Someone Large

Democrats--I speak as an independent--might want to learn more about the Americans who vote intermittently. About 20% of our people vote only in presidential elections. They skip most chances to participate in politics. 

These people tend to be low-information and low interest voters.   

Bigger turnouts in presidential elections used to favor Democrats. In 1940 the Democrats got their fair share of swing voters, including racists. But after Nixon's southern strategy, most of the cognitively-impaired Democrats shifted to the Republican Party. Today a big  turnout of intermittent voters helps Republicans in swing states.  That is fact.

That is how Trump won. Fact: he took the intermittent voters in swing states.

Also, in the last election immigrants (underprepared new citizens) favored Trump. 

In selecting their next candidates and platform, the Democrats might want to consider exactly how they can win the votes of immigrants, young white males and voters with cognitive deficits. Winning these votes cannot be achieved with issues. Uninterested people do not care about issues. Their votes spring from primitive urges. 

When I was in basic training, the sergeant had to pick a leader for our squad. He chose the largest recruit in the room, a quiet young man with no  interest or skill in leading.

That isn't news. Swing voters nearly always choose the candidate with the most height and roundest belly. So, Democrats, nominate a winner. 

War

As you know, last week Israel attacked Iran, starting a war. 

I believe in self-defense, which is why I volunteered to serve in the American army (long ago, before Vietnam). I oppose wars of aggression, where one nation attacks another. For me (and the UN Charter) that is a basic principle.

What struck me today is the way MSNBC has responded. This morning I watched a series of experts brought on to discuss the war; every one of them strongly supported starting the new war in which hundreds have already been killed. 

Maybe this afternoon MSNBC will try to do the right thing.  Or maybe not. 

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The System

When millions of Americans went into the streets to protest against our current leaders and system, the national media were unimpressed. The media gave the protests a minute or two this morning, but their focus was on five other things.

The national media are part of the problem, part of a system that restricts attention to a few Ivy Leaguers in Washington and New York. In their view, the rest of the nation consists of white trash and worse. If everyone in Eugene went on a hunger strike and died, the national media might not notice. 

Many Americans are fed up with the Namby Pamby Party and the Raving Looney Party, but those sharing power aren't listening. 

In Old L.A.

El Supremo, our dictator, was troubled by news about his breakup with fellow fascist Elon Musk and by the trouble his budget bill was having. 

About 600 people in Los Angeles demonstrated against ICE. About 1200 police officers responded, but El Supremo saw his chance to change the subject. He sent  in the National Guard and then the marines. What's next, NATO?

A Cheaper War

So far the United States has sent 31 extremely expensive Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Nine have been destroyed, ten have been abandoned (?) and one was captured. Eleven have been moved to places safe from Russia's $800 drones. 

Last week the Ukrainians used cheap drones and some missiles to take out about a third of Russia's two-billion-dollars-each bombers. 

The Ukraine war is almost a stalemate, with both sides relying on drones now to do the work. At the current rate, if nothing changes, experts predict Russia will conquer Ukraine in about 100 years. 

If Russia keeps the war going for 100 years, taking the usual casualties, Russia's population will drop from 146,000,000 to around 49,000,000. At that point I would expect Russia to be conquered by Moldavia.

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Watching Netanyahu talk on television

Watching Netanyahu talk on television, I see nothing sacred. 

"Nothing is sacred but the good."

Or Wittgenstein might say that who Netanyahu is will be conveyed in his practices. 

We understand, watching Netanyahu talk on television, killing children is not sacred.  Even someone too old to reason quickly understands that.

He's still talking. I watch Netanyahu talk and don't understand why he's there. Why him?

Why is a man who kills children talking on television? 

Togo

I see that Trump has banned the citizens of Chad from the United States. To be honest I never liked Chad. About seventy years ago, Chad had a certain, undeserved popularity in California. That time was brief and rightly so. Chad soon lost out to American names like Rock, Tuesday and Tab. 

Trump also banned Togo, once a fast food franchise in a Healdsburg gas station. I never ate at Togo's, which had a bad location, across the street from McDonalds. 

