Letter to the editor -- The elephant and the third rail

Herewith is a copy of a letter to the editor of the SB Independent that I emailed today, October 15, 2019. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Update: The letter was published on the Independent's website on October 22, 2019, here: https://www.independent.com/2019/10/22/the-elephant-and-the-third-rail/ 

The elephant and the third rail

Kudos to the author of the letter to the Independent about human overpopulation, chiding the Indy for avoiding the "elephant in the room" as the dominant factor causing pollution and climate change. I agree with the elephant metaphor but (somewhat) defend the Indy's silence.

Indy's newsroom is hardly alone in elephantless-ness. One web-searches in vain for articles that, in addressing the pollution/climate-change matrix, confront (or even mention) the impact of the increase in number of Earth's dominant animal. While diligent assessments are made of the smothering of our planet with chemical and carbon-based output – invariably cautioning that this output must be curtailed – not a whisper is heard about curtailing offspring from us seven billion folks.

Why is this? In part because it's much easier – culturally cozier – to preach that people should stop using plastic bags and straws than that they should stop procreating. Indeed, calling for wiser consumption merely plucks the low-hanging fruit of the problem while providing little effect except instant gratification. No, the solution is to reduce the number – certainly the increase in the number – of humans on the planet, which is where one encounters the problem's "third rail." 

No matter the approach to our overpopulation problem – from voluntary to involuntary contraception; from education to indoctrination; from taxation to legislation, to name the most obvious – the debate invariably slides into explosive issues, insoluble topics of freedoms, religious beliefs, governmental intrusion, racialism/genetics, immigration/migration – issues preferably, conveniently, avoided.

Hence, the elephant abides.        

 

Letter to the editor

Herewith is a letter to the editor of the SB News-Press that I emailed today. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Update: The letter was published in the News-Press on Sunday, April 7, 2019.

Pundits wonder why Donald Trump lies so frequently. Perhaps, they suggest, he can't help himself – it's in his nature, a genetic trait or something. Mysterious to pundits too is how forgiving his base is about his repetitive falsehoods. They marvel at the sustained loyalty of his followers despite his constant prevarications. To quote Rogers and Hammerstein, "is a puzzlement."

Pundits are even more befuddled about why Trump lies about facts that are both meaningless and readily refutable. For example, his claims about his golfing prowess turn out to be a tissue (that is, a scorecard) of lies, the result of grandscale cheating. Who cares – except, presumably, Donald Trump – about his handicap?  Dwight Eisenhower, an avid golfer, commanded us to victory over Germany and governed us for eight solid years and yet never found it necessary to fib about his skill at striking a sphere along a lawn. 

Trump's latest odd and silly lie  – that his father, Fred, was born in Germany – is a "fact" he's repeated many times, including a few days ago to the NATO  Secretary General. In fact (emphasis intended) Fred Trump was born in New York, well within the gestation period after his mother's arrival in the United States.

You'd think, after all the attention Trump spent investigating the birthplace of his presidential predecessor, he'd take care to speak accurately of his father's. But no. Apparently, to Trump, it's more important that he not admit to being the offspring of an anchor baby. 

Herewith is the text of a letter I sent to the editor of the SB News-Press today. I'll update this post when/if it gets published.

Update: The letter was published in the News-Press on Sunday, December 9, 2018.

At last, the "witch hunt" is getting interesting. Straight out of a John le Carrė novel, we learn from the Special Counsel's recent court filing that "cooperating" defendant Paul Manafort was actually a "mole," lying to Robert Mueller's team about "a variety of subject  matters," while being a conduit to the President for information about the Russia/collusion/obstruction investigation.

But wait -- the le Carrė tale doesn't stop there. What if Mueller's team knew all the while that Manafort was Trump's mole and they were feeding Manafort false information for transmittal to Trump, which Trump then used in fashioning his answers to Mueller's questions? That would explain why the plea bargain with Manafort was voided immediately after Trump's answers were finally delivered to Mueller: Mueller set the trap and Trump strode into it.

