Category Archives: Politics

October 8, 2013 · 20:00

What Do Our Representatives Owe Us?

I haven’t written much on the current political deadlock in the US because I find that the whole mess tends to do bad things to my blood pressure. In addition, given that it’s a pretty central story to just about every news conduit every second right now, there are some far, far better wordsmiths than I weighing in. For example, Jim Wright has a truly excellent, civil, even-handed, and logical article over on his Stonekettle Station blog. There are body parts I would sacrifice or exchange if I could write that well.

Nevertheless, today a couple of thoughts came together in my brain that I need to put out there for discussion.

First, one of my all-time favorite plays, musicals, and movies is “1776“. We studied it in high school in 1971 or 1972 and I was enthralled. There was talk of our school doing it as our senior play and I was ready to just nail the part of John Adams. (We eventually did “Harvey” instead and I played Dr. Chumley.) I can still do whole sections of “1776” at the drop of a hat. If I see it being done live anywhere here in LA, I’m there.

A line from John Adams’ opening soliloquy has been widely quoted during the current (and previous) Congressional deadlocks:

“I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a Congress. And by God, I have had this Congress!”

You won’t get an argument from me.

Secondly, today I read probably the 100th news story quoting a member of the Republican “Suicide Caucus” (a term coined by Pulitzer Prize-winning, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer) justifying what they’re doing as follows – while a huge majority of Americans may think that what they’re doing is completely deplorable and despicable, their constituents from back in their (gerrymandered) districts are telling them to fight on, stay the course, keep doing what is perceived back in the district as the right thing.

With that article still rattling around in my head, I started humming something from “1776”. I thought about a scene late in the movie, just before the July 4th vote is taken on the Declaration of Independence. In this scene, a Congressional Congress delegate who has been instructed by his constituents to vote against independence instead changes his vote to what he believes is right, i.e., approval of the Declaration and freedom from England.

During this scene, a quote from British Parliamentarian Edmund Burke is given as a key part of the logic and thought process behind the change in his vote. I went and found the exact quote, from Burke’s 1774 Speech to the Electors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll (section 4.1.22 – worth reading the whole section even if you don’t read the whole speech):

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

Let’s think about that for a minute, current 2013 members of the House of Representatives.

You repeatedly claim that you’re taking these actions, as harmful and damaging as they are, because the folks back home who elected you are telling you that’s what they want? That’s really your story? That’s really your justification?

What if “what they’re telling you to do” is causing serious damage to huge sections of the country?

What if “what they’re telling you to do” is a real threat to put the country right back into another recession, or worse?

What if “what they’re telling you to do” has a legitimate chance of causing incredible damage to the entire world’s economy?

What if “what they’re telling you to do” can destroy the United States’ position as a world power?

What if “what they’re telling you to do” is a corruption of the US Constitution, not a defense of it?

What if “what they’re telling you to do” is insane?

What if “what they’re telling you to do” is treason?

(For the moment we’ll overlook the question of whether “what they’re telling you to do” is actually what they’re telling you to do, or just what some multi-billionaire, ultra conservative campaign contributors are telling you to do.)

In researching the Burke quote, I was surprised to find several sources referring to Burke as one of the philosophical fathers of modern conservative thought. It was also fascinating to find that Burke thought as he did because he believed that the common masses would be slaves to emotional and impassioned impulses, while a governing body of the elite upper class would be able to make rational, unbiased decisions when governing.

I’m open to the judgement that we could be doing that part wrong, also.

Let’s assume that the current conservative factions in our government would or should listen to the philosophy of one of the founders of their movement. Let’s assume that the current representatives are sane and intelligent, able to make rational, unbiased decisions. Let’s assume that they take seriously their responsibilities to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.

Given those assumptions, how in the world can the “Suicide Caucus” justify their current actions based on the argument that “the folks back home are telling us to do it?” Would Burke clearly not demand that the representatives do what is right (based on reasoning and logic) instead of what the masses instruct them to do (based on uninformed or uneducated bias and impulsiveness)?

