HinesSight

Avelo Airlines, which flies out of Salem, is being paid for deportation ICE flights

It was controversial when in 2023 the Salem City Council paid $2.4 million from the city's general fund to make airport improvements that were needed to attract commercial air service to Salem -- even though at the time the City of Salem was facing a large budget shortfall and was hoping to raise $25 million a year from a payroll tax on workers.

Avelo Airlines, a low-cost carrier, ended up coming to town.

Now Avelo is enmeshed in a controversy of its own making due to the airline contracting with the Trump administration's ICE agency (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) for deportation flights of supposedly undocumented immigrants. I say "supposedly" because there's plenty of evidence that quite a few of those being deported actually have a right to stay in this country.

I just signed a Change.org petition: "We won't fly Avelo until they stop ICE flights!" Currently it has 31,438 signatures. Here's excerpts from the petition.

We demand that AVELO AIR halt plans to carry out deportation flights in cooperation with the Trump Administration. We pledge to boycott the airline until they stop plans to profit off ICE flights that are tearing families and communities apart and removing some legal residents, such as Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia, with no recourse for returning to their families.

Avelo Air confirms that they have signed a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Immigration Control and Enforcement agency (ICE) to carry out deportation flights from Mesa, Arizona and are currently recruiting staff.

...Trump's cruel policies go against everything we stand for. These flights are inhumane, dangerous, and, in some cases, illegal. They transport vulnerable people, including children and women, out of the country, at times without due process. Read what ProPublica has to say about ICE flights.

The Washington Post has an April 11 story about Avelo's ICE contract: "Small airline faces boycotts over deal to run deportation flights for ICE." That link is a gift from my Post subscription, so everybody should be able to read it. This is part of what the story says.

Avelo Airlines, an ultra-low-cost carrier based in Houston, has agreed to operate deportation flights for the Department of Homeland Security out of Phoenix-Mesa Airport starting next month. The contract is unconventional for a commercial airline because the federal government relies mostly on private charter companies.

Andrew Levy, Avelo’s founder and chief executive, described the company’s decision to participate in the flights as financial. It has generated criticism from Democratic lawmakers, the largest flight attendants union and thousands of travelers who signed a Change.org petition to boycott the carrier.

...Avelo provided details of its “long-term charter program” in a statement to The Washington Post. The airline will use three Boeing 737-800s, which can seat up to 189 passengers, to transport people deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to facilities or staging grounds in the United States or to final destinations abroad.

...Human rights and immigrant advocates have denounced conditions for deportees on flights, as have the governments of Brazil and Colombia. More recently, the administration flew more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they are being held in a notorious prison.

...The primary responsibility of flight attendants is to ensure the safety of passengers. According to the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents workers at 20 airlines, including Avelo, the restrictive nature of deportation flights prohibits them from doing so.

“Having an entire flight of people handcuffed and shackled would hinder any evacuation and risk injury or death,” the union said in a statement to The Post. “It also impedes our ability to respond to a medical emergency, fire on board, decompression, etc. We cannot do our jobs in these conditions.”

According to the ICE Air Operations handbook, adult detainees will be restrained by handcuffs, waist chains and leg irons. Only the flight officer in charge or their assistant can remove the restraints.

The members urged Avelo to reconsider its deal with ICE.

...“If you and I are on a plane, we’re not even allowed to have our purses out when the plane is taking off because you have to be able to get off the flight so quickly if there’s an emergency,” said Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, the director of the UW Center for Human Rights. “Yet these folks are chained.”

Because of the steps involved in transporting deportees, Godoy said, the passengers may be constricted for hours or even an entire day. The shackles stymie mobility and can cause physical pain. She said she has observed flights where people struggle to walk up the stairs and complain of losing feeling in their hands. Using the lavatory is imaginably difficult.

“They’re not allowed to remove those shackles,” she said, “an impediment if you have to go to the bathroom.”

Should progressives pursue policies of abundance? Probably.

I identify as a progressive, though for me, the term basically is synonymous with liberal. At any rate, I'd call myself a moderate progressive/liberal.

Meaning, I'm not as far to the left as Bernie Sanders, though I agree with much of what he says and stands for, and I'm not as far to the right as John Fetterman, though I also like much of what he says and stands for. 

So it isn't surprising that I resonate with the general thrust of a recently published book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance. In fact, I just ordered the book. Here's the Amazon description.

From bestselling authors and journalistic titans Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life.

 

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next gener­ation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and pre­serves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.

 

Klein was on Bill Maher's HBO show this week. Maher hasn't been shy about criticizing California's overregulation, appropriately griping about how it took him three years, I think it was, to get approval for a solar panel installation on his house.

 

There was talk about how California has been trying to get high speed rail installed between Los Angeles and San Francisco for, roughly, forever. Now the plan is just for a segment between Merced and Bakersfield, if I recall correctly. Whoopee.

 

China has been able to build high speed rail hugely faster, as has the European Union. It does seem that Abundance is correct: the United States has lost its ability to build great things. Being old, and having grown up in California, I remember how quickly the interstate highway system in that state was built after a bill was passed by Congress in 1956.

 

Driving from central to southern California used to be really slow. Going through cities like Bakersfield involved stopping at lots of red lights. Once the I-5 freeway was built, and that didn't take very long, the trip was much faster and more pleasant. 

 

Here in Oregon, I'm a defender of our pioneering land use laws that protect farm and forest land from urban sprawl. But the downside is that our state lacks enough affordable housing. As was discussed on the Bill Maher show, blue states like California, New York, and Oregon likely will lose House seats after the 2030 census to rapidly growing red states like Texas and Florida.

 

Housing affordability is one reason. Red states have fewer regulations. Klein noted that this has caused Texas to have a lot of wind and solar electrical generation, even though the political climate in that state is anti-environment. The reason, according to Klein, is that the lack of regulation means green energy projects are easier to build in Texas.

 

Somehow us liberals have to find a way to build things that the United States needs without having construction slowed or even halted by onerous regulations. There's got to be a middle way between allowing development to proceed without necessary oversight, which the Trump administration is pursuing, and putting roadblocks in the path of development through over-regulation, which Democrat-controlled areas have been prone to.

 

The New York Times has a thoughtful review of Abundance, "Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?" You should be able to read the review via my gift link. Excerpt:

As Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson write in “Abundance,” a guide for liberals shaken by an age of factional polarization, the United States can still blaze the path to progress, but only if progressives get out of the habit of putting obstacles in their own way. “If liberals do not want Americans to turn to the false promise of strongmen,” the authors write, “they need to offer the fruits of effective government.” But how?

Klein, a columnist and podcaster for The New York Times, and Thompson, a journalist for The Atlantic, are the best in the business at digesting and synthesizing expertise from a host of fields. “Abundance” expands on their previously published work over the last decade or so, and Klein and Thompson have no shortage of policy proposals on affordable housing (build more!), renewable energy (go nuclear!) and sustainable agriculture (vertical farming?).

But their book comprises more than a set of concrete steps to fix specific socioeconomic problems in America. It’s mainly a sharp cry against myopic Democrats who block new ideas and govern through checklists, leading to what the authors call “an endless catalog of rules and restraints.”

 

Laurel Hines, my wife, supports changes to Oregon's Death With Dignity law

The Oregon legislature is considering a bill, SB 1003, that would make changes to our state's Death With Dignity law -- which allows people who have six months or less left to live to exercise control over the time and manner of their death by taking physician-prescribed medication.

Passed by Oregon voters in 1994, and affirmed in 1997 when it took effect after a legal challenge, the law is a good start, but it needs improving. That's why my wife, Laurel Hines, testified in favor of SB 1003 at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on March 3.

Laurel told the committee that it makes sense to allow physician assistants and nurse practitioners to deal with patients who want to make use of the Death With Dignity law. In many rural parts of Oregon, PAs and NPs are the primary caregivers, since physicians are lacking in those areas. 

She also approved of a proposed change that reduces the waiting period to use the law from 15 days to 2 days, telling the committee that a 15 day wait after deciding on a peaceful death could be intolerable, and it prolongs the patient's emotional agony. Further, some people lose the ability to self-administer the medication over a 15 day period (that's a requirement under the law).

My wife was quoted in a couple of news stories about the hearing. Here's an excerpt from a story in The Lund Report (an independent publication focused on health care in Oregon), "Senators hear passionate arguments over how terminally ill patients end their lives in Oregon."

How easy should it be for terminally ill people to end their lives? Debate over how Oregon should answer that question is flaring in Salem.

A group of doctors want to cut the waiting period for Oregon’s Death with Dignity law from 15 days to 48 hours and allow not just physicians but nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe medication and oversee the process that allows terminally ill patients to end their lives.

Critics say the changes will remove safeguards voters were promised when they approved Oregon’s physician-assisted dying law in 1994 and affirmed in 1997. Supporters, however, say the law needs an update in response to doctor shortages and for patients who are on the brink of death.

“I believe that these changes that are being proposed are not radical at all, and extremely reasonable,” Laurel Hines, a retired Salem social worker, told lawmakers Monday.

Lawmakers considered those arguments during a hearing of Senate Bill 1003, which would make the most far-reaching revisions to Oregon’s Death with Dignity program in the history of the law.

Hines said that Oregon’s law is modest compared to what’s in place in Canada and other countries. Without reforms to Oregon’s law, she said more people would turn to “do-it-yourself options.”

“I now have traumatic memories of my sister dying the way she did, and being in the condition she was and in pain that morphine didn't control and her loss of autonomy."

The Portland Oregonian also had a story that mentioned Laurel, "Bill to ease medically assisted suicide runs into wall of opposition." 
Download Bill to ease medically assisted suicide runs into wall of opposition

The bill would loosen Oregon’s first-in-the-nation law by reducing the standard waiting period after patients ask for lethal doses of medication from 15 days to two days. Among other provisions, it would eliminate the need for two doctors to sign off on medically assisted suicide and instead allow two physician assistants or nurse practitioners to do so.

No individual lawmakers have signed on as sponsors of Senate Bill 1003, which was filed by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Only two people spoke in favor of the bill Monday. Eight people spoke in opposition, along with 150 Oregonians who submitted written testimony objecting to the bill.

Dr. Paul Kaplan, who said he was speaking for a group of about 30 mostly retired doctors who’ve focused on end-of-life care, told the committee the bill would help reduce inequities in rural Oregon where most residents use physician assistants or nurse practitioners for their medical care.

“There are very large areas of Oregon where there is not a doctor available for hundreds of miles,” Kaplan said. “And so this service is literally not available to patients who live in those areas.”

Laurel Hines, a Salem resident, told the committee that sometimes waiting 15 days is too long. Hines said her sister deteriorated within a few days of going into hospice and would not have been able to self-administer a lethal dose — as required by Oregon law. Though Hines’ sister died in Illinois, where there is no medically assisted suicide law, Hines used her sister’s death as an example of what can happen to terminally ill patients.

“I now have traumatic memories of my sister dying the way she did and being in the condition that she was and pain that morphine didn’t control,” Hines said.

It seems that many or even most of the 150 comments in opposition to the bill likely came from an organized effort by Oregon Right to Life. Laurel read the comments and told me that there was talk about the horror of killing unborn children, though abortion obviously has nothing to do with the Death With Dignity law. Most of those opponents probably hadn't even read SB 1003, so hopefully their comments will be discounted by the committee.

In Providence strike, I'm on the side of nurses and doctors

Last Friday Oregon's largest health care strike in history kicked off as about 5,000 nurses, doctors, and midwives walked off their Providence Hospitals jobs. Dissatisfaction with working conditions was a major reason for the strike, according to the Oregon Nurses Association. 

One of Oregon’s largest healthcare providers, Providence, is a system in crisis that threatens the health and well-being of all Oregonians.  

We are nurses, doctors, physician associates, nurse practitioners, and certified nurse midwives from Providence facilities across Oregon. Some of us have been bargaining with Providence for more than a year and are working without a contract.

Providence has rejected our common-sense proposals to improve patient care and safety by not committing to safe staffing and other critical patient safety issues in our contracts. That’s why we’re going on strike starting January 10.

When healthcare workers are asked to do more with less, patient lives are at stake. Providence has pushed nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals to work under unsafe staffing conditions.  

Providence hasn’t offered any real plan to increase retention. Providence simply isn’t competitive with other healthcare systems in the areas where they operate. That means fewer workers; longer ER lines; longer surgery waits; and more medical complications, as Oregonians can’t get the care they need quickly. 

We have made the difficult decision to go on strike because Providence executives aren’t listening to us. We need Providence to put patients before profits and do everything they can to make sure healthcare professionals can work to the top of their practice and stay for the long term.  

Today Providence paid for a full page ad in the Sunday Oregonian newspaper. I'm a digital subscriber. Here's screenshots of the ad, which I found annoying and demeaning toward nurses.

Providence Health & Services claims that the Oregon Nurses Association called a strike with the intent of cancelling patient appointments and services. I doubt there's any solid evidence supporting that assertion, and it goes against the ONA statement of concern for patient well-being. 

And Providence also claims the Oregon Nurses Association is fully responsible for disruptions to patient care. Huh?

Negotiations over union contracts obviously involve two parties, the employer and the employees. Sure, often each side blames the other for being unreasonable if a strike occurs after negotiations break down, but usually this is hyperbole. Each side should shoulder some blame for the strike.

Hopefully Providence isn't operating under a fantasy that the public is more sympathetic to a giant health care corporation than to the nurses and doctors who provide care at the eight Providence hospitals around Oregon. 

I deeply doubt this is the case.

When someone needs care at a hospital, it is given by nurses and doctors, not by the management of the entity that owns and runs the hospital. I've appreciated the competency and friendliness of the doctors and nurses who handled my fairly recent hernia and eye operations at Salem Health, along with screening colonoscopies.  Administrators of the health care organization responsible for my care mean nothing to me.

After ten years of being a member of Regence Medicare Advantage, I just switched to a Providence Medicare Advantage plan after Regence and Salem Health failed to agree on a 2025 contract, which meant that I'd have to pay more for out-of-network care from Salem Health as of January 1.

So far (just twelve days), I'm satisfied with Providence Medicare Advantage. Several times I've phoned Providence with questions about my new insurance plan. The people I've talked with have been helpful and pleasant. But again, I'm thankful for the front-line staff at Providence, not management. 

The financial aspect of the offer Providence says it has made to nurses and doctors seems pretty reasonable. But it appears that working conditions and staffing levels may be the bigger concern for the nurses and doctors. I'm on their side, as I strongly suspect a majority of Oregonians are.

Oregon's Rose Bowl loss reminded me of Harris's presidential loss

There I was, all prepared for what I thought was going to be an enjoyable television watching time.

I'd been looking forward to this moment for months. I was highly familiar with the contest that finally was going to be decided. I realized that my favorite wasn't guaranteed to win. But there was every indication that this had a good chance of happening. I figured that the worst that could happen was an evenly matched contest where it would take a while for the winner to become obvious.

Sadly, what I just said applied equally to two disturbing events spaced about two months apart: Kamala Harris's loss to Donald Trump on November 5 in the presidential race, and the University of Oregon football team's loss to Ohio State on January 1 in the Rose Bowl.

Of course, these losses involved very different consequences. Harris's defeat risks the future of our country and indeed the entire world. Oregon's loss just means that a national championship isn't going to happen for the team ranked #1 for many weeks.

Yet both hit me hard emotionally. I wanted my favored contestant to win, really badly. I'd envisioned how good I was going to feel after their hard-fought victory had finally happened. I had settled into my TV watching chair with a lot of optimism.

But it didn't take long for me to realize that the Oregon Ducks weren't quacking away on the football field like they had earlier in the season when they'd defeated Ohio State 32-31 thanks to the Buckeyes quarterback sliding to the turf a split second too late when he had gained enough yardage to put his team in field goal range, and the game ended before a field goal could be attempted.

Either Oregon had taken a big step backward, or Ohio State was a much better team now. Probably both were true.

Regardless, watching Ohio State score 34 unanswered points in the first half, when the Buckeyes were only favored to win by three points or so, was shocking. Oregon sort of came to life at the end of the first half and some parts of the second half, though it seemed to me that the final score of 41-21 made the game seem closer than it really was. 

In football, there's always next year. Oregon had a great 2024 season with a 13-1 record. It's how much the  "1" hurts that stops me from feeling good right now about how the team did. Plus, Oregon has come close to a national championship before. I'd convinced myself that this was the year the Ducks would break through that "close but not quite" barrier.

Didn't happen. Maybe it will in 2025.

I'm enjoying Bluesky after my disillusionment with Elon Musk's X

A few days ago I took the social media plunge into the pleasant waters of Bluesky, having become increasingly disillusioned with X (formerly known as Twitter). 

After Elon Musk bought Twitter and almost instantly renamed it X, because that's his favorite letter, I found this irritating, but not enough to make me leave X. The positives seemed to outweigh the negatives.

I use Twitter, X, and now Bluesky for the enjoyment I get from following quality observers of our local, state, and national political scenery. They're up to date on what's going on. I learn a lot from the links they share, along with their own commentary on current events.

After I wake up, I like to see what those I follow are viewing as the day's most important news. Because my list of follows is strongly biased toward Democrats and progressives, they resonate with my own similar political leaning. 

Though I've never met any of them, they come to seem like friends of a sort. Each has their own unique style and area of expertise. 

Though for months I've been hearing talk on X about people leaving for other similar platforms like Threads and Bluesky, after signing up for Threads and then ignoring it, I'd decided that I'd stick with X for the time being.

Then came Elon Musk's full-bore support for Trump. Since I have followed Musk on Twitter and then X because I admire what he's done with Tesla and SpaceX (I'm a longtime Starlink customer), I was aware of how different his recent posts on X were from the Elon Musk posts before he became a big Trump supporter. 

Those new posts were full of lies. Then came his efforts to get Trump elected. Now Trump has given Musk the job of figuring out ways to make the federal government more efficient through a Department of Government Efficiency -- DOGE, which not coincidentally is the name of a crypto currency, Dogecoin, that Musk is heavily invested in.

The conflicts of interest Musk has are breathtaking. SpaceX and Tesla benefit mightily from government programs, yet there's no indication that Musk is going to take steps to make sure that his DOGE recommendations on where to cut government spending aren't in line with what enriches Musk.

So along with many other users of X, I've decided to wean myself off of Musk's social media plaything in favor of Bluesky, a haven for people who are fed up with the MAGA craziness X has become. The ads on X are equally annoying, as Musk has taken away the ability to block specific ads. So far, Bluesky doesn't have ads. 

I kept my X username when I signed up for Bluesky: OregonBrian. Many of the people and organizations I follow on X aren't on Bluesky, but quite a few are. Currently I follow 59 Bluesky users. I had 701 followers on X; now I have 9 on Bluesky. I've invited my followers to join me on Bluesky, but obviously most haven't done this.

But since I'm much more interested in reading the posts of other people and organizations than sharing my own posts, which usually are just links to a blog post that I write each night, I'm fine with being almost follower'less on Bluesky.

It feels great to be out of the clutches of Elon Musk's X, though I'm still on X for a while longer. Blue Sky has the look and feel of X without the annoyances. Give it a try. Bluesky has over 20 million users now, a big jump from before the election. It isn't difficult to find people and organizations to follow on virtually any topic.

Constant worrying about Trump is a threat to your health

Like many millions of Americans, ever since Trump was elected president on November 5, a mere twelve days ago that seems like much longer, I've been consumed with anxiety about what this means for the United States and the world.

In short, nothing good. Or at least, very little that is good.

Naturally I'm speaking from my perspective as a Democrat who heartily supported Kamala Harris. I realize that Trump supporters feel differently. But I'm speaking to those who, like me, see Trump as a threat to democracy, the environment, equal rights, justice, the economy, Ukraine, and so much else. 

We have to resist Trump whenever and wherever possible. That's a given. However, we can't constantly worry about what Trump will do in the next four years. That way isn't good for our mental and physical health. 

And it's important that we remain strong -- to fight the good fight against Trump's malevolent authoritarianism.

Maybe you've heard of the book, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. It's about stress. Humans and other animals are hard-wired by evolution to react strongly when faced with imminent danger, like a lion stalking a herd of zebras.

When the lion attacks, the zebras run like crazy. Hormones in their brain and body are instantly released to aid them in escaping from the threat to their life. But after the attack is over, the zebras return to grazing. 

That's how the sympathetic nervous system was intended to work. In his book, Mind Magic, neuroscientist and neurosurgeon James Doty says about the autonomic nervous system:

This part of the nervous system developed early in our evolution as a species and has two divisions. The first to evolve was the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), whose job it is to ensure our physical survival and the survival of our genes, and whose primary activity is to engage the fight, flight, or freeze response. 

...Because it evolved to act in life-or-death situations, it moves along very short neurons and therefore has the power to completely commandeer our physical and emotional resources in a split second, filling our body with stress hormones like cortisol and tensing our muscles for action.

Later, the human nervous system evolved further with the addition of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), also known as the rest-and-digest response, whose job is to return the body to a peaceful resting state, a process known as homeostasis. 

The switch to rest-and-digest is accompanied by a wide variety of physiological changes to promote balance and harmony: our muscles relax, our heart rate and blood pressure decrease, and we produce more saliva for digestion.

Nature didn't intend that we be in a constant state of anxious arousal. Our brain and body are basically unchanged from prehistoric times when early humans, like zebras, were faced with dire life-or-death threats that required a rapid fight, flight, or freeze response, soon followed by a rest-and-digest response (assuming the threat didn't end in death).

We live in a very different world now. Few of us have direct threats to our life. Instead, our modern world is filled with situations that provoke feelings of anxiety in us, such as the election of a president, Donald Trump, who is viewed by many as posing a serious threat to values they hold dear.

Instead of going back to grazing on what sustains us, as zebras do after a threat appears and disappears, often we remain in a stressful state -- because what we fear isn't a near-at-hand danger that can be dealt with, but a distant danger outside of our control.

James Doty goes on to say:

The problem is that while evolution takes millions of years to adapt to environmental change, humans have profoundly changed our environment in only a few thousand years. In fact, we lived as hunter-gatherers in groups of fifty to a hundred until only six to eight thousand years ago.

Unfortunately, today's fast-paced and anxiety-provoking world is riddled with the sorts of uncertainties and frustrations that trigger the fight, flight, or freeze response and keep it chronically activated by unreal, imagined, or insignificant threats. 

Essentially, we are responding to a passive-aggressive comment in a colleague's email through the same system that was designed to process a saber-toothed tiger attack. As we will see, the chronic activation of the fight, flight, or freeze response and its release of inflammatory proteins has damaging effects on the body, including an increase in heart disease and a weakened immune system.

I don't see Trump as an imagined or insignificant threat. He's a clear and present danger to not only the United States, but the world as a whole. Like I said, when there's an opportunity to resist him, we need to do what demands to be done. 

But we can't remain on guard against Trump all the time. He can't be a constant inhabitant of our mind. We can't react to every crazy thing he does as if it was a saber-toothed tiger attack. We need to keep informed about what he and his administration are up to, while engaging in activities that relax and rejuvenate us as much as possible.

Everybody who opposes Trump will have to find their own ways of doing this. I've meditated every day since 1969, when I started learning yoga while in college. Currently I enjoy brief guided meditations rather than the hour or two of meditation that I used to practice.

On my iPhone I switch back and forth between Sam Harris' Waking Up app and the Calm app. Today I went back to listening to the Daily Calm, which I find more relaxing than the daily guided meditation offered by Waking Up. 

Trump is going to do what he's going to do. Yes, that's a tautology. But it reminds me that by and large, it's going to be up to leading Democrats in Congress and various states to stand in Trump's way when he poses a danger. 

