA, Joe Farley came to California to visit relatives. I asked my mother if she  planned to look him up during his visit. 

“No,” she said.  “If the son-of-a-bitch wants to meet me, he knows where I live.”  

Begging Questions

Almost daily I hear hosts on TV incorrectly using a term from philosophy: "begs the question." I'm not sure I have mastered the correct usage, but I will try to explain.

Suppose I make the following argument. "Water seeks its own level. The Pacific and Atlantic oceans are well connected, so sea level must be the same in both places." 

As it happens, sea level is frequently measured by scientists working in the Pacific and Atlantic, and the level in the Pacific is unmistakably higher by four to eight inches. 

Water does seek its own level, but other factors matter. Gravity isn't uniform.  Some water is saltier and denser.  Currents and winds push water into piles. The Earth's rotation swings oceans around.

In my argument, I asked you to accept a flawed premise.  I begged the question. 

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Award

A few weeks ago, my wife and I tried to watch the movie that won the Academy Award for best picture. After about 15 minutes we turned it off in order to watch anything else. So I can't critique the film, except to say that I thought the opening reeked of falsity on every level.  So why did it win  awards? 

I would like to know. I must have missed something.

How to Lose

When I was in high school 75 years ago, I was taught that Robert E. Lee had been a brilliant general, while U. S. Grant had been a bumbler who prevailed only because he had a large army. 

Today historians are apt to say that Robert E.  Lee enjoyed two or three brilliant if rash tactical victories early in the Civil War. Then he invaded the North twice (really bad strategy) and got clobbered, and then he spent the rest of the war skillfully retreating from Grant while the Army of Northern Virginia dwindled to nothing.  

With Lincoln, Sherman snd Sheridan, Grant planned to reduce his opponent to nothing at all. 

Grant used his assets: the railroads, the telegraph, a constant stream of new recruits, his ability to write clear, definite orders, etc.  

In short, Grant started with a winning strategy, employing five Union armies at once.  Something like Eisenhower in World War Two. Not like Trump's Iran war.  Trump has no strategy. 

Imagine starting a war without a strategy.  Trump is an idiot. 

1, 2, 3,

 Be the first one in your block

To come home in a box

--Country Joe

Schroedinger's War

I heard Catherine Rampell use the term "Schroedinger's War". She was talking about the way MAGAs refer to our savaging of Iran.  MAGAs call what is happening there a war and (at the same time) insist that it is not a war. 

The purpose of insisting that we are at war and we are not at war (at the same time) is to illustrate a point in quantum mechanics and, no, it isn't. 

Watching Trump stagger from one diction error to another demonstrates how much his brain has turned into fried noodles.

("Shroedinger's cat" is a famous physics word problem about a cat that is alive and dead at the same time.)

Tree Pollen

I'm allergic to tree pollen. Right now I am coughing like Hank Williams in the Tower of Song.  

Modern War

 A modern war is one in which you hope that both sides lose.

What?

El Supremo has, at last, found his calling: making Netanyahu's dreams come true. 

Also, destroying Iran distracts from El Supremo's history of pedophilia. 

But the media ignore the fact that the Saudis, Iran's hated rival for power in West Asia, gave whispering Jared Kushner two billion dollars to do what?

Improv War

In a war El Supremo improvises and does whatever comes to mind. Soon he loses interest. He makes up an imaginary outcome. In his rotting mind the inhabitants of the country he is crushing love him so much that they overthrow themselves. They erect a giant marble bust of his head. They rename their country for him.  They beg him to have sex with their children. 

Death in Iran

 As evidence begins to emerge of our president's pedophilia, he has reacted by starting a war with Iran. Indivisible will be protesting Trump's war at five today in Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa in Sonoma County.

Iran

 How many Iranians must die because El Supremo is a pedophile?

Two Amniotes

 I see that Pakistan has declared war against Afghanistan. Both sides are descended from amniotes, so it looks like one amniote against another. Not good. I will pull on my peace necklace, a present from kin. 

Meanwhile El Supremo of the USA seems about to declare war on Iran. This means  I will have to buy another necklace and wear two at once. 

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 I decided to look for Bob N.  I hadn't seen him for 40 years.  I wanted to talk, but  I no longer had his home address. I managed to find it on the Internet.

Bob was an intelligent, trusted old friend. 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. 

Through the university where he had worked, I learned that Bob had sold his house twenty years ago. I don’t know where he went next. And he died three years ago.

Move On

 Move On is asking people to not watch Donald Trump's state of the union speech. The goal is to gift this evil moron with bad ratings. 

Bad ratings make Trump wet himself. 

We can see the amusing parts of Trump's string of lies later on YouTube and late night comedy shows. 

Amniote

This week I tried to find out which came first, the dinosaur or the mammal. I fell short. 

The easy answer to the question is that no one knows which came first; Dinosaurs and tiny mammals developed at about the same time.  But new questions developed.

Along the way I learned that dinosaurs, warm blooded creatures, are classified as reptiles, which are cold blooded by definition. (The several different ways in which we sort animals into groups are "by definition.")

Apparently biologists have a rule, which is that an animal is the same thing as its ancestors. The ancestors of dinosaurs are reptiles, so dinosaurs are reptiles. 

Mammals are not descended from reptiles but from an earlier life form called amniotes. (Reptiles also developed from amniotes.) 

