Archives for March 2021

Friday March 5, 2021

The guy who put his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk is mad as hell and maybe isn’t going to take it anymore. Seems all his white buds are out on bail and he’s stuck in jail. Oh no, so sad. He’s looking at possibly twenty more years. But for now he’s in jail til his next hearing in May. 

And now it’s been reported that a person in the Trump administration has been arrested in connection with the Jan 6^th insurrection. I wonder if Josh Hawley is feeling the heat? It seemed odd that he was asking FBI Director Wray how they were gathering information about cell phones and communications didn’t it? Maybe, some speculated he was worried if his cell phone had been found communicating with the protestors. I’ve already seen lists of Congressmen and women who oddly gave tours the day before the insurrection. I say oddly because they hadn’t been having tours of the Capitol and then all of a sudden here were these groups traipsing through the place. 

Meanwhile, the Republican Senators are doing everything they can to stop the passage of the Democratic bills in the Senate. The latest stunt is to have the whole Covid Relief bill read aloud in the Senate Chamber. Why? Why do this? What are they, the Republican Senators, for? It seems they are not for the people. Maybe the rich? It’s hard to say. Greg Abbott’s opening up the state of Texas seems inexplicable except perhaps he is playing to that small group of hard core Trumper Republicans that vote in the Texas primary? At CPAC the three people who got the biggest applause were Trump, Noem, and DeSantis. Noem is the governor of South Dakota. 

There was a bit of video I saw of a young woman who made an announcement at CPAC that said everyone should wear masks and practice social distancing. She got booed. I wish, I wish, she had then said, “You all are idiots.” Ah me, I can dream.

We seem to have alternate universes. One is based on truth and science and the others? I don’t know what they are based on or why they exist, but they do in some people’s minds. 

There’s a new movie coming out directed by Aaron Sorkin about the Chicago Seven and Sasha Baron-Cohen is playing Abby Hoffman. Sorkin has been working on the script for over ten years at the behest of Steven Spielberg. Wow. I urge you to look up that which you don’t know about this, any of this.

In a weird thing I saw a list of albums that are coming up on fifty years old this year. Wow and double wow. Pearl, Tapestry, Sticky Fingers, Ram, Carpenters, Every Picture Tells a Story…

One more little story. My friend Corey was somewhere in the Bay Area 50-60 years ago. It was a party at some TV producer’s house. The guy had a new show or video to show. Everyone crowded in to watch it. Nothing kills a party quicker by the way. Corey wasn’t interested. He drifted out to a outside patio. A young woman was playing a guitar. They got to talking, and singing. He said they sang a lot of the old folk songs. I remember he said one group was The Weavers. Kind of before my time, but I know of them. The girl said she was playing in San Francisco and would he like to come? Yeah, maybe. We’ll see. Was his response. She had offered him a ticket or access or something and Corey being Corey was kind of noncommittal and he drifted back into the house. A person who had seen what had gone on said, “I saw you talking to Karen Carpenter…”

The rest is history.

Have a good day.

PS Waiting in line for my Moderna first shot.

Thursday March 4, 2021

There were several items reported yesterday that we can look at in terms of not only what happened but how we as a people, as a society, as a nation should respond.

At one end we have Andrew Cuomo and the accusations leveled against him of sexual harassment, at the other we have Ron Johnson demanding the whole Covid Relief bill be read out loud, and then we have Elaine Chao who used her office as Secretary of Transportation to boost her father’s status and sister’s position as head of a major Chinese shipping company. There is also the fact that she never sold the shares she had in Vulcan, a major supplier of rock and stone to highway projects. There is also the testimony of the Pentagon officials about what went on January 6^th and why the response took so long. 

It is still not clear to me what the reason was for the slow response and who is responsible for that slow response at the Pentagon. There were troops loaded in buses and waiting to go. Yet, it took hours to get the word. Michael Flynn’s brother, Charles, was in the meetings. It seems he or someone next to him didn’t want to send the troops for a claim of “bad optics.” I have never heard the military was worried about “optics” before. 

Then we get to Ron Johnson. Why does he want the whole bill read into the Congressional Record? The only reason people say is to slow the thing down. Why would you want to slow relief down? Be it for the American people or for himself and the people at the Capitol that were in fear for their lives? Mr. Johnson has offered his reason in terms of the Capitol. It wasn’t what everyone saw. According to Mr. Johnson it was people, actors, dressed up to look like Trump supporters. It was a few bad actors. The rest were peaceful protestors. Some egged on by Antifa. 

