Trump's Canada Reality Show.

     This weekend while in Canada for the G-7 summit Trump had a thought and opened his mouth and suggested that he might support a law that federally ‘legalized’ marihuana (as the feds incorrectly spell it).¹ At first that struck me as odd. But then I remembered I personally know quite a few people who smoke mota but tend toward the authoritarian view of politics and political science.           Marijuana’s fame as the peace and love drug of the very white hippy subculture of the 60s has dropped from the tree of history and is rotting on the ground like so much fruit at the end of summer. It is now a symbol of personal liberty and rebellion in a world increasingly devoid of personal liberty. Donnie’s “odd” position was consistent with and perhaps required by his act of clemency toward Alice Johnson a woman of color languishing in federal prison under burden of a life sentence for a relatively minor offense in the now ancient (and lost) War on Drugs.

     Because he frequently adopts a Randian view of modern economics, I would expect Trump’s main concern in this teased position on legal pot at the G-7 was with the economic potential of such a surrender in America’s longest war. Remember California just legalized recreational use of marijuana via an initiative on the 2016 General Election ballot. There was something in that measure for everyone and every special interest even remotely connected to the under the radar industry. This includes California’s taxing authorities. My most recent experience in the new industry was that the government at the retail level is now collecting taxes equal to 34% of the value of the transaction. The Feds if they have their way will simply put you in prison and seize all your assets after California 34% to have that little baggy.

     It also allowed him to engage in real fun, dropping a teaser in order to secure an audience for the next installment of his current reality show. That’s for the care and feeding of his narcissism.

1Caused by an ignorant attempt by the engrossing clerk to fix a spelling error.

It's Sunday Again

     It’s Sunday again. I know that because I filled my then-empty weekly pill box and because there’s a newspaper in my yard. I don’t read that newspaper. I will eventually go out and pick it up and toss it in the trash. I will do that today because I don’t want to wake up tomorrow see it again and think in my pre-coffeed fog it’s Sunday again. I subscribe to it only on Sundays because the publisher allows me free access to its website in return for my $8.96 every two months. I hate paywalls on websites. I also took my weekly eight pill regimen of 2.5 mg tablets of methotrexate that sustains me until next Sunday when I take eight more of the little yellow buggers. It tempers my overactive immune system over the course of the coming week which allows me temporary control of my ocular myasthenia. So I guess that’s a good thing. It keeps me functional.

     I’ve consumed the entirety of the pot of coffee I made today along with the last two Cleo & Leo cookies. If you’re wondering what they are I must confess that I am really not sure, they appear to be sugar cookies with chunks of chocolate in them. So they can’t really be bad for me. Can they?

     It’s a cold and dreary day with a twenty percent chance of some sort of precipitation and my friend and roommate Rupert has been sleeping all morning. He got up once this morning to eat a bit and have a drink of water and use his box. He then promptly returned to bed in what I used to think was my bed. It apparently is now ours, mostly his now he thinks. He’s a good fellow and talks to me and cuddles me when it seems like no one else will.

And with that I am off to see what this Sunday has in store for me.

We've Been Had Again!

This morning the Los Angeles Times ran an article on its website about the lackluster collections of the 34% combined taxes imposed on the  purchases of marijuana and marijuana products since January 1st of this year. The state is bemoaning the fact that recreational pot has not been the  golden goose politicians expected it to be. California according to the article has only collected $33.6 million since January 1st of this year, way below the expected haul of $185 million projected for the six-month period ending June 30th of this year.
Governor Brown's solution and apparently AG Becerra's solution is Interdiction. The creation of new law enforcement agencies in the California's Justice Department to shut down illegal growers and sellers and apparently the associated retail distributors. Beware, your local neighborhood street dealer who sells you your stash for a cash price tax free just might be your grandmother supplementing her Social Security.
So be forewarned that the little piglets about to be released by Jerry Brown and Xavier Becerra will grow  into full sized sows and boars   and we will be filling our prison systems with marijuana offenders again, including your own personal unlicensed grower/seller.  Saint Lucy with Football, pray for us.

Electoral College Nonsense

As I have said before our nascent democracy is in serious danger.