The latest terrorist attack came from an Egyptian. I expect Trump to ban tourists from Egypt and Saudi Arabia when Mecca freezes over. 

The president of Chad reacted by banning Americans from visiting his country. "Chad has no planes to offer," he admitted, referring to bribes solicited by the American leader. 

 

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June 14

Indivisible and friends will be holding massive, national "No Kings" protests on June 14, Trump's birthday. Our local event will be in Santa Rosa. I'll pass on more info when I get it. 

Apex Predater

Lately I have been boring people with talk about apex predators and what that concept means. An apex predator is a species that hunts other animals but is not hunted itself. But why is a species apex, and what does "apex" really mean?   

1. I started out thinking that by definition there could be only one apex species in a given area. I was wrong. In California 800 years ago there were golden bears, wolves and cougars, all of them apex. Swimming off the coast, orcas (killer whales) were apex. 

2.  There must be many factors that can  contribute to being apex. The two that interested me most were intelligence and commitment to coordinated family teams, as illustrated by orcas and wolves. And humans. 

3. I stumbled into what biologists call "the species problem." To my surprise, around ten subspecies of orcas exist (orcas are, like pilot whales, porpoises). Some subspecies may be different species--the orca groupings differ a lot. What constitutes a separate species is not entirely clear. 

4. What happens when two apex species meet by chance in the wild? Most of the time, I think nothing happens unless a very young predator gets attacked.  I did once see a wolf--part of my family-- come across, for the first time, a bear. The wolf nearly exploded with rage. His reaction seemed built-in. 

This is where a commitment to family values might make a difference. A wolf team (or an orca family) hunts in a coordinated way. Bears hunt alone. Six or seven wolves would surround a deer or a bear. The bear would stand up to fight. But at all times the bear would have several wolves jumping around behind it. 

The bear might decide to go away. 

 

  

The Headless Government

Somehow we have to get through the next 3.5 years in which our national government is malevolent and brainless. It's a headless torso lurching backwards, incapable of rational thought, driven by emotions like hatred and lust. 

That is where we are. 

This is a test. Can we survive as a republic with a headless president? Is the constitution that sturdy? 

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Military Service

Will the President ban Jews from the military? The Supreme Court has granted him the power to ban groups without evaluation. My wife is a Jew. Why should people like her fight and die in a foreign desert for no reason? I'd like to ban that.

I joined the army once. I learned how to field-strip a cigarette and drink from a buttcan and so on. That was back in the old black shoe army--or was it brown shoe? 

  

 

q

How To Live In A Fascist Country

Today the question MSNBC asks is, "Are we on the verge of a Constitutional crisis?" 

As  Jack de Selby has said, "That crisis came in November." 

In November we thoughtlessly elected a Fascist president, much as Germany once elected Hitler, Russia elected Putin and Italy elected Mussolini.  It's still early, though. Maybe the 2026 election will matter. 

We can make it matter.

Donny Two-Dolls is using Putin and Viktor Orban of Hungary as change models. Orban got elected, then softly reset the vital institutions of his nation. Soon he owned them all. That silenced criticism, which made Orban even more popular. 

For example, Orban went after the most elite Hungarian university. He drove the faculty and staff out of Hungary.  The university relocated to another nation.

Two-Dolls is after Harvard and universities in general. Part of the Fascist plan is to reshape academic analyses. 

MAGA wants its new order to last. It plans to bring universities (and other institutions like the courts) to heel. 

In Hungary the people did not jump up to defend elite professors, and most Americans are not going to defend Harvard. 

So how do ordinary people live in a nation where Fascists win elections? 

Consider the billions who have no choice. They get up in the morning and go to work. They raise their children. They enjoy sunsets and music.  They try not to think.  They eat out once a month. Life goes by, much as it did under Ashurbanipal. 

Target June 14`

Donny Two-Dolls will be celebrating his MAGA birthday on June 14 with a gigantic parade of military vehicles in Washington. Indivisible and other organizations will be counter-protesting in large numbers. I'm reserving time to protest on June 14.