I can support those efforts. Yet I can't let my mental and physical health be threatened by constant worries about what Trump has done, is doing, and will do. I've got to graze on the pleasant grass in my life, not be incessantly looking around for threats from a president who isn't anywhere near me, physically.

Another school shooting shows there's only one reason: too many damn guns!

Today four people were killed and nine wounded at a high school in Georgia by a 14-year old student there. 

According to Wikipedia, as of August 31, so far in 2024 in the United States a total of 527 people have been killed and 1,755 people have been wounded in 432 mass shootings. (Defined as at least four people killed or wounded in an incident.)

So this school shooting wasn't anything special, sadly. School shootings just get more attention from the media.

I watched some of the coverage as I exercised this afternoon, then listened to MSNBC and CNN discussions of the mass shooting while driving home.

It didn't take long for me to become disgusted with the all-too-familiar ritual of this country's usual reaction to mass shootings. Vigils, prayers, praise for the police reaction, vilifying the "evil" shooter, calls for better mental health care, blah, blah, blah. 

I can't stand this crap anymore. None of these endlessly repeated actions addresses the real cause of mass shootings: the massive amount of guns floating around in our country. 

This is so damn obvious, it's journalistic malpractice to talk about anything else. 

The United States doesn't have a higher proportion of people with mental health problems than other high-income countries. What distinguishes us is our insane gun culture, the wrong-headed belief that guns keep us safer. 

They don't. As shown in the chart below, which has data for 2017 and 2019, the United States has by far the most guns per 100 people among these countries, and also has by far the highest gun murder rate per 100,000 people.

More guns, more gun deaths. That's the five-word explanation for why our country has so many shootings. There's no other reason. 

So whenever I hear some talking head on a news program blather on about the need for better mental health care, or for arming teachers, or for any other action aimed at reducing mass shootings other than making it more difficult to own a gun, I feel like screaming at the television or radio, shut the fuck up, you idiot!

In the coming days and weeks law enforcement types will study the Georgia shooter's background, his motive for doing what he did, whether his parents knew he had access to the AR-15 style rifle used in the shooting, his behavior on the day of the attack, and such.

None of that, precisely zero, zilch, nada, will move the United States closer to reducing the crazily high number of gun deaths and injuries in this country. Fewer guns -- that's the only real solution.

And that, unfortunately, is almost impossible to achieve until we get a Supreme Court that understands that the second amendment to our constitution allows for strong regulations governing gun ownership.

Joe Biden's speech at the DNC was met with love, and also relief

President Biden deserved the warm welcome he received at the Democratic National Convention tonight. The cries and signs of "I love Joe" were heartfelt. 

However, as I watched his speech here in Oregon, where it was over well after midnight East Coast time and 9:30 or so our time, which seemed like a crazily late time to showcase what amounted to Biden's farewell to the nation as Kamala Harris is poised to enter the stretch run of her presidential campaign, I keep thinking that a big part of why Democrats love Joe is that Biden had the good sense to withdraw from his reelection effort, which created a strong sense of relief.

If he hadn't done this, I was prepared to watch his speech at the convention as the Democratic candidate, rather than as the guy who made Harris' campaign possible, with undisguised enmity. For until the pressure on Biden to withdraw became too strong for him to ignore, reporting indicated that right up to the end, Biden believed that he could beat Trump. 

That wasn't a complete fantasy, but it was damn close to being delusional. The evidence for this is how quickly Harris erased Trump's lead both nationally and in the battleground states, since her candidacy unleashed a wave of enthusiasm that was always there, but was being stifled by Biden's evident inability to run a strong campaign against Trump -- in large part because of his age, but also because he isn't a scintillating speaker.

Those weaknesses were on display tonight, though despite the lateness of the hour, Biden's voice sounded strong, probably because he mostly was reading from a teleprompter. He'll give more speeches before his presidency is over. I'm looking forward to never hearing him say "No joke" or "I'm not kidding" again. I never can understand why Biden feels the need to say these things, since it's obvious from what he's talking about that it isn't a matter of joking or kidding.

By contrast, so far I haven't found anything Kamala Harris or Tim Walz do when they're speaking that irritates me. 

Anyway, I think it was great that Biden got his moment in the sun on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. He rolled through his greatest hits, taking justified pride in his many accomplishments as president. It's hard not to like the guy, though Trump and most Republicans are able to do this, no problem. 

I'm just happy that he was speaking on Monday, rather than on Thursday, when the presidential nominee speaks. I found his speech kind of boring, but that's to be expected of Biden. He beat Trump in 2020 because the nation yearned for someone unexcitingly normal after four years of Trump's over-the-top craziness.

Now, though, I look forward to backing Harris-Walz, who bring out just the right amount of excitement among voters open to their populist progressive message. 

LGBTQ people may not be born that way, but they're formed that way

The Sunday New York Times had a great idea in the opinion section of the August 4, 2024 issue: have some of their columnists debunk a bit of conventional wisdom in their circles. Here's how it was described.

Our world is more connected than ever. But it's never been easier to find yourself shepherded into a comfortable herd made up of close friends or political allies, your social set or professional peers. And those herds are the perfect environment for groupthink to thrive, to allow dubious beliefs or weak arguments to masquerade as unquestionable truisms.

We asked nine of our Opinion columnists to debunk an idea -- big or small -- that has become conventional wisdom in their circles. We wanted to read about the arguments that start debates at dinner parties or make their friends roll their eyes. These are Times Opinion's unpopular opinions.

David Brooks wrote "Many People Fear A.I. They Shouldn't." Zeynep Tufekci wrote "Politicians Say We're More Divided than Ever. It Could Be Worse." Bret Stephens wrote "Conservatives Think The Market Always Gets It Right. It Doesn't." Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote "Don't Hate on the D.M.V. It's Actually Great." Michelle Goldberg wrote "Mothers Are Told Natural Childbirth Is Best. It Isn't." Pamela Paul wrote "The Saying Goes: Dogs are Man's Best Friend. But Cats Are Better." Lydia Polgreen wrote "We're Taught to Hate Hypocrisy. We Shouldn't." David French wrote "Some Think What You Preach Matters More Than What You Do. It Doesn't." 

And Charles M. Blow wrote "People Say Queer People Are Born That Way. It's More Complicated." That's a gift link from my online subscription; my wife subscribes to the Sunday paper edition, which is how I learned about the debunking columns. I've copied in Blow's piece below for easier reading within this post.

Blow makes a lot of sense, though he takes on a subject that in liberal circles is controversial: that sexual orientation isn't purely genetic but arises from a bunch of factors, including genetics. But this seems to be true. Here's a couple of excepts from a 2008 story in Science, "Gay Is Not All in the Genes."

Why are some people gay? Most researchers who study sexual orientation think that both genetic and environmental factors play a role, but the relative contributions of each remain unclear. A new study of Swedish twins reinforces earlier findings that environmental influences--including the environment in the womb--may play a greater role than genes.

...The results, published online this month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, confirm earlier findings that identical twins are more concordant for same-sex behaviors than fraternal twins are but only modestly so: In men, genetic effects appeared to explain 34% to 39% of the differences between the two twin groups, whereas in women, genetics accounted for only about 18% to 19% of the difference--a finding consistent with other research showing that sexual orientation in women is not as rigidly determined as it is in men.

If I was asked to debunk a bit of conventional wisdom in my circle, a top choice of mine would be "Most people believe we have free will. But we don't." This is one of my favorite subjects on my Church of the Churchless blog. I've written many posts about free will, or rather the lack thereof. 

So I resonated with Blow's statements, though I don't totally agree with them: 

“Born this way” may, unfortunately, have been an oversimplification. It’s probably closer to the truth to say that people are “formed this way.”

...Now the argument has to be more sophisticated: We may choose how we identify and how we express — or suppress — our attractions, but our attractions themselves are not a choice.

We must insist that people’s right to exist, and our responsibility to affirm and protect them, doesn’t hinge on the mechanisms by which they came to exist. The “end” exists, regardless of the “means.”

The way I see it, everything that we do, and all that we are, is determined by causes and conditions extending all the way back to the big bang.

This scientific understanding, which Robert Sapolsky ably argued for in his recent book, Determined, makes it impossible to blame people for being whoever they are now, for they had no choice in the matter -- notwithstanding Blow's attempt to make our attractions not a choice, but how we express or suppress our attractions a choice.

Regardless, I like what Blow said in his column.

It won't please those who believe in the "born that way" hypothesis, nor will it please those who believe in the "sexuality is a choice" hypothesis. The truth doesn't always lie in the middle, but in this case I think it does. My only quibble with his column is that I don't believe we ever make choices of our own unfettered free will, no matter what those choices are.

When Lady Gaga released “Born This Way,” the 2011 song on an album of the same name, it was an instant hit and an instant L.G.B.T.Q. anthem. The song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100, and Elton John called it “the new gay anthem.”

It was the dictum of a generation, three words operating with bumper sticker efficiency, conveying that queerness was natural and immutable, and that it was not a result of abuse, grooming or impairment. Queer people were not broken, and therefore in no need of fixing. Queerness was neither a choice nor a curse. It was not a “lifestyle” but a state of being.

The idea that sexuality was innate, captured in the phrase, was a rhetorical work horse that began to lead the conversation around L.G.B.T.Q. issues. Although the idea of homosexual bio-essentialism has a history that long predates this modern iteration, “born this way” this time was a phrase that matched the moment and captured the zeitgeist. As with most things in politics, it was about timing.

Later that year, during remarks delivered at the Human Rights Campaign annual dinner, President Barack Obama joked to the gay rights group that “I also took a trip out to California last week, where I held some productive, bilateral talks with your leader: Lady Gaga.”

Obama was referring to meeting Gaga at a fundraiser at which she raised the issue of bullying after one of her fans, 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer, endured homophobic bullying before dying by suicide.

Before the fundraiser, Obama had repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military, allowing queer service members to serve openly, and soon after the fundraiser, Obama would become the first president to declare his support for same-sex marriage.

In the years after the song was released, the percentage of Americans saying in polling that “being gay or lesbian is something a person is born with” began to consistently outweigh those who responded that being queer was “due to factors such as upbringing and environment.”

“Born this way,” as a slogan, was a tremendous cultural and political success. The problem is that it isn’t supported by science. The emerging scientific consensus is that sexual orientation isn’t purely genetic. A person’s genetic makeup and exposure to prenatal hormones may provide a propensity to queerness, but they aren’t determinative. Other factors most likely also play a role.

“Born this way” may, unfortunately, have been an oversimplification. It’s probably closer to the truth to say that people are “formed this way.” As the complity of human sexuality has become clearer, scientists and writers have attempted to add necessary nuance to the subject. But the slogan remains entrenched in the culture.

Just last year, Rolling Stone crowned “Born This Way” the most inspirational L.G.B.T.Q. song of all time, calling it a “battle cry” that “is as relevant as ever.”

But the time may have come to retire the phrase. It is not only unsupportable by science but also does not capture the full reality of queer experience and is unjust to some members of the queer community itself.

As Lisa Diamond, a professor of developmental psychology, health psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, explained in her 2018 TED talk, the argument is “unjust because it implies that L.G.B.T. individuals who fit a certain cultural stereotype, the ones who have been exclusively gay for as long as they can possibly remember, are somehow more deserving of acceptance and equality than someone who came out at age 60 or whose attractions have been more fluid or who is bisexual rather than exclusively gay.”

I fully understand how frightening relinquishing this phrase may be.

“Born this way,” as both a scientific concept and a political ideology, was easy to understand, accept and digest. A more nuanced explanation of attraction, one with a bit of mystery, opens the door to ambiguity and uncertainty that the opponents of gay rights will no doubt seek to exploit.

Relinquishing such a powerful tool might feel like giving up too much. But incoming Stony Brook University professor Joanna Wuest, author of “Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement,” believes that retiring the idea may potentially not be much of a loss at all, because the science is so strong that things like conversion therapy “are extremely detrimental to mental health and even the lives of queer people.”

As she explained to me, “we don’t need a strong biological theory of identity to understand that when you punch someone, they say it hurts.”

Now the argument has to be more sophisticated: We may choose how we identify and how we express — or suppress — our attractions, but our attractions themselves are not a choice.

We must insist that people’s right to exist, and our responsibility to affirm and protect them, doesn’t hinge on the mechanisms by which they came to exist. The “end” exists, regardless of the “means.”

I watched The Handmaid's Tale to learn what reelecting Trump would be like

It was a tough job, but I had to do it -- watching every second of every episode of the five seasons of The Handmaid's Tale, a show that I wasn't interested in when it aired from April 2017 to November 2022, but which grabbed my attention this year for a couple of reasons.

One was that I'd seen Elisabeth Moss in The Veil and was captivated by her acting. She's the lead character in The Handmaid's Tale.

Another was that I wanted to see what lessons The Handmaid's Tale had for our current political situation, where Donald Trump is seeking a return to the White House and the three Supreme Court justices he appointed overturned abortion rights guaranteed by Roe v. Wade in June 2022 via the Dobbs decision. 

In case you're not familiar with the basic plot of The Handmaid's Tale, which is based on a book by Margaret Atwood, Wikipedia summarizes it.

In a world where fertility rates have collapsed as a result of sexually transmitted diseases and environmental pollution, the totalitarian, theonomic government of Gilead has established its rule in the former United States in the aftermath of a civil war. Society is organized by power-hungry leaders along with a new, militarized, hierarchical régime of religious fanaticism and newly created social classes, in which women are brutally subjugated. By law, women in Gilead are forced to work in very limited roles, including some as natal slaves, and they are not allowed to own property, have careers, handle money, or read.

Sure sounds like the sort of thing rabid Trump supporters would dream about, albeit not to the degree religious authoritarians were able to pull off in The Handmaid's Tale. 

Power-hungry leaders? Check. Militarized regime? Check. Religious fanaticism? Check. Subjugation of women? Check. 

The Handmaid's Tale has many flashbacks where we get to see how the United States as we know it now became a nation, renamed Gilead, with totalitarian rule by men consumed with a lust for power and keeping women in the subservient place their interpretation of the Bible demands. 

At first it seems impossible that this could happen. But bit by bit, rights are extinguished until democracy and the Constitution are just memories. Today many Americans think that could never happen here. 

They need to think again. 

Project 2025 was embraced by Donald Trump until publicity about this scary agenda for a second Trump presidency became so strong, his campaign had to pretend to disavow it. There's a lot to dislike in the 900 page document. A BBC story describes some of what it would do, including these scary plans that relate to The Handmaid's Tale.

Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control - a controversial idea known as "unitary executive theory".

In practice, that would streamline decision-making, allowing the president to directly implement policies in a number of areas.

The proposals also call for eliminating job protections for thousands of government employees, who could then be replaced by political appointees.

The document labels the FBI a "bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization". It calls for drastic overhauls of this and several other federal agencies, as well as the complete elimination of the Department of Education.

...Project 2025 does not call outright for a nationwide abortion ban.

However, it proposes withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, and using existing but little-enforced laws to stop the drug being sent through the post.

The document suggests that the department of Health and Human Services should "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family".

Since I watched some of The Handmaid's Tale every day until I finished the series, there were times when I thought about giving up on it. Not because it wasn't captivating. Because it was so dark and disturbing. 

The big lesson that I took away from my viewing was this: to prevent The Handmaid's Tale from being even a partial reality in our country, it's absolutely essential that Kamala Harris be elected president this November. Donald Trump has told us that he plans to be an authoritarian theocratic ruler if he wins. 

We need to believe him.

"We" being everybody in the United States who supports freedom, democracy, and the rule of law, but especially women, because they have the most to lose from a second Trump presidency, just as they had the most to lose in The Handmaid's Tale.

Relax, today's big stock market decline is no big deal

If you're like me, someone with money invested in the United States stock market, today wasn't fun. All the major market indices dropped considerably, following a couple of declining days last week. 

The S&P 500 was down 3.0%, the Dow 2.6%, the NASDAQ 3.4%.

I don't believe one-sentence descriptions why the stock market rises or falls are worth much, including today's "the market is worried about a possible recession." This doesn't begin to capture the complexities of why markets around the world had a tough time today.

For example, lots of investors had borrowed money in Japan, because that country has had very low interest rates. Then they'd invest that money in other countries with higher interest rates. However, after the Bank of Japan raised the interest rate, this screwed up that scheme, leading the investors to "unwind" their positions.

And don't believe the claims from Republicans that the stock market decline was all Kamala Harris' and Joe Biden's fault. A couple of posts on X undermined that ridiculous theory.

Indeed, currently overnight trading of futures points to a rise in the S&P 500 of 0.9%, about a third of what was lost today. 

Many people aren't totally invested in the stock market. My wife and I, being in our mid-70s, only have about half of our investments in equities. Most of the rest is in bonds and a money market fund. Our investments dropped 1.4% today, about half of the 3.0% drop in the S&P 500. So diversification goes a long way toward being able to relax after a large decline in the stock market.

But regardless of the makeup of someone's investments, the best advice I've come across today is encapsulated in the title of a New York Times story: "When the Stock Market Drops, Stay Calm and Do Nothing." That's a gift link from my subscription, so you should be able to read the story. Here's some excerpts.

Think of what’s happening in the stock market as a kind of fire drill. As we all know from childhood, one of the primary rules is not to panic. And in this case, panicking would mean selling stocks when the market is falling.

...Selling is smart if you know that the stock market is about to fall by a lot and stay down for a long time. Most people don’t know, however, and those who got it right in 2022 or 2020 or 2008 or 2000 or 1987 may not know the difference between the skill they think they have and the luck that probably helped them back then.

Many of the people who traded furiously on Monday are professional investors of various sorts — or the robots they programmed to automatically sell when this or that indicator flashes yellow or red. But here’s a dirty little secret about, say, hedge funds: All of their trading in reaction to world events doesn’t lead most of them to do better than sticking money in an index fund that tracks the stock market. Mutual fund managers don’t do much better.

If you need money soon that you have invested — say, for a down payment or college tuition — this is probably a scary moment, and selling might make sense. But if you are frightened, remember the feeling. Going forward, perhaps any money you might need quickly should not be in the stock market at all.

...Still, rational thinking often eludes us in moments like this, and fear is nothing to be ashamed of. Here are a few things that may make you feel a little better.

First, consider the early days of the pandemic, when stocks fell by more than a quarter in the space of a month or so. Who would have thought that within a year, market gains off the bottom of the market would wipe out those losses and then some? But that’s what happened.

Now, consider other future facts that remain elusive: We don’t know who will be the next president of the United States, or what kind of hurricane season it will be. Try, if at all possible, to revel in the wonders of an unpredictable world and consider the possibility that good news can happen and the markets can react accordingly, even if we can’t predict most of it.

Second, look at the performance of your investment portfolio over the last year or three or 10. Chances are, you’ve made a lot of money if you’ve invested regularly and then left things alone. Nice going! Try to think about those enormous gains and not any smaller paper losses from today’s drop.

...Finally, and as ever, you are not the stock market. If you have, say, one-third of your savings in cash, bonds or real estate, your overall paper losses in your investment portfolio are less than whatever Monday’s stock market losses end up being. Cash, after all, did not melt down.

Moreover, you are the sum of many large parts, including home equity and future salary, not to mention the immeasurably high returns that come from friends and family and playing outside and taking in art.

Go fly a kite or wander among beautiful buildings and check in with the market again tomorrow.

I loved the Olympics opening ceremony, including drag queen part

When I first heard that the Paris Olympics opening ceremony was going to be held on the Seine River, with boats carrying the parade of nations, I thought that this could be a big mistake by the organizers. Why not respect tradition and have the ceremony in a stadium, like it always has been?

Well, my thought was the mistake, not the decision to have the opening ceremony on the Seine. I recorded the lengthy ceremony. My wife and I are only partway through it, but we've loved what we've seen so far, and I know that we'll love the rest of it also.

France did itself proud. The opening ceremony was wonderfully bold, creative, innovative, breathtaking. I'll remember this one much more than all the other ceremonies I've watched, and mostly forgotten, over the years.

The boats passing by the cameras, filled with cheering, flag-waving, dancing athletes from around the world, was much more interesting than the usual march into a stadium. Being on a boat freed the athletes to express themselves more exuberantly. 

And the boats themselves were well worth watching. Each was unique. Some were large. Some were small. I expect that boat tours of the Seine are going to experience a big increase in ridership after the Olympics. 

The performance part of the opening ceremony held my attention to a greater degree than past ceremonies have. Being outdoors, with the "set" the banks of the Seine and other locations in Paris, gave the performances a vibrance that surpassed the performance part of previous ceremonies. 

As an open-minded liberal, the outrage of religious conservatives about the so-called Last Supper performance featuring drag queens made the opening ceremony even more appealing for me.

A NBC News story about the uproar showed how ridiculous religious fundamentalists can be. Aside from being bigoted, they lack both a sense of humor and appreciation of artistry.

PARIS — The extravagant opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics has caused fury among the populist and religious right in the United States and elsewhere, with critics especially unhappy about an apparent depiction of the Last Supper featuring drag performers.

A fashion show at the ceremony included a scene that resembled a modern re-creation of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, French actor and singer Philippe Katerine appeared as the Greek god Dionysus, painted blue and wearing little more than a bunch of flowers covering his modesty.

While some fans loved this unabashed display of French camp and kitsch, others — particularly those who espouse conservative or Christian beliefs — were not happy with it.

“In this scene from the Olympic opening ceremony, the famous painting of The Last Supper is recreated, but Jesus is replaced with an obese woman, while queer and trans figures (including a child!) depict her apostles,” Jenna Ellis, former 2020 campaign attorney to Donald Trump, told her 1 million followers on X.

She described the ceremony as containing “overt pagan and satanic symbolism.”

The Last Supper refers to the final meal that Jesus Christ shared with his 12 apostles before he was crucified. It’s also a popular subject in Christian art, most famously depicted by da Vinci, who painted a scene that captured the apostles’ reaction to Jesus’ announcement of his betrayal.

Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the opening ceremony, defended the production when asked at a news conference Saturday about some of the backlash. Jolly said he was unaware of the criticism and wanted to display “inclusion.”

“When we want to include everyone and not exclude anyone, questions are raised,” he said at an International Olympic Committee media briefing.

“Our subject was not to be subversive. We never wanted to be subversive. We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together,” he continued. “We wanted to include everyone, as simple as that. In France, we have freedom of creation, artistic freedom. We are lucky in France to live in a free country. I didn’t have any specific messages that I wanted to deliver. In France, we are republic, we have the right to love whom we want, we have the right not to be worshippers, we have a lot of rights in France, and this is what I wanted to convey.”

Right on, Mr. Jolly.

I'm sorry that you have to deal with the wounded feelings of our religious conservatives here in the United States -- who have no problem taking away the right of women to choose their own health care, and the right of LGBTQ people to express themselves as they wish, but get offended when the Olympics opening ceremony doesn't comply with their weird twisted sense of morality.

Just ignore them. And be grateful that you live in France, where you're an ocean away from the extreme religious nationalism of fundamentalist Christians in the United States, who are our homegrown American Taliban.

I wish Biden could have heard what my Democratic group said about him

This afternoon the monthly Salon discussion group that my wife and I are part of gathered in a member's living room. Right away, a topic of conversation sprang up, because it was at the top of everyone's mind.

Should President Biden withdraw from the presidential race? We spent about an hour talking about this. The discussion was vigorous. Everybody had something to say about the question. And in the end there was a clear consensus.

All eleven of us felt that Biden should withdraw. 

Everybody in the group is a Democrat, though naturally we disagree about many political subjects. The familiar saying about getting Democrats to agree about something is like herding cats -- absolutely true. But when it came to Biden getting out of the presidential race, we were all in agreement. 