These sort of people seem to be operating as a cabal to destroy our country. They want to replace it with something else. Maybe, it’s already here and they want to keep it? How else do you explain the over 250 bills in state legislatures aimed at limiting voting?

We need to get rid of them.

Let’s move on to Elaine Chao. She repeatedly used her position to bolster her family members and their position in a major Chinese shipping company while she was in office. She brought her dad along on official trips. What can she claim, she didn’t know? I mean you are married to the leading Republican Senator and you want to claim you don’t know? No. You knew. You didn’t care or didn’t think it was a big deal or even if it was so what? Do I have that about right?

Let’s move on to Andrew Cuomo. Okay, three women say he did or said things that made them feel uncomfortable and many have said his words and actions were inappropriate. Okay. So, what should we do? Crucify him? Or something less? How much less? Let’s take the example of Al Franken. There was a gag photo of him back in his SNL days where he pretended to touch a woman’s breast when she was sleeping. There were doctored pictures of him which alleged that he was too chummy by having his hand around a woman’s waist. Actually, the doctored photo showed him to have his shoulder halfway into her chest. There was a claim that in a reversal for a skit he repeatedly wanted to practice the kissing scene. This by a woman who was trying to promote her new talk show and was a pal of Roger Stone. The Dems, headed by Kirsten Gillibrand put so much pressure on him that he resigned his seat, and we lost one of the truly bright lights of the Democratic party.

Cuomo probably acted inappropriately, but how bad was it? Should we lose him as a leader? What he did to save New York was courageous and outstanding. I’m not saying that forgives his actions, but come on. Should he resign? I don’t think so. Should he apologize? Yes, and he has. What about some policies and procedures put in place so woman or anyone sexually harassed can have an avenue to complain and behaviors of those doing the harassing can be given a chance to reform? I for one have put my arm around a woman in a group photo without asking. I never thought much of it until I heard that Obama before having a group photo taken asked permission of a woman he was going to be standing next to in the photo. That made me realize that my actions may have made a woman feel uncomfortable. Was it my intention? No. 

I think there is world of difference between the actions of Cuomo and Franken versus say Bill O’Reilly or Roger Ailes. ( Funny thing – when I put in “Ailes” the spell corrector wanted to change it to “Lies” – Roger Lies. How did it know? )

Now in the case of Cuomo he apparently held a woman’s face in his hands and asked, “Can I kiss you?” She felt uncomfortable. Okay. I get that. Maybe this is “a teachable moment”? What could she have said and done in that moment? I get that she was surprised, but maybe another woman can learn from this? Thinking back and knowing how she felt how could she have reacted differently? She could have said, “Yuck. No. You nasty old man!” Or she could have said, “I’m really uncomfortable with that. I don’t think that’s appropriate.” I think a little training on both sides is in order. Now, what if Cuomo continues to do this sort of thing? What if he demonstrates he has learned nothing? Then we have a different situation.

Meanwhile, Texas and Mississippi have problems. The white guys as governors see no problems and have declared their states are now open. No more masks needed. This while their Covid numbers are starting to go up in their states and while parts of their states are without water or electricity. It’s interesting to me that the people who are in charge of the cities and trying to fix things are black, brown, and hispanic while the people denying anything is a problem, and who have for years not come to the aid of those cities are white.

PS The Crater at Petersburg National Battlefield. This is where the Union soldiers dug a tunnel over 500 feet long and placed four tons of explosives, which they blew up and punched a hole in the Confederate line. That was the only thing that went right for them that day. The Union soldiers rushed forward and went into the hole. The Conderates regrouped and came back and shot those in the hole from the rim. Lincoln said afterwards of the general in charge that only he could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

There’s more to the story. The men who dug the tunnel were miners from Pennsylvania. It took them nine months to do it. Others didn’t believe it would work and so gave them inadequate tools. They had to use crates to move the dirt out. They also weren’t given all the explosives they asked for and the fuses weren’t very good and had to be spliced together. When lit they failed at the splice.

Some soldiers were trained in what to do once the explosion happened. They were black, ie from a “colored” regiment. Grant said afterwards they were held back. “Bad optics”? They were sent in when it was too late and they made the largest advance of any.

