Spitting on Lindsey Graham

Senator Lindsey Graham complained recently that people are spitting on him. That's just wrong.  It aroused my compassion, certainly, but when I looked into the matter, no one near Graham had damp lips. He has presented no spitting evidence to date. He's been accused of lying. Also, why is he named "Lindsey"?

(This reminds me of Tucker Carlson's complaint that when he eats in a restaurant, other customers call out things like "Fuck you, Tucker," which ruins his meals of fried butterfly antennae. His response is to eat our of a can at home. Also, why is he named "Tucker"?) 

In my high school, we had  a potato-shaped vice-principal who walked the halls at every recess looking for potential truants,  shouting, "Clear the halls!" He had a broad torso and a tweed suit,  and some scholars would walk along close behind him and silently spit on the back of his coat. I'm just saying that certain lads developed certain skills.

I'd hate for anyone to think Lindsay Graham is a liar, so I am volunteering to spit in his face, thus proving his complaint well founded. Also, when he dies, I volunteer to pee on his grave. 

How to Fight

The Saudis have concluded their investigation and announced that Jamal Khashoggi entered their consulate in Turkey and started a fist fight with 14 security experts,  one of whom had a bone saw. As it turns out, my family has a history of fist fights that goes back more than one hundred years, and here are some maxims my family taught me that Khashoggi should have known.

1. Always throw the first punch. Many fights consist of one punch. 

2. Never punch a guy with a bone saw.

That must be why, when I look back on the more than ten fist fights that are part of our lore, including my last effort at 67, which must be the age record in my family, not one of us has been dismembered once the fight ended. 

It's common sense.

A Stunning Movie

Last week I stumbled across what might be the best movie made in Spain, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE. I’ll guess that students of film know all about it and studied it and so on, but my circle has not heard of it. I won’t tell the story of the movie, but I suggest that you find a copy and view it.

The film is set in Fascist Spain in 1940 in a lonely village surrounded by empty fields. It’s about a family in which the the father is a poet and a beekeeper. The beehive is there to represent the dull decadence of a moribund society where individuals mean nothing and don’t connect and nothing changes. This is a simple, plain and gorgeous movie. Two little sisters see the weekly town movie, FRANKENSTEIN  and set off through empty fields to find the monster. In contrast to the beehive is the inner life of a six-year-old, played by Ana Torrent, whose dreams, hallucinations and creativity dominate a haunted landscape marked by forboding. 

Comment on Voting (revised)

Some friends have asked me to comment on voting, so I will. Do not take me seriously.

California has a jungle primary in which the top two candidates go on to the general election. Sometimes that results in two Democrats running against each other.

The big contest in California is for the senate seat, where two Democrats are on the ballot, incumbent Dianne Feinstein vs. State Senator Kevin de Leon. I voted for de Leon in the primary. He’s to the left of Feinstein. But de Leon has run a misleading and unscrupulous campaign, so I am switching to Feinstein. I’m fed up with political nonsense.

In candidate races where there is a Democrat and a Rapepublican, I will vote for the Democrat. (No third party candidate survived the primary.) In the races where two Democrats face each other, I will vote for Hernandez for  Lt. Governor because he is experienced. For State Senator I will vote for Mike McGuire, the incumbent. He’s a skilled, professional progressive I once knew. As usual I know nothing about any of the judges up for election.

I will vote for Jim Wood to return to the assembly because he is rational, a scientist and progressive enough, although I may disagree with him on some issues. 

When it comes to the propositions I look at who is for them and who is against. If the proposition is supported by The Richey Rich Taxpayers To Hell With The Poor Association, Hooray for Greed, I know what to do. If the proposition is supported by the nurses union, I’m inclined to agree. If I’m conflicted I vote no, on the grounds that the state legislators should decided the matter—that’s what we pay them to do. 

Prop 1: Yes.

Prop 2: Yes.

Prop 3:Yes.

Prop 4:  Yes

Prop 5: No

Prop 6: No

Prop 7: Yes

Prop 8: Yes

Prop 9: This was the one designed to divide the state into three parts, giving us six senators. It was removed from the ballot.

Prop 10: Yes

Prop 11: No

Prop 12: Yes

Why vote at all? That is a fair question. If you live in a state and county that is always won by the same party, your vote for or against that party will change nothing. I live in such a place, a Democratic county and state. When we retired my wife specified that we move to a place where Rapepublicans lose. My voting here has no practical value, but it says that I remain committed to developing a democracy sometime in the distant future. 

Please pay no attention to any of the above.