Conversely, if Burke is wrong and the “Suicide Caucus’s” responsibility is to either pass laws that their constituents demand or work to hold the entire country hostage, would they use the current legislative tactics if “the folks back home” had other extreme views?

What if the folks back home thought that women shouldn’t vote?

What if the folks back home thought that blacks shouldn’t vote, or even be granted citizenship?

What if the folks back home thought that only those born in the United States of US parents should have citizenship?

What if the folks back home thought that only property owners should be able to vote?

What if the folks back home thought that only approved Christian churches should be allowed, not Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, or any other?

Would any of these Representatives ever dream of blackmailing the entire country and holding the economy hostage over any of those extreme issues? If not, why do they think it’s somehow ethical, just, and justifiable to do that over the ACA, which is the law of the land after having been debated for years, modified, compromised, passed by Congress, challenged, ruled constitutional by a conservative Supreme Court, and given a mandate by the 2012 national elections?

The logic isn’t there – but we all know that. The question at this point is how we get the Congressional leaders to bother listening to their own founders, and be sane and intelligent enough to understand what he was telling them.

If only it were that easy.

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Moral Outrage, Politics

September 30, 2013 · 21:23

Something To Cheer Us Up!

It’s after midnight in Washington DC and the FREAKIN’ IDIOTS (you know who you are!) have managed their particular little epic fail. I was going to rant at length, but Chuck Wendig did it far better than I could ever dream of (WARNING – it’s really, really NSFW) here.

Instead, since I’m depressed and frustrated with all of that BS plus a bunch of other things, let’s just look at pictures of puppies and kittens. Maybe it will all be better in the morning.

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2001_0930AEMaybe October will be better.

 

 

 

 

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Filed under Cats, Dogs, Freakin' Idiots!, Politics

September 25, 2013 · 21:47

Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Wednesday, September 25th

‘Cause I’m trying to get caught up on a bunch o’ stuff, that’s why.

  • Congrats to all parties involved in getting the Expedition 37 astronauts up to the ISS today. I’ll give a lot of credit to the Russians, they really have it down pat when it comes to simply getting the job done.
  • While changing channels to get to NASA-TV I accidentally wound up on NBC Sports channel and some hunting show, heavily sponsored by the NRA. I had never seen any of the ads they’re running now to keep their faithful in line. Oh. My. God! I’m actually a big supporter of the Second Amendment, but in the Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly way. These NRA dudes are truly scary.
  • I’m not a big fan of Chrysler vehicles after the problems they’ve given us in the last couple of years. On the other hand, the ads they’ve been running for the last year or so for the new Dart II have been fantastic. Very catchy, clever, amusing, and effective. Now I’m starting to see similar ads for the new Charger. Conclusion – their cars might be questionable, but they’ve got a great ad agency!
  • Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.
  • Do raccoons hibernate or do I have to put up with these critters running around on my roof all winter long?
  • Does anyone know where I can get some of those old baseball-themed “No Fear” T-shirts still? I can find articles about them online and one or two on Ebay, but that’s it.
  • I don’t normally do Facebook memes, but many of my fannish/filker friends are taking the “What Literary Character Are You?” test. So I answered their silly questions honestly, and got “Gandalf”. It’s so tempting to take it again and try to guess what answers will give the “Sauron” or “Darth Vader”.
  • Speaking of busted Chryslers, I happened across a YouTube video that shows how to replace the part that’s broken in my daughter’s PT Cruiser. It’s a little box inside the steering column about the size of a pack of cards and the replacement looks pretty straightforward. Except that you need a couple of dealer-only “anti-theft” tools. And the part is only available to dealers. And two dealers have told me that the only way to fix it is to replace the entire steering column for $2,000+. I’m just about the furthest thing in the world from being a “car guy” or a “gear head”, but does anyone wanna bet that I can find that “dealer only” piece in a junkyard and get the “dealer only” tools somewhere on Ebay and fix the car for something on the order of $100 instead of something on the order of $2,000?
  • I’ve upgraded all of my iCritters to iOS7 and I’m really happy with it for the most part. A couple of little glitches here and there on a couple of apps, but none of them are a big thing. Except for the redesigned WordPress app. Geez Louise! I tried to use it today to write this post and wanted to gouge my eyeballs out with a fork after about five minutes.