Joe has to go. 

This image expressed our feeling. We all deeply appreciate what Biden has accomplished since he became president, as well as what he's done in his lengthy career in politics as vice-president and senator.

However, it was clear to us that while there are risks involved in Biden withdrawing and another Democrat taking his place, at least then we'd have a better chance of defeating Trump. With Biden at the top of the ticket, our group is convinced that Trump has a much easier path to victory.

 Biden has been wrongly claiming that it is only Democratic "elites" that want him to withdraw. Not true. He would have realized that if he'd been able to see our discussion today. We're all ordinary Democrats who are super-concerned about Trump getting another four years to wreak havoc on our democracy. 

We talked quite a bit about Trump's appeal. There was general agreement that human nature favors strong leaders. After all, that's how leadership works in most of the animal kingdom, and we humans obviously are animals -- just animals with highly evolved brains.

For all of Trump's failings, and they are way too many to enumerate, he does project an aura of strength and confidence. Biden doesn't. I noted to the  group that some political observers feel it isn't fair that Biden only has a 38% approval rating, given all that he has accomplished during his time as president.

But voters aren't machines that calculate the various accomplishments of Biden and Trump, then spit out an answer as to who is most worthy to be president. Voters base their like or dislike of a candidate on all kinds of factors, many of them emotional, irrational, and personal. 

And that's where Biden falls short.

We spoke about how much excitement and enthusiasm there would be among Democrats if someone other than Biden, someone younger and more energetic, replaced him. The malaise among Democrats would vanish in an instant, aside from the comparatively few Biden die-hards who would be sad to see him go.

The rest of us, who are a clear majority of the Democratic electorate, would be thrilled. We talked about how even if the replacement candidate lost to Trump this November, at least we'd feel good that the Democratic Party did its best to defeat Trump, rather than sticking with Biden, a highly unpopular candidate.

We didn't agree on who should replace Biden, should he decide to withdraw. I argued that Kamala Harris was the most obvious candidate. Some agreed, while others felt that Gavin Newsom or Pete Buttigieg would be a better choice. One person liked Secretary of State Blinken. 

Regardless, the prospect of anyone other than Biden facing off against Trump filled us with optimism, while the prospect of Biden hanging on and refusing to withdraw was depressing. 

Along that line, I shared a metaphor I'd heard Chris Hayes discuss with a guest on his MSNBC show. I said that it was about a pitcher "losing his stuff" after doing well for a number of innings. Then he starts giving up hits and walks.

The manager goes out to the mound and talks things over with the pitcher. Then he motions to the bullpen to bring in a relief pitcher. The starting pitcher doesn't get to decide if he stays in the game. Most pitchers believe they're just going through a rough spot, and can get the next batters out.

This is akin to Biden saying in a recent interview, after being asked who he relies on to tell him whether he should stay in the race, "Me." I found that disturbing. Biden isn't qualified to assess his chance of beating Trump, just as a starting pitcher isn't qualified to decide whether he stays in the game.

Two-thirds of Democrats want Biden to withdraw. Everyone in our group felt that way. A majority of Democrats should be the "manager" who decides whether Biden stays in the race, not Biden -- though obviously he has to be the one to say, "I'm withdrawing." 

May that happen soon, for the good of our democracy, which hinges on defeating Trump.

If you don't like the record-breaking Oregon heat wave, don't vote for Trump

It's been a rough four days here in the Willamette Valley, as well as in much of the rest of Oregon. Record high temperatures have been set on multiple days in many locations, sometimes breaking previous records by not just a little, but a lot. 

Today it was 104 degrees in Salem, where I live, according to my car's thermometer. Tomorrow is expected to be just as hot, with temperatures in the high 80s and low 90s for the following six days.

This isn't normal. The average high for today in Salem is 82, so we were 22 degrees above average. Global warming plays a significant role in the heat waves that have been hitting Oregon much more frequently recently, according to the state climatologist, Larry O'Neill. 

I saw O'Neill make these remarks on the KGW 11 pm news a few days ago. They were extremely disturbing then, and even more so now, after I've been dealing with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees for the past three days.

I've boldfaced the scariest part of what O'Neill said. 

PORTLAND, Ore. —

If you think the weather in Oregon over the next week is going to be too hot, Larry O'Neill has some bad news for you.

"Right now, this is probably among the coolest climates we'll be in at the rate we're going," he said.

O'Neill is the state climatologist for Oregon, and he said climate change is amplifying heat waves in the state and across the globe.

"Heat waves are a natural part of our climate system, but when they do occur, now they're occurring in a warmer baseline," he said. "Any heat wave that we get, you can kind of think about it as being about 3 degrees Fahrenheit more intense than it would have been had we not been changing the climate."

Climate change has made extreme heat hotter, longer and more frequent.

There's no hard and fast definition of a heat wave, but regardless of what's used as a measuring stick, warm temperatures have been increasing in Oregon.

"The number of days over 90 degrees or the number of days over 100 degrees, whichever way you parse it, these days are happening much more frequently, especially over the last 10 years," O'Neill said.

According to records from the National Weather Service, between 1938 and 2014, Portland saw an average of 12 days per year with temperatures over 90 degrees.

Between 2014 and 2023, that number nearly doubled to an average of 23 days per year.

Over the past 86 years, Portland has recorded 105 days with temperatures over 100 degrees, but 16 of those days have come in just the last four years.

Portland’s current stretch of extreme heat is expected to be notable not just for its temperatures, but for its duration, with forecasts calling for five days of heat at or above 100 degrees. 

Wow. As hot as it has been the past few days, O'Neill says that soon we'll look back at this time in Oregon's climate history as one of the coolest in recent memory, because global warming is going to increase for quite a while no matter what we human do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Obviously we'll be better off if those emissions are markedly lowered. That's why it's so important that President Biden's climate change initiatives be continued and, hopefully, increased. 

But Donald Trump has vowed to reverse the progress our country has made in combatting global warming. Trump wants to undo those policies and make things worse by increasing the consumption of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas.

That would be amazingly wrong-headed. It would be a disaster economically, since renewable energy is an increasingly important part of our economy. And it would be a disaster environmentally, since we're already not doing enough to reduce carbon emissions, so moving backward under a Trump administration would be horrendous for both our planet and humanity.

There are plenty of reasons not to vote for Trump this November. His commitment to increase global warming, rather than combat it, is definitely a major reason. 

Elon Musk has become an annoying genius

There's no doubt that Elon Musk is a brilliant guy, arguably a genius, who deserves a lot of credit for his accomplishments with Tesla, Space X, and other business pursuits.

I've been a happy Starlink customer (a Space X offering) since it's early beta days, and it's enabled us to trade our crappy 7 Mbps copper phone line DSL for a snappy 250 Mbps satellite broadband here in rural south Salem, Oregon.

But Elon Musk has gone from being fascinating to annoying.

Not to everybody, because a big cause of my annoyance with Musk is what he's done with Twitter after buying the company and renaming it X. Though X is still a social media platform that I use and enjoy numerous times a day, under Musk it has become much more of a haven for right-wing crazies. 

Fortunately, X still allows users to only see posts from people and organizations that they follow. That walls my X account off from extremists and conspiracy theorists. But I follow Elon Musk, so I'm "treated" to his frequent posts about politics, which are decidedly in accord with the wacko wing of the Republican Party.

This is a dumb move given that liberals and Democrats have been much more likely to buy Teslas that conservatives and Republicans. Now, surveys have found that this group is turned off by Musk's right-wing antics, which hurts Tesla sales.

Another thing that's going to hurt Tesla is Musk's temper tantrum that led to him firing the entire staff of the department in charge of the vaunted Supercharger network, which has been a key reason to buy a Tesla rather than a different electric vehicle. 

Today I came across a Reuters story that describes how the firing happened. Here's excerpts from "The inside story of Elon Musk's mass firing of Tesla Supercharger staff." 

The day before Elon Musk fired virtually all of Tesla’s electric-vehicle charging division last month, they had high hopes as charging chief Rebecca Tinucci went to meet with Musk about the network’s future, four former charging-network staffers told Reuters.

 

After Tinucci had cut between 15% and 20% of staffers two weeks earlier, part of much wider layoffs, they believed Musk would affirm plans for a massive charging-network expansion.

 

The meeting could not have gone worse. Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.

 

The departures have upended a network widely viewed as a signature Tesla achievement and a key driver of its EV sales. Tesla Superchargers account for more than 60% of U.S. high-speed charging ports, federal statistics show, and the company has been the biggest winner so far of $5 billion in federal funding for new chargers.

 

The charging-team layoffs mark the latest drama in a tumultuous year for Tesla as Musk has shut down or delayed several core efforts meant to drive the rapid EV sales growth that investors have expected. Instead, Musk now says Tesla will shift its main focus to self-driving cars, a fiercely competitive and riskier business that could take years to develop.

 

The company posted its first decline in auto sales since 2020 in the first quarter amid fierce competition from Chinese electric-vehicle makers and sagging worldwide EV demand. Reuters reported in April that Tesla had scrapped plans for a long-awaited affordable car known as the Model 2. That has thrown into doubt Tesla’s plans for new factories in Mexico and India, where Musk had been expected to travel last month to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, before canceling at the last minute. And a host of executives have departed amid deep companywide layoffs.

I'm disappointed about Tesla's decision not to offer a lower cost, and smaller, electric car.

My last three cars have been subcompacts: a Mini Cooper S, a VW GTI, and a Subaru Crosstrek. I much prefer that size car over larger sizes. A Tesla "hot hatch" priced around $25,000 to $35,000 would be very popular both in the United States and elsewhere. 

But Elon Musk appears to have scrapped the Model 2, choosing to instead build updated versions of the Model 3 and Y, both of which have been around for quite a while and look similar. His intention to focus on self-driving cars/taxis strikes me as a mistake, though maybe it will pay off in the end.

After all, like I said, Musk is both annoying and a genius. I just wish he manifested more of the latter quality and less of the former. 

Stormy Daniels, porn star, is more moral than Donald Trump, ex-president

We live in strange times.

Sure, all times are strange in their own way, but 2024 in the United States is shaping up to be among the strangest years, politically speaking, in my more than a half century of following political issues closely.

No cameras are allowed in the courtroom, so we have to rely on sketch artists

Yesterday and today the news was full of how Stormy Daniels, porn star/adult film actress, testified for the prosecution at the criminal trial of Donald Trump, ex-president. That in itself is damn strange. 

For it's the first time an ex-president has had to defend himself in court against criminal accusations. In this case, that he falsified business records in furtherance of a deception that a $130,000 "hush money" payment to Daniels was for legal expenses rather than a contribution to Trump's presidential campaign -- since if news about his affair with Daniels had come out just before the 2016 election, this could have tanked his chances given the uproar over the Access Hollywood tape where he bragged about "grabbing women by the pussy."

The reason for the payment was that in 2006 60 year-old Trump had sex with 27-year-old Daniels. It creeped Daniels out, but she climbed into bed with Trump anyway, in part (or in whole) she says because of the power imbalance between a rich guy with a bodyguard standing outside the hotel suite and a female porn star.

This was four months after Trump's wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. By contrast, apparently Daniels was in between marriages in 2006, given what this Daily Beast article says:

Daniels has been married four times. Her first marriage was in 2003 to Pat Myne, a fellow adult-film star, just as her career in the industry was taking off. The couple divorced after two years, and Daniels quickly remarried to Mike Moz, an art director, in 2007.

So that's one reason I consider Stormy Daniels to be more moral than Donald Trump. (In truth, I consider almost everyone to be more moral than Trump.)

Another reason is that despite the best effort of one of Trump's attorneys to undermine Daniels' testimony via cross-examination, her story of their sexual encounter held up well. Sure, there were some minor differences between the way Daniels described this over the years, but 2006 was 18 years ago. It makes sense that her memory would fade some with time.

But not to such a degree that Daniels would confuse not having sex with Trump, with having sex with Trump. This is the sort of thing that would be hard to forget. Yet Trump has denied they had sex. Not in court, though, because that would open him up to a perjury indictment.

Daniels had to go into considerable detail about the hotel suite where she met Trump and other descriptions of that evening because his defense team is strongly implying, though not explicitly saying, that the sexual encounter never happened.

This is another reason why Daniels is more moral than Trump.

By no means is she a perfect person (who is?). However, she comes across as someone who is doing her best to speak the truth, while every day Trump speaks to reporters with lies cascading from his mouth. Something he is practiced at, since he lied incessantly during the four years of his presidency, just as he is doing at every campaign event in his hopefully quixotic attempt to be re-elected in November.

Ukraine aid bill passes in House. Bad news for Russia.

I'm happy for Ukraine.

This embattled nation, which has been bravely fighting the unprovoked Russian invasion since February 24, 2022, has been waiting for more American aid for months due to dithering by House Republicans. 

But today Ukraine had something to celebrate: $60 billion in aid. It took Democrats to get the aid bill across the House finishing line, first by supplying votes needed to have the bill move out of the Rules Committee, then by supplying votes needed to have the bill approved by the full House.

The vote breakdown is a mark of shame for the 112 House GOP members who said "no" to helping Ukraine remain a democratic nation, thereby saying "yes" to Putin's autocratic desire to reconstitute the Soviet Union by force.

It's shocking that a majority of House Republicans, the party which used to be staunchly against Russian authoritarianism, voted against the Ukraine aid bill. This shows how deeply the GOP has embraced Trump's love of Putin and other dictators.

Which is scary. Trump aspires to be a dictator himself. That's bad enough. When a good share of the politicians in the Republican Party are willing to go along with that unconstitutional aspiration, the stakes are much higher for the November election.

In Russia the state-run television channels have been praising our House of Representatives for holding up aid to Ukraine. Thankfully, that aid should soon start reaching Ukraine, since the Senate is poised to pass the House bill and Biden will eagerly sign it. 

This is bad news for Russia and good news for the many friends of Ukraine in the world. Hopefully the aid will include much-needed additional anti-missile systems to stop Russian attacks on civilian targets like apartment buildings.

The Ukrainian people deserve to have their own version of Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. Sure, Ukraine is much larger than Israel, so protecting that country will be more difficult that protecting Israel is. 

But saving the lives of Ukrainians is just as important as saving the living of Israelis. Too bad a majority of House Republicans don't agree. 

Here's a post on X that moved me. 

Iran's attack on Israel shows urgent need for military aid to Ukraine

It's time. Way past time, actually.

For the good-for-almost-nothing House Republicans to show that they're not completely useless by finally getting off their GOP butts and passing the Senate bill that has much needed aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan this coming week.

A lot of damage already has been done. Ukraine is running out of artillery shells, ammunition, air defense missiles, and other essential military gear needed to fend off the Russian invasion of their country.

All because of Republicans.

The GOP used to be the party that stood up to Russia and wanted the United States to defend liberty wherever it was threatened. But under the incompetent leadership of Donald Trump, many Republicans have become spokespeople for Putin and his authoritarianism. 

Hopefully yesterday's attack by Iran on Israel will spur the House of Representatives to pass an aid package that supports Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. 

After all, Iran has been supplying drones to Russia, and perhaps other weaponry, that are used to attack Ukraine. About 300 Iranian drones and missiles were fired from Iran into Israel. Almost all were destroyed without causing any damage, thanks to Israel's Iron Dome air defense system and the American military in the Middle East. 

That's good news. But Ukraine has been battling Iranian drones for many months. It's disgusting that House Republicans have failed to approve the military aid package that would go a long way toward protecting people in Ukraine from the Iranian drones.

Ukraine actually is more deserving of military aid from the United States than Israel is. For one thing, Israel appears to be guilty of war crimes in its fight against Hamas. Over 30,00o people have been killed in Gaza by Israel, an estimated two-thirds women and children.

Also, Israel provoked yesterday's attack by Iran when it struck an Iranian consulate building in Syria, killing several top leaders of the Revolutionary Guard. It's against the rule of war to attack embassies and consulates. 

Iran retaliated. But with advance warning and in a fashion designed to make it easier for the Iranian drones and missiles to be shot down. As a Politico story says, Iran's attack seemed designed to fail.  It was a message to Israel more than a serious military retaliation. 

Yet there are reports that some right-wing ministers of Netanyahu's cabinet want to use Iran's attack as an excuse to destroy Iran's oil refineries, ports, nuclear research facilities, and such. This is how major wars start: a provocation is retaliated against; then there's retaliation for the retaliation; followed by retaliation for the retaliation for the retaliation.

And so it goes, a war born from unthinking desires for revenge. President Biden is absolutely correct when he tells Israel, don't do something you'll regret. 

In the case of Israel, doing nothing right now is better than doing something. Iran doesn't want a war with Israel. The United States doesn't want a war with Iran. And if Israeli officials are smart, they'll take Biden's advice: stop and think. 

What worries me is that Netanyahu clearly wants Trump to beat Biden this November. So he might start a wider war in the Middle East to reduce Biden's chance of winning another term as president. Oil prices would spike, causing gasoline to cost more. The United States might even be drawn into an Israel-Iran war, which would be unpopular with Americans. 

Support for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan is popular, though. Way more popular than war.

This is why the House would be wise to pass an aid package for those countries ASAP. Voters will look kindly at those who vote to support Ukraine against Russian aggression, Israel against Hamas/Iran aggression, and Taiwan against Chinese aggression -- no matter if they have a D or R after their name.

Oregon needs to bury more power lines. But here's why we won't.

I have a friend who was born in Germany. She tells me that in Europe, almost all power lines are buried. She can't understand why here in Oregon, so many power lines are strung along wooden poles -- a "technology" dating from the 1800's when telegraph lines used the same approach.

After every major disastrous weather event in our area, such as the high winds and freezing rain that caused massive problems in the Portland area recently, along with freezing rain that decimated the Eugene area, there's calls for our power companies (PGE and Pacific Power, mainly) to do a better job of both preventing damage to lines and restoring service more rapidly.

Since my neighborhood in rural south Salem was without power for eleven days in 2021 due to a serious ice storm, I'd love it if PGE buried the power lines that supply electricity to the several hundred homes in our area that regularly lose power, usually due to tree branches, or an entire tree, taking a line down.

Today a letter to the editor in the Sunday Oregonian resonated with me, big-time.

When are we, as a society, going to decide to make it a priority to keep people safe by changing the codes and paying the price to bury power lines? (“Portland winter storm: Power outages, grounded planes, dangerous roads continue Wednesday,” Jan. 17). For now, I am living in a country and a city where each citizen is responsible for themselves. I am fortunate to have great neighbors and friends who look out for each other. I am thinking about the many people who are not as lucky as I am.

I am safe but angry. I have wood for the fireplace. I dug my camping stove out of the earthquake kit. In the days before the storm, I went grocery shopping and charged the lantern and the power bank. Unlike my neighbors, I still have water and no tree has landed on my house.

What makes me angry is that all of the above was expected, as it is the same playbook with each major storm. I am 71 years old and each storm is more difficult to bear than the last one. I have lived in Canada with blizzards and temperatures as low as -25 degrees Fahrenheit, but never lost power. I have lived in the Swiss mountains with blizzards and never lost power.

I have been without power since 9 a.m. on Saturday morning. I abandoned my house on Monday morning, when the temperature inside the house got down to 32 degrees Fahrenheit and even a day later, I still did not have an estimate for when my power would be restored.

Irene Vlach, Portland

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that very many existing above-ground power lines in Oregon are going to be buried anytime soon. A post-ice storm Willamette Week article from February 2021, "Why Don't We Put Our Electric Lines Underground?", provided the simple answer in response to a reader's question.

You'd think that if anyone would be motivated to put their power lines underground, it would be fire-ravaged California.

And yet it hasn't happened. It also hasn't happened in hurricane-ravaged North Carolina or, as you point out, in ice-storm-ravaged Oregon. The reason, I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn, is money.

Here's the problem: Building a mile of overhead transmission line costs about $800,000. Building a mile of underground power line, meanwhile, costs $3 million to $4 million. And, of course, leaving a mile of existing line right where it is and going out for a beer costs approximately $6, plus you get a beer. You don't have to be Elon Musk to see how the incentives pencil out in this situation.

Okay, so what's the next best option, if burying existing lines isn't going to happen? Well, PGE has been doing a decent job at trimming trees that pose a risk to power lines. Recently I was pleased to see crews from Asplundh doing their tree-trimming thing along Liberty Road, where our neighborhood's electricity comes from.

PGE should be even more aggressive in its tree management.

It's good to trim branches when an electrical line passes close to a tree, but even better is taking down an entire tree if it poses a significant risk to the line. Nobody likes to lose a tree on their property. But nobody likes to go without electricity for days, which can happen when trees topple because of freezing rain, heavy snow, or high wind.

If PGE and other Oregon utilities don't have enough money to bury power lines, then they should do a better job of preventing damage to above-ground lines. An editorial in today's Oregonian, "Oregonians must build a culture of resilience,"  makes some great points.

Last week’s winter storm took a tragic toll on our state. At least 13 Oregonians died due to hypothermia, falling trees, fire and electrocution from fallen power lines ­– brutal circumstances in which vulnerability and bad luck combined to horrific effect.

The misery did not end there as tens of thousands of people across western Oregon endured days-long power outages in subfreezing temperatures. Homeless Oregonians in the Portland area sought refuge in warming shelters only to be sent back out into frigid temperatures later in the week. With high winds and low temperatures, trees toppled onto houses while frozen pipes burst, flooding homes and businesses. A forecast of rain and 40-degrees never sounded so good.

Electric utilities, county officials and the many agencies involved in emergency services will be reviewing their response in the coming days and weeks. But on a local, regional and state level, from individual households to power companies, Oregon needs to significantly up its preparation game. With such extreme weather events expected to become more common in our changing climate, we are witnessing the limits of our infrastructure and the vast needs left unmet. And with significant risk of a massive subduction zone earthquake hitting the Northwest, we must use this storm as motivation to build a culture of resilience.

That should start with a robust evaluation by regulatory and emergency management agencies of utilities’ performance and vulnerabilities. For days, even as much of the country struggled with winter weather disruptions, Oregon led the nation in number of outages, based on poweroutage.us reports. The cause of outages, barriers to restoring service, difficulties in communication all require greater analysis of what, if anything, can be changed, as well as a focus on tree health and maintenance.

Our job is to empathize with both Israelis and Palestinians

We live in an age of extremism. Our politics is marked by right-wing and left-wing, with little room left for moderates in the middle. "Whose side are you on?!" is said with an accusatory exclamation mark, since too often it is unthinkable for someone to be on both sides; you've got to choose one or the other.

This is why I admired an essay in the November 6 issue of TIME by Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, "The world's job during the war."

Harari says that while currently both Israelis and Palestinians are too filled with pain to be able to empathize with the suffering of the other side, it is the job of outsiders who are not in such extreme pain to keep alive the quest for peace.

It's a beautiful piece or writing. Below I've shared the last part of the essay where Harari speaks so eloquently about empathy for both sides. 

Hamas' crimes cannot be justified by blaming them on past Israeli conduct. Two wrongs don't make a right. There is much to criticize Israel for -- for holding millions of Palestinians for decades under occupation, and for abandoning in recent years any serious attempt to make peace.

However, the murder of the Kutz family and the many other atrocities committed by Hamas were not meant to restart the peace process, nor are they likely to end the occupation. Instead, the war Hamas launched inflicts immense suffering on millions of Palestinians. 

In its war against Hamas, Israel has a duty to defend its territory and its citizens, but it must also defend its humanity. 

Palestinian civilians deserve to enjoy peace and prosperity in their homeland, and even in the midst of conflict their basic human rights should be recognized by all sides. This refers not only to Israel, but also to Egypt, which shares a border with the Gaza Strip, and which has partially sealed the border. As for Hamas, it and its supporters should be excommunicated by humanity.