Separation of powers (and other constitutional concepts) is under attack. Most recently by the GOP Senate refusing to consider Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to sit on SCOTUS after Antonin Scalia died in February of last year. That nomination died when the 114^th Congress adjourned sine die. Now of course the Democrats in the Senate are proposing to pay the GOP majority back by refusing to confirm any Trump attempt to fill the Scalia vacancy. Now Republic suffers from the childish antics of both parties. Their excuse for this constitutional outrage and massive dereliction of their own duty was that Obama had less than a year remaining in office and therefore he should forfeit his presidential power and I might add, his duty to nominate and appoint officers of his government for his remaining time in office because of the timing of Scalia’s death. That was one lousy syllogism. But that didn’t keep them from standing up and loudly proclaiming that they wouldn’t consider any judicial nominations the President might put forward.

This was effectively a partial coup and it was without question a violation of both the Senate’s obligation to “advise and consent” and its concomitant obligation to advise and not consent to Judge Garland’s nomination. This was an absolute abdication of its duties under the Constitution and effectively cut the President’s term almost a year prior to its natural termination on January 20^th of this year. By acting in this way the GOP has increased the chances the Nation will have a judicial system that ultimately will speak out of both sides of its mouth depending on which side was the prevailing party in the Circuit.

This past year’s presidential election’s outcome was determined by an archaic system of election that the founders created in order to allegedly prevent mobs from taking over the office and certainly to further insulate the institution of slavery from being upended by their greatest fear: slave rebellions. Their fear of common un-propertied white men voting or at the helm of the ship of state was exceeded only their fear of slaves rebelling against their masters and bringing down the entire agricultural economy then in place. Now as Donald Trump serial liar prepares to take office and wreak havoc on the Republic we are seeing how that system isolates the office of President from its constituency the people of the this nation. It is absolutely past time to consign the electoral college to the trash heap of history, along with Donald Trump.

Okay. It's Over Now What?

I have not yet recovered from the fiasco of the 2016 election. I am unsure of how I feel, other than the anger I feel towards all the folks who decided to fix what they perceived is wrong with America by electing Donald to be President of the United States. I am amazed that more people rightly or wrongly voted for Mrs. Clinton than voted for Donald. Not only that but the total number of votes cast against him totaled something like 75 million. Yet he won the election by gathering 36 more votes than Hillary did in the place where it actually counts: the 50 state capitals and the District of Columbia. This is more proof that our Constitution is not a democratic document. Political movement toward making it a more democratic document has been an ongoing struggle since its adoption but it is not yet there. As proof of that I offer the fact that seventy-five million people voted for someone other than the fellow who will be inaugurated on January 20th. That really needs to be fixed.

I find it really hard to get my head around that. Donald Trump, barring the intervention of any deity actually interested in the future of the USofA, is going to become president at noon two weeks from tomorrow. All the opportunities to set aside this ‘election’ have passed. The electoral college cast its votes on December 19th and then disbanded never to be heard from again. On Tuesday last the incoming 115th House of Representatives counted the electoral votes and certified the presidential election as a done deal. The Senate took similar action with respect to Mike Pence’s election as vice president.

Since I don’t have any belief that petitioning various gods and goddesses for intervention will help us in this hour of peril we had best get our collective and individual asses in gear and start making noise and becoming part of #TheResistance or our Nation will be doomed. We are on a headlong rush off the coming cliff into the great unknown. We had better figure out a way to stop this. I mean now!

Trash Day in the Canyons

     Today is Trash Day in the Canyons. One of my neighbors had already taken their trash out by the time I started to move mine to the ‘curbside’ for pick up. Earlier this morning my cat Rupert was sitting in his window surveying his lands and the castle grounds but was clearly upset at something that had invaded his space. It was the sound of wings, big wings, flapping in the air at high speed. There was a huge crow worrying at one of my neighbors’ trash barrels.

     Later I was taking my barrels out to the road and I noticed that the crow was now joined by a comrade and they had succeeded in liberating some of the treasures in the neighbors’ barrel. What was liberated was a bag of store-bought sugar cookies. These guys had no fear of me and I was twenty feet away from them. I was scolding them. They scolded me back. So I just started watching them. They had a system. One of the crows would stand nearby to the now ripped open bag of cookies in the middle of our road while the other crow would swoop down and grab one in its maw and fly off to enjoy his treasure. When he was done he returned to the area of the cookies, relieved his comrade and stood guard while his comrade grabbed a cookie and took off. This was repeated several times until eventually they seemed to lose active interest in the cookies but still stood by guarding their treasure.