The Crater doesn’t look like much now. There’s a marker near here that declares how bravely the Confederate soldiers fought. 

Interestingly, they had to come up with a way to ventilate the tunnel. Halfway in they built a ventilation shaft covered in canvas. Below it they placed a small fire and closed the entrance to the tunnel. This meant the fire had to grab the air in the tunnel, which rose and was then replaced with “good air” and thus the miners were able to keep breathing and working.

March 3, 2021

As far as I know The Queen’s Gambit refers to a game of Bobby Fischer’s.* It’s the one where he won the New York Chess Championship at 15 or 17, something like that. He sacrificed his queen and knew he had won the game. I’ve played that game. I don’t understand how he knew. The game went for another seventeen moves.

*Okay, technically, I think it means offering your Queen up as a sacrifice.

I can think ahead three or four, maybe five moves, but seventeen?

To play competitive chess is different than any other game, other than perhaps Go.

To watch the Netflix’s series entitled The Queen’s Gambit you don’t have to understand chess to appreciate what is going on. I have read some minor criticism, like “she wasn’t a real chess master,” or “the ending devolved into troupe.” All of which is crap. It’s a terrific series. The end is fabulous, dramatic and gripping.

I have my chess heroes. One was the best player in the 1800s who reportedly stood on his chair, pointed to his opponent and shouted, “Why do I have to play this idiot?”

Another is Bobby Fischer. Yes, he became mentally imbalanced at the end and he said some terrible things, but when he played he was without equal.

The Queen’s Gambit is based largely on his life.

Many real good chess players go mad, so …

I saw him play once. He had just won the world championship. He was on The Dinah Shore Show. She interviewed him. There was a chess board positioned between their chairs. He was clearly intrigued with her. She would ask him something or other and he would answer, while gazing moonily at her. Then she would say, “It’s your move.”

He would glance at the board and without hesitation he would move a piece. The way he moved was to slide the piece along the board, pick it up, and then plop it in place with a resounding thud.

She would ask him, “Why did you move there?”

And he would explain. “You will move here.” Swish – thud. “Then I will go there.” Swish – thud. “You will move here.” Swish – thud. “And I will take you with my bishop” Swish – thud.

This would go on for six or eight moves. He would be holding the pieces taken between the slots of his fingers, two per slot, until he had six in each hand. 

Dinah would say, “Oh.”

And then he would put them all back in place with the same swish – thud sounds, in reverse order.

It was intimidating, and I was watching this on a small black and white TV!

How this informs us about today’s world I don’t know. In fact, there is a lot I don’t know the answers to, but we’ll get to that in a bit. First, let’s deal with somethings happening in the world. Wait! Let’s call it The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Clever, huh? The last one, The Ugly, will deal with Andrew Cuomo and sexual harassment. What do we do with that? Do we throw the baby out with the bath water? Would New York have been better off without Cuomo? I think not. So what do we do? One answer is he could switch sides, become a Republican, where they’d slap him on the back say, “Boys will be boys,” and move on. Let’s think about it, and what to do.

But now, The Good, President Biden announced he has arranged for enough vaccine for every adult in this country to be vaccinated by the end of May, pulling up the schedule by two months. Not only is that incredible, imagine if Satan had won? We’d still be seeing the death toll climbing.

Now for The Bad, actually no, let’s call it The Truth!

The FBI Director, appointed by Trump testified before The Senate about what happened on January 6^th. I have to say I am disappointed that we no longer have corporal punishment. If we did then Ron Johnson could have been brought out front and center and publicly whipped because Wray shot down all his stupid and silly assertions about what happened on the 6^th and who did it. 

No, it was not Antifa.

No, it was not leftists dressed up in Trump costumes.

Yes, it was right wing militia groups.

Yes, it was white supremacists.

Yes, it was Trump supporters.

Bad Ron, Bad Boy.

And that goes for your sniveling sidekick Josh Hawley, who is becoming quite the naive kid of the Senate. Those who watched the proceedings (I did not) said it seemed Hawley wanted to know what and how the FBI was collecting and did collect information. It seemed to some that Hawley was trying to figure out if they could discover messages he or his staff may have put out there and could they get caught. Speaking of which, I saw a list of people in the House and Senate who reputedly gave tours of the Capitol on January 5^th, which was thought to be weird at the time because they weren’t normally giving tours. Were these people on the tour on a recon mission? Did the people giving the tours know this? If the list of those giving the tours is correct than it is mighty suspicious. For example, white supremacist keynote speaker Paul Gosar gave a tour. Hum.