The aims of the Gaza War should be clear. Hamas should be totally disarmed and the Gaza Strip should be demilitarized, so that Palestinian civilians could live dignified lives within it and Israeli civilians could live without fear alongside it. Until these aims are achieved, the struggle to maintain our humanity will be difficult.

Most Israelis are psychologically incapable at this moment of empathizing with the Palestinians. The mind is filled to the brim with our own pain, and no space is left to even acknowledge the pain of others.

Many of the people who tried to hold such a space -- like the Kutz family -- are dead or deeply traumatized. Most Palestinians are in an analogous situation -- their minds too are filled with pain, they cannot see our pain.

But outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all suffering humans, rather than lazily seeing only part of the terrible reality. It is the job of outsiders to help maintain a space for peace.

We deposit this peaceful space with you, because we cannot hold it right now. Take good care of it for us, so that one day, when the pain begins to heal, both Israelis and Palestinians might inhabit that space.

Maine mass shooting and Israel war are both result of craziness

This evening the suspect in the killing of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine and the wounding of 13 others was found dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot. Robert Card had suffered from mental illness, having been hospitalized for two weeks last summer.

Reportedly he had been hearing voices.

Well, while Card likely had some form of schizophrenia, what he has in common with the rest of us is substantial, for we all hear voices inside our head: our own.

Card's voices may have told him that other people were out to harm him, so he needed to kill as many of those "others" as possible.

And the Hamas terrorists who crossed the border from Gaza into Israel on October 7, killing about 1,400 people, had voices telling them that it was their duty to kill innocent men, women, and children, along with Israeli soldiers, because of the injustices Israel had wrought on Palestinians.

And leaders in Israel had voices telling them after the Hamas attack that it was their duty to kill innocent men, women, and children in Gaza, along with Hamas militants, because of the injustices Hamas had wrought on Israelis.

There's plenty of insanity evident here.

A couple of weeks ago I shared on my Church of the Churchless blog three views about the war between Hamas and Israel that I considered reasonable at the time, and still do.

(1) Hamas engaged in unforgivable terrorism when its fighters attacked Israeli citizens, killing women and children, decapitating infants, slaughtering young people at a music festival, and taking an estimated 150 people hostage. Now Israel is justified in fighting back against Hamas.

(2) Israel has fanned the flames of Islamic resentment in the Middle East by treating Palestinians in the occupied territories badly and showing little to no recent interest in pursuing a two-state solution to the longstanding conflict. The current right-wing administration of Benjamin Netanyahu has made a bad situation in the West Bank even worse through its oppressive policies.

(3) Most of the two million people living in Gaza aren't Hamas fighters. Israel should do everything possible to protect them during its war against Hamas. This entails complying with generally accepted rules of war to the greatest extent possible. 

Protecting the people of Gaza from horrendous Israel bombing attacks, as well as a ground invasion that may come soon, needs to become an Israeli priority. As President Biden said in a speech soon after the war began, a thirst for revenge can't be seen as more important than human decency. The United States learned that lesson after our 9/11.

The news out of Gaza has stopped, because today Israel destroyed the internet and cellular communication there. It is clear, though, that things are very bad and getting worse. Today on MSNBC I heard a report from a Norwegian doctor who worked in Gaza hospitals that there are tens of thousands wounded from Israeli shelling, 70% of them women, children, and the elderly, plus thousands dead.

How can Hamas attacks on innocent Israeli women, children, and the elderly be used as an excuse by Israel to attack innocent Palestinian women, children, and elderly? That's crazy, yet at the moment that's the insanity that seems to be holding sway among Israeli leaders.

Fortunately, voices of reason are urging Israel to reconsider the wisdom of a massive ground invasion of Gaza, and of continuing to deny the people of Gaza food, water, electricity, and fuel. Here's a post on X from Chris Hayes today, an eminently reasonable MSNBC commentator.

Thankfully, the Biden administration is urging Israel to scale back its plan to essentially demolish Gaza in order to destroy the Hamas terrorists. So says a Washington Post story, "U.S. urges Israel against Gaza ground invasion, pushes surgical campaign."

The Biden administration is urging Israel to rethink its plans for a major ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and instead to opt for a more “surgical” operation using aircraft and special operations forces carrying out precise, targeted raids on high-value Hamas targets and infrastructure, according to five U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.

Administration officials have become highly concerned about the potential repercussions of a full ground assault, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, and they increasingly doubt that it would achieve Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas. They also are concerned that it could derail negotiations to release nearly 200 hostages, particularly as diplomats think they have made “significant” advances in recent days to free a number of them, potentially including some Americans, one of the officials said.

The Biden administration also is worried that a ground invasion could result in numerous casualties among Palestinian civilians as well as Israeli soldiers, potentially triggering a dramatic escalation of hostilities in the region, the officials said. U.S. officials think a targeted operation would be more conducive to hostage negotiations, less likely to interrupt humanitarian aid deliveries, less deadly for people on both sides and less likely to provoke a wider war in the region, the officials said.

And the United States also is in favor of humanitarian pauses in the Gaza fighting, according to another Washington Post story, "U.S., in policy shift, urges humanitarian pauses in Gaza." Good news. It's never too late to ditch the insanity of all-out war and find a more balanced approach to protecting both Israel and the people of Gaza, while eliminating Hamas to the greatest extent possible.

After weeks of declining to back growing international calls for “humanitarian pauses” in Israeli airstrikes to allow a steady flow of aid to enter Gaza, permit American and foreign citizens to exit into Egypt and facilitate the release of hostages, the Biden administration is now fully in favor of them and is pressing Israel to agree.

The abrupt policy shift comes as the humanitarian situation inside the enclave has become more dire and much of the world has declined to follow the U.S. lead in withholding public criticism of how Israel is conducting its war against Hamas.

...The administration’s public promotion this week of humanitarian pauses came after what one U.S. official said was “a lot of the groundwork in private communications.”

But it still left the United States behind the curve of international opinion, as the U.N. General Assembly Friday overwhelmingly approved an Arab-sponsored resolution calling for a complete ceasefire. Only 14 of the 193 U.N. member nations voted against the measure, including the United States, Israel and several Pacific island and eastern European states. Most close U.S. allies were in favor or abstained from the vote.

The resolution called on “all parties” to comply with international law in the conflict and specifically demanded rescission by Israel, “the occupying power,” of evacuation orders in Gaza. It did not mention Hamas by name or refer directly to its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Talking about racism in schools reduces bias

Here in blue Oregon, we're fortunate to have avoided the absurd laws in some red states, such as Florida, that make it very difficult, if not impossible, for teachers to talk about racism. 

Obviously this head-in-the-sand approach doesn't do anything to combat racism. It just prevents open discussion that could reduce racism.

Last year I came across an article in Scientific American that cites psychological research in concluding that it's best for students to engage in honest talk about racism. The article appeared in the November 2022 issue, though apparently it was published online in August.

That issue has been languishing in a pile of magazines containing blog-post-worthy articles, where I just dug it out. Here's the article in its entirety. It makes a lot of sense. I just wish Florida Governor Ron DeSsntis would pay attention to it.

In Schools, Honest Talk About Racism Can Reduce Discrimination
New laws make it harder for teachers to discuss racism and inequality,
but psychological evidence shows  these conversations dispel causes of bias and distress

by Camilla Mutoni Griffiths, Nicky Sullivan on August 19, 2022 in Scientific American

“Where are the Native Americans now?” asked fifth grade students in an Iowa City classroom last year. There are many ways their teacher, Melanie Hester, might have answered. She could have pointed out that today Native Americans live in cities and towns across the U.S. About 20 percent live on reservations, and Hester could have used that to open a discussion of the U.S. government’s forcible movement and isolation of tribes. Hester might have also discussed how European and American settlers brutally killed many Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Instead she evaded the question and continued her lesson without offering historical context for her students to understand the present. Teachers across the country are avoiding explicit conversations about race, racism and racial inequality because of a series of recent laws passed in several states.

In Iowa, for example, a law prohibits any teaching that suggests the U.S. is “fundamentally or systematically racist or sexist.” The Iowa law also specifies that teachers must ensure that no student feels “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of that individual’s race or sex.” The laws in other states lay out similar logic.

The legal language seems, for the most part, protective of children. But the effect is quite the opposite. As psychologists who study how parents and teachers communicate with kids about race, we can attest to an ever growing body of scientific evidence that suggests these laws are failing the children they purport to help.

First, years of research make it evident that kids notice racial and ethnic disparities from an early age. For example, psychologists have found that white kids as young as age four will consistently pair white families with higher-wealth items (such as nice cars and bigger houses) and Black families with lower-wealth items (for instance, run-down cars and smaller houses).

In other words, very young children are aware of persistent racial disparities in wealth. Around the same age, children begin forming preferences for wealthier kids with more “stuff,” which, given the link between wealth and racial background in the U.S., may result in white children preferring and choosing to play with other white peers over Black peers.

Second, we know that when children notice differences between people or groups, they usually look for an explanation. Here a psychological principle called the inherence bias comes into play. In general, when we see someone behave in a distinctly different way from others, we assume there is something inherently different about that person.

Adults often fall into this trap: if someone cuts you off on the highway, you are likely to assume they are a bad driver rather than assume, for instance, that they are a good driver who happens to be rushing to a hospital in an emergency. In the same way, children are more likely to attribute a wealth difference between communities to the groups’ capabilities or intelligence rather than something external, such as a historical advantage one group has had over another.

Children often go one step further and think that groups are biologically or innately different. These attitudes are what psychologists call essentialist beliefs because they attribute group differences to some deep, underlying and often unknown “essence.”

These tendencies toward inherence and essentialism are especially harmful when we think about children’s efforts to understand racial disparities. Scientists agree that race is not biological. It is not inherent or innate. Instead race is the product of social and cultural ideas that are imposed on groups of people. These ideas become codified in our institutions and in the ways that we interact with one another, thus producing the inequalities we see in the world.

This means that children need external explanations, such as historical injustices and racial discrimination, to understand the differences between groups that they are observing. Without that context, children can mistakenly believe that racial difference is inherent, which leaves them with an inaccurate understanding of the world.

More concerning, these beliefs about the inherent or essential nature of racial difference are actually a foundation of racial bias. In fact, multiple studies have found that when kids have more essentialist beliefs about race, they also hold more stereotypes about other racial groups.

In other words, without explicit discussions about race and the external, rather than internal, causes of racial disparities, children will come to the wrong conclusions and may develop racial biases. In principle, these problems could apply to any child who is not given greater context for racial differences. White children may be especially at risk because they are often the least likely to have conversations about racism with their families.

In fact, one of us (Sullivan) tracked almost 1,000 parents in 2020 and found that white Americans were significantly less likely to talk to their children about race than Black Americans, even after the much publicized murder of George Floyd prompted national protests and dialogue about racism.

When we think about new laws limiting discussion of race in schools, it’s critical to keep in mind how they will impact children of color specifically. The research we’ve discussed suggests that students will be more likely to develop racially biased views in the absence of explicit lessons. As a result, children of color are likely to face more discrimination, not less. This outcome is clearly at odds with the language of the laws, which explicitly state that children should not be made to feel psychological distress because of their race. Yet that is precisely what will happen if children of color face more discrimination.

In contrast, explicit conversations with kids about racial disparities can help reduce some of the negative consequences we have described.

In one study, white elementary school students who received history lessons about racial discrimination faced by Black people had more positive views of Black people and were less likely to hold stereotypes than students who didn’t receive such lessons. And those lessons did not lead either white or Black children to hold more negative views of white Americans, which is a commonly voiced concern among those who oppose teaching about racism. There is also early evidence from a preprint paper (which has not yet been through peer review) that when parents engage in honest, accurate conversations about race with their children, it can decrease kids’ racial biases.

The laws passed in Iowa and elsewhere claim to protect kids from forming racist beliefs, but the research suggests they are more likely to do the opposite. When it comes to children’s understanding of racism and the development of racist beliefs, the biggest danger isn’t teaching or talking to children about these topics—it’s staying quiet.

Watch this video of Lahaina fire destruction. Then do what you can to help.

My wife and I have vacationed on Maui many times. We love the island. The town of Lahaina has a special place in our hearts.

Front Street in Lahaina was a delightful place to visit. We'd go there most evenings during our stay to shop, people-watch, see the art in the many galleries, eat. The atmosphere was like nowhere else we'd ever been.

Now much of Lahaina has been destroyed by the wind-stoked wildfires that have killed 53 people on Maui.

This screenshot from the video below shows the destruction. The three minute video was really painful for me to watch. It is raw footage, with no audio, but the pictures are more powerful than any words.

Here's the YouTube video.

Please consider donating to one of the relief organizations mentioned in this Travel + Leisure story about the Maui wildfires.

Here's a photo of Lahaina's Front Street from the visit we made to Maui in 2017, the last time we were there, which was part of an Adobe Spark slideshow I made about our vacation. Again, its unbelievably sad that this marvelous place has been mostly reduced to ashes.

Titanic submersible tragedy shows need for regulation

Today we learned that the five men who were on the Titan, a submersible craft that was on its way to the wreck of the Titanic, are dead after the Titan imploded under the tremendous pressures in the ocean depths.

The good news is that the five men must have been killed instantly. I and countless others had been having waking nightmares about their slow death from lack of oxygen as they sat on the ocean floor 12,500 feet from the surface.

Now it appears that the submersible imploded at the same time its mother ship lost contact with the Titan, about an hour and forty-five minutes into its two and half hour descent to the Titanic. So there must have been some kind of structural failure that led to the Titan breaking into pieces and creating a large debris field near the wreckage of the Titanic. 

The United States Navy is reporting that secret Navy sensors detected the implosion at about the time communication with the Titan was lost. 

The U.S. Navy, using data from a secret network of underwater sensors designed to track hostile submarines, detected “an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” in the vicinity of the Titan submersible at the time communications with the vessel were lost on Sunday, two senior Navy officials said on Thursday.

But with no other indications of a catastrophe, one of the officials said, the search was continued.

The data from the sensors was combined with information from airborne Navy P-8 surveillance planes and sonar buoys on the surface to triangulate the approximate location of the Titan, one of the officials said. The analysis of undersea acoustic data and information about the location of the noise were then passed on to the Coast Guard official in charge of the search, Rear Adm. John Mauger.

We shouldn't view this catastrophe as akin to climbers being killed on Mt. Everest or people dying in the course of undertaking some other dangerous activity. That way of looking at it ignores the important differences with the submersible disaster. 

For one thing, it's a big stretch for OceanGate, the company that owned and operated the Titan, to call those on the submersible "mission specialists." Though several had extensive experience with deep sea dives, including the CEO and co-founder of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, who was the pilot of the submersible, two were simply tourists who paid $250,000 each to take the trip.

It pains me to see their photo. The father and son must have viewed this as the biggest adventure of their lifetime. Instead it turned out to be the last thing they'd ever do in life: die almost instantly as the Titan burst apart.

Shahzada and Suleman Dawood surely recognized that the descent to the Titanic was risky. But probably they weren't aware that OceanGate and Stockton Rush had constructed the Titan without going through usual procedures for testing and certifying a submersible of this sort.

A CNN story describes the unnecessary risk-taking with the lives of paying passengers.

The focus on the vessel has renewed criticisms of OceanGate’s approach to safety from employees and other industry leaders. The 23,000-pound deep-sea vessel was made of an experimental combination of carbon fiber and titanium and relied on decidedly low-tech parts, such as a video game controller.

...The implosion of the Titan and deaths of those on board has put its operator’s safety procedures under the microscope.

Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, told a Mexican travel blogger in 2021 he wanted to be known as an innovator who broke the rules.

“I think it was (US Army) Gen. (Douglas) MacArthur who said, ‘You’re remembered for the rules you break,’” Rush told Alan Estrada, who documented his trip to the Titanic, including an aborted attempt in July 2021 before a successful visit in 2022.

“And you know,” Rush added, “I’ve broken some rules to make this.”

At least two former OceanGate employees years ago expressed safety concerns about the vessel’s hull, including the thickness of the material used and testing procedures, CNN has learned.

OceanGate Expeditions strayed from industry norms by declining a voluntary, rigorous safety review of the vessel, according to an industry leader. If the company had pursued a certification review “some of this may have been avoided,” Will Kohnen of the Marine Technology Society told CNN on Wednesday.

The company also faced a series of mechanical problems and inclement weather conditions that forced the cancellation or delays of trips in recent years, according to court records. The scuttled excursions led to a pair of lawsuits in which some high-paying customers sought to recoup the cost of trips they said they didn’t take. The complaints alleged that the company overstated its ability to reach the Titanic wreckage.

OceanGate did not respond to the claims in court and could not be reached for comment.

Some expeditions were delayed after OceanGate was forced to rebuild the Titan’s hull because it showed “cyclic fatigue” and wouldn’t be able to travel deep enough to reach the Titanic’s wreckage, according to a 2020 article by GeekWire, which interviewed the company’s CEO.

Several reporters who boarded the Titan noted some of these issues.

For one, Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown” host Josh Gates and his team decided after a 2021 test dive of the Titan against filming a segment on the vessel as it “became clear to us at that time that there was a lot that needed to be worked out with the sub,” he said.

A lot of the systems worked but a lot of them really didn’t. We had issues with thrusters and issues with computer control and things like that. Ultimately, it was a challenging dive,” Gates told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Wednesday.

“We were inside Titan for two or three hours, and there were a lot of things that weren’t really ready for prime time, it seemed,” he said.

If Stockton Rush, the OceanGate CEO who was so proud of breaking rules when it came to deep sea exploration, had been the only person to die in the submersible that almost certainly imploded because of design/construction rule-breaking, we could say that he died as he lived -- taking risks.

But Rush's rule-breaking caused four other people to die with him also. And that should tarnish Rush's legacy big time. If a climber on Mt. Everest falls to their death after attempting an unnecessarily risky climbing move, fine, they died doing what they loved. But if that risky move causes four other people roped to them to die also, then the climber deserves a huge amount of criticism.

Hopefully this tragedy will lead to greater regulation of submersibles, especially those being used to take paying customers to ocean depths. Those who say that government regulation isn't necessary are dead wrong. 

In this case, five deaths wrong.

A queer girl talks about being mistreated in Keizer

Thanks to the Salem-Keizer Proletariat substack writer, who on June 8 published "Keizer marks Pride Month with powerful call to do better," I learned about a moving example of speaking truth to power by McNary student Nevaeh Music -- who addressed the Keizer City Council at the invitation of Mayor Kathy Clark.

Below is an excerpt from this post.

Music is Clark’s youth appointee to the city’s Community Diversity Engagement Committee - the only youth position in Keizer city government with committee voting power.

Clark indicated Music was invited to speak to the Council about Pride Month. But it was clear Music intended to use her time to instead tell an uncomfortable truth about Keizer, and a stern reminder to do better. 

Here’s what Music said: (linked here and transcribed below)

You can read what Music said on the Salem-Keizer Proletariat post. The link above will take you to a YouTube video of the city council meeting that begins with Music's remarks. I've embedded the video below.

It's clear from Music's remarks that homophobia isn't just a vestige of our country's bigoted past, but is alive and well in Keizer. And not only there, but just about everywhere. Dislike of the LGBTQ community just isn't as obvious in Oregon as it used to be.

That's progress. Yet Nevaeh Music reminds us of how much more remains to be done. By all of us.

I wrote about this yesterday on my Church of the Churchless blog in a post I called The beauty of "We don't not care" rather than "We don't care."  Here's an excerpt, along with the video I shared.

Sometimes a television program can get a moral point across in a few minutes of entertainment that is more clear and convincing than a lengthy ethical treatise.

That happened to me last night when my wife and I were watching an episode of season 3 of Ted Lasso on AppleTV+.

Before I share a clip of that scene, a bit of background. 

Colin, one of the soccer (football, to most of the world) players on the professional team Lasso is coaching, inadvertently revealed that he was gay, homosexual, to the team captain, Isaac, when Isaac saw some photos on Colin's phone.

Isaac then gave Colin the cold shoulder, ignoring him and even acting nasty toward him during the first half of their soccer match. I thought Isaac was being homophobic. Not true. We later learn that Isaac was upset that Colin hadn't told him he was gay.

At halftime, after the team had played poorly, a fan yelled that they were all a bunch of faggots -- a derogatory term for a male homosexual. That set Isaac off. He charged into the seats, accosting the fan, which led to him getting a red card and being ejected from the game.

During the team's halftime meeting, Lasso asked why Isaac acted that way. Someone said that maybe it was because Isaac was gay. But Colin then revealed to the team for the first time that he was gay.

The reaction from team members: "We don't care." That spurred Ted Lasso to relate one of his folksy stories in order to convey a message to his team.

What struck me about this little speech was how while "We don't care" was supposed to express support for Colin, that actually was a weak gesture for their gay teammate. 

Sure, we don't care that you're gay is much better than we dislike that you're gay, but it's way worse than we care about you and will support you. Which is why Lasso put it as "We don't not care." Because they actually do care about Colin.

The meaning I took away from this is that we shouldn't sit on the sidelines when someone or something we care about is being attacked or threatened or denigrated or ignored.

A little Memorial Day tale of grocery coupon kindness

Memorial Day is about recognizing the ultimate sacrifice for our country: losing one's life. That deserves a lot of praise. But so do lesser sacrifices ordinary Americans perform every day to make things better for their fellow citizens.

That's who I want to honor today.

Not just those who have died fighting for the United States, but everybody who engages in actions large or small for the greater good. What happened to me while grocery shopping last week got me thinking about this.

I was in a checkout line at the south Salem Fred Meyer. The clerk had scanned my purchases and was ready to charge my credit card. But she paused, picked up a coupon, and read it closely. I was perplexed, since I hadn't given her any coupons.

"Someone couldn't use this," the clerk told me. "They asked that I use the coupon for someone who could. You know, a pay it forward thing." So I got $1 off a container of Baby Spring Mix organic salad greens. 

That spurred me to look in my wallet for a Fred Meyer grocery coupon that I'd been carrying around for a while because I never buy enough groceries to use the $7 off a purchase of $70 or more. I handed the coupon to the clerk.

"This is a good deal," I said. "Seven dollars off. Use the coupon when someone qualifies for it." The clerk asked if I was sure I wanted to give it away. Absolutely, I told her, mentioning that I never buy $70 worth of groceries.

As I headed off to my car after checking out, I realized that I felt hugely better about giving the $7 off coupon away, than I did about getting $1 subtracted from the cost of the salad greens. The adage it's better to give than to receive popped into my brain.

(The Bible says "more blessed" rather than "better." However, since I'm not religious, I prefer better.)

It's wonderful that evolution has led us humans to feel good about doing good. That's because our species is intensely social. In the early history of Homo sapiens, as today, we thrived by cooperating with each other to accomplish things beyond the capacity of any individual or small group.

Giving is one way we continue to form the bonds that tie us together, notwithstanding all the political and other pressures that drive us apart. When I thought about someone smiling at being able to get $7 off due to the coupon I gave the clerk, I was filled with the warm glow that comes from giving.

Almost everybody feels that way when they act in a way that makes life better for someone else.

In fact, probably I shouldn't have added that "Almost." Even the most selfish Wall Street trader, whose goal is making bucketloads of money for themselves and their firm, likely feels good that they're playing their part in the game of capitalism that keeps our country's powerful financial machinery humming.

So here's to all of the people who give to the greater good. Who are, again, everybody. Trash collectors. Medical personnel. Teachers. Plumbers. Store clerks. Students. Nursing home residents. Everywhere we look, there's fellow citizens giving of themselves.

