HAPPY BIRTH DATE, HENRY!

This date in 1817 Henry David Thoreau, our nation’s widely revered philosopher of nature, was born in Concord, Massachusetts.  He was born into a shopkeeper’s family, and early showed himself a versatile master of many trades, including the management of his family business of making pencils, and as a land surveyor.  Later, after graduating from Harvard, he lectured throughout the Northeast states, now as a “member” of the group of cultural luminaries—that included Nathaniel Hawthorne and Bronson Alcott—orbiting Ralph Waldo Emerson, leading advocate of the Transcendentalist philosophical movement.

Social and engaging enough when in the company of the Concord-based group of intellectuals, Thoreau could be “prickly,” according to his long-time friend Emerson, particularly when discussing his views, which were uniquely his own.  Indeed, in eulogizing Thoreau, Emerson said “there was something military in his nature, not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not see himself except in opposition.”

Thoreau was a “loner,” both in thought and lifestyle.  He was never so happy than when he was alone in nature, recording with a scientific eye what he saw and felt.  He concluded that we are a part of nature, not separate from it, and its “primitive vigor” is in us.  “Primeval, untamed, untamable,” it is a force not always kind to us.

The iconic Thoreau is best remembered for his masterwork Walden, named for the pond by which he had a small cabin outside Concord, where he communed with his beloved “wild.”  He was also an essayist of the first rank, as attested to by his much-read Civil Disobedience, in which he argues personal morality supersedes that imposed by the state, and by Slavery in Massachusetts, in which he expresses his strong abolitionist views.  But he had always thought of himself as a man of letters, and that included the top rung of literature—poetry.  Here’s a terse one of his that seems both apt and timely today—especially so if you substitute the word “nation” for world.

EPITAPH ON THE WORLD

            Here lies the body of this world,

            Whose soul, alas! to hell is hurled.

            Its golden youth long since was past,

            Its silver manhood went as fast,

            An iron age drew on at last;

            ‘Tis vain its character to tell,

            The several fates which it befell,

            What year it died, when ‘twill arise,

            We only know that here it lies.

MORE MOCKING WORDS ON TEXAS

ALL GUNS AND NO GOWNS

Did you know that the “United” States has three electrical power grids?  One grid services states east the Mississippi; another interconnects the western states, save Texas.  Yep, the Lone Star state, as usual, likes to go it alone with its own solitary grid, not wanting any Feds meddling in their affairs.

The costs of “do-it-yourself” can be high.  Take, for example, the power failure in Texas in mid-February when an abnormal but predictable (much the same thing happened ten years ago) Arctic cold mass descended upon the Lone Star State and visited tragedy and suffering on its unprepared citizens.  More than 100 died from the cold.                 

Call it a leadership failure.  Or call it another Republican failure.  But I repeat myself.  It’s what you get when people who don’t believe in government run the government.  Texas exemplifies that reality like no other place in the good ole Disunited States.  The Lone Star GOP can’t keep the lights on, but it leads the world in the black art of gerrymandering.  It’s also a state where a hunting license meets voter-ID requirements, but a student ID does not.  Take that, snowflakes!

Who’s running this “Lazy Fair Ranch” you might ask.  Well, there’s Governor Greg Abbott, who, fresh from his successes allowing Texans to “open carry” handguns and banning abortions after six weeks, just today passed a passel of restrictive voting laws.

Then there’s Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, an ultraconservative who opposes gay marriage and the decriminalization of marijuana possession, and who supports keeping Confederate monuments on public display and the teaching of Creationism in the schools.  Enough said?

Finally, there’s Tejas’s most engaging public face, none other than that dashing statesman we all know and love, Senator Ted Cruz.  He’s one tough hombre.  When the deadly February storm struck, he made the arduous flight to Cancún to protect his family.  Take a bow, Señor Ted!

Ask a Texan what he values most and you’ll get a one-word answer: Freedom.  “Freedom” (or is it neglect?) means everything to your average Texan.  This mindset is bolstered by studying the Bible daily, repeated viewing of every John Wayne movie ever made, and getting someone to read to you the writings of Ayn Rand.  (In them white men find their rationale to put up an obstructionist roadblock to most everything considered “liberal” or “progressive.”)

Ever since Texans stole their present state from Mexico back in 1846, when they briefly declared themselves a nation unto themselves, Texans have talked on and off about bailing out and leaving the Union—and actually did back in 1861 when they joined the Confederate States of America.  Since then many reasons have been given by Texans why Texas should do so again.  Most recently, the outgoing Chairman of the Texas Republican Party, Allen West, declared two days before the January 6 insurrection that the U. S. is in the throes of an “ideological civil war.”  His solution was to draft a bill this year for the legislature that proposed “a referendum on the question of secession of whether this state [Texas] should leave the United States of America and establish an independent republic.”  The proposal didn’t get very far.

Cooler heads must have seen the problems independence would pose, given an economy heavily reliant on the petroleum industry in this age of global warming and fossil fuels’ guilty part in it, not to mention the environmentally harmful cattle industry that faces strong competition from more ecologically friendly producers of plant-based protein.  What are the state’s fallback industries that would support the vanity of secession?  (Even the export value of manure would decline, given the thinning of the herds…would that mean the B.S. would stay in Texas where it belongs?)

For all that, I wish Texas success in its secession efforts.  Let’s face facts.  Texans think they are too good for the rest of us…and we should humor them.  Who wants another bloody battle at the Alamo?  Why not help them pack and part friends?

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE MORNING AFTER

AN IDAHO MEMORY

Call it a close brush with history…or was it an opportunity missed?  Today I wondered again what I’ve wondered for 60 years to this day—could I have made a difference?  What if?

I was with two other travel writers—Tom F. of Michigan and Bob S. of Texas—on the last day of a week-long writers’ tour of southern Idaho, and the three of us were ending it in style at the posh Sun Valley Lodge on the outskirts of Ketchum, Idaho.  Our hostess was Dorice Taylor, an elegant lady who was head of public relations for the world-famous skiing destination.  That July 1st afternoon we three guests enjoyed an end-of-the day cocktail with Dorice Taylor and her husband.  After the exchange of the usual pleasantries, the talk predictably turned to the Taylors’ nearby neighbor, Ernest Hemingway.  He was the reigning king of the American novel then, and what young journalist would not want to cap off his pedestrian stories about fishing the Snake River with an interview of Ernest Hemingway, the widely acknowledged star of American letters?

Mr. Taylor was neither encouraging nor discouraging when we asked him whether Papa might be accessible.  But I do I remember him saying that his hunting companion had been “a bit moody lately.”  We chose to interpret that as a “go,” and at about six p.m., with directions to our destination in hand, we walked into the town of Ketchum and stopped in a bar for a drink while we got our thoughts together and our questions ready.  Our spirits were already high, but we ordered a round anyway, and talked.

What if Papa wasn’t up to an interview?  Did we just apologize and gracefully make a quick exit?  We ordered a second round of liquid courage and the gabble strayed to a discussion of other writers we admired and time-wasting arguments about how Papa compared with Faulkner and Steinbeck.  Before you knew it, it was eight o’clock.  I can’t remember whether it was Tom or Bob who said “You know, I think it’s too late to barge in on him unannounced.”

Agreement was prompt.  And the lack of talk during our unsteady walk back to the lodge betrayed our disappointment…in ourselves.

What kind of fearless reporters were we?

The next morning I was driven to Pocatello to catch my plane home.  I was in a funk.  What story had I missed due to…well, I might alibi and call it courtesy, but I knew it was cowardice.  Did I have the makings of a good journalist?  I might not, and I carried those doubts with me onto the plane, and brooded over them all the afternoon flight home.

When my wife met me at LAX she seemed uncharacteristically animated.

“Did you hear the news?

“No, what news?

“Hemingway is dead.  They think he committed suicide this morning.”

I was stunned. I am still stunned. The night before he mouthed the shotgun I could have been there. Would it have made any difference? Altered his self-destructive thinking in any way? Would three young strangers knocking on his door the evening of July 1, 1961 have changed his mindset? Flattered him? Enraged him? I still wonder what story I might have had if I had behaved differently exactly 60 years ago. Of course, it’s always possible I might not be here to wonder.