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Filed under Juicy Chunks, Politics, Space

September 11, 2013 · 15:07

Always Remember, Never Forget

Today is, of course, September 11th.

9/11.

The twelfth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States in which 2,977 innocent people were murdered by 19 terrorists.

Unless you’re spending the day (and probably the whole week) locked inside of a vault which is sealed inside a Faraday cage, completely cutting you off from all contact with civilization, it’s impossible to not see and hear hundreds of mentions of 9/11. Television news, newspapers, online news, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail — they’ve all got stories about 9/11, either the one in 2001 or the memorial services today. That’s not unusual given that it was such a monumental day in the lives of so many people.

So many people were directly affected, losing a spouse, child, parent, or friend. So many people were injured and still suffer from long-term disabilities due to the after effects and exposure to toxic smoke and materials following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Factor in everyone who was killed or injured in the ten years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the percentage of the population which have had their lives knocked off course due to 9/11 gets to be huge.

We all watched and felt the horror, shock, anger, and frustration. So many among us were directly touched and scarred by the events of the day. For them, this day on the calendar will never be the same.

But…

Don’t we all have dates on the calendar which rock us back on our heels every year? Dates on which we know that we’re going to have to spend some time alone or with family or loved ones to remember and reflect on the loss of a spouse, parent, child, or friend? The difference with a tragedy like 9/11 is one of proportion and size, with so many people sharing the pain, horror, and anger.

Sadly, among those who weren’t directly touched that day, so many have succumbed to fear that continues to echo in their lives. We need to beware of that. Too often that fear is irrational and leads to consequences which weaken us instead of strengthening us as a society. More on that some other time perhaps.

What of those who had some wonderful thing happen on September 11th, either the one in 2001 or some other. Or the day before, or the day after? Today I’ve seen multiple stories about children born on 09/11/2001 who can’t enjoy their birthdays or even get teased or bullied about it, as if they had any control. I’ve seen people whose wedding anniversary just happens to be September 11th, and they feel that it’s now tainted in some way.

Really? People react this way?

Two sentiments that sound like opposites but mean the same thing get repeated over and over on September 11th. Our new national mantra for the day.

“Always remember.”

“Never forget.”

Absolutely. No question. But let’s do it with our brains as well as our hearts.

Let us make a conscious, intelligent decision to be positive, not negative.

Let us always remember the innocents, remember the heroes, and remember the stories of bravery and courage.

Let us make a choice to not remember it tinged with an everlasting patina of fear and hate.

We can and should pledge to never forget any of it.

We can and should strive to always remember and memorialize every loss and every triumph.

We must also realize that we have a choice in how we work to do those things as well as how we try to prevent it from happening again.

We can be inspired or we can be consumed. We can be motivated or we can be paralyzed. We can look forward to our dreams or we can be trapped by our past.

Sometimes in all of the grief and rage it’s hard to remember that we still get to choose.

Let’s always remember that, too. Never forget it.

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Filed under Politics

August 5, 2013 · 21:24

Stuck In The Middle Blues

A few items from the current headlines and from our personal life:

  • Fourteen baseball players got huge suspensions and penalties for getting caught again using illegal performance enhancing drugs – the record books mean just about nothing these days since many of the current records were set by players who were or were suspected to be “juiced”.
  • At our grocery store we’re now forced to either check out our own groceries (a process which fails more often than it succeeds and they only have one person to assist a dozen terminals as things go FUBAR) or wait in increasingly long lines caused by only having one or two of the eight regular checkout aisles open. Yet every couple of years we have to endure even worse service and even less selection when the union goes on strike, sometimes for months and months. Oh, and we now get a choice of either bagging our own groceries or taking even longer at checkout to wait for the groceries to be properly crushed by the union employees.
  • We’ve got a dozen or more channels on our cable television that are now showing propaganda from Time Warner Cable – no CBS or Showtime or KCAL. They’re predicting that this particular little pissing contest might drag on for weeks, until the return of the NFL games gets consumers really, Really, REALLY pissed off instead of just really pissed off.
  • At least we have the NFL this year. Last year we didn’t have the referees and it was a joke. A few years ago we didn’t have players and it was a bigger joke. The NHL season last year was cut to about half its normal length by a strike/lockout, and a few years ago those yahoos managed to cancel an entire season.
  • In San Francisco, BART went on strike last month for several days, completely snarling the city. They went back to work for a month-long “cooling off period”, but that’s expired now and the only reason they weren’t on strike again this morning and again shutting down the city was because the governor stepped in. That will only buy a few days and then we’re right back to our brinksmanship.
  • Congress. The White House. The state legislature. (Any state.) The city council. Does any one have any level of government that isn’t totally a partisan collection of completely incompetent buffoons? Doesn’t matter the party, doesn’t matter your affiliation. It’s the blind leading the blind, six of one and half a dozen of the other.

The common thread in all of these stories (and dozens more just like it every day) is that the common people, you and I, get the short end of the stick every single time.

Do CBS and Time Warner Cable lose anything significant in their dispute? Not really, and eventually they’ll come to an agreement that will be identical to the agreement they could have come to last week. But the little guy that just wants to watch television at night gets screwed.

Do any of the millionaire athletes or billionaire owners lose anything when they go toe to toe for months? You know better. But the devoted fans who live for the games turn bitter and disillusioned, while tens of thousands of minimum wage employees and small businesses who provide parking and tickets and food and security and cleaning and a thousand other things at the games all get to go unemployed. They’re missing meals, they’re losing their homes, they’re going broke – how many athletes or owners missed meals or lost their homes?

Same thing about the unions and the stores and the unions and the transit managers and the unions and the hospitals and… After months of angst, suffering, and sometimes violence, they’ll come to the exact same agreement that they could have done earlier to avoid the problem. Then they’ll both “declare victory” and claim that they did it “for us”.

That’s the salt in the wound.

Look at what CBS and TWC are telling the press, putting on billboards, and putting on full-page newspaper ads. Each side claims that they’re doing what they’re doing in order to help you and me, to protect you and me from the big, bad other guy.

BULLSHIT.

Maybe they’re so delusional and drowning in the corporate koolaid that they truly believe that. Maybe they’re truly so full of their own stupidity to even realize how blind and ignorant they are, something that’s only too clear to us.

Or more likely, they’re fully aware of what BS they’re spreading, and they’re fully aware that we know that they’re raining BS down on us – THEY JUST DON’T CARE.

We’re cannon fodder to them, the little guys stuck in the middle, and they can continue to redefine the limits of arrogance and ignorance. It’s just a game to them.

Politicians, labor leaders, civic leaders, owners, athletes, captains of industry – none of them care. It’s guaranteed that none of them are “leaders” by any definition of the term that I grew up with. If they were, they would solve the problems before they became crises. They would work their butts off to make it better instead of deliberately making it worse.

Yeah. Let’s wait for that to happen. Can anyone name the last time that one of these “leaders” did his or her job and actually “led”, actually solved problems, actually got their job done and earned their millions and billions?

Maybe if 500,000 cable subscribers this month didn’t pay their bill and turned in their cable boxes, would that get their attention? If a couple million voters signed recall petitions and demanded there be a “None of the Above” option on the ballot, would Congress notice? If the baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and soccer stadiums were 99% empty for a year or two and no one bought jerseys or memorabilia to put millions in the athlete’s pockets, would they wise up?

It’ll never happen. We don’t have any leaders who are supposed to be leaders, and we most certainly don’t have any leaders to lead the masses in the middle out of that rut and out of harm’s way.

I wish that I were wrong.

Freakin’ idiots.

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Politics, Sports

August 2, 2013 · 13:28

Political Robocalls

This morning I got my first “robo-call” from a local politician wanting my vote in the upcoming September special election for state assembly. We have a special election coming up in September? Who knew?

And so it begins again. I hate robocalls, with a passion like the fiery burning of a thousand white-hot suns.