Last night, on the 11 pm KGW news, there was a story about how electrical linemen are trained, who work with experienced crews from the very begging of their training. One of the trainees said that he loves it when lights go on in a house because of what his team did.

That's giving. That's sacrifice. Not nearly as dramatic as Patrick Henry's famous ""I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," yet praiseworthy all the same.

 

Mental health gets talked about at Salem City Club

It's usually good to talk through your mental health problems rather than keeping them bottled up inside of you. Today the Salem City Club did just that, albeit from a policy perspective, in a program called Oregon's Many Mental Health Crises.

The not-so-cheery news is that Oregon ranks 49th out of the 50 states in the prevalence of mental illness and access to care. So for sure, we've got a mental health crisis. 

State Representative Rob Nosse started things off by talking about how the legislature is trying to fix things.

He's chair of the House Joint Committee on Behavioral Health. Until now somehow I didn't understand what "behavioral health" meant. It's mental health plus substance abuse, since you can engage in the behavior of substance abuse without having a mental health problem.

Nosse said that due to the largesse of the federal government, Oregon got $1.3 billion for mental health in the last two years. He said that probably Oregon now ranks as the 46th or 47th worst state for mental health problems and access.

Up from 49, perhaps, but still decidedly pitiful -- especially since we're a blue state with supposedly progressive policies, not one of those backward conservative southern states.

Nosse explained the three levels of mental health care the legislature is trying to improve. The first level is community mental health programs where people are treated on an outpatient basis, often by nonprofits.

The second level is secure residential facilities for those whose care needs are in-between being in the community and in the state hospital. The hope, he said, is that fixing problems with the first two levels will relieve pressure on the third level, the state hospital here in Salem.

Measure 110, which decriminalized drugs like heroin and meth, was needed, Nosse said, since treating drug use as a criminal problem obviously hasn't worked. But he would have preferred to see Measure 110 money for treatment programs ramp up in a first year, with decriminalization happening in the second year, instead of both things occurring at once, as actually happened.

Now that the federal money that was plentiful in 2021 and 2022 has dried up, the legislature is focusing on implementing the programs already started rather than initiating new mental health programs. Nosse said that he's a tax and spend liberal who believes that Oregon needs more investment in mental health.

The next speaker was Ann-Marie Bandfield, a Marion County Health and Human Services Program Manager for many behavioral and mental health areas. She said Marion County has a 24/7 walk-in crisis center. Here's an excerpt from the center's web page.

At least one Qualified Mental Health Professional (QMHP) is on duty at all times to provide face-to-face assessments and crisis counseling. We also provide telephone triage, support, and referral. This service is provided on a first come-first served basis. Most of this work is done at the crisis center itself, but a large number of assessments also occur at the emergency room of Salem Hospital.

The last speaker was Heather Jefferis, Executive Director for the Council for Behavioral Health which helps support behavioral health workers in Oregon. She said it was great that health insurance now has to pay for mental health care. 

However, Medicare rates haven't increased in 18 years. And Jefferis said that Oregon is far below the number of substance abuse and inpatient supportive housing beds that are needed.

In the Q&A part of the program, someone asked the speakers if a universal single payer health care system would help with Oregon's mental health crisis. Each of them said that it would, though Rep. Nosse was skeptical that such a plan is politically feasible in our state. 

I got to ask a question.

I said that when I was diagnosed with a major depressive episode -- meaning I was super depressed, which is much worse than merely being deeply sad -- I contacted every psychiatrist in Salem. None were taking new patients. Some didn't even have a waiting list. I was told that I'd have to wait months to see someone. And I had Medicare Advantage insurance.

But I noted that people in my situation weren't talked about by the speakers today.

I said that people with insurance still have big problems getting mental health care due to a shortage of providers. (Eventually I learned that my Salem Health primary care physician's office had a psychiatric nurse practitioner on the staff, who saw me fairly quickly, prescribed an antidepressant, and saw me every week or two for several months until my depression had lifted.)

Rep. Nosse said my comments were right on, and that the legislature wasn't focused on the plight of insured people like me.

When the program was over I spoke with several people. The program chair told me that in getting background info for his introductory remarks, he learned that half the counties in the United States don't have a psychiatrist. And most psychiatrists don't take Medicare patients because Medicare pays so little for mental health care.

I also spoke with a psychiatric nurse practitioner who said that any doctor can prescribe antidepressants. True. But my wife, a retired psychotherapist, tells me that primary care doctors aren't as knowledgeable about managing psychiatric drugs, which is why she urged me to try to find a psychiatrist when I was depressed.

Bill Maher wrong about transgender athletes and Trump indictment

Bill Maher is a comedian. I like his jokes. It doesn't bother me when some of his one-liners mess with facts in order to get a laugh. That's what comedians often do: exaggerate in order to make a humorous point.

What irritates me about Maher is when his playing loose with facts continues from his opening joke-filled monologue to the mostly serious discussion Maher has with his two panelists.

Last Friday's show (April 14) featured Maher engaging in extended rants about transgender people and Trump's indictment. I didn't like what he said on both subjects.

Maher claimed that transgender women (who transitioned from being a man) were harming the rights of "real" women. I've never heard that from any of the women I know. The main argument presented for this assertion was transgender women competing in women's sports.

OK, this happens. Not often, but sometimes. Maher and the panelists, Katie Porter and Piers Morgan, spent quite a bit of time talking about a transgender woman winning a NCAA championship in swimming.

That was Lia Thomas. 

University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title after finishing first in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event Thursday evening.

Thomas pulled away in the final 150 yards to win in 4:33.24.

Thomas, who previously swam for the men’s team at Penn, has come to personify the ongoing debate on trans women’s participation in sports and the balance between inclusion and fair play.

This is a worthwhile debate to have. There do need to be rules governing transgender women who want to compete in sports where they may have a competitive advantage. However, Porter made sense when she said this should be left up to the organizations that govern women's sports.

And Morgan was wrong when he said, as I recall, that Thomas won the 500-yard freestyle by 50 seconds over the next fastest woman. Actually it was 1.75 seconds, not exactly a blowout. Plus, Wikipedia says:

In March 2022, she became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship in any sport after winning the women's 500-yard freestyle event. Thomas lost muscle mass and strength through testosterone suppression and hormone replacement therapy. Her time for the 500 freestyle is over 15 seconds slower than her personal bests before medically transitioning. Thomas's winning time of 4:33.24 was 9.18 seconds short of Katie Ledecky's NCAA record of 4:24.06. In other races, Thomas has been beaten by multiple cisgender women as well as by Iszac Henig, a transgender man not on hormones.

Further, the NCAA has instituted a transgender policy that addresses the problem of assuring fair competition between transgender and cisgender women.

At its January 19, 2022 meeting, the NCAA Board of Governors updated the transgender student-athlete participation policy governing college sports. 

The new policy aligns transgender student-athlete participation with the Olympic Movement. The resulting sport-by-sport approach preserves opportunity for transgender student-athletes while balancing fairness, inclusion and safety for all who compete.

So it isn't true that transgender women are trampling on the rights of other women. Maher should educate himself about this before contributing to the transgender hysteria that, as Porter correctly noted, is endangering transgender people, who are subject to physical attacks at a rate much higher than their proportion in the general population.

Regarding Trump's indictment, this is a simpler Maher falsehood to address. First, he wrongly claimed that Democrats were after Trump because he had sex with Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress. That's untrue.

Hardly anyone cares who Trump has sex with, possibly excepting Melania, his wife. And Trump wasn't indicted by Democrats. He was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury that heard extensive testimony about false business records filed by Trump in an attempt to cover up the payment of hush money to Daniels a few weeks before the 2016 presidential election.

Maher blathered on at length about how Democrats were making the same mistake with Trump as Republicans did with Bill Clinton following his affair with Monica Lewinsky. But again, the charge against Trump isn't that he had sex with a woman other than his wife.

He's been indicted because he paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about their affair just before the election where his misogyny was a central focus, and instead of reporting this as a campaign contribution, Trump falsely termed it legal fees.

Bill Maher is a smart guy. So is his staff. So I can't believe that Maher didn't know the facts about Trump's indictment. He knew. Maher just chose to say stuff on his show that was false, in order to take a cheap shot at Democrats.

Just like he took a cheap shot at transgender people.

Caste is a marvelous book about our racial divisions

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I hadn't heard of Isabel Wilkerson's book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, until I read a fairly recent TIME cover story by Wilkerson that provided an overview of Caste.

Somehow I'd missed the publication of the book in 2020. Making up for lost time, I immediately ordered a copy from Amazon. It took me a while to finish Caste.

For even though Wilkerson is a terrific writer with a smooth style that makes reading her a pleasure, her subject matter isn't cheery. So I'd read a short chapter on most days, rather than rushing through her book.

What blew me away in her TIME essay was the brilliant notion that caste, not prejudice, is a better way to understand the 400 year history of discrimination against African Americans in this country. 

Wilkerson makes her case for caste by not only describing how this means of maintaining power by a dominant class has been used in the United States, but also how caste has enforced hierarchies in India (no big surprise) and Nazi Germany.

This book opened my eyes to how caste explains a lot about social power dynamics that go beyond racial discrimination. For example, in a concluding chapter she speaks about a subject dear to my aging heart, how old people are treated in our country.

The challenge for our era is not merely the social construct of black and white but seeing through the many layers of a caste system that has more power than we as humans should permit it to have. Even the most privileged of humans in the Western world will join a tragically disfavored caste if they live long enough.

They will belong to the last caste of the human cycle, that of old age, people who are among the most demeaned of all citizens in the Western world, where youth is worshipped to forestall thoughts of death. A caste system spares no one. 

I'm not capable of doing justice to the book by attempting to summarize it. Others have done that hugely better than I could. Reading Caste, of course, is the #1 way to understand what Wilkerson has to say.

Here's a couple of lesser ways I found by some Googling: a NPR story, 'Caste' Argues Its Most Violent Manifestation is in Treatment of Black Americans, and a 6-minute PBS NewsHour episode on You Tube.

The book contains a lot that is disturbing. But we Americans need to be disturbed by how our homegrown caste system has caused so much pain and suffering and lost opportunity. One of Wilkerson's favorite metaphors, which I've heard her use on several interviews, is of an old house.

Old houses have many problems. She speaks from experience, being the owner of one. The roof may leak. The basement may have standing water. The electrical system may be outmoded. The porch may be rotting.

If a building inspector takes a look at the house and lists what's wrong with it, this doesn't mean that the current owner was responsible for the problems. But the problems are still problems. They don't go away just because someone says "I didn't cause them."

Likewise, those who want us to ignore the problems of caste and racial discrimination in this country -- I'm thinking Ron DeSantis and many other Republicans -- are like a homeowner who turns a blind eye to what's wrong with their house. We don't need to blame ourselves for the past. However, we have to take responsibility for fixing what's wrong with the United States that flows from our history.

Wilkerson ends up on a positive note. Here's how her book ends.

In a world without caste, instead of a false swagger over our own tribe or family or ascribed community, we would look upon all of humanity with wonderment: the lithe beauty of an Ethiopian runner, the bravery of a Swedish girl determined to save the planet, the physics-defying aerobatics of an African-American Olympian, the brilliance of a composer of Puerto Rican descent who can rap the history of the founding of America at 144 words a minute -- all of these should fill us with astonishment at what the species is capable of and gratitude to be alive for this.

In a world without caste, being male or female, light or dark, immigrant or native-born, would have no bearing on what anyone was perceived as being capable of. In a world without caste, we would all be invested in the well-being of others in our species if only for our own survival, and recognize that we are in need of one another more than we have been led to believe.

We would join forces with indigenous people around the world raising the alarm as fires rage and glaciers melt. We would see that, when others suffer, the collective human body is set back from the progression of our species.

A world without caste would set everyone free.

Bill Maher has become an irritating purveyor of liberal myths

I've been watching Bill Maher ever since his Politically Incorrect days. When he turned up on HBO with his Real Time With Bill Maher, twenty seasons ago, I watched him there.


I still enjoy Maher. But the past few seasons, and maybe longer than that, Maher often acts like a caricature of a one-time liberal who now takes excessive pleasure in attacking what he believes are overly "woke" Democratic/progressive positions.

I've got no problem with Maher doing that, so long as he doesn't twist the truth to make his point. Which, he does with disturbing regularity.

Last Friday's Real Time show was a good example of this.

His guests were Bari Weiss and Tim Ryan. I guess you could call them centrists. Ryan, a Democrat, ran for Ohio Senator against JD Vance in the 2022 midterm election. Weiss was recruited by Elon Musk to make a big ado about not much in the recent Twitter Files saga.

A central theme of Friday's show was how the American people are fed up with the woke positions of Democrats. (This has been a theme of previous shows also.) 

So there was a lot of tut-tutting about how in many parts of Ohio, and rural areas generally, having a "D" after your name can be a death knell for your election chances. OK, an obvious point, but fair enough. But I keep waiting for Maher, Ryan, or Weiss to bring up an equally valid point.

In virtually every large big city in the United States, having a "R" after your name pretty much dooms your election chances.

So why doesn't Maher spend as much time asking what Republicans need to do to win back urban voters as he does asking what Democrats need to do to win back rural voters? I also couldn't understand why Maher and his guests didn't bring up the 2022 midterm results.

There sure wasn't much of a sign that voters were fed up with Democrats because of their excessive wokeness. The Dems picked up a seat in the Senate, maintaining control of that chamber. And the Dem losses in House races was hugely below expectations. They took control of some Governorships and state legislatures.

Rather than House Republicans having a 30-40 seat majority as many pundits predicted, the GOP just has a narrow four seat majority.

Thus it seems clear that the Democratic Party is alive and well in the United States, contrary to all the doom and gloom about Dem popularity expressed by Maher and his guests.

Another thing that irritates me whenever Maher brings it up is the notion that all across the country, young children are being indoctrinated by teachers in the supposed Liberal Commandment of gender fluidity.

Maher keeps claiming that rather than teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and other core competencies, liberal elementary school teachers are spending much of their classroom time talking about how wonderful it is that some children have two mommy's or two daddy's.

Bill Maher loves to cite individual anecdotes as if this proves anything. Actually, it doesn't. If Maher presented solid data on how frequently teachers of young children are bringing up gender issues, and used an anecdote to back up those data, that'd be fine.

Instead, Maher likes to talk about a single anecdote that he or his staff dredged up, then uses that anecdote to draw broad-brush conclusions about how wokeness is destroying our educational system. 

That's a lousy way to make an argument. Maher should know better, but he appears to have entered a largely fact-free zone on his show. 

Lastly, I can't disagree with Maher's often-stated point that obesity is a big problem in our country. He's correct that obesity is a risk factor if someone gets Covid. But it's a bit simplistic for Maher to say that all it takes for someone to lose weight is will power. 

Meaning, just eat less and you'll lose weight. I've read about numerous scientific studies that show how some people have a natural, probably genetic, propensity to obesity. Sometimes a person's metabolism is out of whack, which makes it really tough for them to lose weight. Medication and surgery may be called for in some cases of obesity.

When Maher and his guests talked about the horrible food in the school meal program, they didn't mention that during the Trump years, it was Republicans who stood in the way of making school breakfasts and lunches more nutritious. 

On Friday, USDA Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps proposed new rules for the Food and Nutrition Service that would allow schools to cut the amount of vegetables and fruits required at lunch and breakfasts while giving them license to sell more pizza, burgers and fries to students. The agency is responsible for administering nutritional programs that feed nearly 30 million students at 99,000 schools.

Social media reform is needed, but the market mainly should decide

Today NBC's Meet the Press devoted its Sunday morning hour entirely to a discussion of social media: what's wrong with the way things are now on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and such, along with what needs to be done to fix those problems.

It's a complicated subject with no easy answers. Here's what stuck in my mind after watching the program.

Algorithms. Social media sites typically use computer algorithms to determine what gets shown to users. (Twitter is an exception, at least if a third party app is used to access Twitter, which I do. I only see tweets from the people and organizations I follow, and I see all of their tweets, in chronological order.)

This encourages anger and divisiveness, since negativity generally draws more views than positivity, cute animal videos notwithstanding. Several Meet the Press guests called for more transparency in how the algorithms work. But it's unclear what this means.

A Republican congressman, who made good sense, argued that government regulation of the algorithms could cause more problems that it solves. Who decides what is divisive or misinformation? Even hate speech, while easy to decry, is difficult to pin down. Stand-up comedians often make jokes about "sacred cows" in our culture. Are those jokes hate speech or free speech?

Maybe I have a libertarian side when it comes to social media, but I'm wary of regulations that tell social media companies what content to prioritize to their users. So what's the alternative?

Market forces. I agree with several people on this special Meet the Press program who said that if social media companies don't operate in a fashion that users like, many of those users will head elsewhere. To some extent this has happened with Twitter after Elon Musk took over and mostly dismantled company efforts aimed at curbing extreme hate speech and harmful disinformation.

The woman who was a Facebook whistleblower in 2021, I think it was, tried to make an analogy between government requiring seat belts and other safety equipment in cars and regulation of social media companies. 

However, it's a bit of a stretch to do this.

Cars are an essential part of life for most people. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter aren't. Sure, they're addictive, useful, fun, and entertaining. But social media doesn't kill tens of thousands of people a year. And many social media users enjoy them just the way they are.

If someone finds Facebook, or whatever, distasteful, they can stop using it. When enough people do this, the social media company will realize that the market has spoken and changes need to be made.

Section 230. This is the part of the Communications Decency Act that prevents social media providers from being responsible for content put up by users. Here's how the Electronic Frontier Foundation describes Section 230.

Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider" (47 U.S.C. § 230). In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do.

The protected intermediaries include not only regular Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but also a range of "interactive computer service providers," including basically any online service that publishes third-party content. Though there are important exceptions for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, CDA 230 creates a broad protection that has allowed innovation and free speech online to flourish.

Most of the Meet the Press panel members seemed to think that keeping Section 230 is a good idea. I agree. It would be a nightmare if social media companies were legally responsible for all of the content uploaded by its users. This likely would lead to increased censorship of that content, since social media companies would want to be sure that they couldn't be sued by someone upset with user-generated content.

A better approach, someone said, is what happened with Alex Jones. He was successfully sued by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre after Jones repeatedly and loudly claimed the children weren't really dead. And Fox News is being sued by Dominion voting machines after hosts on the network said that the machines produced fraudulent election results. 

So in egregious cases the legal system can be used to punish libel. There's no need to make social media companies watchdogs over everything users upload on their platforms. 

Section 230 is meaningful to me because I'm an extremely small social media platform, having three blogs, two of which date back to 2003 and 2004. I've always allowed comments on my blogs. I go back and forth on moderating comments. Mostly I haven't moderated them, though occasionally I'll delete a comment that doesn't fit with my comment policies.

Here's what the Electronic Frontier Foundation says about blogs and Section 230.

CDA 230 also offers its legal shield to bloggers who act as intermediaries by hosting comments on their blogs. Under the law, bloggers are not liable for comments left by readers, the work of guest bloggers, tips sent via email, or information received through RSS feeds. This legal protection can still hold even if a blogger is aware of the objectionable content or makes editorial judgments.

Thus I'm very much against Congress messing around with Section 230, unless the changes were minor and didn't alter its free speech provisions. 

Elon Musk's Twitter antics are hurting Tesla's image

Until Elon Musk bought Twitter and started acting like a right-wing maniac, I had a favorable opinion of Musk. Sure, he had some annoying quirks. That comes with being one of the richest people on the planet.

But overall I viewed Musk as an eccentric genius who was doing good things for the world. He made Tesla into a great company, jumpstarting the electric car revolution sorely needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

And his SpaceX company has made great strides in developing innovative advances in rockets, including booster stages that can land themselves and be reused. SpaceX also is responsible for getting my wife and I out of internet hell, a.k.a. dismally slow CenturyLink DSL, when we were able to become beta testers for Starlink satellite internet, which has worked great for us.

Now, though, I'm seeing Musk very differently. What really pushed me over the edge from like to dislike was this recent tweet of his about Dr. Fauci, who I respect greatly.

It's incredibly dumb for Musk to be so blatant about his extreme political views. I follow him on Twitter. These days Musk sounds more like a QAnon crazy person than a CEO. 

Look: I realize that corporate CEOs tend to be politically conservative. But usually CEOs don't throw those views in the face of current and prospective customers. I love my Subaru Crosstrek. I have no idea who the CEO of Subaru is, and obviously also am clueless about what this person's political persuasion is.

That's the smart thing for a CEO to do. You don't want to antagonize a big share of your customer base by trashing their politics. Yet this is what Elon Musk is glorying in doing, and it's hurting the image of Tesla among those who buy a big share of Tesla cars: Democrats.

It used to be cool to drive a Tesla. Now I see a Tesla and think, "There goes someone who helped Musk buy Twitter and say that Dr. Fauci should be prosecuted." I may end up owing a Tesla someday. However, there are ever-increasing choices in electric cars. I'd rather that my money not go to benefit Elon Musk, so I'll look more closely now at other brands.

(The situation is different with Starlink, since we have no other choice for high-speed internet out here in the "wilds" of rural south Salem, a mere six miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital.)

I found quite a few stories about how Tesla's image is going downhill now that Musk is preoccupied with kissing up to right-wingers on Twitter. Here's some examples, along with excerpts from the stories.

Tesla's approval rating sinks into negative territory, survey finds
Tesla’s approval rating has fallen fast, according to one survey. Yes, like politicians, automobile makers have approval ratings.

...The electric-car maker started 2022 with a net-positive score of 5.9%, then peaked in May at 6.7%. In early November, it fell to a negative -1.4% reading.

YouGov found a political divide in the numbers. As the Wall Street Journal explains, “self-described liberals now view Tesla more negatively than conservatives, though conservatives also have a negative view of the brand on average.”

What changed to influence opinions so radically? Tesla CEO Elon Musk famously bought the social network Twitter at the end of October and has been a prominent figure in the news for reshaping its operations.

Elon Musk is about to learn that liberals -- not his new deplorable pals -- buy Teslas
I drive a Tesla. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sometimes it feels like a third of people around me drive Teslas. I see lots of Teslas in New York City, Austin, and Seattle. I don’t see many of them in Alabama, or the Florida Panhandle or mid-Pennsylvania or Idaho, or anywhere else that’s mostly conservative. 

Yet Elon Musk has decided to literally destroy his personal brand—and Tesla’s along with it—in his bizarro turn toward the QAnon dark side. As I’ve been saying for a while (on Twitter), this was never going to end well for Tesla.

...Looking at where electric vehicles are registered in Texas, just 10.12% are registered outside of the state’s four big liberal centers: Dallas-Fort Worth (35.75%), Houston (23.45%), Austin (21%), and San Antonio (9.68%). The vast Texas conservative hinterlands have little interest in Musk’s product. Woke California buys 42% of all electric vehicles—the vast majority in its urban liberal centers—while making up just 12% of the country’s population. 

Tesla is becoming a partisan brand, says survey
Tesla is becoming a partisan brand – losing the support of Democrats and gaining support from Republicans, according to a survey.

Leaders of large companies selling consumer products, like automakers and tech companies, generally refrain from showing direct support to any political party, especially in the US.

Due to the polarizing nature of politics in the US and its two-party system, it’s better to stay away from definitive statements of support one way or the other since you risk alienating large parts of the population.

That’s why it was so surprising to see Elon Musk tell his over 100 million followers on Twitter to vote Republican during the midterm elections last month and going as far as calling the Democratic Party the “party of hate.”

Regardless of your political affiliation, from a business standpoint as the leader of a company selling consumer products, it was a questionable move, and the impact is starting to be felt.