MESSING WITH TEXAS

WHERE THE GUN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE BOOK

Now that Texas has thawed and a decent amount of time has passed since the Great Texas Freeze Over, and the state’s toll of more than a 100 dead have been properly put to rest, I believe it’s time to unload on that bastion of arrogant right-wingers running the Lone Star State.

In case you haven’t heard or read, the Republican legislature recently passed a volley of new laws meant, apparently, to hold on to power and preserve and protect their nineteenth century culture of moneyed white supremacy.  One puzzler to me, though, was the law that outlawed abortion after six weeks of becoming pregnant, which does not show much knowledge of the human reproduction process I’m told.  The women I know assure me that many women have no way of knowing if they’re pregnant at that early date.  Are the GOP lawmakers recommending invasive surgery to determine whether a woman is with child?  Wouldn’t that be an unnecessary health risk if she were not?  That makes no sense to me, but then Texas has never made sense to me.

There’s some real good news for gun owners, too.  Governor Greg Abbott recently signed into law, to become effective September 1st, the right for those over 21 to open carry handguns without a permit or any training in gun safety.  Add that to the existing right to carry cumbersome long-guns and you have the means to settle disagreements in much shorter time.  Should come in handy in those common cases of road rage; or imagine you’re in the restaurant bar on your fourth longneck and some fancy dude with love on his mind starts cozying up to your wife.  (Well, she isn’t really your wife—just substituting as such for the night.)  You’ve got the iron to put Romeo in his place, pronto.

There’s even more good news for those gun owners who hunt.  Your hunting license is all you need to meet the new requirement that you must have a voter ID to cast your ballot.  That offsets the bad news for you would-be scholars; your student ID won’t pass the test.  Proving?  The gun is mightier than the book in the Lone Star state.  Maybe that explains why Texas education is sub-standard.

So what?  You don’t need no book-learnin’ to survive in Texas.  You just have to be hardy down there in that gritty mix of the Old South and the Old West and the Old Testament.  It’s “survival of the fittest.”  That may explain why Governor Abbot deliberately “botched” his handling of the Covid pandemic and now vies with Florida for the most last-gasp “hotspots” of the virus; he just wanted to weed out the state’s weaklings.

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, slightly to the right of Charlemagne on the political spectrum, seems to agree with the governor.  He’s on the record as saying old folks should willingly exit this life if they get the plague, make way for the younger and fitter.  I am an old folk and would willingly do nothing of the kind.  That’s one reason why I will never be seen in Texas again—even with a handgun in hand.

IS A SECOND COMING COMING? THIS AUGUST!

OR IS IT MORE MAGICAL THINKING?

Get ready for it!  Restock your bunkers!  Donald J. Trump will return to the Presidency this coming August.  That’s what he says, according to his close enablers who say he really believes his kingship will be restored and he will be back at his old desk doing more of the same.  Wait a minute!  Where is Joe Biden going to sit?  Will there be a fist-fight in the Oval Office?  Will there be blood?

Hoping to find out how Trump was going to pull off his return to power, I searched all my 500-plus TV channels to hear him last Saturday night, when, in his first public address since inciting the January 6 Insurrection, he spoke to some 1,200 North Carolina cult members as they dined.  Couldn’t find a single channel carrying it.

So I did the next best thing.  In the days following I read the online press coverage, which seemed to agree that those diners were a bit restive through the hour-plus lamentation on how many wrongs were done to the former president while in office.  The audience apparently was less interested in their hero’s past tribulations than in what the GOP had planned for the future.  Which seems a ridiculous question.  There are only two things Republicans ever do when in power: they cut taxes for the rich, and appoint conservative judges to guard their profits.  Anyway, there was no mention of how the Orange Menace was going to overthrow the Biden government.

Still in your service and searching for an answer, and at great risk to my heart health, I tracked down the text of Trump’s speech online and read it.  Foiled again!  There was nothing about the imminent coup.  All it really did was try to transmute what we call the “Big Lie” into what he calls the “Crime of the Century.”  How’s that for doubling down on Magical Thinking?

In the speech there was one section (it may have been a lousy translation from the Urdu or Swahili) that you might help me understand.  It reads thusly:

Biden is openly mocked by China’s negotiators and Russian President Putin.  And they’re taunting him and they’re laughing at him and they’re humiliating our country. And do you ever notice when he had a hard time going up the stairs on the plane, nobody talks about that. Nobody talks. The news didn’t cover. Not one network covered it. Now, when I made the best speech I’ve ever made, they said it was at West Point and it was pouring, and I a ramp that was an ice skating rink. And I called, I said to the general, I said, “General, I may have to grab you, because the last thing I’m doing is going down.  So I walked gingerly down. That was on every newscast in the world, and I never went down. I never went on my ass, I’ll tell you. I wasn’t going to fall. I think that was a booby trap. I’ll never forget that ramp. That was like a sheet of ice. It was cold, rainy, and that ramp was long and steep. I said, “General, I might have to grab you, but I’m not going down under.” And unfortunately, I wasn’t wearing American shoes. I had Italian shoes, nice leather. Leather. It’s like an ice skating rink, but they made that a big story, but they didn’t make the Biden fall, the triple fall. I call it the triple fall.

Reading the passage over a third time, I’m left with these questions for anyone who has the answers.  Will I lose my citizenship if I confess to kicking the habit of watching people deplane after a boring year of trying it?  What’s the news value of nobody talking?  Doesn’t rain melt ice?  Are ramps really like lost loves you never forget?  Is Ginger-Lee your latest fling?  Why do you think your West Point speech was your best?  Better than your nomination acceptance speech when you told us only you could fix our problems?   And if they’re fixed, why are you coming back to occupy the White House?   What do you have against Australia?  Are you telling us to buy American when it comes to shoes?  Who is suspected of planting the booby trap?  How did they make Biden fall?  What’s a triple fall?  And was Biden wearing Italian shoes when he triple-falled?  Finally, how do you skate on leather?

Maybe I can ask him to clear up these questions at his first news conference when he miraculously returns in August to take command.  And thank you for thanking me for my participation and concern.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME

Swearing Off Sin for the Season

Know that I have promised not to gamble anymore…a vow to go with those of poverty and chastity as I climb the steep hill, Sisyphus-like, toward a life of total virtue. Why the new vow? Punishment for having told you back in March to bet your ranch on Gonzaga beating Baylor in the NCAA hoop finals. As you now landless and livestock-free folks painfully learned, the Baylor Bears thrashed the Gonzaga Bulldogs in a breeze. Sorry about that.

So why do I bring it up? Because I’m overdue in giving you my annual Major League Baseball predictions, and I know how much you rely on them when you head to Vegas. And I don’t want you using these smart picks for nefarious purposes anymore.

So although these picks are as good as gold, I want you to swear that you won’t use them for wagering purposes, lest I be a party to your future losses…in virtue and property. Let’s just say I’m giving you the winners for the love of the game…of baseball that is.

Try your own forecasting from home and see if you can out-predict me. Just for the fun of it. Note that I haven’t given you the playoff match-ups and the World Series winner. Why? Because I don’t want to encourage you to engage in the sin of gambling…and be responsible for you possibly becoming an addict to the evil. I’ll check back with you after the All-Star break to see if you’ve strayed from the path of righteousness. In the interim, pray early and often.

BULL IN THE AFTERNOON

WHEN I WAS YOUNG AND FOOLISH

It was the recent watching of the excellent six-hour PBS special on the life and career of Ernest Hemingway that poked my memory and led me to exhume this remembrance of my one “bullfighting” experience. The year was 1955. I was in the U. S. Air Force and stationed on the mid-Atlantic island of Terceira, a weatherman working with Portuguese airmen under the NATO shield. It was there, in the Azores, that I met my first bull, and lived to write about it. Here is that memory written many years ago.

Maybe it all comes of an overdose of Hemingway. A romantic urge of the time. Or maybe there is some thrill missing from American Life. Whatever, a number of Papa’s followers just must go to Iberia when the bulls are out. And being a spectator at the arena, watching a matador in his suit of lights gracefully doing in a fighting bull, just doesn’t always satisfy the onlookers’ blood lust. Those spectators want to get into the action themselves—an urge they share with the locals.

