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.