On the one hand, one of the few things that Congress has done that I’m a big fan of is the “Do Not Call List“. We signed up instantly when it went live a few years ago.

On the other hand, every spammer, scammer, and troll out there pretty much blatantly ignores the DNCL. There is really no way to enforce the DNCL laws since it’s so trivially easy for the scum telemarketers to spoof their caller IDs. When you get one of these calls for “credit card repairs” or “carpet cleaning” or “home improvements” or whatever, there’s no way to know the actual name, address, or phone number of the slimeball company calling you. They don’t care if you hang up, it’s just a computer. It’s already gone on to the next automated call.

If you click past the computer robocall and get a human to ask for any of that information, demand that they stop calling, threaten them with an FTC complaint, or simply cuss them out and vent your frustrations at them, they simply hang up on you. Even when you do manage to find out the information needed to file a complaint, there is so little enforcement that it’s a complete joke.

You and your anger and frustration mean absolutely zero to anyone involved, either those inflicting the robocall interruptions on us or those who are supposed to be stopping them.

The best part of all is that the politicians, upstanding leaders of our society that they are, wrote the DNCL laws and exempted themselves from it. Politicians and political campaigns can robocall you until your ears bleed and there’s not a thing you can do about it. Their justification was that it was necessary in order to insure we had open and free elections and campaigning. (Can you say “bullshit”? Sure. I knew you could!)

Do companies actually get any business out of these robocalls? Have you or anyone you know ever done business or paid good money based on a robocall or telemarketer? EVER?

Do politicians actually get any votes out of these robocalls? Have you or anyone you know ever voted for someone or something based on a robocall or telemarketer? EVER?

It’s a mystery to me. I don’t know of a single person who could answer either of these questions with a “yes”. (If you can, please, please, PLEASE let me know in the comments!) Yet there must be some return on the money spent to do this kind of “advertising” or “marketing”. If there wasn’t, simple economics says that they would stop. Yet it keeps getting worse. Ergo, it must pay off. Who are the people who aren’t as annoyed by these calls as everyone I know?

Sometimes we go for weeks at a time with our phone off the hook or unplugged, simply in order to avoid getting called a dozen times a day by some idiot machine or another. At the moment, due to a couple of other things going on in life, that’s not a good option. Ditto for simply ignoring the ringing unless it’s someone we recognize. There are a couple of potential calls we can get at any moment that we really, really need to get and we won’t recognize those numbers. We’re a captive target audience.

The only small control we can have over this problem lies with the politicians. They have to let us know exactly who or what they’re pushing or it’s truly a waste of their time and money. But in doing so, they also make sure that we know exactly who’s bothering us and pissing us off.

I had never heard of the guy who had the political robocall from this morning. I have now, which I guess satisfies part of his campaign’s goal. But I also went to his website, hit the “contact us” button, and fired off a capsule summary of my feelings on robocalls and pointed out that I now vote for the guy who robocalls me the least.

I have no clue who he’s running against, but I know that he has called. Like the old joke says, “That’s one!” He’s now in last place in this race as far as I’m concerned.

Any political campaign consultants out there listening?

(P.S. – in the half hour or so that it’s taken to write this rant, I’ve had two more robocalls, one on duct cleaning and one on credit cards.)

(P.P.S. – there should be a software patch in WordPress so that when I flag a post with the “Politics” category, the “Freakin’ Idiots!” category automatically gets flagged as well!)

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Politics

July 20, 2013 · 20:20

Forty-Four Years Ago Today

Forty-four years ago today we all held our breath until the Eagle had landed. It was one of the biggest moments in human history, right up there with the discovery of fire, domestication of animals, development of agriculture, invention of movable type & printing press, discovery of America, and the development of flight.

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And it was live on television. Walter Cronkite was as nervous as we had ever seen him, on pins and needles, and (dare we say it?) almost speechless. We listened to the radio transmissions, heard the calls as master alarms were going off, heard the warnings from Houston that fuel was running out, heard the warnings from Neil Armstrong that the autopilot was putting the Eagle into a boulder field and he was taking over the controls.