The running of the bulls at Pamplona is perhaps the most celebrated of the “street fights.” But there are others—in Portugal as well as Spain—where the common man gets a chance to live out his macho fantasy in an atmosphere of fiesta. Often the occasion is a particular saint’s day that is locally significant, and the actual release of the bulls in the street is preceded by much merrymaking and cheap-wine-imbibing.

Then comes the moment of truth. Or call it the moment of mayhem. The bull pen is opened and it’s every brave drunk for himself…as I was to learn. There’s no denying that the element of risk makes for a rush of excitement—directly proportionate to one’s close-up participation in the event. There’s also no denying that participation can be hazardous to one’s health.

Many years ago when I was young and slightly more foolish than I am now, I had my fling at “bullfighting.” It was September 1955 in the village of Praia on the Portuguese island of Terceira in the Azores, where I was stationed as a weatherman in the United States Air Force. It was a sunny day and a fiesta was in progress in the village, only a mile’s walk from my base at Lajes Field.

In Praia the bulls are not released en masse, but singly, into narrow cobble-stoned streets flanked with five-foot-high walls of the native volcanic rock, from which fans safely look down to view the action. Around the released bull’s neck is a thick rope—maybe 200 feet long—held onto initially by a band of young men who are pulled along behind the charging beast…until the bull turns and starts reversing his tracks. Then the two-legged guys let go the rope and scatter. And then the alleged fun begins.

The way one proves his manhood (I saw no women risking their womanhood) is to leap off the wall into the path of the bull. You get points for taunting him, for getting as close as you can to him—before you get his attention and then run like hell! The hope is that before the horned head can find your soft behind some other brave hombre will drop down and distract the animal, haze him off.

I spent two hours trying to photograph the frolic from atop my perch on the lava wall without much success, while steadily sipping red wine that sold for the most civilized price of 14 cents a liter. It was not long before I started overhearing remarks being made in Portuguese, peppered with a smattering of English, from the crowd around me, that apparently I was meant to overhear. Was this American content to be a mere picture taker? Wasn’t I going to get in on the fun? Or was I perhaps lacking in courage?

Wine has a way of lowering your threshold for an insult, naked or veiled. About three in that hot afternoon I dropped downward from behind the wall, pushed through a wooden gate onto the street, camera in hand, with a sullen black bull pawing the cobblestones about thirty feet away. The crowd around me roared their approval of my bravery…or were they thinking of some fun to come at my expense?

The bull was looking up the street, away from me. Why not get a close-up of that animal? I inched toward him in baby steps. I focused. I clicked. He didn’t see me, didn’t move. I moved closer, then refocused. The black ears flicked and the horns bobbed. But his attention was still directed elsewhere. I inched closer and clicked a few more off. Then, with only some ten or 15 feet separating us, the great black head turned in the direction of the clicks. My way. Now I had his undivided attention.

I began my slow, inch-by-inch retreat from the big dark eyes that seemed to change from puzzlement to malevolence. The thick body of the bull turned my way in a shuffle of hooves. It was time to fly—right back to through that wooden gate whence I’d come, behind that protective wall. I spun and ran right into my moment of truth.

Shut! I tried to pull the gate open. Secured from the inside! Bastards! I tried to climb it—all six feet of smooth, vertical wood—while raucous laughter spilled into the street. No use! I hung for an internal moment from the gate top, camera slamming against the boards, spread out, my backside a perfect target at horn level. My terror was pure.

Then, to my everlasting thanks, a teenage boy leapt down from the wall between me and the approaching bull in time to turn the animal by ninety degrees, and another chase was begun. Only then was the gate opened to me, with cheers and a few hearty backslaps from the thick-tongued celebrants. So the American was a brave one; worthy of sharing their red wine with. I accepted, though I knew it would coat my teeth black.

That dusk, when the village streets were cleared of bulls and fiesta-goers, I began my walk back to base, only to run into Humberto Souza, a Portuguese buddy, exiting a cantina, well lubricated. “Aha!” he said with grin. “I am told you have a lion’s heart.”

“So you heard,” I said.

Humberto began explaining how fast and far “news” travels on the island when we were stopped by a weeping woman dressed in black; she had a can in her hand and thrust it out toward me. What does she want? I asked Humberto, who had suddenly become quiet. “Her husband was killed by a bull this day,” he said after a slight delay. “It is tradition to give money.”

The wine glow dimmed. I reached in my pocket and withdrew a few escudos and dropped the coins in the can. “There was also another widow made this day,” Humberto added, as though it was sad but to be expected. Then and there, at that very moment, I decided, no matter how noble the sport or art, or manly the act Papa said it was, I would give up bullfighting…while I was still called “brave.” And I did. No regrets. Only the memory stays.

HONORING OUR NOBEL LAUREATES

SHOULDN’T THE SCIENCES GET AS MUCH PUBLICITY AS THE ARTS?

It came to me on Oscars Night…this disparity…this injustice! Why all the foofaraw for the cinematic arts that grab such public attention every year at Oscar time, while those who win Nobel Prizes in science draw little public notice?

OK, so I’m a big fan of science and even subscribe to Scientific American. (OK, I admit I only understand about 30 percent of the contents, but I’m trying). I just wish more of my countrymen shared my interest as well; a greater knowledge of science’s recent achievements might just tame our turbulent political waters raging now.

I also wanted to salute California’s five Nobel Prize Winners of last year without using the standard press release format…dramatize it in some way…show, not tell. Then it came to me while working on my next book on the secession of our West Coast states from the Red State nation of luddites. Put it in some kind of story. OK. Why not?

Say I (or you for that matter) have a modest two-story mansion with a large downstairs room in which to host a black-tie, post-Stockholm reception for 2020’s Nobel Prize winners. I send out the invitations to the honorees and a few VIPs in my own circle of learned friends, and most of both actually show up! Right away I know from the musical tinkle of champagne toasts and the pleasant murmur of civilized talk that my party is taking off like a Mars probe launch.

Why there’s Andrea Ghez (UCLA) at the shrimp fountain! She’s standing next to Reinhard Genzel (emeritus, UC Berkeley; co-director of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics). Didn’t they share the physics prize for confirming the existence of a massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy? Yes, but they had to share prize with Roger Penrose (Oxford) standing alone over there with an empty glass; he got his for showing how black hole formation supports the general theory of relativity. Too bad they had to share the bucks, but a third of the pie is better than none, right?

And look over there…by the fireplace…Paul Milgrom (Stanford, professor of humanities and sciences) chewing the ear off his colleague Robert B. Wilson (Stanford, emeritus distinguished professor of management). They shared the Nobel for economics. But don’t you sometimes get the feeling that those sticking-together Stanford folks feel they’re somehow above the crowd? A little better than the rest of us?

Aha! Cast your gaze on the eye candy grazing over the canapé tray. That’s Professor Jennifer Doudna (UC Berkeley) and her young French associate Emmanuelle Charpentier (also working at Berkeley)…they won the chemistry award for the life-changing discovery of how to edit the human genome. Talk about a game changer! In the future humans will argue about what to do with this major scientific advance; the breakthrough will likely lead to eliminating many human diseases…but, really! Should you be allowed to pre-order to specs your next baby? Some ethical rows to come, believe me!

Now where’s Michael Houghton…one of the three award-winners in medicine for discovering the Hepatitis C virus. He said he was going to fly over from Britain and join the party, but I don’t see—just then a loud, incoherent sequence of verbiage disturbs the emotional calm of the happy gathering.

It’s my syphilitic Uncle Don descending the stairs in his underwear, loudly demanding his Diet Coke nightcap and telling all that global warming is a hoax because snow once fell on his New York hotel one late-April day. Somehow he has managed to bust out of the upstairs closet in which I had locked him.

My guests go silent, but I can hear their nervous stirrings. Uncle Don waits until reaching the ground floor before launching into a loud lament about how he, too, deserved a “Noble Prize,” but was cheated out of it; if he wasn’t given one for the peace he brought to the world, then at least he deserved one in medicine for his cure for Covid-19…you know, a mask-less regimen of “game-changing” hydroxychloroquine (treats your malaria, too), followed up with injections of disinfectant, followed by exposure to sunlight—whether to the skin or the innards not specified, apparently it’s at one’s own discretion.