My Father-in-law and Frederick Douglass

My father-in-law told jokes about my kind (the Irish) and how they were drunken oafs and so on.  When we named one of our daughters Maggie, he objected, saying it was a servant's name. In nearly all ways he had sound working class, progressive politics, and this Irish thing was just a minor hitch. It didn't bother me, because I was raised to believe that there were only two kinds of people, the Irish and those who wished they were Irish.

The early women's suffrage and black suffrage movements, it seems, had the same hitch, and that's probably where my father-in-law got it.  They argued that it made no sense to allow drunken, ignorant Irish oafs to vote while denying suffrage to dignified men of color or good women. Douglass did hold that suffrage for men of color was more crucial than votes for women, because when women protested for the vote, they were seldom lynched or burned alive. 

Frederick Douglass made after- dinner jokes about the Irish, and this country has not produced a greater man than Douglass. 

Douglass embodied both of the main bodies of black political thought. He was a pragmatist who understood that people of color were a minority who need majority support. He worked with Lincoln and Grant. He also militantly advocated violence when (and only when) it would work (the Civil War, in which one of his sons fought). Douglass was Malcolm  X and King combined. Yet, like us, he was imperfect.

The World's Oldest Babysitter

A year ago a city wild fire swept into Santa Rosa, a fire driven by huge winds throwing sparks over the city and county. About 40 people died. The morning it started, my wife called me from San Francisco at about 6 AM and said that she smelled smoke. San Francisco is 60 miles to the south. So I got up in the dark and went outside and saw that the mountain east of us had turned red. 

We're in a huge apartment complex, but the only people we knew were a young couple from Italy with a small daughter. I was a little worried about them not knowing what to do, so I knocked on their door and told them what was happening. We all had to leave, but our place did not burn, just lost its electricity etc. 

Anyway, last night I was home alone. My wife was staying with a friend who is recovering from a hip replacement. The young Italian woman knocked on our door and told me that she had to go to a parent-teacher's conference, and her babysitter had canceled. She asked if I would sit with Sophia, her three-year-old. This came as a considerable surprise. Sophia does like me, for no good reason, and I said yes. But how strange. Here I was, an 83 year old, suddenly with a 3 year old to entertain for 90 minutes. We did fine. I found SpongeBob on the TV, and when Sophia said she wanted to draw, I came up with some printer paper and pens, and she did about ten portraits of her mother and several of her father. She found a collection of rubbery plastic bugs my wife has, so I gave her one bug and told her she could use it to scare her mother. Some music came on the TV; Sophia did some dancing. When her mother returned from the meeting, Sophia immediately began chasing her around with the fake bug and so on. Sophia is very lively and self-assured (and bilingual).

The Intolerant Left

My radio is a sap.

I heard on the radio recently that the Left demands tolerance but is itself intolerant of Nazis, racists, misogynists, homophobes and their supporters. What the Left should be doing, the radio told me, is respect differences and welcome with a smile the Nazis, racists, misogynists, homophobes and their supporters. How else, the radio asks, can the Left  ever win an election?

In short, the message is that when confronting evil, be polite. Anything less is gross and not expedient. Remember, if you insult a misogynist, he may not vote for you (if he figures out what you meant).

Lock Him Up

This is how President Spanky got rich, as a kind woman explained it to me.

Fred Trump, Spanky’s father, was enormously rich; his problem was how to pass hundreds of millions of dollars to each of his children without paying inheritance taxes, allegedly.

All the figures below I just made up to illustrate the trickery.

The family invented a shell company, which I will call SHELL. The job of SHELL was to purchase the items Fred Trump needed to run his real estate empire. Fred was a builder, so maybe he needed 100 stoves for 100 apartments. SHELL would buy the 100 stoves at $1,000 each. Then SHELL would sell them to Fred Trump for $100,000 each. The profit to SHELL was $99,000 per stove. This money would be divided among the owners of SHELL, the Trump children (including Donald). The children would then use the cash to buy into various safe investments that to this day feed them millions of dollars each week.

This tax fraud and investment plan was and remains the source of Spanky’s money. It explains how a balmy dope has remained rich while losing money on gambling casinos, which is nearly impossible to do, they tell me.  

Beers for Brett

Today the Republicans will be swearing in The Boofer for the second time in four days as a Supreme Court Justice. I guess the first time didn't take. Or maybe the Republicans love rubbing this degenerate in the faces of America's women. It felt so good the first time, and it solidifies the Mitch McConnell vote. All that they need now is to slip something into beer that will render white women unconscious and compliant and keep the snappy old power-freaks in charge.