Were they going to have to abort? Or worse, were they going to crash or be trapped where they couldn’t take off again, dying so very far from home? We had seen failure and death on the pad just thirty-one months earlier when we had lost Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Armstrong had almost died on Gemini 8, along with David Scott. Success was by no means guaranteed.

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Do you remember the cheering? The insane, out of your mind relief and release of tension? The hugging of total strangers in every corner of the world? The pictures on the news, and in Time and Life and Look and Newsweek and National Geographic magazines, and on every newspaper in the world?

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Do you remember the crowds watching and cheering along with us in London, Paris, Bangkok, New Dehli, Cairo, Johannesburg, Rio de Janerio, and tiny little villages in the middle of nowhere on every continent. Do you remember 600 million people all watching together?

Where I was a 13-year old in the Chicago suburbs, it was late in the evening by the time the moon walk started, six and a half hours after landing. It was coming up on 10:00 at night when the hatch opened and Armstrong started down the ladder. He pulled a lanyard, a hatch on the side of the LM folded down, and we had live video! From the moon! With a guy climbing down the ladder in front of us!

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“That’s one small step…”

I don’t know how much my seven younger brothers and sisters remember from that night. I know my parents had us all there in front of the television, but it was late and I’m sure that many of them slept through most of it.

20130720-191201.jpg NASA

I did not. I still vividly remember the first step, the ghostly black & white televised images as the contingency soil samples were taken, Buzz Aldrin coming down the ladder next with Armstrong’s help, the installation of the science experiments, the set up of the US flag, the call from Nixon.

One of my most distinct memories is from when the plaque on the lander’s leg was unveiled. As Neil read the plaque, the video was clear enough to see inside his helmet and you could see his face as he read.

“We came in peace for all mankind.”

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Soon enough it was done. They hustled to get the rock boxes and cameras and experiments back into the LM. After less than an hour, the first moonwalk in human history was done. The crew, and the world, got some sleep. The next day Armstrong and Aldrin blasted off from the moon, docked with Mike Collins in the Columbia command module, and returned safely to Earth three days later. Their film got developed and we’ve had iconic images as a part of our lives, our culture, and our history for forty-four years.

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Now it’s forty-four years later. A generation and more not only don’t remember Apollo 11, they weren’t born until fifteen or twenty years after Gene Cernan left the last footprints on the moon at the end of Apollo 17 in 1973.

Why haven’t we gone back? Why haven’t we learned about living on another planet by living on another planet?

Why haven’t we gone further? Why haven’t we put boot prints on Mars? Or an asteroid? Or a comet?

Why haven’t we gone permanently? Elon Musk and others are now talking about colonization, not just travel. Why aren’t there opportunities for people like me, middle aged, healthy, kids grown, to go and live the rest of our lives building a colony on the moon or at L5 or on Mars?

Given the chance to spend the next forty or fifty years here on the ground becoming a part of the Lazy Boy lounger or going to Mars for fifteen or twenty years building the first human colony on another planet, I’m outta here in a heartbeat.

Forty-four years ago I wanted more than anything to follow in Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s footsteps.

I still do.

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Filed under Politics, Space

July 1, 2013 · 22:29

Flight Or Fight?

Have you noticed how often the “Politics” category gets flagged on the same post as the “Freakin’ Idiots!” category does?

Somewhere down the road in three years, five years, ten years, whatever, the Castle Of The Willetts will be relocating out of Los Angeles for sure, and almost certainly out of California. Ronnie’s still got her job here and career to finish out. I’m looking for my next job and for practical reasons it’s most likely to be in the area here (but I would take a decent job out of state in a heartbeat if it came along). But when the day comes for us to retire, it will be someplace else.

In looking at where that “someplace else” will be, I’ve been keeping track of places that seem to have a preponderance of freakin’ idiots, particularly in the political area. I would really prefer to not voluntarily move to some place where my first reaction to every move made in the state capitol is to go there and start yelling at folks and asking what kind of freakin’ idiot they think they are!!??

That could make retirement…unpleasant. For everyone.