Meanwhile Two-Dolls has, as you know, renamed the Gulf of Mexico and the Persian Gulf;  he intends to rebrand our planet on government documents as Trumpvilla I. Mars will be Trumpvilla II. Venus remains unnamed for now, but, according to JD Vance,  its new name will be that of a white, male Christian, probably "Charlton." 

Home

Trump intends to restore Alcatraz as a super-max prison. Or a retirement home? 

On Cowardice

David Frum, an insightful conservative commentator, recently pointed out that the Trump regime consists of cowards, crackpots and crooks.  

The crooks grub for wealth, wasting time that could be spent on long desert hikes. 

The crackpots joyously deny food and medicine to dying children. Their social function is to embody evil. 

Many Trump functionaries are just like us but more timid, better dressed and taller. Height and cowardice are huge factors in political success. In Presidential elections, the taller person wins.  

In a regime dedicated to social Darwinism, it's the taller cowards who get promoted and reproduce.  These tall cowards plan to outlive Trump, which should be easy. 

Keep in mind, Trump isn't all that tall himself. He claims he is three inches taller than Joe Biden, but when they stand together, the two men are the same height. And Biden is nearly six feet tall, having shrunk a little with age. I think Fatso is kidding himself. 

 

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Safety and Happiness

In the Declaration of Independence, the founders of our country made two central functions of government clear: to keep us safe and to make our lives better. (Look at the last two words in the quotation below.) 

Donald Trump is not keeping us safe. He is trashing our medical research programs and our alliances with other democracies. 

I feel less happy. He's not making my life better. Tariffs are ripping the world economy apart. And the rent is too damn high. 

_____________________________________ 

 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Berklee

My granddaughter, Daisy, auditioned for the Berklee College of Music in Boston and was accepted and granted some tuition money, which she will need. The college made it clear that they want her.

Berklee, which has ties to Harvard, is one of the great colleges for the study of popular music. Former students include Quincy Jones, Steven Tyler, Gillian Welch, Chaka Khan, Melissa Ethridge, Diana Krall, Johnny Ramone, Natalie Maines and so on. 

Johnny Ramone? "I want to be sedated."

Daisy is a singer with tested perfect pitch, and she knows how to hold a microphone. Her father, Mark Meritt, a guitarist and singer, has guided Daisy's development. She's been performing with local bands in the Bay Area since childhood. 

MAGA and TIME

                            

About 100 years ago, Calvin Goss, my paternal grandfather, signed up with the KKK in Fresno, California. His Klan recruiter got to keep half the ten dollars a membership cost. He’d told Cal that the KKK served free beer at its meetings, the first of many lies used to separate untutored white men from their money.  

Disappointed, Cal quit a year later.

. . . . . . . . . .

Consider Andrew Jackson, who defied the court system. He rounded up American Indians and deported them, in brutal conditions, to Oklahoma. Consider FDR, who sent innocent Japanese-American citizens to concentration camps for years. During the Civil War, Lincoln jailed suspected Democrats, ignoring the Constitution. 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The USA  has always had a large MAGA group devoted to making America white, male and Christian. 

They lynched Joseph Smith. They murdered Medgar Evers. 

MAGA is built in. It hides like shingles and then returns. We should fight MAGA. We will win significant battles but not see a final victory. 

The Center

I was reading a conservative, anti-Trump columnist. He ended by advising the Democrats  to build their party "from the center out." But where is the center?

Are centrists the voters who can't decide between the Namby-Pamby Party and the Raving Loony Party? What would a centrist leader be like? 

The Long Game

Trump has lost the tariff war. 

Chess players used to say that a bad plan beats no plan.

Trump has no plan. He does have biases. He acts on impulse, surrounded by the kind of yes-men who consider electric cars unmanly  

He does not understand what a tariff is or how it works. He has no idea how much to charge or why. He's floundering, making up numbers based on bullshit.  

Trump, on television, invited the other national  leaders to "kiss my ass."

China plays the long game. 