Birds, as you know, descended from dinosaurs, so birds are dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs are reptiles, so birds are reptiles, according to some but not all biologists. 

You and I, by this logic, are amniotes, parts of the amniote glade. 

Humans invent categories that we find useful. That can take us down many forking paths.

Who Was Jeffrey Epstein?

We know who Trump is, but who was Epstein?

According to a NY Times columnist,  Epstein grew up on Coney Island, where he learned how to groom teenage girls for sex and rich men for money. 

What Epstein discovered is that many billionaires are, like Elon Musk or the Great Gatsby, ruthless dorks. Many, but not all, are charmless and friendless, unable to relate to others. 

The lame rich had expected that enormous wealth would automatically gain them tickets to fantastic parties staffed by topless teenagers. Parties that might make up for the turndowns in high school. 

But no one invited them to wild parties. Girls, aside from hungry EuroTrash, wouldn't look at these lame old goats. 

Epstein. grooming girls, made the empty dreams of wrinkly rich men come true, in return for financial favors, until his time ran out. 

 

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Eating at the Hospital

Susan is back from a labyrinthian local hospital of countless forking corridors. She is okay.

The doctors kept on testing her, so she missed four meals in a row. Nothing by mouth.

I tried to feed myself. The hospital cafeteria food was inadequate. I bought two meals there and threw both in a trash can. 

I'm not choosy. I like canned hash. But everything I chewed in that cafeteria proved inedible except for a croissant. In most hospital food deserts, you can at least buy a banana or an apple. No such luck this time. 

Bison

The next No Kings Day is March 28.

I'm 91.  I've known four friends who had polio, but I never got it.

Sometimes I wear a black Antifa tee-shirt. My plan is to pull it on and walk in the street, leaning on a blackthorn.  

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Where the Hell is Barack Obama?

Where is George W. Bush? Has he heard what happened to Good and Pretti? 

Bush doesn't like fascism. He may not be smart or informed, but he's not a MAGA racist. Some voters like him. If he speaks up, he might make a difference.. 

Michael Wolf recently asked, "Where the hell is Barack Obama? "

Obama is the Gregory Peck of political actors. The minute Peck appeared on screen, you knew he was the protagonist. You didn't need exposition or a back story. He was what he was: tall, good jaw, trustworthy. 

Something has happened. The people of Minnesota, afraid of organized federal killers,  went into the street anyway. Political leaders have people they can follow. 

 

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I've Had It

This morning I blundered across a podcast on YouTube called "I've Had It." I suspect that it is big and famous.

Two salty women run  it. Their goal is to reach ordinary folks by talking like working people who cuss a lot. They regard the Democratic leadership as namby-pamby weaklings who need spine transplants. They don't like the oligarchy.   

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Explaining Trump

This morning I turned on the TV and saw a woman asking why on earth does Donald Trump want to invade Greenland? An invasion makes no sense.

In what universe does this woman live? Trump is nuts. That's why this ridiculous, prancing oaf does what he does.  

Demonstration

 

Time

Saturday, January 17

4 – 6pm PST

Location

Old Courthouse Square

3rd Street & Santa Rosa Avenue

Santa Rosa, CA 95404

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About this event

No War! No ICE!

Join Indivisible Sonoma County, coalition partners, and your neighbors for a Global Day of Action on January 17, at 4 pm.

We cannot support blood for oil, illegal coups, or another forever war.This president’s imperial ambitions represent a global threat as he pushes us closer to another world war. 

Nor can we sit idly by while an American city is terrorized by rogue bands of vicious agents.

Sonoma County residents who refuse to tolerate the Trump administration’s brazen attacks both at home and abroad are coming together for the No War! No ICE! Global Day of Action on Saturday January 17, at 4 pm.

There will be a program with live music and speakers, including congressional candidates: Audrey Denney, Eric Jones, Mike McGuire, Trevor Merrell, Mike Thompson, and Kyle Wilson.

New Goals

 Trump's new goal is to serve as acting president of Greenland. Also to be acknowledged as the true author of the novels of Willa Cather. 

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Execution

When a paramilitary force, the leader's thug army, executes a woman in the middle of the street in the middle of a crowd, that is fascism. 

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Denationalized

Trump has threatened to denationalize Rosie O'Donnell, born in New York. Experts have told us that it is not legally possible to denationalize  American citizens born in this country. They are protected by the 14th Amendment, signed by President Grant. 

Yet Trump has denationalized Renee Nicole Good. She won't be voting in 2026. 

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Trump's Plan

I watched two Canadian analysts discussing Trump's plans. They took turns pointing out that his decisions would not produce the goals he had set out etc. They found him baffling. We often see the same sort of careful analyses from American TV experts.  

Trump has no plan. He's nuts.

When Trump does, when not falling asleep on camera,  is run in circles, scream and shout and throw excrement in the air. He does have a goal, which is to be the center of attention every night at the dinner hour. 

Run

Trump is not going "to run" Venezuela. He will run his mouth. He'll spout 20 hours a day on the shifting topics dementia flashes up his creaking  spinal cord. 

His goal: to alter reality by blabbering.

Lost in the Excitement

The Supreme Court recently required President Trump to turn in to them vast numbers of financial records. He cannot appeal because there is no higher court. His goose may be cooked. One more reason to invade Venezuela.