But these days, it’s getting harder and harder to find places that aren’t full of freakin’ idiots, particularly ideologically right-wing, sanctimonious, Faux News watching freakin’ idiots. Whether it be Texas and their little thing about banning abortions no matter how many special sessions it takes, or Ohio today with their move to do the same no matter how irrational or unconstitutional, or North Carolina and Mississippi and other states trying to re-write the Jim Crow laws, or any one of a couple dozen states not being satisfied with simply denying marriage rights to a significant chunk of the population but instead insisting on making those rights actually illegal in the state constitutions – it’s getting tough to find anyplace that doesn’t suck from some political or social standpoint or another.

I’m not saying that California’s any better – it’s not! It’s not just the fact that more than 50% of the voting public allowed their common sense and their souls to be purchased by the religious right’s bullshit campaign and vote in Prop H8 a couple of years ago. The entire ballot proposition concept in California today is so totally corrupt that it’s not even funny, with 99% of the Props being corporate sponsored and corporate opposed and signatures gathered by political machines, to the point where any actual citizen-based reform via ballot proposition is almost inconceivable.

So many places look like such nice places to live, if you ignore the politics. I look at places like North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, and I would love to move (or move back) there for so many reasons.

Seasons. Small towns. Mountains and rivers and landscapes. Weather.

And then I see something about their politics or social mores that just infuriates me and I don’t see how I could ever live there.

Thinking about it today, I was wondering how other folks do it. For example, I follow and admire John Scalzi but I don’t actually know him. I know that he lives in Ohio and appears to love it there, yet he appears to feel like I do about the politics of the place. How does he do that? How does he reconcile that?

North Carolina seems to be a lovely place, lots of nice mountains, a good climate, some great places like Raleigh. I have a high school friend who’s a lawyer there and she loves it. But I know her political views and I see things like North Carolina passing constitutional amendments prohibiting gay marriage and passing laws in their legislature that make some incredibly bone-headed and backwards educational choices – and I don’t know that I could live there despite all of the other good things. So how does Maria do it?

While turning all of this over in my mind today a new thought occurred to me. Kind of like the revelation that the Grinch had as he heard the Whos singing in the village below him.

Maybe if you find a place that you really love except for some facet of outlandish and outrageous political or social disconnect, the trick is to live there anyway and fight to change the things that you find wrong about it. Accept that no place is perfect and even that there may be a major issue, but embrace what is good and then with determination and confidence and courage stand up in the minority for the things that you believe in and try to change things.

OK, so if the “major issue” is something like cannibalism, perhaps you need to keep looking for a starting point that’s a little closer to your own position. But if it’s the fact that 55% of the legislators are boobs who are trying to legislate pi to equal 3 just because, or legislate that third graders be taught that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, then perhaps you can work to get them replaced with better legislators. Maybe?

Is that the answer? To realize that Nirvana doesn’t exist and you can’t fly far enough away to ever find it, but that you take your best shot and fight to make it better? Or do you avoid the angst and grief that lies in that fight and keep flying, hoping that Nirvana or Shangri La is just over the next horizon?

It’s a thing to think about.

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June 1, 2013 · 19:17

Mother Nature vs Coastal Commission

In Southern California, brush fires are a way of life. This year the fire season has started early and looks to be bad.

The Castle of the Willetts is close enough (a half-mile or so) to some open brush and parkland areas that we’re occasionally packing the critical documents, computers, and irreplaceable items and making sure that the cars all have a full tank of gas should we get the order to bug out.

There’s currently a big fire burning up north of the Santa Clarita Valley, about twenty miles due north of us. Here’s how it looked on Thursday afternoon at 1,000 acres (from the KTLA helicopter):

2013-05-30 Powerhouse Fire

And here’s a picture of the smoke cloud going up to about 40,000 feet, as taken from our front yard this afternoon, now that the fire’s up to 3,600 acres (and it’s over 100 F out there):

2013-06-01 Powerhouse Fire

Note that those aren’t normal, water vapor clouds – it’s all soot and smoke and ash. Billions of cubic yards of it I would think, if not more.