Problem Solved

In the April 21 The New Yorker, Sarah Stillman analyses about fifty incidents in which prisoners in American county jails died of starvation and related problems.

That's surprising until you think about it. 

Suppose a mentally ill person spits on a police officer. That's illegal. We clap her in a county jail. That's how we handle useless trash. It's traditional. The pilgrims did it. 

Locked up, she might not trust the county bread and water. She abstains for a week or two and dies. 

Problem solved. 

The Manufactioners

The USA is the second largest nation in the world when it comes to manufacturing. China, with three times our population, is first.

El Supremo's tariff war is not about manufacturing. He wants the leaders of other nations to journey to Washington and kiss his giant bum.  He wants to feel good. But he never will. 

s

How Class Came to America

In public schools long ago I was miseducated about the first European settlers in America. I learned back then that the settlers were particularly devout Christians seeking religious freedom or that they came to the New World to settle on unused land and make it fruitful. 

In fact, most early settlers were shipped here against their will. They were sent as indentured servants to do the work. Great Britain hoped, in this way, to rid itself of vagabonds, orphans, thieves, prostitutes and the unproductive poor. 

In the New World they could work hard or die. Either way it solved a British problem.

People that Hillary Clinton might have called "deplorables" became indentured servants  without pay for up to nine years. 

For example,  a man convicted of robbery in 1633 had his property sold and given to his victims. He was sentenced to three years as an indentured servant. His daughter (a child, I suspect) was sentenced to 14 years as a servant. It would be the duty of her new American master to see that she was raised properly--that was standard at the time. 

There were, in 1633,  two classes of people even lower than indentured servants: American Indians and "strangers" (enslaved black people). 

e

Movement

Saturday I biked to the anti-Trump rally in Santa Rosa. Courthouse Square was jammed with thousands of protestors holding home-made signs. So many people I had difficulty reaching the square. No parking. 

When younger I participated in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. This demonstration felt like that, like a movement that came from people, not from a political party. 

The crowd looked different, made up of a mix of middle-class families, radicals, retirees, etc. All sorts of people have problems with Musk/Trump. 

I must have had friends in the area, but, lost in the crowds, I didn't see anyone. And I'm old now. I left early.

Everyone do something, even a small thing.

Trump Is Not Mistaken

This week President Trump has presented us with charts, calculations and figures representing tariffs as they currently exist. Have he and his team made mistakes in their calculations? 

This is from Wittgenstein (sort of). Suppose you ask Jean-Paul to divide 50 by two. His answer is 125,001.  Has he made a mistake?

No. Jean-Paul has no idea how to calculate. He doesn't know enough to make an error. In the words of the song, he can't get started.

Trump and his team have no idea how tariffs work or how to add them up or calculate impact and so on. 

They just make up numbers to put on charts. 

Vance

I just caught a glimpse of J. D. Vance on TV telling people that Canada cannot win a tariff war with the USA, 

I know nothing about economics, but is Canada required to fight this idiot's war? 

Trump seems determined to build up tariffs that block Mexico and Canada from our markets. Can Mexico and Canada develop more dependable markets in Europe, Asia and Africa? 

Let Trump have a war with Mr. Nobody. 

I suppose this kind of market shift would be financially rough for a few years, but in the end Canada and Mexico would enjoy dependable systems. 

America won't always have a psychopath in charge, and trade with neighboring countries will someday improve. Until then I still don't know anything about economics.  

s

Hoover

 

During the first years of the Great Depression, Republican President Herbert Hoover remained convinced that the economy would correct itself. He had no plan and offered no way out. He was dour. He didn't relate to common people, many of whom went to bed hungry. But almost 40% voted for him in 1932. 

Why?

Hoover voters had many reasons, but maybe the main one was that the Democrats had favored the wrong side in the Civil War, about 70 years before. That mattered more than lunch and dinner. 

 

The Two Liars Problem

Imagine that two psychopaths, representing two nations, meet to make a treaty.  Neither man has ever told the truth in his life. In fact, they do not understand what regular people mean by "truth."