A survey from Morning Consult reported by the Wall Street Journal has been tracking changes in opinion about Tesla from people with different political affiliations. It shows that the number of Democrats with a positive view of Tesla has been tracking significantly down, while it’s up for self-described Republicans:

Tesla’s net favorability among self-described Democrats in the U.S. fell to an average of 10.4% this month through Nov. 27, down from an average of 24.8% in October, according to Morning Consult. It rose to 26.5% from 20% among self-described Republicans during the same period.

Jordan Marlatt, tech analyst at Morning Consult, went as far as saying that Tesla is becoming a partisan brand:

It seems like Tesla is on its way to becoming a partisan brand.

I love Twitter. Elon Musk, not so much.

When people ask if I'm going to cancel my Twitter account now that Elon Musk is in charge of the company, I say, Absolutely not. Then I explain why.

I love Twitter. It's one of the first things I check on my iPhone when I wake up in the morning. It's one of the last things I check before I go to bed. 

But I rarely use Twitter directly. I use a third-party app (Tweetbot) that collects tweets from the individuals and organizations that I follow, then presents them in a clean easy-to-use format.

I never see tweets from anyone I don't follow. I never see ads.

All I see is topical, interesting, provocative content from a wide range of knowledgeable commentators, mostly liberal in their politics. I also get tweets from organizations, including the Portland office of the National Weather Service, TripCheck (problems on Oregon highways), and the Kyiv Independent for up-to-date news about the Ukraine War.

Twitter is a marvelous way to keep informed on just about any subject that you're interested in. When economic news breaks, like a fresh inflation report, Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman shares tweets in my feed about how he sees that news.

I could give many more examples of why I adore Twitter. Now, I realize that people who use Twitter itself, not a third-party application, probably encounter more annoyances, such as ads.

But for me Twitter is very similar to Facebook. Apart from ads on Facebook, I don't see content from anybody that I don't choose to follow. So the argument that I should give up on Twitter because some Twitter users engage in hate speech or misinformation makes no sense to me.

The same thing happens on Facebook. Or any other social media platform. Since I don't follow people on Twitter who engage in hate speech or misinformation, I never encounter tweets with those qualities.

Well, with a few exceptions. When Donald Trump was on Twitter, I followed him off-and-on just to keep up on the crap he was tweeting about. It's easy to unfollow people and organizations, so when Trump got too annoying, I'd ditch him. Then I'd follow him again when I felt like it.

Since I'm a happy Space X Starlink satellite internet customer (was fortunate to be a beta tester of the service, which works great for us), I've followed Elon Musk on Twitter for quite a while. He's always been quirky, along with brilliant.

After buying Twitter, Musk has become irritating in many of his tweets, but I still follow him for the entertainment value. 

There's been a lot of discussion among the people and organizations I follow about whether they should stick with Twitter or migrate to a different platform. Most are staying put, for pretty much the same reasons I am. 

I have to admit, though, that Elon Musk runs the risk of ruining Twitter.

His politics seems to have tilted decidedly rightward. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. However, if Musk persists in allowing Twitter to be a haven for bigots, racists, and militant extremists, I worry that Twitter could enter a death spiral as advertisers jump ship and Musk's investment stops being financially viable.

What's perplexing is how someone as obviously intelligent as Elon Musk can be so ignorant about basic facts. Like the nature of the First Amendment and freedom of speech. 

Recently Musk got pissed off at Apple for suspending the company's advertising on Twitter. He viewed that action as anti-free speech, whereas actually it was very much in line with free speech. As an excellent story by David French in The Atlantic says, the First Amendment only speaks about government, not private actors.

Here's an excerpt from Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson don't understand the First Amendment. If you aren't familiar with the reference to "Twitter files," this relates to today's release of internal Twitter communications regarding a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop.

The First Amendment regulates government conduct. It does not regulate private actors. The text of the amendment itself says that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” That restraint on Congress has since been extended to apply to the U.S. government at all levels—local, state, and federal.

Activists have tried to argue that large social-media companies essentially function as the government, citing a line of cases that treat private parties as government actors when the private parties perform functions that are “traditionally and exclusively governmental.” Examples include running elections, private prisons, and so-called company towns.

But, as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently explained, “hosting speech on a private platform … is hardly ‘an activity that only governmental entities have traditionally performed.’” Social-media companies are not the government.

This means the First Amendment protects Twitter, the Biden campaign team, and the Democratic National Committee. The “TWITTER FILES” released so far do not describe a violation of the First Amendment. Instead, they detail the exercise of First Amendment rights by independent, private actors.

One can certainly agree or disagree with the way in which they exercised those rights. Twitter’s decision to delete pornographic pictures of Hunter Biden was entirely justified and appropriate. Its actions to suppress the New York Post story about Hunter’s laptop were far less defensible. But they were Twitter’s decisions to make, and no amount of misguided rhetoric can transform a Twitter story into a government scandal.

I'm not an economist, but isn't unemployment worse than inflation?

Usually my response to bad economic news is to ignore it as much as possible. After all, what goes up must come down, and what goes down must come up.

So freaking out over short-term worries about inflation, unemployment, the stock market, gas prices, or whatever generally isn't justified. Typically, when things look to be the darkest, the economic sun is about to turn brighter.

Thus even though I find it difficult to look at my iPhone's stock market app first thing in the morning, because I don't want to get depressed before I've had breakfast (might as well wait for lunch to feel bad), until recently I was feeling pretty much OK about where the American economy was heading.

But now I'm wondering if Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, and his organization know what they're doing.

Economics isn't exactly a science like physics. In my perhaps overly cynical opinion, it strikes me as being akin to psychology -- a discipline that aspires to hard science precision, yet falls way short when it comes to being able to accurately model and predict reality.

Currently Powell says the Federal Reserve is deeply committed to fighting inflation. OK, inflation is a big problem, for sure. 

However, the rapid rise in interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve is threatening to produce a recession and high unemployment. Today Politico ran a story, "Dow hits 2022 low as markets sell off on recession fears." Excerpts:

Stocks tumbled worldwide Friday on mounting signs the global economy is weakening just as central banks raise the pressure even more with additional interest rate hikes.

...Energy prices closed sharply lower as traders worried about a possible recession. Treasury yields, which affect rates on mortgages and other kinds of loans, held at multiyear highs.

...The Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world aggressively hiked interest rates this week in hopes of undercutting high inflation, with more big increases promised for the future. But such moves also put the brakes on their economies, threatening recessions as growth slows worldwide.

Besides Friday’s discouraging data on European business activity, a separate report suggested U.S. activity is also still shrinking, though not quite as badly as in earlier months.

So even though the United States and world economies are looking more feeble,  the Federal Reserve and other central banks are planning to raise interest rates even higher because inflation is viewed as a more serious problem than a recession.

I guess that makes sense if you're a professional economist who isn't worried about losing their job, or a Wall Street type who makes money no matter what happens on Main Street. 

But since a recession will cause millions of Americans to be unemployed, it seems clear that if those future unemployed people were asked whether they'd prefer to have a job or to pay higher prices, they'd say that having a decent regular income is more important than having to spend a bit more of that income due to inflation.

Plus, higher interest rates hurt those with credit card balances, people needing a mortgage to buy a house, construction companies hit by lower demand for homes due to more expensive mortgages, and applicants for other sorts of loans.

Maybe the Federal Reserve will be able to pull off the "soft landing" that's a sweet spot where rising interest rates lower inflation to a tolerable level while the economy avoids a recession.

I'm just getting a sinking feeling that the Federal Reserve interest rate hikes are going to make us wish for more inflation and less unemployment before too long as the United States heads into a recession (which some argue is already here, at least in a mild form).

Remember Ukraine. American support can't waver.

It's been about six months since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In those dark early days of the war, it seemed highly unlikely that Ukraine would still be an independent nation half a year later.

Yet here we are, with the brave Ukrainians basically fighting Russia to a standstill. So let's remember Ukraine -- today, tomorrow, every day. 

If Ukraine continues to get strong support from the United States and our allies, there's a very good chance that before too long Putin and his Kremlin cronies will realize that the price of waging their unprovoked war against Ukraine isn't worth the loss of life, sanctions, international condemnation, harm to the Russian economy, and other problems Russia is facing.

The Ukrainian people won't give up their fight. The only way they lose this war is if key supporters, notably the United States, tire of supplying aid to Ukraine and punishing Russia. So preserving American public opinion in favor of Ukraine is crucial.

One way I remember Ukraine is by following The Kyiv Independent on Twitter. For more in-depth coverage of how the war is going, there's The Kyiv Independent web site. How this publication came to be makes for some interesting and inspiring reading in the About section.

The Kyiv Independent is Ukraine’s English-language media outlet, created by journalists who were fired from the Kyiv Post for defending editorial independence.

The Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s global voice, went silent on Nov. 8, 2021, days after celebrating the 26th year of its uninterrupted run.

The publication was shut down by the owner in his attempt to take full control of the newsroom that has always followed the principle of editorial independence. 

Yet, the editorial team of the independent Kyiv Post refused to be silenced. If we couldn’t save the Kyiv Post brand, we could save its values.

On Nov. 11, 2021, over 30 ex-Kyiv Post employees decided to continue the Kyiv Post’s legacy by launching a new publication – the Kyiv Independent.

The following values will serve as the backbone of the Kyiv Independent: 

• • The new publication will serve its readers and community, and nobody else.
  • The Kyiv Independent won’t be dependent on a rich owner or an oligarch. The publication will depend on fundraising from readers and donors and later on, commercial activities.
  • The newsroom will decide and execute the publication’s editorial policy in the community’s best interests. Attempts to influence it from outside will not be tolerated.
  • The Kyiv Independent will always be at least partly owned by its journalists.
  • The Kyiv Independent will strive to reach financial sustainability to preserve its independence in the future.

The team unanimously chose Olga Rudenko, former deputy chief editor at the Kyiv Post, who dedicated 10 years to the brand, to lead the new publication as editor-in-chief.

The Kyiv Independent is still in the making. The website you see is our first, temporary platform. 

As we embark on this new project, we vow to serve as the true, independent voice of Ukraine. 

The Kyiv Independent provides fair and reliable news on a variety of topics. From Russia’s war against Ukraine and disinformation campaigns to the ongoing pandemic and medical procurement, from human rights in occupied Donbas and Crimea to reforms in Kyiv, nothing will escape the view of the Kyiv Independent.

But we can only do it together with you. Join us today and become a part of Ukraine’s fight for a better future with the Kyiv Independent.

I can't celebrate Independence Day when freedom is under attack

I resonate with this image I saw on Facebook, though it doesn't go far enough.

Yes, the horrendous Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade took away the freedom of women in about half the states to choose an abortion. Thankfully, Oregon isn't one of them.

But there's plenty of other threats to the values our country was founded on. We're in grave danger of losing them.

Democracy. The January 6 committee is doing a great job of revealing the details of how close Trump and his enablers came to overturning the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden. What's even scarier, though, is how Republicans across the country are working hard to make sure that the next anti-democracy coup attempt, probably in 2024 but possibly as early as this year's midterms, succeeds. 

Further, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case about whether state legislatures have the right to choose their own presidential electors even if the candidate they favor didn't win the popular vote in the state. This could mean that state judges and supreme courts would have no say in such an attack on democracy.

Women's right to health care. It's bad enough that so many states either have made abortion illegal or are about to do so. It's clear that if Republicans win the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2024 they'll ban abortion nationwide. Already abortion-banning red states are working on laws to prevent women from going to other states for an abortion. This is blatantly unconstitutional, but it's possible the Supreme Court would let them get away with it.

Protecting the environment. It used to be that both major political parties agreed that protecting the environment was a good thing, since everything we value -- life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness -- depends on preserving the natural systems that keep us alive and our economy functioning. In other words, conservatives used to believe in conserving our air, water, and natural resources.

No more. The Supreme Court has undermined the ability of the federal government to deal with the carbon pollution that threatens the habitability of our planet through global warming. Polls show that most Americans want to reduce human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Sadly, our ability to do that has been diminished by an out-of-control Supreme Court that is functioning not as a legal body, but as an arm of the Republican Party.

Freedom to not be shot. Being 73, I'm old enough to remember when guns were used for hunting and target practice. I grew up in a rural community where the progression was BB gun, pellet gun, .22, deer rifle. No assault rifles. Very few handguns. We not only survived, we thrived, because mass shootings in schools or anywhere else were nonexistent.

Now the Republican Party and Supreme Court have decided that it's better to deny children and other people the right not to be shot and killed than to permit reasonable gun control measures. This doesn't increase personal freedom, it limits it, since the freedom to stay alive undergirds every other freedom.

Separation of church and state. Authoritarians like India's Prime Minister Modi like state-sponsored religions, in his case, Hinduism. In our country, increasingly, it's Christianity. The Supreme Court has ruled that a football coach had the right to pray in the middle of the field after games, surrounded by his team -- ignoring the fact that voluntary private prayer is fine, but coerced public prayer isn't. Atheists, Muslims, Jews and other non-Christians on his team would have felt they had to take part in the coach's praying. That's un-American.

I'm as patriotic as anybody. But I won't be celebrating Independence Day tomorrow. Or any day until our country demonstrates that it really cares about personal freedom and independence.

Right-wing extremism responsible for 10 mass shooting deaths

Yesterday thirteen people were shot and ten killed at a Buffalo supermarket by an 18-year-old white man armed with an assault rifle and high capacity magazines.

A day after one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent American history, law enforcement officials in New York descended on the home of the accused gunman and probed disturbing hints into his behavior, as Gov. Kathy Hochul promised action on hate speech that she said spreads “like a virus.”

The suspect, Payton S. Gendron, 18, shot 13 people on Saturday afternoon at a Tops supermarket in east Buffalo, killing 10, officials said. Almost all the victims were Black — shoppers, grocery workers and a security guard bound together by little more than tragic happenstance.

But Mr. Gendron picked his target carefully, the police said, choosing an area known for its large Black population and even visiting the neighborhood the day before the attack in what authorities described as “reconnaissance.”

Clearly his motive was racial hatred. Gendron left a lengthy manifesto professing concern about the "great replacement" theory that bizarrely warns about white people being replaced by immigrants, Blacks, Jews, and Latinos.

Before embarking on a racist rampage in Buffalo on Saturday, the alleged gunman left behind a document denying membership in “any organization or group.”

“I am the sole perpetrator of this attack,” he wrote.

But the 180-page screed, which authorities are scrutinizing in connection with the massacre, leaves little doubt that the alleged perpetrator, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, belongs to a global fraternity fused by the Internet and fixated on the idea that White people are being intentionally replaced.

That idea, once relegated to the fringe, has gained currency on popular right-wing television programs and in the halls of Congress. The theory, known as the “great replacement,” has turned white nationalism into an international call to arms. The apocalyptic vision has accumulated followers during the coronavirus pandemic, which has deepened political polarization and accelerated the online flow of racist ideology.

All mass shootings are horrific. But they used to be mainly the work of deranged individuals who wanted to kill a bunch of their fellow human beings. 

Now, though, we're seeing mass shootings with a far-right political motivation. That's even scarier, since the crazy ideas motivating the killers are emanating from inside the Republican Party and right-wing media outlets like Fox News.

Tucker Carlson, notably. He's been spouting lies on his Fox show about how Democrats are encouraging illegal immigration so they can get lots of new voters, which is a version of the Great Replacement theory. This is an excerpt from the April 13 CNN story.

Obviously, Carlson was never going to apologize for or retract his remarks. But he could have chosen to ignore the controversy, move on, and let it die out. Instead, he did the opposite. Carlson opened up his show by first replaying the comments he made last week — comments in which he essentially endorsed the "great replacement" theory.

 

Then he mocked critics who were outraged he had done so. "It is amusing to see them keep at it," Carlson said of those who have called for him to be removed from Fox's air, a group that now includes the Anti-Defamation League. "They get so enraged! It's a riot!"

 

Making a mockery of those with very real concerns about his rhetoric wasn't enough for Carlson. He then went on to recite the core element of the "great replacement" theory, describing it to his millions of viewers as accurate. "Demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party's political ambitions,"

 

Carlson said. "In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country." Carlson told his audience that the "goal" is "to make you irrelevant." He said it is "provably true." Over and over again, he referenced "demographic" change.

Now that ten people have been killed by a man motivated by the lie of the Great Replacement theory, Tucker Carlson should vow that he'll never bring it up again. Of course, he won't do this. Nor will a House Republican, Elise Stefanik.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, and other GOP lawmakers came under scrutiny Sunday for previously echoing the racist “great replacement” theory that apparently inspired an 18-year-old who allegedly killed 10 people while targeting Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo.

Yet Republicans around the country are passing laws against discussing race in schools because the United States supposedly has moved beyond racial discrimination. That obviously isn't true, a fact underlined by the deaths of the 10 people in Buffalo.

Mr. Gendron’s writings were littered with racist, anti-immigrant views that claimed white Americans were at risk of being replaced by immigrants or people of color, once-fringe ideas that have been given a fuller airing in recent years by some prominent conservative commentators.

On the far right, the theory, which sometimes blames Jews for fomenting the “great replacement,” has been tied to gunmen in several other mass shootings as well as the 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va. that devolved into violence.

Our country desperately needs national gun control legislation. Sadly, the odds of that happening in Congress are slim to none, since Republicans will filibuster it in the Senate.

We also need to control the hate speech that is rampant in the Republican Party, which loves to denigrate immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and anyone else who doesn't conform to their archaic political views, including women who want to choose for themselves whether to have an abortion.

Vote for Democrats. That's the only way the United States is going to pull out of the moral tailspin Republicans have gotten us into.

Young folks, here's a tale of the not-so-good old days

Gather around the blog post kitchen table, young'uns.

(Which means just about everyone, since I'm 73, older than all but a few people reading this, but, hey, if you're a sentient Giant Sequoia, I'm a baby compared to you.)

I realize that hearing senior citizens talk about the good old days is just about the most boring thing imaginable. Not wanting to inflict that on you, I'm going to do something different.

Talk about the bad old days. 

I feel the need to do this because it wasn't all that long ago when I was a youngster just out of college who subscribed to the 1960's mantra, Don't trust anybody over 30.

Well, actually it was all that long ago, about 50 years. In that half century I've learned a few things. Not because I'm smart.

Because the sheer passage of time gives us baby boomers a perspective on where our country was way back when that impels our sometimes frantic desire to warn people about the danger of our country heading that way again.

Which is a clear and present danger, not the sort of warning my grandmother used to give childhood me, like "Never stand under a light globe where the bulb has just been changed, since the globe could fall, hit you on the head, and you're dead."

No, what I'm warning about is a very real commitment by a large share of the Republican Party to return the United States to the way things were when I was in high school, 1962-66. 

OK, not totally, obviously. The GOP doesn't possess a national time machine. We'll still have smartphones, big screen TVs, computers, and other benefits of living in the 21st century. 

What we could lack, though, may sound crazy to those who have grown up in an age of societal progress. However, let me assure you, as someone who grew up when the following were absent from the cultural landscape of the United States, that what was missing, then became a reality, can go missing again.

Meaning, progress isn't inevitable. Societies can go backward. Hard won gains can be lost. All it takes is people, and voters, becoming complacent, figuring that No way could our country ever return to...

Well, here's how things stood when I was in high school.

-- Women were second class citizens. Abortion was illegal everywhere. Girls couldn't wear pants in school. They could be cheerleaders, but could only compete in a few sports. Home economics was required. Getting a loan or credit card typically required a man's signature. Few women worked outside the home.

-- No such thing as LGBTQ rights. We knew there were homosexuals. But they were considered deviants. Any boy who seemed effeminate would be taunted with Queer! Homo! Faggot! There was zero discussion of gender identity or sexual preferences in school other than the traditional male/female. Any suggestion that gay marriage would ever be legal -- ridiculous.

-- Blacks lacked basic rights. I was six years old when the Supreme Court finally declared racial segregation in public schools to be illegal in 1954. But southern States fought the ruling for quite a few years. As late as 1963 Alabama governor George Wallace tried to stop Black students from enrolling in the University of Alabama. Racial discrimination in voting wasn't banned until 1965.

Our country has come a long way since those not-so-good old days. Problem is, there's strenuous efforts to reverse that progress by conservatives. They can't be allowed to succeed.

My fear is that younger people who have grown up without knowing anything other than equal, or almost equal, rights of women, the LGBTQ community, and Blacks will be complacent in the battle to preserve those rights against Republican efforts to turn the clock back to the 1950s and early 1960s.

Like I said, nothing is guaranteed when it comes to human rights and democracy. What seems impossible to lose can be lost. Hopefully this won't happen if enough people wake up and realize the need to preserve our hard-won social gains.

 

 

I'd like to trade Joe Biden for Volodymyr Zelensky

I'm a Democrat who is ever so thankful that Joe Biden is president rather than Donald Trump. But if I could trade Biden for President Zelensky of Ukraine, I'd make that deal without a second thought.

Zelensky is a fighter.

He's rallied the Ukrainian people behind him in their battle against Russia's invasion of their country. More: Zelensky has inspired the entire freedom-loving world by refusing to bow to the demands of Putin, an authoritarian ruler who is committing horrific war crimes in Ukraine, if not outright genocide.

Biden, by contrast, is doing OK in supporting Ukraine, but not nearly enough.

Biden is unduly afraid of Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons if the United States goes beyond sanctions and supplying military equipment to Ukraine, such as by protecting humanitarian evacuations and relief efforts via a limited no-fly zone to stop the killing of many thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

So Putin gets to draw red lines that the United States can't cross, while Biden and our NATO allies refuse to draw a very reasonable red line aimed at Putin.

Stop killing Ukrainian civilians and bombing entire cities into rubble, along with other war crimes, or the United States and NATO will force you to do that by military means.

Would that lead to World War III between the United States and Russia? Almost certainly not. Putin talks tough, but he isn't going to start a nuclear war over Ukraine. 

We're making the same mistake Europe did in the run-up to the Second World War. Assume that an authoritarian ruler, Hitler in that case, Putin in this case, will be content with merely taking over part of an adjoining country.

Didn't work then. Won't work now. 

Zelensky is absolutely correct when he says that Ukraine isn't fighting just for its own survival, but for the survival of the free world. I wish Biden would grasp that fact. If Putin succeeds in taking over part or all of Ukraine, he'll be emboldened to do the same with other countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union.

And China will feel freer to invade Taiwan, since the Biden doctrine seems to be, "If you're a nuclear power who invades a sovereign nation, we won't confront you militarily, but only by sanctions and providing arms to the country you invaded."

Pretty damn weak.

Plus, Biden initially was reluctant to give Ukraine all the weapons it needed to defend itself. Notably, a plan to have some NATO countries transfer MiG aircraft to Ukraine that Ukrainian pilots were familiar with fell through when the United States didn't want the planes sent to an American base in Germany before being flown to Ukraine.

A just-published New York Times story, "The U.S. Races to Arm Ukraine With Heavier, More Advanced Weaponry," reflects the mistake Biden made by dribbling out arms to Ukraine too slowly and cautiously.

As columns of Russian troops began pouring into Ukraine nearly two months ago, the United States and its allies started supplying Kyiv with weapons and equipment for what many expected to be a short war: sniper rifles, helmets, medical kits, encrypted communications, lots of bullets and the portable, shoulder-held Stinger and Javelin missiles that quickly became icons of the conflict.

Defying the odds, Ukraine held on to its capital and pushed Russia from the north. Now, as the Kremlin switches gears and begins a concerted effort to capture eastern Ukraine, Washington and its allies are pivoting as well, scrambling to supply Ukraine with bigger and more advanced weapons to defend itself in a grinding war.

The West is focused on sending longer-range weapons like howitzers, antiaircraft systems, anti-ship missiles, armed drones, armored trucks, personnel carriers and even tanks — the type of arms that President Biden said were tailored to stop “the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine.”