My guests are shuffling toward their coats and the exit door, muttering their polite “goodnights” as they depart. My party is over, ending with a whimper, dead on Don’s arrival. Have I learned anything?

Yes. Not to seem snobbish, but now you know why I will never invite another Floridian or any other Red Stater to my future soirées. The culture gap is simply too wide, exceeding the yawn of the Grand Canyon.

A PARABLE FOR POKER PLAYERS

A TIME TO FOLD ‘EM

You just got your new glasses. And you’re on your way to the monthly poker game with old friends, no marks in this game. You take your seat, put on your new glasses, and see soon enough that this game of five-card stud is not as friendly as it once was…or you thought it was.

Right off you spot Peachy George, to your left, dealing from the bottom of the deck. Not fair!

Next to him sits a smiling Al White, the Crimson Tide fan who deals next, with a joker up his sleeve; how long has this been going on?

To Al’s left sits Virgil “Verge” West, with the flattop haircut and the sooty hands that you watch shorting the pot by surreptitiously dragging back his ante; that’s cheating!

You turn to Tall Tale Tex on your right who is now dealing; he gives everyone the prescribed five cards except you; he shorts you a card while the rest get the prescribed five. Wtf?

It suddenly dawns on you that you’re now the mark! How long has this been going on? And what do you do? Well, you remember Kenny Rogers’s advice to know when to hold’em, and know when to fold’em. Yep, time to fade.

You stand up and tell banker Tex to cash you out. “I’m running behind schedule fellas…I’ve got a dolphin to feed.”

At the exit door you turn back for a parting shot: “Guys, I won’t be back. Some of my West Coast buddies are starting a friendly game and asked me to join them. Good luck in finding another chump to take my seat.”

Wouldn’t you do the same with a pair of new, close-up spectacles?

PARDON MY SCHADENFREUDE

THOSE GUTTY LITTLE BRUINS ARE BACK!

Sophomore Jaime Jaquez Jr. of Camarillo, California, has sparked the Bruin run to the Final Four with an average of 16.8 points per game and 6.8 rebounds through the team’s first four wins in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

It’s been a wonderful week for this UCLA grad! Did I ever tell you I am also a sports fan? Specifically, a Bruin sports fan? Especially a fan of the school’s legendary basketball program? That I was a student at UCLA even before the wizard John Wooden won his first of ten national championships? How fitting it is that, against all the so-called experts’ expectations and predictions, the Bruins are going to Indianapolis for NCAA hoops’ Final Four?

Listen to Bill Walton you East Coast pundits and NCAA nose-pickers; your glaring prejudices are showing! The PAC 12 is the Conference of Champions, and you sold us short again this year! You invited only five of our teams to the annual March Madness tourney, branding our conference as down, weak, not competitive with the big boys. Not only did we get shorted on invitees to the Big Dance, you compounded the insult by seeding those five teams no higher than sixth (USC in the West Regional). How sweet it is to watch you folks dine again on raw crow!

You fork-tongued soothsayers really should hide your blushing heads in shame. You told us the mighty Big Ten was going to kick our posteriors. You never drew the logical conclusion that the teams in the PAC-12 had so-so win-loss records because they had to play each other!

Yet you invited nine teams from the oh-so-awesome Big Ten, including two number-one seeds (Illinois and Michigan) and a number-two (Ohio State). They didn’t go far, did they? By my reckoning, the Big Ten had an overall tournament record of eight wins and nine losses through the semi-finals, with no survivor making it to the Final Four.

By contrast, the PAC 12 has amassed a sterling 14-4 win-loss record, with UCLA knocking off the East Regional’s number-two seed Alabama and then number-one seed Michigan, both in heart-wrenching upset thrillers, in their surprising run through March Madness; yes, the Blue and Gold will carry the West Coast’s colors to Indianapolis.

OK, so I know my joy in our Cinderella story comes to an ugly end tomorrow when my Bruins meet the unbeaten Bulldogs from Gonzaga. The only way we get by that superhuman bunch is for the entire Zag team to come down with (asymptomatic) Covid-19 and be quarantined. (Not that I wish that.)

But to end on a happy and hopeful note, did you know that not a single Bruin player who performed on this year’s tournament team and reached the Final Four is a senior? Meaning? That every one of them will be back next near to make another run for what would be the Bruins’ Twelfth National Championship. Back as well will be my nominee for coach of the year, Mick Cronin. You benighted pundits can put all that in your nimbus-filled crystal balls and…you know where to stick it.

(NB: Any stuffy, learned, high-toned reader who thinks college sports is not what academic life is supposed to be about should also know that in the ranking of research universities worldwide, three PAC 12 teams are in the Top Twenty-five; they are Stanford, Cal and…wait for it!…UCLA. You might conclude that scholarship and athletic excellence coexist in the Golden State.)

BACK TO BRING YOU THE BIG BUCKS

WELCOMING THE RETURN OF MARCH MADNESS

As you may recall, before the plague struck I served you as your Assistant Financial Advisor for Sports Gambling, specializing in basketball, baseball, and thoroughbred horse racing. (As you may also remember, it was an unpaid position, and this year I’m bucking for a raise…if I deliver, of course.)

So here’s the goods! My picks for the 2021 NCAA “March Madness” Hoops Tourney! Exclusive to the readers of this blog! Ready for use in that office pool that you are forced to swim in every spring! Yes, my generosity persists.

Any of you with faulty memories of my past performance and still question my qualifications to advise you in such matters should know that I played baseball (fairly well), basketball (not very well), and once owned pieces (of their behinds, I believe) of three thoroughbred ponies—yclept Wait for the Wind, Tell a Story, and Azure Blues—as a very minor owner in Clover Racing Stables. (I sold my stake early to invest in a uranium mine in Utah that…well…anyway, that’s another story that we need not go into here.)

Know that these picks are official; yes, they have been submitted to the annual CBS contest that draws millions of would-be Cassandras to pit their predictive powers to select the winner of 68 competing college basketball teams for national champion honors. Sure, I know the odds against me winning the CBS swag are maybe 15 quintillion to one. Conceding that, I still feel especially strong about my selections this year, with unbeaten Gonzaga edging a tremendous Illini team in the final game. Sadly, Baylor’s late-season bout with Covid-19 slowed them down some, and Michigan’s recent loss of star forward Isaiah Livers to injury diminishes the Wolverines’ chances. But lucky you—you’ll likely be thrilled by a suspenseful game as you watch the exciting accumulation of your newly acquired wealth!

Be sure to alert your overseas bankers that deposits are on the way. And remember, my standard guarantee is still in force: if you are not satisfied with my soothsaying this time, you are still eligible to receive this same service next year absolutely free!

Good luck, plague survivors!

My predictions:

STANDING ERECT FOR MY PEOPLE

WHAT’S WORSE THAN NEANDERTHAL THINKING?

Don’t get me wrong. I think President Biden is doing a great job. That said, I have to take exception to his criticizing dim-witted state governors for their “Neanderthal thinking.” That slam is directed at Governor Greg Abbott of the Great State of Texas, and to a lesser extent his fellow simians governing Alabama and Mississippi. What provoked the President say such a thing? Because that trio have prematurely lifted mask-wearing requirements and encouraged their citizens to get the party going again before the Covid pandemic is behind us.

Of course that’s stupid. But why drag my ancestors, who have been dead and gone for some 30,000 years, into it? Biden could have just easily, and more appropriately, tagged them with “baboon thinking.” (We Homos have to cover one another’s backs.)

My ancestors? Yes, the good folks at 23andMe inform me that I’m carrying 2 percent Neanderthal DNA in my genome…the deep-past result of some Homo neanderthalensis gent wooing a Homo sapiens lass…or was the lady the Neanderthal? (Check photo above.) Yes, I do have some red body and facial hair, my nose is larger than I’d like, I have a pronounced supraorbital ridge, and my jawbone is prognathous. I can live with that. Moreover, of special relevance for me, the first identified fossil find of Neanderthal remains was in 1856 in Germany’s Neander Valley, the present day North Rhine-Westphalia region. That’s where my mom’s people were from!