By psycho standards, whether a sentence is true or false depends on what they fancy at a given moment. (For the rest of us, a sentence is true if it can be validated by evidence etc.)

I don't see how two psychopaths can agree on meaningful sentences. The meanings will shift too rapidly.  A treaty they sign will mean everything and nothing.  

w

Schumer

My wife and I  were born during the New Deal, which made us Democrats until Susan switched to a no-party registration. You can do that on-line, and I followed her example a week ago. 

We left because the Democratic leaders lack backbone. Consider the hapless Charles Schumer. 

I think voters look for aggressive leaders the way Lincoln looked for General Grant. Someone who fights. I could be wrong, but I want leaders who do the right thing (Spike Lee). 

Less carefully weighed surrender and more doing what is right. 

Jew Or Not A Jew?

Jew or not a Jew?

Yesterday President Trump announced  that Senator Charles Schumer is no longer a Jew. Now, Trump said, he's a Palestinian.

When we married 60 years ago, Susan told me she was a Jew.  But she had not been checked by Donald Trump.  

I'm pretty sure that if Trump does vet Susan, he will find she is, like Schumer, a Palestinian. Or maybe a Canaanite. 

The Canaanites, often overlooked, were a Semitic civilization that flourished  in  the Middle East about 20 centuries ago. At one point they conquered Egypt. 

Their descendants include the Phoenicians, the Israelites and Susan. 

Unless Trump is as mad as a box of frogs. 

Men Who Will Rot in Hell

Following cues from Indivisible, I made my way to a demonstration on Saturday. About 60 people gathered in front of the Santa Rosa Tesla dealership at 3286 Airway Drive. They meet there on Saturdays at 11.   

Opinions differ about the owner of Tesla, Elon Musk. Some consider him a businessman. Others see him as a half-formed, Stone Age belly that eats its own vomit. 

I have not met the man. He's not for me to judge. Two of his grandparents joined the Nazi party in Canada, but that's little more than a fact. Another fact, Musk is the world's richest capitalist! 

s

The Night of the Black Snow

Yesterday Japan commemorated a gigantic fire-bombing of Tokyo in World War Two.  The Japanese call it "the night of the black snow."

In one night 80 years ago more than 105,000 Japanese civilians were burned to death by the American Army Airforce. The residential streets of Tokyo filled with heaps of charred bodies. Survivors watched entire families burn. 

The Tokyo fire, created with incendiary bombs, has been largely ignored in favor of the two atomic bombings that followed. 

The Tokyo raid remains the most destructive bombing event in history. 334 B-29s dropped 1,665 tons of incendiaries, including a half-million cylinders of napalm and white phosphorus. Most of this hit civilian neighborhoods with wooden homes. The area also contained deliberately dispersed Japanese factories. They were targets. Civilian deaths were ignored. 

 

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No-Fight Leaders

The Democratic leaders decided to listen politely while the Fascists roared during the state of the union speech. There was no fight in the Democratic leaders. They will sit quietly through the end of democracy, always decent and hoping someone else will save them. 

A number of rank and file members waved signs. Brave Al Green got  thrown out, and several members left with him. Some members stayed home, boycotting.  

But the Democratic leaders called for polite deference.  They are useless. The party needs leaders who can connect with voters. 

Don't sit politely. Many families are about to lose their health care. 

s

El Supremo

Trump's recent attack on President Zelenskyy was more than stabbing Ukraine. Trump was attacking western civilization.

This is my view (probably wrong). 

Trump's problem is that western civilization, as structured, blocks his pursuit of absolute power. If he can reconstruct the entire world system so that Putin rules Europe and China rules Asia. Then Trump, as El Supremo, can rule America, Canada, Mexico, Greenland and everything south to the pole. 

He is a textbook psychopath. 

Trump admires himself in the most grandiose terms. He is the world's leading expert.

Trump feels no remorse. He tells lies to control people. He acts impulsively. He's not faithful to his wife. He breaks the law. And so on.

Imagine being born with a half-billion dollars in your wallet. You are free to devote your time to any cause. 