Then we have the lawyer for the Republican party arguing in the Supreme Court why they are bringing over 250 laws to try and change the ability of people to vote in a majority of the states. These laws would restrict who could vote and how they could vote. This is called voter suppression. Why do they, the Republicans, need these laws? The lawyer explained. If everyone votes they would lose. Plain and simple. There was no fig leaf to hide behind. 

Today the Senate will hear from the Pentagon as to why it took so long to deploy the National Guard. The corollary to this is why was Michael Flynn’s brother in the meetings about this and why did the Pentagon lie about that fact? Should be interesting.

Now to a more structural problem. It appears no Republican Senators are going to vote for anything Joe Biden wants to do. They got nothing themselves. So why are they there? What purpose do they serve other than to gum up the works and do nothing?

Even with the massively favorable Covid bill and the infrastructure bill they plan to not vote for it, as a block. 

I am told the only way to get anything more done is to get rid of the filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to pass anything, and to pass that they need I think 50 votes and they only have 49. So the Senate will be dead to anything happening for the next two years once these two very popular bills get passed.

PS Josh Hawley the insurrectionist (left), Josh Hawley, the concerned Senator (right)

Rachel Maddow’s show was rated to top show on cable for January and February. Maybe people like accurate truthful reporting?

Tuesday March 2, 2021

I’ve been watching the series “Mysteries of the Abandoned.” Each place they investigate started out with pictures and three different people describing the place and asking, “What is this place?”

I’ve gotten pretty good at the answer before being told: “State Penitentiary,” “Military Installation,” “Dictator’s Prison,” or “Nazi Concentration Camp.”

The last one I mentioned, “Nazi Concentration Camp,” brings back reminders of news films from the 20^th century of these places and their horrors. I remember my history teacher saying he was riding on the subway in New York and saw a person reach for an overhead strap and their bare arm revealed a numbered tattoo. A reminder to him that their were survivors, who were just numbers the at the camp. The atrocities are so terrific that in Germany every student must visit one of these places before they graduate high school. They do not want people to dismiss or forget. Yet, evil persists.

The young woman who took the laptop from Nancy Pelosi’s office to sell to the Russians is a nazi. She is also a white supremacist. She pals around with a guy who was notably at the January 6^th insurrection and was inciting the crowd with a bull horn. This fellow is an avowed white supremacist and puts out propaganda regularly about it. He held a conference at the same time as CPAC. It was for those who thought CPAC too tame. Stephen King, the guy kicked out of Congress (sorry, stripped of his committee assignments) for making white supremacist statements, spoke. But the keynote speaker was sitting Congressman, Paul Gosar. If you don’t remember him, he first came to most people’s attention when his own children and direct family members pleaded that you not vote for him. Since then he has popped up from time to time with some vile tweet or headline.

But you know what? The Republican Party is okay with Gosar. Just like they are okay with the insurrectionists: Jim Jordan, Jeff Hawley, and Ted Cruz. They are also okay with their members raping, fondling and sexually harassing. Women. Men. Boys. Girls. They’re cool with it.

Many are asking, “What do they stand for?” As far as I know they stand against: Progress, Democracy, Police, and doing anything that helps ordinary people. They are for tax cuts for the wealthy, lining their own pockets, letting companies get away with not implementing regulations and stripping those regulations away wherever possible. They also like to implement hateful racist policies, like separating kids from their parents and putting those kids in cages.  

Hey guess what? The Trump administration had names and phone numbers of the parents of many of the kids that were separated. They didn’t give that information up.

That administration did not have any distribution plan for the vaccine, and they didn’t reveal that Trump got the vaccine before he left office. He also was much much sicker in October than they revealed, like almost went on a respirator sick. 

Lying, deceit, do nothing are all trademarks of the last administration it is also a condition within the Republican party. The other thing they like to do is appropriate symbols and slogans when they are screwing you. Just like George Orwell pointed out decades ago about authoritarian regimes. 