You think I’m being touchy? Well, I am. I’m tired of having my kin being put down as subhuman…which, then again, I guess they were, in a way. Confused? Well, let me explain why you shouldn’t stick your patrician noses in the air and look down on us lowbrow, big-nosed, jutting jawed, receding-chinned knuckle-draggers. Why? Because you’re probably one of us! If your ancestors are from Europe or Asia or from anywhere else save Africa (if they never left Africa)—then you too are packing 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal genes in your jeans. (And that includes you too, Joe!)

Since the first discovery of that vanished species, many additional finds have been made in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. For a long time the species got a bum rap as dullards, primitives, intellectual lightweights compared to the late-arriving Homo sapiens newcomers, with whom they just couldn’t compete. (But they could mate, it would appear; you know, closing time in the cave, and the one mead-sipping patron left at the end of the bar is looking at you longingly….)

As some of us know, science is never done sifting evidence for the tentative conclusions it draws, and, as the years have passed, more recent research paints a different picture from the old, demeaning stereotype. Among the revisions, we learn that Neanderthals controlled fire, were accomplished toolmakers, were great close-up hunters of big game (and left their broken fossil bones behind to prove it), adorned themselves with ornaments, created cave art in red ochre, strewed the graves of their departed loved ones with flowers (how’s that for showing empathy!), and, finally—get ready for it!—their brains were as big as or bigger than ours!

The old conclusion that Neanderthal extinction stemmed from the species’ mental and cultural inferiority, leaving them unable to compete with the newly arrived modern humans for scarce resources, has been joined by another viable, even complementary, theory: climate change. Between 60,000 and 20,000 years ago the earth’s temperatures plunged steeply, putting life for the north-Europe-centered Neanderthals in an icy peril they didn’t survive, leaving behind only their genes we carry forward. Is there a lesson for us here?

No, Joe, it isn’t Neanderthal thinking that’s to blame; they managed to live on this planet for 200,000 years. It’s Republican thinking, which threatens to render its party—and perhaps all of us—extinct in less than 200 years.

AN OBIT WITH A MUTED LESSON

CALL IT A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

From time to time I try to break the monotony of my writing style with a fresh voice, a guest contributor with a worthy message to post. Such is the case with my friend Richard Armendariz, who adds to the log of obituaries for the late Rush Limbaugh; the subject—smoking tobacco—is painful for me personally. I managed to kick the addiction after twenty years. My father and my two brothers did not, and they paid the price with early deaths. And I miss them. With that always on my mind, here’s Richard’s ever-timely caveat:

Rush Limbaugh had a great deal of influence over his 20 million listeners who frequently accepted his words as the gospel truth. Much like Trump, his number one fan who awarded him the Medal of Freedom, Rush had no qualms about lying to or misleading his faithful followers, even if it exposed them to danger.

Limbaugh frequently railed against drug users and argued that they deserved punishment; if they were doing drugs they should be accused, convicted, and sent to prison. But when it was revealed that he was addicted to painkillers, it became a different story. No, he did not reveal his addiction voluntarily; he was outed by a housekeeper's allegations that he abused oxycontin and other painkillers. He was arrested and charged with fraud to conceal information to obtain prescriptions. The charges were dropped only after he participated in a drug treatment program and paid $30,000 for the costs of the investigation

Before his diagnosis with lung cancer, Rush had downplayed the health risks of smoking, and argued that second-hand smoke did not harm people. He also revealed that he started smoking cigarettes as a teenager, and that he stopped smoking them when he was older, after a bout with bronchitis, only to start again later smoking Cuban cigars, which he did for many years. (How he obtained those contraband Cuban cigars during the embargo is unknown.)

Limbaugh continued to argue that smoking was not as harmful as claimed, and that people were exaggerating its ill effects. He said that smoking takes 50 years to kill people, if it does at all. Besides, he argued, not everyone who smokes gets cancer, ignoring the many other causes of death attributed to cigarette smoking. Everyone who smoked dies, he joked, but so does everyone who eats carrots.

If Limbaugh had any sense of compassion for his fans, he could have advised them of the true dangers of smoking before he died. Evidently that act of concern for others was not in his makeup.

DOES CRUZ’S CANCÚN CAPER HURT HIS PRESIDENTIAL CHANCES?

FROM THE ANNALS OF POLITICAL HYPOCRISY

He’s baaack! Yes, Teodoro de la Cruz—U.S. Junior Senator from Texas and Pride of the Tea Party—has cut short his impromptu family vacation in Cancún, only to return to mostly jeers, not cheers. Turns out Terrible Ted was just being a dutiful dad and responding to his two young daughters’ requests to get out of their “freezing” Houston home asap. Ted did just that this Wednesday past aboard a United Airlines flight, ready with his wife and daughters to brave the blazing 80-degree heat of Cancún; at least he got a good price of $309 a night at the Ritz-Carlton. He also did right by the ASPCA by leaving behind the family pooch “Snowflake” in the care of a security guard.

What more can you ask of the man? “What’s happening in Texas is unacceptable,” he told reporters who had caught up with him at the Cancún airport. Since that was scarcely news, reporters questioned him on how he could take a tropical vacation when his constituents were without potable water and freezing to death without heat. He later admitted he had had thoughts aloft that he might be making a mistake leaving his state, stricken as it was by the wintry blast, but he was just being a “good dad” (kids to blame?) and he had planned to return to Texas Thursday, after only a day in the sun. (He had reservations through Sunday).

Ted flew home wearing a Texas flag mask, proof apparently that he was a loyal son of the Lone Star State. It didn’t fly. His early homecoming set off a snowstorm of criticism. Seems the whole world was cross with “Lyin’ Ted,” as a former president once branded him. Criticism was general and bipartisan, incoming from all quarters. [It’s] “something he has to answer to his constituents about” state Republican Party Chairman Allen West told the AP. “I’m here trying to take care of my family and look after my friends and others that are still without power.”

West’s counterpart, Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, was more offended: “This is about as callous as any politician can get…He’s a politician that really has never cared much about anybody but himself.”

Still other Texans found the stench of Cruz’s hypocrisy particularly offensive, compounded as it was by his strident moralizing just two months earlier. December second Holy Cruz had cried “utter” “hypocrisy” on Austin’s Democratic Mayor Steve Adler when his honor flew to Cabo San Lucas at a peak in the COVID-19 plague. “Don’t forget [Mayor Adler] who took a private jet with eight people to Cabo,” Cruz wrote, “and WHILE IN CABO recorded a video telling Austinites to ‘stay home if you can…this is not the time to relax.’”

Adler apologized. And Cruz? Well, he said that in “hindsight” the timing of his Cancún getaway might have been ill-advised, but then again, he did want to be a “good dad.” Alibis often serve as apologies.

It is widely reported that Senator Cruz is the least respected member of that august body, even though he tried to make amends by entertaining his colleagues with a lengthy reading of Green Eggs and Ham. That’s nice, but not enough to erase the charges of “self-promotion,” “opportunism,” and “dishonesty” heard for years from politicians of both political parties.

If these flaws were not enough, we must not overlook Cruz’s recent ugly and repugnant competition with Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri to be heirs to Trump’s mindless flock; can you think of a better launching pad for a presidential run on the Republican ticket in 2024? All you have to do, and both of them did just that, was agree with the twice-impeached madman yclept Trump that he had won the 2020 presidential election in a landslide.

There is a way to determine the winner of that competition and punish the presumptuous pair. Lock Cruz and Hawley in separate rooms, provide them with food and water, and have each make a hand count of the 155,125,907 ballots cast for Biden and Trump. The one closest to the official breakdown wins the Republican nomination…if there is still a Republican party when they finish.

Case dismissed. Justice is served.

Nearing the End

Yet Another Day That Will Live in Infamy

The 1868 Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, the first such trial in our nation’s history, also resulted in setting a scoundrel free.

I’ve started this blog entry four different times, only to have the zig-zags of Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial (thank God it wasn’t his Second Inaugural Address!) take so many changes in direction that I had to begin over and over, again and again. The Senate trial’s end in acquittal didn’t surprise me; it only proved to me once more that our so called “Union” is fractured into several irreconcilable regional culture blocs.