You choose to spend your life cheating people, starting a fake college, a fake charity, promoting fake money. A convicted felon, you sell rubbish from inside the White House. But you aim higher--Trump wants to be Caligula but he will settle for being Putin. 

Weakling

Susan observed that Trump is now such a weak figure that he needs a "strong" man to protect him in public appearances. So far that farcical role has been played by Musk and Vance. 

s

Buy Nothing Day

Today, Friday, is the day Indivisible has called on people to buy nothing. The idea is to make a statement of protest against the Musk-Trump cruelty. 

It's a gesture.

We don't have to wait until 2026 to vote. We can vote with our wallets now. Coca Cola, for example, is more politically offensive than Pepsi. MacDonalds (Mickey D) is more offensive than Burger King. 

MSNBC

Frightened by a ratings drop after the election, a new broom at MSNBC has swept out two hosts and demoted a third. All three are women of color. This cleansing will adjust MSNBC's ratio back toward the correct MAGA percentage of white and male. 

The one woman left in a good time slot is Rachel Maddow. She has stated on air her disapproval of the host changes. Good for her.  

For the most part, what an MSNBC host does is interview other hosts and the same old sidekicks.  And they sell one another's books all day long.

MSNBC covers a narrow range of news, mostly gossip from the national capital. If you want to know what is happening in Asia, Africa or Europe, where most humans live, look elsewhere.  

Best Music

Maybe the most moving classical music written in the 20th century is the adagio in "Concierto de Aranjuez" by Rodrigo. Not that I know anything. But it was the most performed 20th century concerto. 

Even if you aren't interested in classical music, you might give this a try. It's about 12 minutes long. 

You can find it on YouTube. Search for "adagio concierto de aranjuez." 

Be prepared for guitar and oboe.

Rain Man

The levers of world power are now in the lotion-scented hands of three weanies: an orange traitor, Jumping Jack Rain-man and the only Yale-trained hillbilly.  

The Democratic Party is not going to save us from them. The New York Times will not save us. Rachel Maddow is not going to save us.  

We have to save ourselves.

Each of us has to do something. Look at the different groups and pick something that suits you. 

Ordinary people have started by forming groups and networks. We need networks because the commercial media is not informing people of scheduled protests. 

The media cover events after they have occurred, but they won't tell you when the next event will happen. 

Our groups keep coming up with new ideas about how to strike back at MAGA leaders. Informal networks can mobilize us. We can keep friends informed. We can try new ideas.

Join a group. Make a statement now. Don't wait until 2026. 

One event. On February 28th send a message. Spend no money, none at all. Tell your friends. Maybe business leaders will notice.  Or maybe not.

Then on to the next thing.

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Eating It

Last night John Oliver explained that we do not have to wait until the election in 2026 to send a message. We can demonstrate now and tell the fascists "to eat --it."

Join a group. Fight!

Mrs. Subliminable

A plea for decency by a good citizen

------------------------------------------- 

"I was shocked to hear that a small band of unhappy residents are brutally desecrating local Testla recharging sites. I hope people understand that brutally desecrating Testla recharging sites is illegal. If you get caught brutally desecrating Testla recharging sites,  you may be fined or serve months in jail. 

"It may be the case that ordinary Americans are   brutally desecrating Testla recharging sites because they do not like the weenie who owns Tesla. He has so much money he thinks he's entitled to rule us. But that is no excuse for brutally desecrating Testla recharging sites late at night when no one is watching. 

"Brutally desecrating Testla recharging sites is wrong day or night--the time doesn't matter. Think of the inconvenience that brutally desecrating Testla recharging sites causes. 

"Do the right thing, folks. You know what it is."

                                                                                                                                                   --- Jack de Selby

Monday

 

There will be a protest against our psychopathic leaders on Monday, the 17th. Meet at Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa at 11am. 

I got this notice from Indivisible.  

Change

In our national history we've gone through three or more major social changes. They began badly. But the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Great Depression ended well.  

We may be in the next change period. If so, it has begun badly. 

