Obama's Style

President Obama held a rare news conference today, and as I watched I became aware of the obvious. His style in a news conference is that of a friendly and sober professor conducting a class discussion. He knows a lot more about the topics than the students. The students make absurd comments and ask inane questions. He pretends that the comments and questions are adult and reasonable, and he responds to them seriously (while steering the talk to the points he is attempting to convey). He's serious. He pauses at times to shift what he has to say into less colorful language. He's respectful where no respect has been earned. That's the way to go.

An awesome level of discussion

On the beach at Avenue C in Redondo, I overheard three young men discussing gun control. One was an NRA member; another was a liberal; and the third was a dude holding a volleyball.

Dude: Why aren't these mass killers using hand grenades? That's lots faster.

Liberal: Hand grenades have been banned.  You can't buy them. 

NRA: What? When? Look, guys, you can't ban guns and live free. The second amendment was written by our representatives to guarantee that each of us has the right to shoot our representatives.

Liberal: Wrong. The second amendment is about militias. It guarantees the militia's right to keep and bear arms.

Dude: They amended the Constitution to grant the army the right to bear arms? Awesome, man. A stroke of genius. 





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Richard Blanco

The inaugural committee has picked as its inaugural poet Richard Blanco, a gay Latino. That's two firsts. (This week the TV Left has become hysterical in unison because Obama has picked several straight white males to serve in his administration.) The Motion Picture Academy has nominated for best film a movie that (apparently) justifies torture of prisoners. I'm skipping the film. And it has nominated Robert DeNiro for his role in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, which I did see. DeNiro was so over-the-top and awful that I would close my eyes and just wait for him to exit the scene. He came close to ruining a good movie. I blame the writer, but the performance was really really really bad.

Diamond Lane

A friend told me this story, which she said had appeared in the SF Chronicle. A man had legally incorporated his family. He then drove in carpool  lanes, which require two people in the vehicle, for several months with the incorporation papers riding shotgun in the front passenger seat. Finally he was stopped by the police and cited, although he carefully explained that there were two legal persons in the automobile. The case is pending. Someone else chimed in that in personhood states, a pregnant woman was two persons--wasn't she free to drive in diamond lanes? Let's hope that someone takes that question to our ridiculous Supreme Court.

Zagat

Apparently Zagat has rated Healdsburg's tasty foods in the top 20 worldwide. As a wine destination it ranks second to Tuscany. That's interesting--the Sonoma wineries reflect the fact that the area became home for many Italian immigrants.  I suppose there are 200 wineries, and most have Italian names.

New York as Dog

I caught the middle of a conversation by two men, probably Canadians, on the van radio. They were talking about asymmetrical relationships. For example, the relationship between a woman and her dog is asymmetrical. The woman has many interests: cooking, politics, her dog, literature, movies, friends, relatives, jogging, etc.  The dog is fixated on her. She has his devoted attention; his eyes, his nose, his ears are tuned in on her most of the time. She is much more important to him than he is to her.  Canada, they said, joking, is America's dog.

I've come up with another example, the American Revolution. Great Britain was engaged in a world war, fighting all over the globe. They cared about their American colonies, but that was a small sideshow. Americans were fixated on their cause. We know the result of this asymmetry. (The Vietnam War was a similar example.)

My family has been in California for many generations, but, when young, my wife and I moved to New York for graduate school and ended up on Long Island, where we were employed for about 35 years. I liked it a lot. While there I heard and read numberless times about the rivalry between New York and California. I noted at the time that I had never once heard Californians mention this rivalry--or talk about New York at all, except for one young woman I dated who planned to visit New York to improve her wardrobe.  Since moving back to California 12 years ago,  I haven't heard a word about the rivalry or come across any interest in New York. Nada. I do remember one comment made by a friend of mine at UCLA in the 1950s when someone asked him if he wanted to visit New York. "What for?" he asked. "Ethel Merman sings there."

I'm Not As Paranoid As Oliver Stone On Crack

I usually miss seeing Chris Hayes on MSNBC. In California he's on from 5-7 AM on Saturday and Sunday, I did catch the last 20 minutes today, and I have to retract my stated belief that you never see anyone from the left on commercial TV. Try Sunday morning before dawn. 

In any case, Hayes had four or five guests, including the raddled Oliver Stone, and Hayes closed the program with his usual (interesting) schtick: he asks each guest what he or she knows today that he or she did not know last week. This time around each guest obliged by denouncing President Obama in a different way. Keep in mind that this was the week in which Obama got the first tax raise on millionaires in a generation and pulled us back from the "fiscal cliff" (saving the world economy from a massive depression). Not a positive word for the Democrat. 

I think Oliver Stone compared Obama unfavorably to Stalin, but I might be jumping to conclusions. Anyway, I'm kind of a fringe guy myself--for eleven years I've been attending a peace vigil once a week (why not). ) Hayes isn't just Left. He's fringe, man. People suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome should look Hayes up.

The Legacy Term

This morning I heard some TV blabbers talking about the President's need to turn his second term into his "legacy term."  I had to agree. For one thing, in his first term Obama did not always act exactly the way I wanted. I voted for him. He should have done what I wanted, but instead he did what some other people wanted. He even attempted certain things that people who voted against him wanted, claiming he represented them, too. Summing up,  in his first term all that President Obama did was avert a worldwide depression, found medical care for nearly every American who lacked it, and end the balmy war against Iraq. Piffling stuff. He'd better make the next four years count, or history will rank him below James Buchanan. 

Ma Barker Jr. High

About ten years ago my wife and I were driving south of Oakland and came upon a small building with a sign on it that told us it was THE TIBURCIO VASQUEZ PUBLIC HEALTH CLINIC. I burst out laughing, which I admit right here was an example of cultural insensitivity. 

For those unfamiliar with California history, Tiburcio Vasquez was a bandit who operated from around 1852 to 1874, when he was caught, tried for the murder of three innocent bystanders during a robbery, and hanged after Governor Romualdo Pacheco denied him clemency. Whether Vasquez actually shot the bystanders or someone else in his gang shot them is unclear. 

Vasquez was colorful, charming and much too successful with Latinas, which troubled their husbands and fathers and probably led to his final capture. Even before his death Vasquez had become a folk hero of the sort familiar to Americans, who made giants out of Jesse James, Sam Bass, John Dillinger, mafia dons and so on. "They stole from the rich and gave to the poor." Vasquez portrayed himself as an avenging revolutionary figure as he roamed from Sonoma County to Los Angeles holding up stores in small towns.

There is no doubt of the legitimacy of the anger among the original Californios, who were cheated and very badly treated when California was taken from them by force.

Today I read in the paper that an elementary school in East Salinas, a neighborhood known for gang activities, has been named by its school board for Tiburcio Vasquez. They did this to honor our nation's Latino heritage. I support this, of course, and I suggest that to honor strong independent women, we should build a Ma Barker Junior High. She was colorful. A Machine Gun Kelly High School might signal our support for innovative technologies.