Yes, the Kentucky Fox in turtle guise pulled off another masterful magic trick. On boggy legal ground, Senator McConnell found ex-Dear Leader guilty of insurrection, but asserted Trump could not be impeached because he was out of office before the Senate trial began. He didn’t mention that the House had done its impeaching while Donald J. Trump was still in office, but he had deliberately held up the Senate trial until Joe Biden was installed as president. Yep, cheap trick easily seen through by anyone with an IQ above 45…but, remember, the GOP has given up its old patrician ways and gone populist over recent decades. You can’t expect the aggrieved white Tumpenproles to stop watching FOX while cleaning their guns…and maybe read a newspaper. Sic transit cogitamen mundi.

By Saturday morning I knew the fix was in. Forty-three Republican senators set our would-be tyrant free to try to seize power again. But, I wondered, what if that mob of Proud Boys, boogaloo bois, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, the “Camp Auschwitz” crowd, and all the other self-anointed “Patriots” had been a minute earlier in their invasion of the “sacred” senate chambers? Would they have really lynched Vice President Mike Pence? Would our lickspittle VP have been martyred and become a saint in democracy’s Calvary?

Who knows? But make no mistake, my friends: what we witnessed on January 6 was merely a dress rehearsal of another violent drama still to come. So what we do? Pray. Wish Biden well. But also prepare to abandon this sinking ship of state, remembering as you search for the nearest life jacket the 43 crypto-fascist Republican invertebrates who torpedoed it. May their names and likenesses, below, live in earned infamy.

Photographs courtesy of GRASSROOTSDEMPOLITICS.COM.

Envoi!

LET US NOW PRAISE A FAMOUS NEWSPAPER

MUCH PRAISE FOR A MUST-READ

Today I’d like to steer you to an invaluable article on the front page of the yesterday’s New York Times. It’s a lengthy and thoughtful piece on the precarious state of our “Disunited States,” as well as a perfect background prep for next week’s impeachment trial (yes, another one) of Donald J. Trump.

Trump in his term’s early years liked to call it “the failing New York Times.” Not to be. It turned out that it was Trump who failed and the world’s greatest newspaper has survived to chronicle his brief and destructive days on the world’s stage.

Some of you might question my credentials in calling the “Gray Lady” the world’s best newspaper. In my defense, I would cite my whole adult life spent in the field of journalism, beginning as graduate student at UCLA where I took my M.A. in the subject; then I spent 18 years as a magazine editor, followed by six years as a freelance writer, then finally entering academia, where I taught the subject at the university level (CSUN, UCLA, CSULB) for 18 years.

While a student at UCLA I was told that The New York Times was “the newspaper of record.” That seemed like a tall order to me—to print daily “all the news that was fit to print,” the paper’s time-worn motto. Yes there are other fine newspapers…The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, The Kansas City Star, The Los Angeles Times (particularly when Otis Chandler was at the helm). But year in, year out, it is New York’s Gray Lady that comes closest to being a reliable “newspaper of record.”

But back to yesterday’s front-page, in-depth summation of our January 6 insurrection, the latest crisis that threatens to dissolve our union into several fractious culture blocs. Do try to read it if you want an insightful narrative into what has been happening out of sight, building up to and including January 6: “77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election.”

BY THEIR FLAGS YE SHALL KNOW THEM

That Day of Shame Reviewed

The Battle of the Capitol is almost two weeks past, Trump has been impeached a second time, and for tomorrow’s inauguration of Joe Biden D. C. looks like Corregidor preparing for the Japanese assault of May 1942. Only now are we identifying the forces that attacked our legislative branch of government, and we are only now learning who many of the individual participants were.

But what was their real cause…their real beef? Stopping the ritual formality of counting President-Elect Biden’s victory of last November 3 wouldn’t change anything. Anyone who hadn’t dropped out of grammar school could count to 306 (Biden’s number of electoral votes) and Trump’s 232. It could even be called a “landslide” spread, and was so by Donald Trump when he won the presidency by the same electoral vote totals in 2016.

Watching the violent insurrection unfold on the telly, I tried to find its root causes by checking the flags and signs the fattened white herd brandished as they stampeded toward their trashing of our hallowed Capitol.

Most numerous were American flags. No surprise there. Many of them were defaced by a superimposed likeness of President Trump; others were stained with merely his name. MAGA hats were everywhere.

Second most flags in number were the yellow Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” rattlesnake flags that date from Revolutionary War days; more recently it has become treasured by right-wing malcontents obsessed with imagined freedoms—including freedom from citizen responsibility. To date, no one has called their bluff, and no jackboot has comes crashing down to defang them. The bearers of these banners seemed to me to be perpetually angry white loners who find comfort in some murky form of nihilism.

Then came the most disgraceful display—the Confederate flag paraded across a deserted legislative chamber. That gave us all the prime cause behind the insurrection: the racism that still hounds our dissolving nation. Doubters need only check out the appearance of the pale, well-fed angry mob bent on hanging Vice President Mike Pence and kidnapping House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. All this in the “People’s House”?

Menace was on full display. Many men (and a few women) were dressed in combat camouflage gear, members of many militias spoiling for a fight; some seemed to be vets of our armed services, others were probably weekend warriors bored with their “Call of Duty” video games. In any case, the lot of them were well-armed—with pipe bombs (one planted near the RNC, one for the DNC offices), caches of Molotov cocktails, automatic rifles, handguns, hockey sticks, nooses and gallows. You name it, they had it…everything, except it would seem, leadership.

I confess there were many signs and standards I couldn’t identify. But I did see the flag of Texas waving proudly in the mix. Oh those Texans…they’re such fun at a riot! And I spotted a dude in a Harley Davidson jacket, evidence apparently that Trump’s biker gang backers had his back.

If hate is in the air, you can be sure the Proud Boys will be there. And they were, flaunting their presence in black stocking caps.

So were the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the boogaloo movement, and a rogues’ gallery of militias and white supremacy warriors looking for a fight. Capping it all off were the Q-Anon loonies, probably the energy if not the brains behind the quixotic attack, waving their own flag with an outsized letter Q on it, their apparent leader a body-painted, self-styled shaman with horns growing out of his head, carrying a long spear to demand…er, attention?

Any Nazis, you might ask? Were they present? Oh yes…our own homegrown variety. If there is a Reichstag to be burned down, Nazis will show up to add their virulent anti-Semitism to the white power crusade. The signs they wore were the most scurrilous of all. “Camp Auschwitz” adorned one guy’s sweatshirt, reminding us that over a million Jews were in incinerated in the most notorious of Hitler’s death camps. Other Nazi slogans could be seen but are too offensive to be reprinted here.

Christians among you might be offended by my use of “crusade” in conjunction with Nazism, since the word refers to a Christian-sanctioned war.” Yet, surprisingly perhaps, the insurrection also had a religious component. One sign read “Pelosi is Satan.” Pelosi? That diminutive, devout Catholic nonna? Besides, I thought Satan was a guy. Was she the one wearing a satin gown when the House members fled for their lives into the escape tunnel?

Another baffler was just the words “Holy Bible” emblazoned on a breastplate worn by one protester. Meaning? I don’t know. Were you supposed to read the Good Book? Upside down? That sign was followed by another puzzler: “Jesus Saves.” Saves what? Is that all there is? Another “Jesus Saves” sign, flown on the same staff beneath an Israeli flag, mystified me further. Then one intruder penetrated the legislative chambers bearing a flag I later learned was the Christian flag, which I admit I never knew existed.

Who knew? Christians have a flag of their own.

Putting it all together, I tentatively concluded that the Born Again crowd had joined the coup in progress. (I guess the Prince of Peace approved the breaking of the peace.)

One reporter aptly called the January 6 uprising a “Bonfire of the Insanities.” I must agree. Yes, my friends, fascist mayhem can happen here. Yes, it did happen here. And, yes, Trump’s gullible goons promise it will happen here again.

Are we witnessing end times for our country?

Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving 1787 Constitutional Convention held in the Pennsylvania State House, was asked what kind of government the delegates had come up with. “A republic,” he responded, “if you can keep it.”

I, for one, am having doubts we can.

RUSH AND I FINALLY AGREE ON SOMETHING

DOES THAT MEAN I’M NOW A DITTOHEAD?