We have a psychopathic president, elected.  We have a rat-brained billionaire serving as unelected co-president. 

They are symptoms.

Two major problems loom. One is a raging capitalism that produces sociopathic, blind super-billionaires who feel entitled to rule us. 

The other problem is climate change, edging into catastrophe. The next generation may see as many as 2 billion bitter people surging  toward the north or south poles. Move or die. Nations may come apart. 

We need programs and leaders to cope with change. 

 

Art of the Deal

Donald Trump's comments on the Ukraine war are supposedly meant to open discussions with Russia. Art of the deal. 

Unfortunately Trump's comments cede the main points to Russia before the negotiations begin.  There may yet be a Trump hotel in Moscow. 

Westmeath

One of my great-grandmothers was named Mary Berry. My memory is that she was short and smoked a clay pipe.

I wouldn't say we had a strong relationship. 

Mary's parents were born in County Westmeath. Dissatisfied with Ireland, they moved to Scotland for work. Mary was born in Scotland, and, dissatisfied, she moved to Iowa as a teenager. She was followed by her parents. By the time I met Mary, she was living in Compton, California, with her husband, Sylvester Streeter Strickland, a descendent of Captain Streeter of Chicago infamy. (Look him up.)  

When FDR ended prohibition, Mary entered a bar in Compton and drank her first beer.   

Moral: No one has to live in Westmeath--it's a choice. 

Fight Song

According to the  NCAA, there are ten trans athletes active in college sports. The NCAA has now banned ten mediocre trans athletes. Just in time to placate a psychopathic president.  

According to the NCAA, they represent 500,000  college athletes, minus ten. 

That's one way to cope with Trump. Kiss butt for four years and hope he strokes out. 

Meanwhile Mr. Dunleavy, who runs the Golden State Warriors, has traded Andrew Wiggins and three or four good players for Jimmy Butler, a malcontent, who is almost as good as Wiggins. 

The remaining disconcerted Warriors and their coach have a season to finish.

Some may remember Donleavy as a Warriors player who had all the basketball skills but on a mediocre level. 

Trump's Face

Have you seen Trump's face? He looks glum. His vast cheeks growing wider than Death Valley, burnt orange with pungent chemicals, they swell more at dawn. 

He can't get it up. He hates his life and everyone in it.

He won. 

Nothing makes him smile. He's  the most powerful man in the world--it's not enough. He dodders. Power is ashes in a sour, aching mouth. 

No psychopath has ever looked more unhappy.

He don't know what love is. 

A History of Night

Recently scholars came across the old concept of two sleeps. It seems that in medieval times people in Europe commonly slept twice each night.    

For first sleep, they would hit the sack around 7 or 8, sleep and then get up about 2 AM. They would stay up doing something for about two hours. People called that period "the watch." Then they would start the second sleep, which would last until dawn.  

What To Do

Trump is staffing the government with idiots, sex abusers, crooks, billionaires, swindlers and traitors. He intends to feel comfortable. 

Many innocent people have begun to suffer. What can we do about it?

Leading Democrats believe the answer is to negotiate with Trump.   

I am grateful to collaborators for helping where they can. They will save some of Trump's victims. 

Democrats prepared to fight Trump are being shoved into the background.

Centrist Democratic leaders seem to have no powerful resistance plan. Maybe a resistance plan is out of the question. 

Maybe ordinary citizens will have to act, to resist and refuse to obey.  

A False Accusation

I am falsely accusing Pete Hegseth of sexual assault.  That's on the assumption that he will pay me $50,000 for a false accusation, something this good man has done for others in the past. 

When it comes to money, I could use a little extra. 

Doctor Zhivago

The film version of Doctor Zhivago grossed the equivalent of 2 billion dollars worldwide. 

The movie follows two star-crossed lovers, married to other people, tragically caught in a huge revolution that tosses them hither and yon.  