With Satan they got a man who made cheating a way of life. The Republicans had been doing that for years but with Satan they got a guy willing to do it out in the open with little veneer, and certainly no caring. Not for brown people, or Mexicans, or black people, or poor people, or frankly anyone. They thought they were exempt, but one by one some learned they were fodder for the steam roller. ( Talk about a mixed metaphor – OMG! )

Now Donnie is facing serious charges in two states on totally different kinds of things. One deals with fraud relating to his businesses, the other with his trying to throw an election. Just like the impeachment trials, the evidence is overwhelming. There really isn’t a question as to whether he did what is alleged. But we’ll play the game.

Meanwhile, the Republicans and their white supremacist sympathizers – the Nazies, will cry and pule. Will there be any talk of how to fix things? Naw. Come on. This is the party of criers and falsifiers.

The Republican Senators are reputed to not like the Covid Relief bill. Do they have any alternative? No. Except make the current bill smaller. Where exactly would they like to make it smaller? They don’t say.

Why not?

Because they got nothing.

Period. Full Stop.

Meanwhile, the country is getting vaccinated. Imagine, if Satan had won? We’d still be in a death grip, wringing our hands. Wishing and hoping. While he did nothing and his racist under lords did their own dirty work.

Some of it isn’t dirty, just slimy. Like Steve Mnuchin, who in the waning days of the administration jetted off to Saudi Arabia and a few other gulf states. Imagine, he has now announced he is doing investing with the sovereign wealth finds of those countries. Is that legal you ask? Of course, because Trump stripped away the prohibitions just before he left office.

One thing that came out last night in an interview with the head of the ACLU last night was his interest in holding people accountable. He pointed out that it didn’t happen under Obama and look what happened. Yes, he said, we need to hold them to account. If you were in the previous administration and you helped or implemented criminal actions you must be held to account. I like that.

PS Pictured for the first time – The Republican Platform and those on board with it.  

Monday March 1, 2021

The Governor of South Dakota got a standing ovation at CPAC for saying that Dr. Fauci isn’t always right. WTF? 

Well, if that is the case lady where does that leave you on the scale of right and wrong?

What did Dr. Fauci say about her comments? That they were unfortunate or was it “not helpful”? He quoted the idea of science and facts. What does she follow? Satan and falsehoods.

It’s one thing to lie and know you are doing it. It’s another to not only know it but try to convince others that something else is going on (ie gaslighting). It’s quite another to convince yourself of your own lies. Gaslighting yourself seems to be the new norm for people on what was once the Republican Party.

They are using their own lies to try and steamroll legislation to restrict voting. On some level they then know it’s horse manure.

Some are pissed at Brett Kavanaugh because he would not go along with some of the idiotic voter suppression cases that have made their way to the Supreme Court. For the moment the Supreme Court ain’t playing that game.

You’ll be surprised to learn that Fox News is. Yeah, I know. Right? 

Tucker Carlson spewed some idiotic thing the other week and said, “that’s science.”

As John Oliver pointed out – just because you say something is science doesn’t make it so.

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson has pointed out, on many occasions, science is the search for truth.

And to quote Jack Nicholson from “A Few Good Men” – “The Truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

PS I know my readers can handle the truth so here goes. I know. You are wondering what those photos are of, aren’t you? (No? Too bad, I’m going to tell you anyway.)

Remember I told you about that story I read in grade school about a girl who came home and started telling her mom about something she was embarrassed about at school and her mom, who was working evaporating maple sap into syrup, asked her daughter if she really wanted to tell her this? The girl said no and the mom gave her some hot half evaporated syrup and the girl went outside and made little swirly candy like things in the freshly fallen snow? 

Yeah, well that story made a big impression on me and I’ve tried making snow syrup things for years and it’s never worked. I tried recently when we had snow on the back deck. It looked like I had taken a piss and now I had maple syrup on my deck. Great.

I finally took some snow, mixed it in a bowl with some not hot maple syrup and shoved the concoction into some Tahitian head popsicle forms. This is the result. 

Basically the maple syrup ran to the bottom of the form. The snow stayed near the top and in-between didn’t get enough stuff or it melted away. Then you can’t pop the thing easily out to the form because of the indents. But I think you can make out an eye in the profile pictures. 

The tip of the thing tastes like maple syrup, the rest tastes like snow. Snow has a kind of rusty taste to it. (No, it wasn’t yellow. Shut up.)

That is all carry on.