      I would suspect by the time the cookies are gone that the birds will both be dead of diabetic shock. There has to be at least one lesson there for us to heed.

North Pole of Jupiter

     

NASA was created in late 1958 during the waning years of the Eisenhower Administration. The Act creating NASA was the creature of the 85^th Congress which was run by Democrats. The Act was signed into law by President Eisenhower. It was a bipartisan creation, something that could never be accomplished today with the current crop of GOP-crazies in Congress. The GOP now actively supports the elimination or diminishment of our space agency and certainly seeks annually to defund it.

      Its creation was perhaps a naive expression of the USofA’s can-do attitude in its new position as the sine qua non of the victory over the Nazis and the Empire of Japan barely a decade before its creation. It turned out to be a full employment for act for geeks of every sort. Even better than that it turned out to be an incredible font of knowledge and awe at what ‘nature hath wrought.’

      This past week NASA released pictures taken by the Juno spacecraft of something we have never before seen: the north pole of Jupiter. The NASA geeks were flabbergasted.. They had no expectation that they would see the wonders photographed by Juno. This picture is dominated by blues. Those blues sharply off set the familiar reddish bands around Jupiter. It is simply stunning. I could sit in a darkened room staring at this picture and travel to the end of ends of space-time in my mind.

Willful and Persistent Ignorance

The christian church has long taught that there is no such thing as an unforgivable sin. I suspect whoever it was who handed down that doctrine never had to deal with the ignorance of anyone willfully and persistently ignorant like Mr. Trump or with his disciples. He is indeed a prideful son of a bitch.

The Kiwi a Cosmic Joke

    

If ever there was a cosmic joke it was the creation of the kiwi bird. The kiwi is native to New Zealand and exists no where else in the world. It is functionally blind and it is nocturnal. It has no wings and it can not fly. The hens of the species ovulate once a year and the resultant egg is sometimes 40-50 percent of the body-weight of the hen. If any creature was designed not to survive in our terrarium it is the kiwi.

      The only thing the bird has going for it is that it has no natural enemies. At least it didn’t until the arrival of the British. The Brits brought their pigs with them and introduced porkers to New Zealand. Pigs are an ornery lot and lots of them escaped or were just turned loose. The pigs thought the kiwis tasted just fine and kiwis were suddenly on the diet of the pigs. The pigs taught the Brits that kiwis were indeed yummy. The population of kiwis dropped from the millions down to fewer than ten thousand in less than a century.

      I visited New Zealand a number of years ago and during that trip I went to a facility that cares for kiwis. Most of the remaining birds live in captivity. They had periodic kiwi shows. We were ushered into a large dark room with its walls painted black. There were benches in front of a large terrarium. The enclosure was lighted to resemble a moon lit night. No cameras were permitted and visitors were required to sit soundlessly on the benches watching and waiting. Finally we were rewarded by seeing a lumbering small chicken sized creature pecking around on the ground whatever they feed them. It was reddish in color. It didn’t sing or dance or do tricks. It just went and pecked at the ground and then went and hid. It was pretty boring.

      As a matter of full disclosure I have wondered many times since what one of those birds would taste like...and what kiwl-made wine would go with roasted kiwi. Finding out would probably provoke an international incident.

On Peaches and Eggs

An artist friend and neighbor stopped by a day or so ago.. He has both a peach tree and a mess of critters called chickens. They lay eggs pretty much one a day per hen almost like clock work. It apparently is one of the few things hens do, eat, poop and lay eggs. His peach tree is pretty amazing. It produces peaches and oxygen. The tree doesn’t appear to eat anything and it pretty much doesn’t poop. It isn’t quite as prolific as his hens but the peaches he brought by were really good and sweet. Well one of them was. The other two are being carefully cared for so they can be a later joy. Anyone growing up in California has to know the joy of summer time California peaches and the absolute joy of fresh peach pie on a summer eve sitting on the porch listening to frogs and crickets and nighttime song birds.. Try it. I think you will like it.

The peaches reminded me of a John Prine tune Spanish Pipedream

“We blew up our TV threw away our paper
Went to the country, built us a home
Had a lot of children, fed 'em on peaches.”