...Some argue the Americans are being too cautious.

“Seven weeks ago, they were arguing over whether to give Stinger missiles — how silly does that seem now?” said retired Lt. Gen. Frederick B. Hodges, the former top U.S. Army commander in Europe. “We have been deterred out of an exaggerated fear of what possibly could happen.”

...Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, repeatedly expresses gratitude for the aid but wants more, sooner. He admitted to being fed up with listing the same set of requirements over and over again to different national interlocutors, telling The Atlantic in Kyiv: “When some leaders ask me what weapons I need, I need a moment to calm myself, because I already told them the week before. It’s Groundhog Day. I feel like Bill Murray.”

Oscars blow it by a pitifully minor mention of Ukraine

Tonight's Oscars show was viewed around the world. It used to get hundreds of millions of watchers. Maybe that's less now.

Regardless, both those who put on the Oscars and those who won awards blew it by failing to take a much stronger stand in support of Ukraine against Russia's unprovoked invasion.

I watched every minute of the show.

I kept waiting for someone -- a presenter, an award winner, anyone -- to make some impassioned remarks about the bravery of the Ukrainian people and the need for freedom lovers everywhere to support their battle against Russia.

Instead, all we got was the bare minimum: a screen with a bunch of words that called for a moment of silence for Ukraine, along with a request to donate to Ukrainian relief.

Better than nothing. But just barely. 

I heard a lot of talk in support of deaf people, of LGBTQ people, of Black people. But there were only two verbal references to Ukraine.

After a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Godfather movies, if I recall the number of years correctly, one of the honorees said as he was leaving the stage, "Viva Ukraine." 

Wow. The Oscars ran about 40 minutes over the scheduled three hours.

So there wasn't time for a couple of minutes to honor the freedom fighters in Ukraine, who, while the Hollywood elite were congratulating themselves for being able to make movies, were risking their lives to combat the biggest invasion of a European country since World War II?

I guess not. Looks like the Oscars had decided that what the world needs now is 3 hours and 40 minutes of an award show devoted to wealthy people involved with movie-making patting themselves on the back.

The other verbal reference to Ukraine came from Amy Schumer, one of the three hosts, who said after making a humorous remark, "There's a genocide going on in Ukraine and women are losing all their rights."

Huh? Thousands of Ukrainians are indeed being killed. That arguably is a form of genocide, but it also is simply Russia bombing civilian areas rather than military targets. And I have no idea what Schumer meant by women losing all their rights.

Maybe she got Ukraine mixed up with Afghanistan, where the Taliban are indeed taking away women's rights.

Actually, many women and children in Ukraine are losing their lives, not their rights. Russia is forcing lots of Ukrainians to flee to Russia from cities being bombed by Russian forces, so I guess that could be considered a loss of rights.

I found this year's Oscars entertaining, but also deeply irritating. It astounded me that no presenter or award winner, neither of whom is at a loss for words, didn't use the world stage they found themselves on to draw attention to the horrors being inflicted on Ukraine by Russia.

Instead, I watched Will Smith rush up on stage and punch Chris Rock after Rock made a joke about Smith's wife. OK, she has hair loss, and Rock joked about that.

Chris made a comment about Jada's shaved head ... saying he couldn't wait to see 'G.I. Jane 2' -- which got some groans from the crowd, to which he just sorta shrugged off.

Chris didn't think he'd crossed a line, but Will clearly did ... because he stormed the stage and literally socked the dude in the face. A stunned Rock exclaimed, "Wow. Will Smith just smacked the s*** outta me."

The American broadcast on ABC muted, and even froze, but in other countries it continued ... and Will shouted "Keep my wife's name out your f****** mouth" twice to Chris.

Will Smith later made one of the most annoying acceptance speeches I've ever seen when he won Best Actor for his role in "King Richard." Smith kept saying that God had chosen him to do some amazing things, which apparently included punching Chris Rock and swearing at him.

Religious hypocrisy is the worst kind. Will Smith showed that tonight.

If democracy is worth fighting for in Ukraine, it is in the USA

It's too early to tell how Putin's invasion of Ukraine is going to turn out.

Currently a 40-mile long Russian military convoy is making its way toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Tough times lie ahead for the people of Ukraine, who have been fighting bravely against the stronger Russian forces.

But one thing is certain. The freedom-loving world has been inspired by the fierce determination of Ukrainians to preserve their democracy. 

Strong sanctions against Russia have been supported by most European nations, even including usually neutral Switzerland, which has frozen the accounts of Russian oligarchs and others targeted by the sanctions.

(Which is great news for everybody except criminals and authoritarians who believed their money was safe in Swiss bank accounts.)

FIFA, the soccer organization which isn't exactly known for taking strong political stands, has ruled that Russia isn't eligible to compete in World Cup matches. Likely this will sadden ordinary Russians just as much as having their credit cards no longer work. 

Today my 73-year old self was moved by a tweet about a Ukrainian man my age who said he's willing to die for his country.

That got me thinking. What are we Americans willing to do to preserve our own democracy in the face of attempts to overturn it?

Not though an invasion by an authoritarian despot, Vladimir Putin, but by followers of a homegrown would-be authoritarian despot, Donald Trump.

Those Republican sycophants are making it harder to vote in many states. They're targeting minority voters with no fear of pushback from a Supreme Court set on gutting federal election laws that protect the right to vote.

So far Congress has done nothing to prevent a repeat of the January 6, 2021 insurrectionist attempt to overturn the free and fair election that made Biden president of the United States. Conservative Democrats are teaming up with Republicans to stop steps to protect our democracy.

But many others are fighting at the local, state, and national level to fend off the clear and present dangers to American democracy. I'm hoping that the freedom fighters in Ukraine will inspire them and many others to battle as hard against authoritarianism in the United States.

While hundreds of thousands of women, children, and older men have left Ukraine, I've seen a report that 20,000 Ukrainian men who were in other European countries are returning to Ukraine to help fight the Russian invasion.

Deeply inspiring. Especially since here in the United States we're not being asked to risk our lives to save democracy, but to do some much easier things.

Vote, even if it is difficult. Support Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterms. Protest attempts to subvert our democracy. Urge politicians to pass legislation that strengthens voting rights. Contribute to organizations that register new voters and file legal suits to protect the right to vote.

This isn't as dramatic as firing a Javelin missile at a Russian tank. It's just as important though, since our democracy needs protecting as much as Ukraine's does, albeit not in the same way.

One thing we lack is a leader like Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine. He has been inspiring his people to fight the Russian invasion with all their might. Our President Biden, by contrast, has been largely absent from the fight to repel attempts to curtail or destroy our own democracy.

No matter. Eventually a leader may emerge in this country who will inspire like Zelensky has been able to do. Even if that doesn't happen, the main thing is to never give up.

Perhaps Republicans will succeed in stealing the 2022 midterm and 2024 presidential elections. If so, don't give up. If Putin manages to install a puppet government in Ukraine, the Ukrainian people will turn to guerrilla warfare. 

They won't give up just because an authoritarian has won a few battles. They won't give up until they've expended every ounce of energy fighting for democracy. We Americans need to have the same attitude.

Never give up.

Protests against vaccines and masks are super selfish

Tonight we had a meeting of the monthly Salon discussion group my wife and I are a part of.

We met via Zoom because even though some in the group, including Laurel and me, are fine with meeting in-person, others aren't.

So we do our best to accommodate those who are most wary of coming down with Covid, even though everybody in the group is fully vaccinated and boosted. 

This is called being reasonable. Also, unselfish. Doing what you want only is justified if that action isn't going to harm other people. 

I'd like to believe that most people feel the same way.

Freedom has limits. Someone might really enjoy driving while drunk, but this is illegal because of the danger to others. That handicapped parking space is conveniently located, but it needs to be reserved for those who really need it.

This also is the rationale for public health measures.

Each person has a responsibility to look out for the welfare of everybody else. Getting vaccinated and wearing a mask in indoor public spaces both protects the person doing these things, plus other people.

This evening we talked some, as we usually do, about the phenomenon of Trump. I noted how his superpower is shamelessness. We're used to leaders who try to hide their wrongdoing. Trump revels in his misdeeds.

While members of our group had some different ideas about why Trump still is so popular with Republicans (though his approval seems to be dropping), we agreed on some basic points.

Even though it's tempting to view Trump as the cause of the increase in overt racism, disdain for LGBTQ people, anti-vaccine/masking hysteria, and such, this is too simplistic.

It takes two to tango.

Trump is a master manipulator of the dark side in his followers, but he wouldn't be so successful unless there was a dark side to manipulate in a disturbingly large percentage of the Republican Party.

The protests currently happening in Canada show that Trumpist views are gaining traction in our neighbor to the north, as well as in some European countries.

I started attending protests while in college, 1966-71. Back then, as now, until Trumpism reared its ugly head, protests almost always called for a change that would benefit the common good.

End the Vietnam War. Stop unjustified police killings. Act to reduce greenhouse gases. Those were progressive causes. Conservatives had their own causes, such as the Tea Party movement that sought to reduce government taxation and wasteful spending.

I disagreed with those conservative causes, but I could understand that those espousing them sought their own vision of the common good.

In the Canadian protests, though, which are largely funded and supported by right-wingers in the United States, the main battle cry is "Freedom!" Not freedom for someone else. Not freedom for an oppressed group.

Freedom for the protesters to not have to be vaccinated, wear masks, or engage in other public health measures. They are demonstrating zero comprehension of why those measures are needed to prevent deaths, disease, and disability from exposure to Covid.

It's all about Me. Just as Trump is all about Him. Trump's shameless openness about his own selfishness gives an impetus to others to follow in his selfish footsteps.

Which don't lead to any sort of conception of the common good. No, those footsteps make a circular pattern, always facing inward to the desires of Me, Me, Me, with the welfare of other people completely irrelevant.

This is something that hasn't been seen before in American politics, nor in Canadian politics, I'm pretty sure.

A large share of a major political party being captivated by the notion that freedom isn't something to be fought for to benefit others, but solely to allow those protesting to be able to do whatever the hell they want, even if this harms their fellow humans.

MDMA research shows war on drugs is absurd

Sadly, I've never tried MDMA, otherwise known as Ecstasy or Molly. If I had, maybe I wouldn't have said sadly, since MDMA is a feel-good drug due to its ability to induce a massive release of serotonin, creating a feeling of well-being, love, joy.

In his book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion," Sam Harris describes an experience he had at the age of 19, taking MDMA with a friend in 1987.

The setting of our experience bore little resemblance to the conditions of Dionysian abandon under which MDMA is now often consumed. We were alone in a house, seated across from each other on opposite ends of a couch, and engaged in quiet conversation as the chemical worked its way into our heads.

Unlike other drugs with which we were by then familiar (marijuana and alcohol), MDMA produced no feeling of distortion in our senses. Our minds seemed completely clear. 

In the midst of this ordinariness, however, I was suddenly struck by the knowledge that I loved my friend. This shouldn't have surprised me -- he was, after all, one of my best friends. However, at that age I was not in the habit of dwelling on how much I loved the men in my life. 

Now I could feel that I loved him, and this feeling had ethical implications that suddenly seemed as profound as they now sound pedestrian on this page: I wanted him to be happy.

...The interesting thing about this final shift in perspective is that it was not driven by any change in the way I felt. I was not overwhelmed by a new feeling of love. The insight had more the character of a geometric proof: It was as if, having glimpsed the properties of one set of parallel lines, I suddenly understood what must be common to them all.

...The experience was not of love growing but of its being no longer obscured. Love was -- as advertised by mystics and crackpots through the ages -- a state of being. How had we not seen this before? And how could we overlook it ever again?

Sounds great. Sign me up for some MDMA!

Oh, there's a problem. According to an article in the February 2022 issue of Scientific American, "A Psychedelic for Trauma," this happened after MDMA began to be used as part of psychotherapy with people who had distressing memories.

In 1985 the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) classified MDMA as a Schedule I substance, making its possession a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The National Institutes of Health subsequently spent two decades funding research that suggested MDMA is neurotoxic and often lethal.

Which isn't true, as a bit of Googling easily reveals.

Most people who have a toxic reaction to MDMA got an adulterated version of the drug. This is what happens when a drug is made illegal. People still use it, but they don't get the pure drug, since it is unregulated. The Drug Policy Alliance says in relation to overdosing on MDMA:

“Overdose” refers to taking a higher than appropriate dose of a medicine or drug, which can happen with MDMA, but is extremely rare. It is much more likely that a problem would occur as a result of MDMA use with contraindicated medications (such as MAOI anti-depressants), preexisting health conditions, overexertion, or dehydration. Given the highly adulterated molly market, it’s also more likely to see an unidentified substance cause problems, rather than MDMA itself.

The Scientific American story by Jennifer Mitchell describes a key reason MDMA got such a bad reputation. 

These early studies indicated that MDMA can promote long-lasting restructuring of serotonin-containing nerve fibers, but they also suggested that such changes occurred only in high doses and were reversible over time.

Then along came George Ricaurte, a neurologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who made a name for himself by touting the alleged neurotoxic and lethal effects of MDMA. Ricaurte claimed that "even one drop of MDMA can lead to permanent brain damage."

His findings, proclaiming that MDMA could ravage the brain and leave nothing but damaged fibers in its wake, were published in the Journal Science and used time and again by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to support the war on drugs.

These data were later retracted after it was revealed that amphetamine, not MDMA, had caused the reported neurotoxicity.

But it has taken us years to get beyond sensationalist antidrug propaganda posters in which phrases such as "This is your brain on Ecstasy" were splashed atop artificially colored brain scans, making it look as if MDMA, as one DEA official put it, "turns your brain into Swiss cheese."

Mitchell is both hopeful and appropriately cautious about the current efforts to restore MDMA as a therapeutic drug for people suffering from PTSD, depression, anxiety, and other mental problems. She writes:

At 15 study sites across three counties, working with more than 70 different therapists and with study participants with childhood trauma, depression, and a treatment-resistant subtype of PTSD, we have obtained incredibly promising results.

...And although there had been concern that administering new medication to people with suicidal ideation could worsen their problems, MDMA-assisted therapy did not increase measures of suicidal thinking or behavior. 

MDMA also did not demonstrate any measurable misuse potential (which should compel us to reconsider the reasoning behind the war on drugs and scare tactics of the 1990s).

For sure.

I'm happy that I live in Oregon, a state that has legalized marijuana, approved psilocybin (magic mushrooms) for therapeutic use, and is the first state to decriminalize possession of all drugs and greatly increase access to supportive health services.

It's time -- past time, really -- for the United States to say yes to drugs. Adults should be able to purchase legal, well-regulated drugs that they want to use either for pleasure or therapy/healing/self-improvement.

It's crazy that alcohol and nicotine can be bought everywhere, even though these substances are much more destructive than most of the drugs still under tight control by the federal government.

Nothing to celebrate on this Martin Luther King day

I was nineteen years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968. When it happened I was on a sophomore semester abroad in Zadar, Yugoslavia along with a couple of dozen other students from San Jose State College and a few professors.

I remember local people coming up to me and my classmates expressing sympathy for King's death in broken English. The same thing happened a few months later when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on June 6, 1968.

That year, 1968, was a dark time for the United States. So is 2022. It's depressing that 54 years after King was murdered, our country is still struggling mightily to preserve the voting rights that he and other Black leaders fought for so bravely and vigorously.

Yet here we are, on Martin Luther King day, with the Senate scheduled to begin debating two voting rights bills that have a vanishingly small chance of becoming law. 

Senate Democrats plan to press ahead this week with an effort to push new voting rights protections through Congress, in an all but doomed attempt to enact a key piece of President Biden’s agenda that has been undercut by members of his own party.

The Senate on Tuesday will begin to debate legislation that combines two separate bills already passed by the House — the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — and folds them into an unrelated measure. The move would allow the Senate to bring the bill directly to the floor, avoiding an initial filibuster.

But that strategy would still allow Republicans to block it from coming to a final vote, and Democrats lack the unanimous support needed in their party to change Senate rules to muscle through the legislation themselves. Still, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said late last week that Democrats would forge ahead anyway, forcing Republicans to publicly declare their opposition to the bill.

“We all have to be recorded at this moment in time about where are we in protecting the right to vote,” Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “Right now, it doesn’t look like it has the votes to pass, but we’re going to cancel our Martin Luther King Day recess and be there this week because we think it’s so important for the country.”

Well, if it was so important for the country, why did it take a year after Biden was inaugurated for Democrats to get around to seriously pressing for passage of the voting rights bills? Biden has spoken dozens of times about coronavirus and infrastructure legislation. He's spoken exactly twice about voting rights, with one of those speeches last week.

It's easy to understand why Blacks who were key to electing Biden are so disappointed at his lukewarm commitment to voting rights. Politico says in today's Playbook:

For decades, MARTIN LUTHER KING III has heard his father’s words invoked by politicians across the ideological spectrum on behalf of all sorts of positions — even ones antithetical to his beliefs.

“Everyone believes or says they believe in the words and values of Dad, but they try to extract various portions to make it fit their narrative,” MLK III told me on Sunday. “I have to constantly challenge people and say, ‘No, that's not what dad meant; this is what Dad meant.’ I have to push back because every politician, every elected official is going to be out making statements about how ‘I loved Dr. King,’ ‘I support Dr. King,’ and then … they’re voting against voting rights.”

That’s why today, as Americans mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the family of the late civil rights leader is cutting through the usual lofty invocations to make a specific ask: “No celebration without legislation.”

“[CORETTA SCOTT KING], when she was working so many years to make sure that there was a King holiday, her vision of it always was a day of action — a day on, not a day off,” ARNDREA WATERS KING, MLK III’s wife, told me. “There was no way that we, in good conscience, could celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. this year without [progress on] the legislation that was the cornerstone of his legacy.”

Today, Arndrea, MLK III and their 13-year-old daughter will take part in the “D.C. Peace Walk” across Washington’s Frederick Douglass Bridge and hold a press conference with House Speaker NANCY PELOSI and Congressional Black Caucus Chair JOYCE BEATTY (D-Ohio) aimed at ramping up pressure on Democrats to move voting rights legislation forward ahead of a planned Senate vote on Tuesday. That’s an uphill effort: Neither the Freedom to Vote Act nor the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act have anywhere close to 60 votes in the Senate, and Sens. KYRSTEN SINEMA and JOE MANCHIN aren’t budging in their opposition to reforming the filibuster.

Be that as it may, the Kings don’t hold moderates on the Hill solely responsible for the lack of forward movement.

“What we’ve seen with President [JOE] BIDEN is what happens when he puts his full force and power behind an issue like infrastructure. What we want to see is that same power and passion being put behind voting rights,” said Arndrea Waters King. “We hope that [Monday] is a working day for President Biden.”

The Kings know that the short-term outlook doesn’t look good. But they see keeping the faith — and pushing it forward, no matter the odds — as central to maintaining the late Dr. King’s legacy.

“Had he lived, we would be a fundamentally different place,” MLK III said of his father. “[But] if he just arrived today as a 93-year-old man, he would certainly be very frustrated, but not deterred. He understood that you had to look at the long game. He’d certainly be disappointed that we seem to be going around in a circle. … Not only have we been down this road so many times, we are people who will not give up. We're not going to give in, we're not going to give out.”

I admire that determination to never give up.

But the sad truth is that Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have been working hugely harder to make it more difficult for minorities to vote than Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats have been working to protect voting rights.

The time to start a full court press to pass voting rights legislation was the day after Biden took office. Now the Democratic push to do this is too little and too late, which is infuriating.

Lastly, if you're a progressive like me who supports voting rights, and you're open to reading something  really depressing, check out "How Manchin and Sinema Completed a Conservative Vision" in The Atlantic. Ron Brownstein lays out how dismal the future looks for voting rights, ending with:

The one force that was best positioned to resist Roberts’s zealous vision was the ability of Congress and a president to sign new laws reasserting federal voting protections. And now Manchin and Sinema, combined with the impenetrable Senate Republican opposition, have blocked that route—possibly for years. Without federal legislation restoring a baseline set of national voting rights, “it’s hard to imagine the political process delivering any sense of fairness that represents the will of the majority,” Nelson said. “I think the ramifications will endure for generations. It is truly that consequential.”

With crucial help from Manchin and Sinema, Roberts’s triumph now appears complete. And that could trigger a decade of struggle over access to the ballot, unmatched since the days of Jim Crow segregation.

"Woke Racism" is a great book

Today I finished reading John McWhorter's terrific book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.

McWhorter is black. He teaches linguistics, American studies, and music history at Columbia University. He's appalled at the excessive wokeness of both blacks and whites who inhabit the far left side of the political spectrum and view race relations through a biased perspective.

Many people will agree with what he writes in Woke Racism. I do. Others will disagree with him. That's fine also. My goal is sharing these excerpts from the book is to encourage people to buy the book and read it.

McWhorter makes a strong case for woke racism being a serious problem. He writes well in an engaging fashion. Enjoy these passages, understanding that a mere 1,000 words out of the entire book doesn't do justice to McWhorter's fuller arguments that are encapsulated below.

Author and essayist Joseph Bottum has found the proper term, and I will adopt it here. We will term these people the Elect.

They do think of themselves as bearers of a wisdom, granted them for any number of reasons -- empathic learning, life experience, maybe even intelligence. But they see themselves as having been chosen, as it were, by one or some of these factors, as understanding something most do not.

"The Elect" is also good in implying a certain smugness, which, sadly, is an accurate depiction.

...One response to a book like this might be to own that Electism is a religion. You might consider it a better one than, say, believing that God's son died for our sins and was reborn, waiting to envelope you in his eternal grace if you believe in him.

This new religion is about countering racism. Who could be against that?

But we must ask whether the Elect approach actually shows signs of making any difference in the lives of black people, other than by making educated white people infantilize them. While purportedly "dismantling racist structures," the Elect religion is actually harming the people living in those structures.

It is a terrifyingly damaging business. Here is how Elect ideology does not genuinely care about the welfare of black people.

You are to turn a blind eye to black kids getting jumped by other ones in school.

You are to turn a blind eye to black undergraduates cast into schools where they are in over their heads, and into law schools incapable of adjusting to their level of preparation in a way that will allow them to pass the bar exam.

You are to turn a blind eye to the willful dimness of condemning dead people for moral lapses normal in their time, as if they were still alive.

You are to turn a blind eye to the folly in the idea of black "identity" as all about what whites think rather than about what black people themselves think.

You are to turn a blind eye to lapses in black intellectuals' work, because black people lack white privilege.

You are to turn a blind eye to the fact that social history is complex, and instead pretend that those who tell you that all racial discrepancies are a result of racism are evidencing brilliance.

You are to turn a blind eye to innocent children taught to think in these ways practically before they can hold a pencil.

...Electism calls for everyone who isn't white to found their primary sense of self on not being white and knowing whites don't quite "get" me. 

Electism forbids us non-whites from being individual selves, out of an idea that white racism is so onerous that our self-definition must be fashioned against it, despite that this vastly exaggerates the role of racism in most black lives -- including that police brutality, while appalling, is just one of thousands of types of experiences one goes through from cradle to grave, if at all.

Your Elect friend may claim that I am distorting what they believe. Ask them to specify just how it does so -- and the word-salad answer they craft while looking over your shoulder will show you that I am not.

...Let's pull the curtain back. Is the reason black kids often think of school as white that white people today don't like them, or that the system is somehow set against black kids learning? No. That analysis makes no sense, period.

Only a heedless, numb kind of fealty, a quiet refusal to engage the actual individuals we are talking about, would insist that "racism" is why a black kid, decades after 1966, gives a black nerd trouble for studying hard.