I never thought I would agree with Rush Limbaugh on anything. But it happened. In a radio broadcast last month the long-time loud voice of the far right said that, given the political split between Blue states and Red states, “secession might be inevitable.” True. I’ll go a step further and say secession is both unavoidable and desirable. These disunited United States are not just divided; we’ve downright splintered into at least six estranged and discrete culture blocs, one of which—the West states-- I discuss here. As Abraham Lincoln might have said, “A house splintered against itself, cannot stand.”

Rush went on to say “there cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs,” and he saw a “dire conflict” in the offing. Agree again. And I add my rising fear of our right-wing militias that threaten another civil war.

But Rush and I parted company when he said, “I see more and more people asking what in the world do we have in common with people who live in, say, New York?” Sorry, but the Empire State is a poor choice for comparison. The more obvious pick is the Golden State, where there is sporadic talk among Californians of going it alone as the fifth largest economic power in the world, where tolerance and science-propelled innovation give the world a preview of tomorrow. It’s still the Promised Land, where democracy blooms under an indulgent sun.

Donald J. Trump hates California and has waged war against it since taking office. He wants to build walls on our southern border, advise us on forest management, deny us sanctuary cities, defund our plans for a bullet train, undermine our bans on drilling for petroleum offshore and in the Central Valley, reverse our restrictions on automotive air pollutants, meddle in our politics—you name it, he’s there to trash us at every turn. Of course, sophisticated Californians call his every bluff and showed their disdain for the uncouth conman from Queens when at the polls, where last month they rejected him by a margin of 5,004,501 votes (64 percent to 34 percent spread). (In New York, Biden’s winning margin was a mere 1,833,217 votes, a 60 percent to 38 percent spread; but thanks for the opening to boast, Rush.)

Yes, California, the nation’s most diverse and populous state, could stand alone as a world power. But why think big when you can think bigger? Why not invite our cultural bedfellows—Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii, which share frontage with the mighty Pacific Ocean—to join us in showing the world how democracy is done? The so-called “Left Coast” states have already shown a unified commitment to fair and inclusive elections, unlike many of our corrupt Eastern states, where voter suppression is rampant, GOP gerrymandering is on steroids, and Black and brown voters face new obstacles every election season.

And yet we on the Left Coast help subsidize the taker states, sending more tax revenue to Washington, D.C., than we get back. Those dollars could be used to confront our own problems; we’ve got climate fires to fight, earthquakes to prepare for, long-term droughts to dampen, even volcanoes and tsunamis to dread. Those dollars, added to our united and optimistic mindset and energy, are needed to help us solve our problems, which can’t be can’t done as long as we remain in a polarized country that’s been deadlocked for 30 years.

Secession would be peaceful, of course. The other 46 states would remain our friends and trading partners. Why don’t we call our new nation “Pacifica” after our pacific exit from the “union” and in honor of the great ocean from which so many of our blessings come?

Those who doubt Pacifica’s viability should consider its component states’ cultural and political similarities over the last 40 years. Did you know that in this century, none of the four states has voted Republican for president? In fact, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii haven’t gone Red since 1984 (36 years on the wagon); laggard California jumped aboard in 1988. Facts. Not the alternate kind.

And did you know that all four of the Pacific Coast states’ current governors are Democrats? The only two Republican governors since 2000 were California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger (2006-2010), at that a man too moderate for his fellow Republicans, and Hawaii’s Linda Lingle (2002–2010), the only Republican since 1962 (William F. Quinn) to fill that post in Hawaii.

The Left Coast’s liberal/progressive credentials are even more evident in the eight senators it sends to Washington, D.C. Yes, all are Democrats (four women and four men). This one-party dominance is nothing new. Hawaii hasn’t had a Republican senator since 1977 (Hiram Fong), Washington hasn’t had one since 2001 (T. Slade Gorton, III), Oregon hasn’t had one since 2009 (Gordon Smith), and California hasn’t had one since 1992 (John Seymour).

Perhaps most indicative of the Far West turn left is found in the growing number of House members each party sends to D.C.: Hawaii sends two Democrats and no Republicans, Washington sends seven Democrats and three Republicans, Oregon sends four Democrats and one Republican, and California sends 40 Democrats and 13 Republicans. That’s 53 Democrats and 17 Republicans, or 76 percent Blue and 24 percent Red—and that lopsided result comes without the “benefit” of the dark arts of gerrymandering so skillfully practiced by the GOP in North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, et al.

The West Coast liberal zeitgeist is apparent even in the seven House seats in California’s populous Orange County, long a secure bastion of ultra-conservatism in the Goldwater/Reagan/John Wayne West that was. Five of the seats are now occupied by Democrats ... such a nasty insult to the memory of John Birch.

And yet it is ironic that the Left Coast, with its liberal/progressive persuasion and direction, contributes mightily to the nation’s decades-long political paralysis. From 1988 to now, were you to subtract all of Pacifica’s electoral votes (presently 78) from the nation’s quadrennial presidential contest, the (alleged) United States would show its true color: a deep Red. That very thought should be Pacifica’s wake-up call. Yes, we are the outlier culture, tethered to those with whom we agree on very little.

Have you noticed that California Governor Gavin Newsom has since April of 2020 referred more than once in public address to California as a “Nation State”? And he speaks also of his close cooperation with Governors Kate Brown of Oregon and Jay Inslee of Washington in combating the COVID-19 pandemic on a “regional” basis? Portents of things to come? The Left Coast nation Pacifica in embryo?

Let’s take the present national paralysis as our cue to break away and start anew. Let’s begin by calling for our own constitutional convention (in Honolulu?) to set the rules we will live by. Use the 1789 document as our template, update it in a few outdated places, and patch up the many tears the lawless Trump Administration left for the world to see. Those states left behind can do the same, creating their own nation-states closer to the hearts’ desires of their citizens ... done peacefully as free members of a loose and congenial confederation.

Pacifica’s first president? Easy choice. Barack Obama. He’s rested and ready ... and a native son.

We can do this now voyagers, fellow lovers of democracy! And thanks for the push, Rush.

FOR DOG LOVERS ONLY

Confession: I am a dog lover. I’ve been so since I was six years old and my parents gave me my first dog. Pat was her name, a black and white collie/English shepherd mix, a loving little pup who used to pull down my toddling younger brother by his diaper from behind, without ever leaving the faintest mark of a tooth on his buttocks. Now Pat was promiscuous, and also not spayed, so it was no wonder that she should favor us (me especially) with three separate litters, with three different appearing batches of pups, over three different years.

I knew nothing of mammalian reproduction then, and didn’t think to ask where they came from, and how they got made. But I alone got an upfront seat to view those three litters of newborns (numbering seven, eight, and seven, respectively ) because she always had them under our neighbor’s garage; only I was skinny enough to slither through the wooden struts and concrete supports where she cuddled them. There I could, with Pat’s permission, stroke them before they had their eyes open, and until they were old enough for the proud Mom to bring them out for the world to see.

Of course the pups had to be given away far too soon, and each departure was painful for me. And then one day Pat herself was gone. I still can’t remember how or why…I can only guess that my father attended to end-of-life matters on his own to spare me the grief of my first dog gone. Or did I just blank out the loss from memory?

Since then I have almost always had a canine for company, and I have come to regret deeply the differing life spans of humans and dogs. Too soon they grow old and die, and the love you developed for them fades to a sad memory of their qualities that made them special…a void to be filled only with another rescue of another orphaned best friend.

My attachment to dogs borders on the irrational, I suppose. Whenever I hear the word “dirty dog” or “yellow dog” used to describe a human, I want to come to all dogs’ defense. And when I hear someone use the traditional “you son of a bitch,” or today’s fashionable putdown “my bitch” to refer to someone subservient to their wishes, I bristle. Who the hell are humans to demean a creature nobler than themselves—one we’ve lived with in mutual respect for more than 15,000 years, since they were wolves and we hunted as a team.

With age my attachment to canines has only grown, to the extent that whenever I see an SPCA ad on the telly showing a mistreated dog shivering in the cold, I must change channels quickly. Words attributed to President Harry Truman sum up best, for me, the place of dogs in our lives: “If you want a friend in Washington D. C., buy a dog.”