  I started thinking about chickens and eggs. Yes I do have a lot of time on my hands. It occurs to me that from what I can gather the average hen (whatever average means) lays one egg each day until the bird croaks. Occasionally chickens will get broody and stop laying for a few days but basically it’s one a day per hen forever. If you have a little land you can build a henhouse for a couple of hens, say ten thousand or so. Over a week’s time you are going to have a whole bunch of eggs. What if you have a million hens laying eggs? In that event you are quite simply a big egg farmer and all is automated even your government subsidy is direct deposited into you bank account.

   

      When a chicken builds an egg the last thing it builds is the shell. During this process what becomes the shell is coated with some kind hen body-fluid. This fluid hardens around the shell and seals it from outside intruders such as pathogens. Remember the egg inside the shell is pretty much sterile. There really is no need to refrigerate a chicken egg if the coating is intact. Commercial egg farmers wash the eggs to remove the coating and bleach them so they are white (subliminal association: white = clean and pure) Because of the resultant porousness of the shell the egg now has to be kept refrigerated.

      What this quick guide to being an egg farmer really brings to mind is the degree of control over the “free market” that can be exercised by the egg farmers by manipulating the flow of eggs to the retail markets. The retailer has to move his newly perishable egg inventory while the egg farmer can sit on his stock of non perishable eggs. That gives the farmer more economic power than I care to see.

Along the Banks of the Cayahoga

Well it’s the month of July in the quadrennial leap year again and that means old white men and their obedient blue-haired mates in tennis shoes are gathering along the banks of the Cayahoga River to select their candidate for president to lead us into the 17^th century once again.

You remember the Cayahoga River. It caught fire in 1969 from the pollutants and industrial waste it was carrying off to Lake Erie. Nothing but scum lived in the Cayahoga River. That fire on that river was one the major reasons the Congress and Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. People demanded it and the Congress complied. The river now supports a healthy eco-system thanks to the EPA

Now that the fire has been put out and only places like Flint Michigan have flammable domestic water systems the GOP can see no reason not to terminate the EPA. It gets in the way of what the one percent want to do. I can understand their reasoning: if it works get rid of it. Once it’s gone they can show what a lousy failure the remaining government agencies are. Soon you will be able to drown government in Donald’s gilded bathtub.

Speaking of Donald he has spent the weekend deciding things like the name of his veep and then getting his panties all a twist when he had buyers’ remorse and started making calls to his advisers. That was leaked to us. At about the same the campaign introduced his new TP logo and then, forgetting that the internet is forever, tried to scrub it from the internet. Finally there was the Leslie Stahl interview. What says “let them eat cake” more eloquently than two old white guys sitting on a pair of faux gilded Louis XIV chairs telling the world how they are going to “make America great again”? The comedy channel would do well to consider gavel to gavel coverage of the convention.

Ginsburg vs Trump

A massive explosion has torn across the political landscape. Flash flood warnings are posted. Surfers have been recalled from the surf because of tsunami warnings. Red flags are everywhere. Old Glory is permanently at half mast. Schools are on lock down and defensively we are at DefCon 3.

Notorious RBG has spoken aloud about Donald Trump and his qualifications to be president of the United States. She called the Donald a fake. She wasn’t clever about it. She didn’t use a euphemism for the word. She didn’t write in magnificent prose. She was plain spoken and actually used the word. She called him a fake. Donald was butt hurt. Donald newly proclaimed a fake by Justice Ginsburg was righteously angry and with his mane flying immediately and painfully sent off a “You’re Fired” tweet, a demand for her resignation. Donald’s choir tiaraed regally under memed baseball caps took up the refrain and also called for her immediate resignation from SCOTUS. The cacophony was deafening.

This entire affair is a nonsensical tempest in a tea pot and has been exaggerated beyond all rational inquiry and belief. The noises you have heard from pundits both qualified and unqualified alike are just the sounds made by any bovine when producing what Virgil would call cacas tauri. The whole thing stinks to high heaven.

Justice Ginsburg is an American citizen exercising her constitutional rights in America’s favorite season, a presidential election year. She’s also a member of America’s court of last resort but she doesn’t forfeit her own civil rights to sit on that court. She is supposed to be impartial not about political candidates (remember Bush vs Gore) but about the matters presented to her for decision until called upon to decide the matter presented. If judges were required to be totally impartial throughout a case then nothing would ever be decided.