Racism sparked this problem originally, to be sure, but the solution today cannot be to wave a magic wand and "eliminate racism," because the teachers who exerted racism upon black kids three generations ago are now mostly dead.

...To be Elect is to insist that unequal outcomes mean unequal opportunity, which is false. The misimpression misdirects our efforts at change, by inculcating in us a blindness to how a society actually operates. The insistence on this mantra makes us dumb.

...On racism, Elect philosophy teaches black people that cries of weakness are a form of strength. It teaches us that in the richness of this thing called life, the most interesting thing about you is that the ruling class doesn't like you enough.

It teaches us that to insist that black people can achieve under less than perfect conditions is ignorant slander. It teaches us that we are the first people in the history of the species for whom it is a form of heroism to embrace the slogan "Yes, we can't!"

Elect philosophy is, in all importance, a form of racism in itself. Black America has met nothing so disempowering -- including the cops -- since Jim Crow.

...Nota bene: Don't get sidetracked by that person on the other side of the dinner table who says that the Elect are not a real threat compared with overtly racist right-wing extremists. Revolutions are always "messy," one hears, with the implication that in the grand scheme of things, the Elect's current reign is just a matter of the left working out some kinks.

Few people settling for this view would call the alt-right just "messy," and my simple answer is: Imagine the Elect mob coming after you.

If your emotion amid the "mess" of that would be terror, then it's a conclusive demonstration that this is something we need to pay serious attention to. Terror becomes a good thing neither when it comes from the left nor even when it comes from black people. 

Reason must prevail. This is the heart of the Enlightenment. The abolitionists knew it; Civil Rights leaders knew it; today's liberals know it. Only the Elect propose that rationality, where it discomfits them, is mere "whiteness."

It is neither progress nor messy for people to lose their jobs and reputations for not putting the overturning of power differentials at the very core of every single thing they ever do, express, or feel.

It is neither progress nor messy for black people to be taught that our main value is not as individuals, but in how articulately we play victim in order to help whites feel good about themselves in feeling guilty about it.

The Elect is not merely some mess. The Elect is a scourge and must be treated as such.

Supply chain woe: we can't get a part for our broken washing machine

I'm not allowed to use our washing machine, since my wife (correctly) doesn't trust me to handle clothes with the proper water temperature and dryer settings.

But ever since our fairly new Maytag decided that it would be a fun joke to start a washing cycle, then turn off when it got to the rinse mode, Laurel hasn't been able to use the washing machine either. 

She searched our files and found that, as she remembered, we did indeed buy an extended warranty from Kelly's. Sweet, we thought. It wasn't hard to find the "Parts and Service" page on the Kelly's web site.

Which had some optimistic language.

Appliance Hospital is family owned and operated since 1947, Appliance & Refrigeration Hospital is dedicated to providing HONEST, REASONABLE, RELIABLE and REPUTABLE service to our customers in the Seattle, Spokane, Portland, Vancouver, Salem, and Bend areas.

...Our service vehicles stock a large array of factory recommended parts and equipment to quickly return your product to top operating performance.

Please give our knowledgeable, courteous service professionals an opportunity to restore your product to its proper operation. You can count on us!

Likely Appliance Hospital usually does live up to its claim that they can quickly handle a repair. It did take five days for a repairman to show up, but that was fine.

Laurel had gone to a laundromat in the meantime. Not fun, but tolerable given that we expected our washing machine to be fixed promptly.

However, the repair guy said it needed a circuit board. They didn't have one in stock. He said to wait three days, then see if the circuit board was available. Unfortunately, when Laurel phoned she was told that the part had been ordered. No word on when it would come in.

So now we're stuck with an American-made Maytag washer that's unusable for an indefinite future. There's no way to tell whether the laundromat will be Laurel's not-so-favorite hangout for another few days, few weeks, or few months. 

Almost certainly we're a victim of the Supply Chain Hell that has been causing so much disruption.

I'm sure circuit boards are complex. Probably even though Maytag washing machines are made in this country, many or most of the parts for them come from China or somewhere other than the United States.

A neighbor Laurel encountered on a walk said that he's been waiting quite a while for a dishwasher part. He's been washing dishes by hand, something that's a lot tougher to do with clothes. His HVAC upgrade also is on hold due to a lack of materials.

President Biden is working to get our supply chains functioning like they used to. But there's only so much he can do, since mostly this is in the hands of private businesses.

It's just aggravating for so many people to be impacted by shortages when the economy otherwise is doing well. 

I'll copy in a message I got recently from the person in charge of a Kickstarter project I helped fund, being attracted to the lightweight shoes promised by the project. This guy tells a fascinating story of what it's like for a small business owner in these days of supply chain problems.

Dear All, 

The following is a summary of what are the supply issues affecting the market and in particular the footwear market. The following information was collected from different sources but mainly from the Footwear News Corporation (https://footwearnews.com/) but all of the information is available online.

Last year around March when the Great Plague was upon us, nearly every industry, in nearly every country in the world, practically shut down.

And many businesses went bust, never to return.

Eighteen months later the businesses that survived have largely reopened but the reboot process has been riddled with critical errors and system failures.

For example, right now there are countless businesses in industries from retail to manufacturing that are experiencing severe labor shortages. Supply chains around the world are breaking down, resulting in product shortages and major transportation bottlenecks.

The end result of this dumpster fire is that prices are soaring. And I wanted to take this opportunity to connect some of the dots to help explain some of these important trends with regards to the delivery of the Sockwa X10 product.

So let’s revisit March 2020 again when everything shut down. You probably recall that dozens of large companies declared bankruptcy, like Nieman Marcus, GNC, JC Penny, etc.

But there were other companies that went bust which most people have probably never heard of. They were in more mundane, less sexy industries… like manufacturing...the closure of these unsexy industries created supplier shortages. Though their demise was hardly noticed, it turns out they would have a significant impact on the global economy.

Supply has fallen. Last March when a large number of manufacturers went out of business, no one noticed and no one cared. And this production capacity cannot be simply turned on again with a flip of a switch. It takes a lot of effort to resurrect a bankrupt factory, to re-hire and re-train workers.

This trend is worldwide -- even foreign factories (Chinese) have closed, and those that remain open are struggling to retain workers and operate under strict COVID protocols. Manufacturing efficiency is way down as a result, so they’re not producing enough supply to keep up with demand and the big companies like Nike and Adidas are gobbling up whatever capacity any footwear manufacturer that is still in business can offer. Not much production room for the little guys!

Then there are the actual shipping problems:

Shipping Container Pricing -- shipping container prices have exploded. From March 2020 up to March 2021 a 40ft container could be purchased for +/- $2,500-$3,000. Today's opening price is $25,000 - $30,000 per container and there is still no guarantee that you will win the price auction on those containers available.  This increase in price means that shipping your product is now 6-10x more expensive than estimated depending on the size of the product.  We estimated $5 which was realistic when we launched, now we are over $30 to ship the same product.

Shipping Delays -- then there are the crazy delays evident in almost every port in the world, that prevent container ships from delivering their cargo.

A range of factors, including COVID rules and union regulations, means there’s a shortage of maritime crew to operate the vessels. There’s also a shortage of dockworkers, truck drivers, forklift operators, etc. at the ports.

The supply chain chaos has been brewing since the beginning of the global COVID-19 pandemic and has been building momentum ever since. Industry insiders who have first-hand exposure to its ever-changing variables and reach admit they’ve never seen anything like it before. And these experts remain unclear about when the eye of the current Supply Chain storm may finally pass by the footwear, apparel, and textile industries.

The supply chain, shipping and logistics storm, which has battered many industries since the pandemic commenced, increased in velocity during the Summer of 2021 with container shortages, port logjams, surging shipping costs that have forced some brands to resort to air freight, and finally a shutdown of key Asian sourcing factories due to virus spread among workers in Asia.

These factors will result in shipping delays for holiday 2021 and Spring/Summer 2022, late and/or limited deliveries to retailers, possible product shortages on key items and higher costs for consumers looking to snare the season’s hottest products.

Athletic giants Nike and Adidas are not going unscathed by the situation. Like the Sockwa X10, Nike & Adidas are facing problems beyond securing higher-priced container space on shipping vessels.

Crocs’ McNelly sums up the harsh realities of today’s logistics and supply chain climate. “[Vendors] are paying more for less — for less predictability, less space and less movement,” she says, predicting “it’s going to take a long time to get back to the new normal.”

I appreciate that there are some individual pledgers that are not at all happy with me for not communicating more, not producing a survey that collects your size and your address and yes I am late in delivering the product that you pledged for.  I honestly did not foresee the gravity of the above global production and shipping issues when I launched the Sockwa X10 campaign.

I believe that everyone who pledged for the Sockwa X10 understands or has access to information about what has happened since March 2020 and what is happening in the world right now.

So where does the above leave us now regarding the Sockwa X10 crowdfunding campaign?

Production: 75% of the order is ready to ship, we are just waiting for the insoles to come out of production which should now be within the next two weeks (we have had production delays for this factory too).

Shipping: As the price of shipping has increased x10 since we launched the campaign, there are two choices. One is to add an additional $25 to each pair shipped or to wait for the shipping container prices to get back to the levels or similar on which the campaign was launched.  For those that ordered more than one pair, the shipping price of extra $25/pair would reduce for the 2nd, 3rd pair etc.

I have been holding off on sending the survey in the past couple of weeks as I tried to work out how to present this extra shipping scenario in the pledge management software and also crossing my fingers that there might be some sign that shipping container prices stop increasing - I am still working on the survey presentation presently.

Nobody is or was prepared for what is happening regarding these shipping costs and shipping problems, never mind the production issues.

I still need to know sizes, delivery addresses etc because I need to know how much textile to produce for the remaining 25% of the orders.

I will try my best to either complete the pledge management survey in the next few days or find a way of getting people to enter their details onto our Shopify website.  Worst case scenario, I can get you to email me the details.

I am very sorry guys, I'm 54 years old and I have been managing my own businesses for the past 21 years and before that I ran other peoples' businesses for 10 years and I have never experienced anything vaguely close to what has happened since February/March 2021.

I appreciate that there are companies that have $millions more revenue than mine that have gone bust in the past 18 months but that doesn't help me sleep every night.  My company has not gone bust and I still intend to supply everyone who pledged with their product order.

Thank you for your understanding.  I know the above is not what anyone wants to read but it is a reality.  I will update again before the end of this month. Hopefully, I will have some better news to provide.

Kind regards,

Patrick

Nuance is what our country needs now

There's way too many Americans unduly confident right now.

They're sure they're right about Covid policies, the just-ended war in Afghanistan, racial justice, abortion, and a host of other issues that mostly get reduced to short sound bites, pithy Twitter tweets, brief Facebook posts, and other manifestations of our desire to appear absolutely certain about subjects that demand a word currently out of fashion. 

Nuance. 

Which means, a subtle distinction, an awareness of delicate shadings (as of meaning, feelings. or value). How did we get to such a dearth of nuance among a large proportion of our citizenry? 

It's tempting to blame it on Trump. He was a master of anti-nuance.

The crowds who adored his blunt, cocky, in-your-face style of speaking didn't want a political meal marked by difficult-to-describe subtle flavors. They wanted red meat cooked to a crisp over blazing hot coals, doused with BBQ sauce that hit the taste buds like a giant pickup truck rolling over liberal sacred cows.

But that's too simplistic.

The United States seems to bounce back and forth between presidents with greater or lesser nuance.  George H.W. Bush was less nuanced than Bill Clinton who was more nuanced than George W. Bush who was less nuanced than Barack Obama who was (way) more nuanced than Donald Trump who was (way) less nuanced than Joe Biden.

Those "way's" reflect the fact that Trump represented a recent peak of simplistic crudity, yet his becoming president was more a result of Americans relishing a brash overconfident macho style than a cause of the 2016-20 decline in national nuance.

There's always been an anti-intellectual bent among many Americans. Or perhaps better put, an anti-reasonableness bent. We tend to distrust politicians who are open to changing their minds. The sentiment, "I was for it before I was against it," followed John Kerry around in his 2004 presidential campaign like a flip-flop death knell.

Nuance, though, also can be a matter of style. 

Usually it is those on the far left or far right who cling most tenaciously to ideological positions. However, there's not much difference between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren when it comes to policies. But I view Warren as more nuanced because she has a gentler, more thoughtful speaking style than Sanders. 

(Unfortunately, this could be one reason why we've never had a female president, since women tend to rate higher on the Nuance Scale. Our taste in national leaders tends to run toward those who express themselves with the most outspoken certainty, though Obama's deliberate speaking style certainly didn't hurt him.)

I readily confess that when Trump was president, I relished hard-hitting attacks on the Idiot in Chief. I felt like firing crudities at Trump was justified when he couldn't open his mouth without insulting someone. Or an entire country. 

Now, though, I'm realizing how much we all have lost -- liberals and conservatives alike -- by engaging in rhetoric that fails to reflect the complex nuances of most issues. Moderation isn't just a valuable political perspective. It also points to the fact that often, if not usually, the nuanced truth lies in-between simplistic extremes.

One of the reasons I'm hooked on the Gabriel Allon character in Daniel Silva's thriller/espionage series is that Allon is a deeply nuanced Israeli assassin. Who in addition to being a highly skilled killer is one of the world's top restorers of damaged paintings.

In every book, Silva has "good guys" and "bad guys." But they aren't caricatures.

Allon has doubts. He makes mistakes. He tries to understand the motivations of the Muslims who want to do Jews and Israel harm. Often Silva presents Palestinians in a totally sympathetic manner, even though his main character is fiercely devoted to his work in the Israeli intelligence agency.

I also read more typical books in this genre. They can be more entertaining, yet not as satisfying, because Daniel Silva presents the reader with hugely more nuance.

This is akin to how I'm able to enjoy reading both People magazine and The New Yorker.

One entertains. The other feeds my hunger for nuance. The September 13, 2021 issue of The New Yorker beautifully reflected this. Three lengthy stories, all in the same issue, each presenting a complex issue in a wonderfully intelligent fashion.

"The Sex Wars: Feminism and its fault lines" is a seven-page discussion of how the single word feminism contains many shades of meaning I wasn't previously aware of. For example, the story told me about the debate in feminist circles over transgender people, with some feminists arguing that transgender females aren't truly women, while others vehemently disagree. 

And I hadn't realized that "butch lesbians" are looked down upon by certain feminists because they embrace a masculinity that pays homage to the patriarchy. Naturally other feminists consider that however women want to look and behave is up to them.

"The Other Afghan Women" is a marvelous twelve page look at how the American occupation of Afghanistan affected women in rural and urban areas much differently. While women in Kabul were enjoying modern liberal freedoms, women in the conservative countryside faced the chaos of war: drone strikes, bombardments, endless fighting.

Those rural women welcomed the return to order that came with the Taliban victory and the American withdrawal. It isn't that they don't want more rights; they just see that those rights need to come from within Islam, not from the barrel of an American gun.

"Force of Nature" asks in eleven pages, Can Kathryn Paige Harden convince the left that genes matter -- and the right that they're not everything? Harden is a brilliant psychology professor who earned tenure at age thirty-two. She specializes in behavior genetics, "which investigates the influence of genes on character traits (neuroticism, agreeableness) and life outcomes (educational attainment, income, criminality)."

Harden, a progressive, gets a lot of grief from academics who view any research into the effect of genes on one's success in life as racist, disgusting, even Gestapo-like. Yet she perseveres, because she knows that learning the truth is more important than clinging to an outmoded "nature vs. nurture" dichotomy. 

As with most things, studying behavioral reality requires a "both...and" mentality rather than a simplistic "either...or" outlook. In short, nuance.

Oregon's changing demographics -- a Salem City Club talk

Today it was refreshing to hear Ethan Sharygin speak to the Salem City Club about Oregon's changing demographics. As befits the Director of the Population Research Center at Portland State University, Sharygin was 100% factual and 0% political. 

These days that ratio often is completely reversed, especially when the fact-challenged side of the political spectrum is doing the talking. So my mind relished the data-filled slides Sharygin shared. Because of Covid, we met via Zoom, which made it easy for me to grab screenshots of most of his slides.

In the course of introducing Sharygin, Russ Beaton made an interesting observation about how things have changed in Oregon during the past 133 years. In 1888 the Oregonian newspaper expressed a hope that the wealth of rural areas spills into the cities. 

Now the situation is pretty much the opposite. 

Oregon's population has been growing at 1% a year recently, while the United States as a whole has been growing at 0.7%. This enabled Oregon to snag an additional Congressional seat, leaving us with six rather than five.

I wasn't aware that generally the rate of population growth slows as the population increases. The figure above shows that Oregon's growth rate has been declining over the past 110 years. The 1900's and 1940's were marked by rapid growth in Oregon, while the 1980's saw slow growth. The gray circles are other states. In the 1900's some states had close to 8% annual growth. Recently, most states cluster around 0 to 2% annual growth.

While Oregon grew faster than the nation as a whole from 2010-20, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, and Utah grew even faster. But, hey, we whipped California's population growth ass.

Some demographic truisms are obvious. Population change is a function of births minus deaths, plus net migration. This chart shows that net migration is a volatile factor in how many people Oregon gains or loses each year. In the 1980's Oregon's population declined in three years, largely because of people leaving the state. In recent years net migration into Oregon has been going down.

This slide shows how Oregon's race/ethnicity breakdown changed from the 2010 census (left column) to the 2020 census (middle column), with the right column showing the difference between 2010 and 2020. The white population declined from 79% to 72%. Hispanic/Latino rose from 12% to 14%. Black/African American rose slightly from 1.7% to 1.9%. I don't understand the combinations of races data very well, so will let that part of the slide speak for itself.

Compared to rural areas in other parts of the country, the population in rural Oregon has been holding up fairly well. Only one county lost population, Grant, while Deschutes (where Bend is) grew the fastest. Marion County grew by 10%. Sadly, in the competition for Oregon's second largest city after Portland, Eugene (176,000)  beat Salem (175,000).

Looking at the Salem Metropolitan area, the population 18 and older increased from 74% to 76%, with a corresponding decline in those under age 18. Vacant or seasonally occupied housing units went from 6.6% to 4.7%, putting pressure on housing affordability/availability. However, Sharygin noted that the average household size has been quite steady, which apparently indicates that, say, there aren't large numbers of young people living with their parents because they can't find a place of their own.

In the Salem Metro area, the white population declined from 71% to 64%, while Hispanic/Latino increased from 22% to 25%.  The Black/African American population rose slightly from 0.8% to 1.0%.

The next slides are data from the American Community Survey of 2% of the United States population, which replaced the census long form.

Sharygin highlighted that Californians migrating to Oregon are most likely to settle in SW Oregon and Deschutes County. Overall, 46% of Oregonians were born in Oregon. I'm part of the 22% who were born somewhere other than Oregon, California, or a Pacific region state (in my case, Massachusetts). Sharygin noted that there has been a decline in migration from Mexico.

The BIPOC population (Black, Indigenous, other Person of Color) percentage is much higher among younger Oregonians. Sharygin didn't discuss the reason for this. Likely it has to do with birth rates and migration patterns. 

The life expectancy at birth for Oregonians is 82 years for women and 77 years for men. Fortunately for us 72 year old men, the life expectancy for those who make it to my age is higher. The Covid crisis should result in a further flattening of the life expectancy curve. 

The U.S. birth rate is 1.7 per woman, while Oregon's birth rate is 1.5. This puts pressure on programs like Social Security that assume population growth.

Redistricting relies on census data. This slide shows three House districts in the Salem area with their 2020 population, which needs to be equalized.

This is one proposal for redrawing the district boundaries to get an approximately equal population in each district. 

Sharygin ended with this slide, which shows where people can get more detailed census data and redistricting maps.

Afghanistan is horrible, but Biden is doing right thing

For the past few days I've been agonizing over how I feel about the situation in Afghanistan.

It pains me that the horrific scenes of panicked people at the Kabul airport trying to flee their country are happening on Biden's watch, since I view him as hugely more competent than Trump, and so far he's mostly done the right things as president.

Last night my daughter, Celeste, and I talked by phone. Even though we're both progressives, much of our conversation centered on what was happening in Afghanistan. 

Almost certainly the Taliban takeover will doom Afghan women and girls to subjugation under harsh interpretations of Islamic law. Which is beyond sad. And we worried about how the chaotic evacuation of Americans after an unexpectedly swift collapse of the Afghan military will impact the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election.

Celeste and I agreed that Biden had screwed-up. It felt weird for us to be so down on the action of a Democratic president we both strongly support, but that's how I felt yesterday.

Today, though, I'm more inclined to look favorably on what the Biden administration has done with the Afghanistan pullout. Here's why.

This afternoon I watched Biden's address to the nation, along with a Defense Department press briefing. Biden did a great job explaining why it made sense to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan. There's no doubt in my mind that both Trump and Biden are correct in ordering this to happen.

(That's one of the few times I've used "Trump" and "correct" in the same sentence.)

Over the past twenty years the United States gave Afghanistan every opportunity to become a better country. We invested huge amounts of money in building roads, schools, other infrastructure. Over $80 billion went to the Afghan military. They got high tech weapons, an air force, training of an army far larger than Taliban forces.

Yet the Afghan military crumpled like a sheet of tissue paper in the past few weeks. The weapons our country gave them now are in the hands of the Taliban. Biden is absolutely correct when he said that it wouldn't matter if the United States stayed for another few months or another few years.

The collapse of the Afghan military proved that withdrawing all American forces was the right thing to do. Corruption and incompetence among Afghan leaders showed that Afghanistan squandered the support the United States poured into that country since 2001.

Our own military deserves a lot of blame also. Just as in Vietnam, our generals painted overly rosy pictures of how well the fight against the Taliban was going, and how strong the Afghan forces were. Sure, the soldiers who fought in Afghanistan were brave.

But in the end we have to face a harsh truth: their efforts were largely wasted. Soon after our invasion of Afghanistan, the mission shifted from hunting the 9/11 attackers to nation-building -- something the United States is really crappy at.

Just as in Iraq, we wrongly assume that Islamic countries want to be just like us: diverse, democratic, materialistic. We  thought Afghanistan could be remade in our own image. Instead, Afghanistan pretty much remained the same, a nation beset with corruption whose people either tolerate the Taliban or actively support fundamentalist Islamic rule.

So there's no doubt Biden was correct to withdraw all American forces. The only question is whether he botched that withdrawal. I found Biden's speech and the Defense Department press conference persuasive in that regard also.

Biden said that Afghan leaders didn't want him to move rapidly on giving Afghan interpreters and others who helped the United States visas to leave the country, because this would have demoralized the Afghan military. Sure, it turned out that likely nothing could have made the Afghan military a worse fighting force than it already was, but this wasn't known at the time.

It does seem like our intelligence services should have been more aware of how rapidly the Afghan army would surrender to the Taliban. However, as a general said at the press conference, it's a truism that battle plans last as long as the first shot, then have to be revised.

I'm bothered by how difficult it will be now to get Afghans who worked with the United States out of the country.

However, it's hard to fault the Biden administration for not doing this sooner. Hindsight always is 20-20. Unfortunately, I doubt that the optimism of those who want us to get tens of thousands of Afghans out of the country in the next weeks and months is justified.

It's hard to believe that the Taliban will allow interpreters and their families to line up outside the Kabul airport and file onto waiting planes. Thus it's a undeniable tragedy that those who risked their lives to aid the United States will suffer mightily under Taliban rule.

Even so, I suspect that in the long run, Biden will have the support of the American people for how he handled the Afghanistan pullout. It wasn't pretty, to put it mildly. But it was necessary. And I have no doubt that if Trump was still president, he would have screwed things up way worse than Biden did.