On a related note, a controversy here in Southern California surrounds the beach fire pits that have been iconic landmarks for decades here in Southern California. Several cities, particularly Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, are trying to get the beach pits shut down. The reason given by the California Coastal Commission is that the smoke from the beach fire pits is a source of pollution.

Does the Coastal Commission want to know why the average Californian think’s they’re a bunch of freakin’ idiots? (I’m sure they don’t know and really don’t care, but let’s go through the math anyway.)

Look at those pictures of the natural brush fires. Look at all of that smoke for days and days and days, and multiply it by the dozen or two dozen or three dozen or more fires per year.

Now let’s think about how much smoke can ever possibly come from the beach pits, even if every single one of them is used (they aren’t) every single day (they aren’t) for six or eight hours a night (in reality it’s less).

As an order of magnitude comparison, the total amount of “pollution” by the beach fire pits has to be a tiny fraction of a fraction of a percent of the 100% natural “pollution” being caused by the brush fires. It’s a drop in the bucket, a teeny-tiny squiggle in the data, a blip lost in the noise, statistically insignificant.

So why are our tax dollars being spent on this political kerfuffle?

Buried in the articles are comments from the local beach residents about how they are being exposed to the smoke from the beach fires. The people complaining to the politicians are the multi-millionaires who live along the beach in Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Santa Monica, Malibu, and Santa Barbara. The people who will be unable to enjoy a BBQ on the beach are the middle and low-income families who occasionally get to visit the beach for a day.

Obviously the Coastal Commission can’t get any support for banning the beach fire pits base on that obvious truth, so they spin the argument into one of “pollution”. Yet they do it while clouds of smoke from brush fires rise up over the horizon and think that we can’t or won’t notice.

How stupid do they think people are?

 

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May 21, 2013 · 21:39

Local Elections

Today Los Angeles had its local election for mayor and a couple of local offices and local measures regarding marijuana dispensaries.

Finally!

I’ll admit to having a severe case of voter’s exhaustion at this point. Starting a full eighteen months ago with the early presidential primaries, through last year’s California primary, last November’s national election, this spring’s mayoral primaries, and now the final mayoral election, we’ve had pretty much nonstop mailers, phone calls, billboards, and attack TV ads. The mud slinging in California and LA might not have sunk quite to the level of some of the more memorable campaigns from around the country, but they’ve been plenty bad. And nonstop, unrelenting. I’m seeing political campaign ads in my sleep.

At this point I really don’t care who wins. First of all, in the LA mayor’s race it’s pretty much six of one, a half-dozen of the other. Greuel would be LA’s first female mayor, Garcetti would be it’s first Jewish mayor. Other than that? I give it about a 99% chance that LA in four years will look pretty much the same either way.

District attorney? Again, who cares? The DA’s office here has a tradition to uphold and both of them will do just fine. OJ Simpson walked. Robert Blake walked. They couldn’t even get a decent set of convictions on the Bell “civic leaders” who were caught red-handed with their hands in the cookie jar all the way up to the shoulder. So someone new will be in charge of the department? Okey dokey.

Should we limit marijuana dispensaries, pot shops for “medicinal” marijuana? Sure, works for me. There are upscale parts of town here (Encino, Woodland Hills, Tarzana, Sherman Oaks) where there are pot shops on every block. In the less upscale parts of town (Van Nuys, Pacoima) there are two or three of them in every single teeny tiny strip mall. Is that too many? Probably.

We’ve gone days at a time with our home phone off the hook because we’re getting robocalls three, four, six, eight times a night, once an hour during the day. Isn’t it great that the politicians who wrote the “Do Not Call List” law exempted themselves from being subject to it? They said that it was to preserve democracy, to make sure that everyone’s political views could be heard, to not limit free political speech. What a crock of shit! And yet, when politicians say that sort of thing with a straight face, they still aren’t capable of understanding why the average American is disillusioned and wouldn’t trust a politician, ANY POLITICIAN, to give them the time of day.

I give a week before the first ads for the next state propositions and fall governor’s race start.

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