As far as I know Trump has nothing pending before her so there is nothing for her to be impartial about. Until that changes he has no cause for complaint against her. He’s just another old white guy trying to continue to run things and pull levers for his own benefit.

This is such a silly season.

Brazilian Style Rice

I love this rice. It is tasty and it is reasonably quick to make and it makes me feel artistic when I make it (which I do often) and on top of those virtues it is almost fool proof. I’m qualified to say this because I am a fool and I have never ever been able to cook a satisfying dish of Uncle Ben’s Instant Rice. It is a grave disappointment to me, always and without fail. I don’t even try anymore.

For this adventure you will need some Basmati or Jasmine white rice, a one quart or larger sauce pan with tight-fitting top, less than a teaspoon of olive oil, a small strainer and water in a 2:1 ratio. Always 2:1.

Put olive oil in saucepan over lowest setting on your stove. Swirl it to cover. Pour given amount of rice into strainer and rinse with cold water. Let it drain and while it is draining return to the sauce pan and test the temperature of the olive oil. Test it by flicking a few drops of cold water into the center of the saucepan. If it sizzles and gases off the oil is at the right temperature. Immediately grab your draining strainer give it one more shake (you guys will understand) and dump it into the pan and stir. Stir it lightly (this isn’t waffle batter) and when the rice has been coated with the oil and become shiny it will suddenly brighten. At this point add your water in the prescribed 2:1 ratio. Stir it a bit and bring the mixture to a boil uncovered. When it boils, cover it and turn down the heat to the lowest setting on your stove. Do something else for fifteen minutes. When you return turn off the heat and give the rice a stir. It will be lumpy and sticky. That is just part of the process so don’t sweat that. Cover it back up and do something else for five minutes. When you return you will have a pan full of the most delectable nutty-tasting rice. Gone are the lumps and the stickiness. Enjoy! Don’t waste money on a rice cooker. They cause the user to engage in mindless non-artistic pursuits and they transfer money out of our economy.

Anyone Order a Bomb?

      Thursday ’s lawful and peaceful #blacklivesmatter demonstration in Dallas marked a technical ‘advance’ in policing of lawful peaceful demonstrations. After watching this from my safe perch in the Santa Ana Mountains I am not sure we want to continue on this path in the use of violence. I am bothered by the use of the robot-delivered bomb by DPD to end the violence. I certainly believe that the shooter certainly did a terrible deed many times over and he really have been prosecuted.. I just wonder about the method used to bring him to heel. I am not dismayed that the guy is dead. I wish he had survived so he could be tried for the crimes the government would have alleged against him had he survived. I would not have been upset if he had been killed by a sniper with what is essentially a hunting rifle. Given what the shooter was up to i.e. killing people, pitting sniper against sniper seems a reasonably tailored use of deadly force to end the ongoing situation.

      But the means of delivery of deadly force was quite unusual. Essentially the government built an IED an Improvised Explosive Device. They called Amazon and had it delivered by drone to the intended target. Well it really wasn’t a drone because it was land based and as far as I know Amazon wasn’t involved. But that doesn’t change the fact that they sent the fellow the bomb via a robot. People in Dallas were terrified and I don’t blame them. I don’t live in Dallas so I wasn’t terrified per se. To me the massacre was “another one just like the other one.” The other one having occurred only days before. There is a pattern emerging, gun violence is happening on a weekly basis. More people are getting guns and more people are dying. Is that connection so hard for us to make and understand? Okay let’s put that issue aside and let me try to explain why and on what levels the use of the robot bothers me.

      Let me state initially that I am a science fiction buff. So when I heard that they used a robot to deliver the bomb my ears stood up in coyote fashion. Robots were the cool thing of science fiction. The genre deals with weighty issues. One of the early and oft repeated issues getting the attention of scfi authors was the then infant science of robotics. Scifi’s fascination with robotics finally culminated in the perfect android, Lt Cdr Data of the StarTrek franchise. Along the way scifi authors created a code of conduct that bound that nascent science and the robots it created. The problem the roboticists was basically how do you prevent something smarter and stronger than you from taking over the society and even exterminating or enslaving that society?. The solution that developed in the literature pretty much said robots had to do what their human masters told them. This was subject to the overriding rule that no robot could ever cause harm to a human being under any circumstances whatsoever. This was the prime directive of robotics.