The ending is unusual. The two main characters are long dead. Zhivago's powerful half-brother, Yevgraf, visits a power plant deep in the USSR to determine if a young worker there, Tonya Komarov,  is his niece. She has no idea who he is or who her birth parents had been. He doesn't tell her. But he sees in her the artistic talent that runs through his family. The end.

Why is that so powerful? Here's what I think.

The USSR had been idealistically devoted to creating a new sort of human, adults dedicated to the state and humanity as whole. Not to family. The new kind of citizen was not to be  sidetracked by art, music or love. 

But in the odd, final scenes of the film, the personal survives. Yevgraf cares about his niece. Stalin's attempt to create a new kind of person has failed. 

MLK

America is getting the president it deserves today, but I'm not going to watch. I will be thinking about MLK. I once stood twenty feet from him as he talked with students at UCLA.

The Constitution

In the army I took an oath to defend the Constitution. That's fine. I still defend it, although  it is a strange old thing. 

The Constitution gives us a platform for discussion and governance. 

I'm guessing the Constitution took the form it did for many reasons, and one big reason was that men educated at Harvard feared that white working-class men might outvote them in a democracy and grab their money. 

So the rich wrote a labyrinthine, difficult constitution designed to keep the rich in power.  

Today, though, tech billionaires have allied themselves with working-class white men to pick a king, to destroy the Constitution and to beat down the mildly progressive middle-class. 

This alliance of the rich with white workers to destroy the middle class has happened in other countries.

 It doesn't make sense for billionaires to attack the system that enriched them. Maybe they get addled by the impact of super-wealth. They surround themselves with fawning yes-men. They begin to think they are wise. 

 

 

to insure (if possible) that mobs of inferior thinkers could not come to power. The inferiors--women, people of color and ignorant poor white males--were denied the vote. That way no inferior could threaten rich white males.  

The basic American political platform mixed some democratic representation with some oligarchy or rule by the Harvard-educated elite. Governors could be elected directly by white men, but Presidents would be elected by a conclave of deep thinkers called "the electoral college," which is not a college.

That political system, patched and sometimes improved,  held together until last November when a lot of power was won by the irrational male mob so feared by Benjamin Franklyn. This mob was funded by stupid billionaires. But the mob and the stupid billionaires have incompatible goals. 

Who knows what will come next?

I'm just guessing.

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Priorities

 "When asked where she will spend the most time in her new title, Melania told Fox, 'I will be in the White House. And when I need to be in New York, I will be in New York. When I need to be in Palm Beach, I will be in Palm Beach. My first priority is to be a mom, to be a first lady, to be a wife.'"

How many First Ladies have formulated and announced three first priorities?

Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg, trembling, announced last week that he was shutting down the fact-checking at Facebook. 

That raised concerns. We are still in the opening discussion of how to deal with internet media, its impact on children, on politics, etc. But attempts to defend the fact-checking at Facebook overlook something important.

The fact-checkers at FaceBook were idiots. The whole system was bent, alien, unworkable and a can of stale nuts. 

From the Pages of American History

When, at the request of President Jefferson, Lewis and Clark led an exploration of the American West, they had to feed themselves along the way. It is a fact that they ate 200 dogs. 

Lewis took with them (and did not eat) a giant Newfoundland dog, named Seaman. The dog excelled at retrieving game and chasing bears.

Only two statues of Seaman have been erected.  

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Barbara Lee

I see that Barbara Lee is running for mayor of Oakland. Good news! She was a thoughtful and dependable member of congress for years. Any city could use a leader like Lee. 

The Stupid

I've become interested in political stupidity. 

Stupidity, as I see it, is an inability to think rationally. In that case, we are born stupid. 

Later some of us learn to think rationally part of the time--if we have rational parents or helpful experiences or a good education, etc. 

Here are a few key points I picked up from my reading.

There are more stupid people than you think.

Stupid people often reject rational thinking as elitist.

The stupid often vote against their self-interest and your self-interest.  

Stupidity is an independent variable. A man can be a brilliant engineer and politically illogical. 

A political party that does not win a good chunk of the stupid vote will lose. 

You win the votes of the stupid by agreeing with their disjointed views. 

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