Your Money Or Your Life

Climate change is making parts of the USA less safe. But which parts? Which sections of the nation will suffer most from humid heat, storms, hurricanes, floods, etc? 

To answer that question, experts ask which states are gaining population. Americans are moving to the worst possible climate places, mostly the Gulf Coast of the USA, including Florida and Texas. Many voters are drawn to regions where life is cheaper in every way and cognitive inadequacy goes unnoticed. 

People are leaving overpopulated areas with mild climates like San Francisco and Sonoma County. Too expensive.

 

 

   

 

Paperclips

John Roberts (Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court) and Justice Clarence Thomas are, reporters tell us, afloat in the river of cash being funneled to their wives by billionaires. In short, Roberts and Thomas are as bent as paperclips.

Both men and their wives got rich thanks to the old Republican Party, which was saner but even more corrupt than the bug-headed MAGA types. 

I've seen a Democratic senator defending the right of the Supreme Court to not regulate itself.  Most likely the Democrat is defending his own wife, who is also helping herself at some rich dude's ATM. 

There are around 800 billionaires in America. If one billionaire gave every spouse in the senate a million dollars, he would still have at least 900 million dollars left. And his oil field investments would make up the loss. 

Can we have billionaires and a democracy at the same time? 

 

White House Plumbers

WHITE HOUSE PLUMBERS, an HBO series, has aired its first episode, and it is funny. The fictional E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, incompetent bunglers, are molded from the stuff that made Laurel and Hardy legends.  

At the time we did not find Hunt and Liddy amusing, but 50 safe years later they have become ineptly hilarious. And you can bet that many years from now Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis will be major roles in a comedy series, two squabbling goons unable to find their own butts with both hands. 

Nikki Haley's Goal

Yesterday politician Ms. Nikki Haley told us that if we re-elect Joe Biden, he will likely die before finishing his second  term. Her unspoken point was that if President Biden dies in office, he will be replaced by a woman of color! And what could be worse.

Susan pointed out that Nikki, a woman of color, is running for President to keep a woman of color from becoming President. 

Gender Queer

Two nights back Susan and I went with Marty Renault to attend a tribute to her late husband, Dennis Renault, the former editorial cartoonist for the McClatchy newspaper chain. This was a small event made up largely of people devoted to artistic printing, setting type by hand. Dennis, once my roommate at UCLA, had owned an ancient press, and he had printed wonderful items that people appreciated. 

About 30 people showed up at North Bay Letterpress Art in Sebastopol.,One of the informal speakers was a printer named Maia Kobabe, author of GENDER QUEER. She was quite interesting. She told us about her work at the printshop and about how GENDER QUEER had been something of a success until attacks on the book by crackpots had propelled it into a major event.

This morning I read that the American Library Association has named GENDER QUEER as the most banned book of the year. Susan and I feel like we've  met royalty. 

Melodrama

My local newspaper had a subhead this morning that read "A tragic moment in some ways." It referred to the arrest of Donald Trump for 34 of his minor crimes.

A tragedy is about the downfall of a good person, usually someone of importance. He's brought down by a personal failing and circumstances he can't defeat. In a sense a tragedy teaches us a truth: even the best among us is imperfect and faces death.  

The downfall of a shitty crook is not a tragedy. It's melodrama. I don't feel fear and pity for Trump. The candle of the wicked shall be put out. With pleasure. 

Falling

I am amazed by how fast I fall. My bike flips or I step in a hole, and I am flat on the ground before I can blink. Then comes the shock of pain, which usually lasts only, say,  5 or 10 minutes. After that I get up, and I'm okay. (I did break my ankle once, so I now employ, while walking, a half-numb foot that cants a little to the right.) 

When you get old, you start falling. I had a friend named Lucy who reached 100; she fell and lay on her kitchen floor for 14 hours. 

When I got into my 80s I began to fall from time to time. And then my wife fell. But we are fine. 

(Report from Old Age)

Talking Points

I sometimes wonder what our elected officials are doing in committees, making good deals behind the scenes, I hope. 

I did read that Gov. Newsom is pushing to modernize how California treats its mentally ill. He'd like to provide more hospital beds and treatments, something the state has needed since the day that Ronald Reagan forwarded the mentally ill into local communities to be homeless.

Newsom also wants to turn San Quentin, with the nation's longest death row, into a rehab and education facility for prisoners. 

We can solve problems. Or we can keep problems as political talking points.  It's a choice.

Authentic

In a loose sense, an authentic person is one who lives up to her own belief system. Putin is an authentic fascist, although he doesn't know it. Trump is an authentic narcissist, although he doesn't know it. Bernie is an authentic democratic socialist, and he does know it.  

I don't think authenticity is rare. We respond to it favorably much of the time. People who are painfully inauthentic (DeSantis, Nixon, Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley, Pence, Marco Rubio) may or may not attract enemies, but their friends don't like them (Oscar Wilde). 

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