      The use of the robot-delivered bomb in Dallas certainly violated that prime directive that the robot must never harm a human being. When it did what it was told to do, deliver the bomb it killed the shooter pretty much by splattering him up against wall. That was certainly a violent act. I don’t think there can be much serious argument about that. That’s what IEDs do. Perhaps that’s the issue I am dealing with. The technology of robotics has developed to the point that it is no longer necessary to kill the malefactor with a rifle or a robot. Just recently I read a note about a similar robot being used to deliver sleepy time gases to a fellow barricading himself. He was gassed with the robot, he went sleepy time and was captured. Well now that seems like a good outcome to me. We get to put the alleged malefactor on trial to see if we can punish him. We could let his guilt be decided by the conscience of the community a petit jury. Speaking as a lawyer that is the preferred outcome of these things.

      It’s been reported that the Dallas PD obtained the robot from the US defense department under a program through which surplus or outmoded military physical assets are released on favorable terms to local law enforcement. That program is a major factor in the increased militarization of local law enforcement agencies. Militarization of local law enforcement is a big issue in large metropolitan areas such as Dallas. Law enforcement in that context acts like an occupying army in those cities which have had their police departments militarized. The government assures us the robot was not intended to be an anti-personnel asset. Somehow that assurance isn’t very comforting to me or I think to the people of Dallas or any large city.

 

      Now this morning the malefactor is dead and the area sanitized so that no one will remember any of this in the coming weeks or months until we are visited by another malefactor. We have to decide what to do about all this before it is too late. There are those who offer “thoughts and prayers” which of course do nothing to solve the problem of violence and America’s first choice to remedy violence. Something else that does nothing except create more violence are the ridiculously insane calls for more guns. More guns as we have seen means more death and destruction. It is time to deal with this nonsense and put it to rest.

Long Time No See

     It's been well over a year since I've posted anything to this blog. I admit that I'm naturally inclined towards sloth. While  that isn't the entire reason for my failure to post  it is a large part. The rest of this post explains the other reasons.
     One reason for not posting is that I am an old angry gay white guy of Iberian-Basque-Celtic ancestry and each day I keep discovering more stuff for me to be angry about. It has kept me really busy.
      Another is my recent health history dealing with an orphan auto-immune neurological condition called  Myasthenia Gravis or MG for short. It is an orphan disease because it affects only 7 or 8 people per hundred thousand of the general population. So there isn't much interest in a cure. The pharmaceutical industry however has great interest in selling drugs especially palliative drugs for chronic conditions. There is only one palliative drug (and its generic form) on the market for MG and it isn't very effective at controlling the condition's effect on neuro-muscular function and it is pretty toxic, at least to me.
     Then came  the other diagnosis: another cancer had invaded my body. This was colon cancer. There was a partial blockage of my transverse colon. I was pretty much thunder struck. I had feared such a cancer since I was an 8 year old boy when my mother's friend was diagnosed with it in her descending colon (very bad). She had a colectomy and a colostomy and did live on into her 90s another fifty plus years. I didn't have that extensive a surgery and I managed to survive not only the surgery but also six months of chemotherapy. Chemo is not fun although I did drop from almost 220 pounds to 175 pounds. It is a diet to be avoided. I now have stretch marks but I have no visible surgical scar. For whatever that's worth.
     Happily I am in remission from both of my cancers. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2011. I treated it aggressively with radical surgery. I finished my chemo for the colon cancer in the middle of January and I'm now recovering from the damage chemo did to my body. My oncologist said recovery may take a year or more since chemo affects every organ system in your body from the top of your head to the soles of your feet.
     I survived this thanks to the chemo nurses who were just incredible, my physicians who were wonderful and who showed no signs of any god complex and my friends who hauled my butt from doctor to doctor and treatment to treatment (Myasthenia doesn't allow me to drive) and who took care of most of my needs during those six months. My friends also seemed to understand that I am the kind of person who when sick retreats to the very back part of his personal cave and tries to sleep off the sickness. It's no exaggeration that during that period I was sleeping 16-18 hours every day.
      Another thing: Cannabis really does have therapeutic value in spite of what the DEA says to the world. The DEA should be abolished but that's not about to happen, so I would just as happily see the DEA stop practicing medicine. So to recap I got through this part of my life due to the care of my healthcare providers, the love of my friends, lots of sleep and a good quantity of medical mota.
     Next thing up for discussion is why I am an old angry gay white guy

Post SOTU Letter to My Congress Critter--Mimi Walters

Dear Representative Walters:

First I must extend to you my congratulations on your election to and service in the 114^th Congress of the United States. I hope you serve well and honorably and do well by your constituents and by the Nation.