The above serves as a lead-in to a spirit-of-the-season love story I’d like to share with you. It’s written by Ken Bash, a longtime friend and a fine writer, with whom I obviously share an affection for man’s best pal. With his permission, I reprint it here for other dog-lovers’ pleasure.

They Call It Puppy Love

by Ken Bash

Back when Al Franken hosted a radio show, one of his guests was an expert on “big cats”—tigers, lions, jaguars, leopards, etc. 

Franken asked her, “If my house cat, my domesticated pet, were big enough, would she eat me?”

The expert didn’t hesitate:  “Yes, probably.”

So much for our feline “friends.” 

Now don't get me wrong; I love cats, and in the past, a few have kept me as their pet. But I am a confirmed dog person.

This is Lucy.  We adopted her at our local shelter eight years ago, when she was about a year old.  Her DNA is Dachshund, Miniature Pinscher and Boston Terrier.  Lucy weighs 18 pounds.  Even if she were 200 pounds, Lucy would never eat me.

Lucy sleeps in our bed between my wife Janice and me every night, under the covers, snuggling and nestled against my side.  

In the morning, Lucy dutifully and thoroughly licks the salty sleep from my eyes.  When she has finished the job, she rolls onto her back and bares her pink belly, upon which I plant my open mouth and produce a loud, sloppy raspberry.  

The whole routine is choreographed.  Some might deem it unsanitary and even a little disgusting.

Screw them.

The bond that Lucy and I share is so obvious that it has caused my wife to experience a tinge of jealousy.  Recently Janice said that she sometimes wonders if I love Lucy more than I love her.

“Oh, honey,” I said, “don’t be ridiculous.  It’s just that Lucy is so uninhibited with her shows of affection.  And I have to reciprocate because I don’t want to hurt her feelings.  Of course I love you more.  I mean, she’s just a dog.”

“I’m never going to lick your eyeballs.”

“Of course not, but…”

"But what?"

“But—say if every time I come home, whether I’ve been away two weeks or two hours, you would run as fast as you can to greet me at the door, shaking your butt like crazy, wearing nothing but a monogrammed reflective pink collar, and frantically paw me and lick me all over, and leap up into my arms, getting so excited that you lose control of your bladder, well, then it would be a no-brainer.  No contest.  Definitely.”

“If I did that, you’d have a heart attack on the spot.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.  But I’d die a happy man.”

“Well, don’t worry, ain’t gonna happen.  Besides, I wouldn’t want to make Lucy jealous.”

                                                                         *  *  *

Lucy and I are still bonding every night, and continuing our morning ritual, and now she and Janice and I also sometimes engage in a ménage à trois on our big comfy couch in the living room, sharing a bag of popcorn and watching DOGTV.

My vision is amazingly clear.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

SEARCHING FOR SANITY IN THE TIME OF TRUMP

Deep State civil servants, you have a choice: to be beheaded, drawn and quartered, or shot at dawn.

Sanity. I haven’t seen it in the last four years. And I’m ready to jump off Trump’s Crazy Train before it crashes.

When a freshman at UCLA many years ago I was taught in the intro to philosophy course that what makes humans so special is their power to reason, think rationally, with logic as their guide. So you can understand how stunned I was when Donald J. Trump ascended to the throne with his bloodthirsty cultists in tow. Nothing has been the same since, and recent post-election events have left me wondering whether there is a sane Trumper still alive, and whether any of them ever matriculated.

Take Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, probably the most mentally challenged of the 100 who claim membership to what President James Buchanan called the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” Keep in mind that Buchanan has been called by many the worst president we’ve ever had (prior to Trump, of course), and a senator before that, so he might not be impartial on the subject.

Anyway, when Trump tool Attorney General Bill Barr actually came out and admitted there was no evidence that the presidential election was rigged, Senator Johnson challenged Barr to “show the evidence” that it wasn’t. Come again? One of the first things I learned in that philosophy class of long ago is that you cannot prove a negative! It’s analogous to being forced to prove you are innocent in a court of law. No, it’s the prosecution that must prove you guilty! Back to the University of Minnesota you go, Ron, and this time take some courses besides business and accounting.

Not to be outdone in the advanced stupidity class, Joe diGenova, a Trump attorney whose politics are slightly to the right of Charlemagne’s, really came out with a Zen baffler. Joe went into a reactive rage when Christopher Krebs*, Trump’s Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security, stated that “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised” in the presidential election. For his honesty, Krebs (a lifelong Republican) was summarily fired by Trump…by tweet, as is Dear Leader’s wont. DiGenova went considerably further in his angry reaction to Krebs’s verdict: “Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be head of cybersecurity, that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”

Almost immediately I asked myself how one could do such a thing? I mean, from what I’ve read, you need four horses pulling in different directions to quarter the traitor, presumably with some innards spilling out behind the diverging steeds.

Question, Joe: Which of the quartered parts do you take out and shoot the next morning? Is it the one with the head still attached to which you administer the coup de grâce? What if the head has been detached and remains in the trail of offal left in the wakes of the departing horses? Do you shoot the head rather than one of the four quartered torsos? You know, on second thought, I suggest you reverse the entire process. Better to shoot Krebs first, store him inside overnight, then at dawn take his body out and hitch it (him?) to the horses for quartering.

By the way, are you planning to invite the public to the spectacle, as they did back in Merrie Olde Medieval England? Then I’d take the precaution of chilling the corpse overnight, lest it begin to rot and cut down on attendance. Will you be charging admission? If so, I would delay the actual execution until mid-morning. Dawn’s a bit early for a lot of our GOP slugabeds, and you want to maximize your gate. A last question, Joe: Have you arranged for a clean-up crew? Methinks the grounds will be rather a mess, and I can’t imagine you bloodying your hands with that. Best of luck.

You know dear reader, I doubt that the dweebish Joe diGenova is really up to the task of executing anyone. He just talks a grisly game. Perhaps he should turn over the killing to an able paisano, a guy who is never far from a camera before which he will embarrass himself; yes, I’m referring to Rudy “Skullface” Giuliani, who seems much more qualified to make the hit. He expressed his wish to join in on the frenzied bloodletting by telling Sean Hannity of Fox News that “someone should cut the head off” of the Democratic Party. Now that would take some doing, and with all the important legal cases he’s handling, I don’t think he could find time on his crowded agenda to take on another killing.

Perhaps a better candidate for the gory chore is Dapper Steve Bannon, who has said he would double down and behead both FBI Director Christopher Wray and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the world-renowned expert on infectious diseases. “I’d actually go back to the old times of Tudor England,” he said. “I’d put the heads on pikes, right? I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to Federal bureaucrats: You either get with the program or you’re gone.”

While some might argue that beheading is a more humane method of execution (it’s over in an instant, I’m told) than being pulled apart by four horses and then shot in the dead head, Bannon’s “doubleheader” was apparently too much in-your-face bloodletting for Bannon’s white-shoe lawyer, William A. Burck. Lawyer? Yes, Mr. Burck was representing Bannon in a well-publicized federal fraud case in Manhattan; Burck, in a letter to the court, announced that “Mr. Bannon [was] in the process of retaining new counsel.”

Quite a setback for Mr. Bannon, who, along with three confederates, is charged with siphoning off hundreds of thousands of dollars for some personal high-living—funds that were ostensibly collected from other Trumpers to build for their boss the Great Wall of Trump. Is that the same boss who’s behind all this blood lust? Who’s stirring the hate pot? The cur in the manger that seems intent on dismembering our nation?

Yep. You got it. Our Orange Eminence himself. Putin’s pet puppet. Erostratus redux. None other than Dimwit Donald, the sore loser of the 2020 presidential election by more than seven million votes. Even in the “rigged” Electoral College Biden won, 306 to 232—the same “landslide” numbers that Trump won by in 2016. Talk about irony.

As for this yearning for bloodshed, I hear the militias are talking civil war. The Proud Boys are standing by. The biker gangs have their chains out. The ICEmen cometh.

You know, this is no country for old men. Stop the Crazy Train. This is where I get off.

*Krebs is a life-long Republican. His defiant honesty lifted him to a near-hero’s status among the mentally sound of his party….all eight of them. He deserves our respect…and then some.