I watched the SOTU last night and I was impressed not just with the President's presentation but also by the dignity exhibited by your caucus. Your Members were for the most part dignified and pretty well behaved given their behavior in recent prior years.

What I am bothered about is that the Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader have taken upon themselves to wander off into the political territory generally occupied by Article 2 of our Constitution e

xecuting the powers of the Executive. I fully understand that the House and the Senate exercise lawful control over the Hill and it is within its rights to invite whomever it wishes to invite to speak to it. However such invitations should have at least some governmental and public purpose to them and the consequent disruption of their primary purpose, providing for the legislative governance of the Nation. The invitation extended to the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamen Netanyahu seems totally devoid of any public purpose or to accomplish anything of benefit given the duty of the Congress to work towards not only protecting the “state of the union” but also furthering the Founders' purpose of ensuring a “more perfect” one.

Mr. Netanyahu is regarded by many intelligent and thoughtful people both in and outside government to be a terrorist and a practitioner of state sanctioned terrorism. One only needs to recall the events between Israel and Gaza during the past year to recall acts of barbarism and terrorism on his part.

For Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell to invite Netanyahu to address the Congress for no good reason other than to embarrass the President of the United States is truly beyond the pale constitutionally and gives at least tacit support to the wrongful acts of Israel and its prime minister. I urge you to publicly disavow the action of your leaders.

Sincerely,

Butchering Inconvenient People

Last night I watched a real union thug, not the imaginary ones invented by GOP politicians, on MSNBC defend the murder of a twelve year old boy cut down by other thugs for hanging out in a public park and doing things that twelve year old boys do and have done for millenia, going on imaginary adventures.

The 'union thug' was Jeffrey Follmer who is the president of the Cleveland PD's patrolman protective association and himself a low ranking patrol officer for the that city's police department. This is the same Cleveland that the US Department of Justice has strongly criticized as having a policy of deadly force use so terrible that the DOJ wants to have a receiver appointed by the federal courts to run that department. The DOJ inquiry was itself invited by the mayor of Cleveland who himself is horrified by the policies of his own police department. Apparently Follmer has great support within the department.

Thug Follmer's claim to fame is that he was infuriated by the Cleveland NFL franchise and he had demanded an apology for players wearing tee shirts supportive of Tamir Rice and John Crawford, twelve and twenty-two years of age respectively who were gunned down by Ohio “peace officers” who did not even make pro forma attempts to contact Tamir or Crawford before executing them. Their first and only contact with these two was to fire bullets into their bodies. Both were described only by the 'citizen informants' as black males in possession of guns. Apparently those officers knew (or thought they knew) all that was necessary to find them guilty of being scary dangerous people. It is apparently open season on black males in Ohio. Interaction between police in Ohio and black citizens is almost uniformly fatal to black males. So much for Equal Protection of the Law.

Bolt Guns as Euthanasia

More information has come to light on the slaughter and butchering of Marius the young healthy giraffe killed Sunday by the Copenhagen Zoo in order to protect the genetic purity of its herd of giraffes. The Zoo contends in its defense that this final solution was necessary to ensure he didn't pass his genes on later generations. The Zoo claims that Marius was euthanized. However it has come to light that he was 'euthanized' by the use of a device called variously a bolt gun and a captive bolt gun. The latter is more descriptive of the process of 'euthanizing' the soon to be dead creature. The captive bolt gun does not actually kill its victim. It is analogous to the use of a sledge hammer. It does not shoot anything into the brain, the bolt is held captive by the gun and is reused again and again.

The gun was invented in 1903 and is used in slaughterhouses to stun and concuss the animal before it is skinned and dismembered. The device is powered by either compressed gas or by a blank set off by a firing pin which slams a bolt toward the forehead of the creature being turned into hamburger or in this case lion food. It does not kill the creature it merely causes a skull fracture and a consequent concussion and a lack of consciousness.

In simple English what this means is Marius was hit in the forehead by a piece of metal hard enough to cause him to black out or simply to see stars, we don't know which since this device has not yet been tested on the director of the Copenhagen Zoo. Immediately thereafter and presumably while still alive Marius was skinned and the process of butchering him begun. I am amazed at the abuse of the English language that occurs when this process is called euthanasia.

Butchering an Inconvenient Giraffe

“Marius, a healthy 2-year-old male giraffe living at the Copenhagen Zoo has been euthanized; his body cut up and fed to the lions” so wrote National Public Radio this morning on its website. Those are pretty shocking words to hear or read. Euthanized? Really? What on earth was good about this death? That was a totally inappropriate word to use about this horrible event. The animal was killed. That animal was killed impliedly in public view of spectators and television cameras according to the author of the article. The giraffe was then skinned and butchered and fed to the Zoo's lion pride. I wonder if the Zoo was crass enough to sell tickets to this savage spectacle.

According to the article there was no room in the herd for this beautiful creature. They didn't want to give him away or lend him to some other zoo. They turned down offers to care for the creature. They turned down an offer from an undisclosed private person to pay the zoo almost seven hundred thousand dollars for the creature. That may or may not have a good decision. However declining that offer did not leave the Copenhagen Zoo with no alternatives other than slaughtering and butchering the animal for the benefit of the Zoo's lion pride. The justifications for the slaughter of the giraffe urged by the Copenhagen Zoo are almost laughable though. Preservation of the integrity of the gene pool could have been accomplished simply by excising the creature's testicles or otherwise preventing him from breeding. Removing him from the Zoo's herd and still preserving genetic diversity could have been accomplished simply by transferring it intact to another facility where his genes could be passed into another genetic pool. That would preserve some amount of diversity in the pool and prevent the donee institution from perhaps slaughtering one of its giraffes for the reasons urger in Copenhagen.

After reading the article and comments of Zoo management I am left with the feeling that this creature was slaughtered and butchered simply for the convenience of the Zoo or that the Zookeeper is truly a psychopathic personalty.

The Chemical Plot Thickens in West Virginia

Freedom Industries Inc (“FF Inc”) at 1:25 pm Eastern time today filed an emergency petition under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. It is an incomplete filing and not much can be determined from the documents at this point. FF Inc now known as the Debtor and probably soon to be known as the Debtor in Possession must file the balance of the documents no later than January 31^st unless the Debtor for good cause shown on motion receives an extension of that requirement from the bankruptcy judge assigned to the case. Failure to file the missing documents is grounds for dismissal and the clerk is authorized to dismiss the case if there is no filing by the due date. For some reason the filing information and the docket sheet do not disclose the name of the bankruptcy judge assigned to the case. The case number is 2:14-bk-20017.

The name of the Debtor is Freedom Industries, Inc. It is a West Virginia corporation. The debtor has filed an entire slew of 'first day motions' such as for leave to pay employees and to pay benefits and such other things this is always done on the day the case is filed. I have not reviewed those motions yet at any great length. There will be plenty of time to do this since this is only the first day of what will probably be a very long process. One interesting motion filed today as one of those First Day Motions is one authorizing the Debtor to use existing “cash management, bank accounts and forms” as it continues its operations. This is somewhat unusual since the law normally requires the Debtor to close all his bank accounts open at the time of the filing and to open new accounts in an approved bank showing the case number of the bankruptcy filing and that the Debtor company is the Debtor in Possession. I am mildly interested in the “whys” of this motion.

The president of FF Inc is one Gary Southern who apparently is one of the founders of the company. Recently it was taken over by another company called Chemstream Holdings LLC which is listed on the corporate ownership declaration filed in this case as the owner of one hundred percent of FF Inc's stock. A company with a similarly named entity Chemstream Inc. is listed on FF's list of its “20 Largest Creditors” which was filed today in the case. There is no information other than the address of the creditor in Storystown PA and the amount of the claim against the debtor which is shown as $175.566.75 set out on this document This is not inappropriate since the form and rule under which it is filed does not require any further detail. More will be known about this after Creditor Schedules are filed in this case in two weeks.

Expect more over this weekend as the documents are reviewed by me and other curious people and, since this filing is in response to a newsworthy event, the poisoning of 300,000 West Virginians by FF's leaky 35000 gallon storage tank containing MEBS, when news media start talking in earnest about this case.