But wait – le Carrė isn't finished. Because the President's written answers were doubtless lawyer-honed and contained weasel-words such as "to the best of my recollection," those answers wouldn't be a sound basis for proving anything much. Instead, it's likely that Mueller has independent evidence that Manafort lied. We'll likely learn details about the "subject matters" that Manafort allegedly lied about in court filings that Mueller will present shortly and in Manafort's lawyers' filing seeking to show he didn't lie. These presentations, whether or not they dovetail with Trump's ambiguously-crafted answers, will reveal only the next chapter in the story, including, obviously, the scope of Trump's pardon power. Turn the page.

Herewith is the text of a letter I emailed today to the SB News-Press. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

It sounds crass, I know, but I'm grateful for Hurricane Florence. It has, for a day or three, knocked stories about Trump/Cohen/Manafort/Stormy/Mueller down from the lead to the second story on front pages and telecasts. Wildfires occasionally did the job earlier this year, but that season is ending – thankfully, with hurricane season beginning. God forbid the top stories should report the death tolls in Iraq/Afghanistan/Yemen or the plight of the millions of refugees. No – never, not America's mainstream media.

The press's mantra used to be "If it bleeds, it leads." No more – the buckets of blood and trauma abroad are insufficient to warrant our attention. Nowadays, under the current political climate, the mantra has become, "If it stinks, it inks," or, likely the more apt, "If it stinks, it links."

Letter to the editor

Here's the text of an email I sent to the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press today. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Update: The letter was published in the News-Press on Sunday, April 29, 2018.

To the editor:

An unheralded benefit to middle-class wage-earners has been found from recent studies of the effect of the Republican "tax cut" legislation. The studies determined that while high-paid employees are seeing significant take-home pay increases from the legislation, most taxpayers whose wages are mid-range are experiencing little – and many no – increase in their take-home pay. The benefit? These folks won't experience much of a decrease in their take-home pay when these temporary cuts expire in a few years.

This says it all...

An excellent essay by MATT Taibbi. Couldn't have written it better myself.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-the-legacy-of-the-iraq-war-w518193

Boxing Day

Herewith is the text of a letter to the editor of the SB News-Press that I emailed today. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Dear Sir or Madam:

I wrote this on "Boxing Day," the day after Christmas. You've doubtless heard of Boxing Day, but, perhaps like me, hadn't known its derivation. Well, I've cyber-searched it: Consensus is, it arose in England centuries ago, nickname for servants' "day off" to enjoy the boxed gifts and leftovers their nobles dispensed to them, the servants having labored through Christmas Day to provide their masters with feast and celebration. Over succeeding years it became a secular day of giving – through alms-boxes and the like – celebrated throughout the UK and many Commonwealth countries.

However, Boxing Day has lately devolved from a day of sharing and tribute to workers' labor and service, into a frenetic shopping day – with crowds surging into stores for much-touted discounts. It's also a hallowed – if lethargic – day for televised sport: endless soccer matches, auto racing and such, with leftover Christmas food and drink at hand. 

Sound familiar? Sound like our Black Friday merged with Super Bowl Sunday? And why not? America leads Western Culture nowadays: Our Labor Day no longer celebrates labor in America: It's simply beer-and-burger day. Memorial Day has become beer-and-Indy day, and Independence Day is all about fireworks. Our Thanksgiving is now tryptophan-and-TV day, followed within hours by our annual addictively-intense shopping event.

So – No surprise. Boxing Day has become driven by distraction and commercialism, sullied by crass consumerism, just as have our holidays.

But we still have Christmas, a day of goodness and kindness, without the unseemly commercialism that has consumed other holidays, right?

 

Bernie's speech on foreign policy. Good stuff, and high time he addressed it.

I note that it's been a year since my last post to this blog. I don't apologize: I've been in such despair that I have found any expression meaningless. However, I have today written another letter to the editor of the Santa Barbara News Press which, if it's published, I'll update this post with the specifics thereof. Herewith (Update: The post was published in the News Press on Sunday, September 17.):

To the editor:

Music to my ears. That was my reaction to Hillary Clinton's response to the question put to her last Sunday by CBS's Jane Pauley on whether her political career was over: "I am done with being a candidate."

For me, a progressive, the prospect of another Clinton candidacy by Bill or Hillary for any office (I don't know enough about Chelsea to include her) has a distinctly zombie-like quality. What, for once and all, can be done to erase from our nation's future these two life-long principle-less office-seekers, these awful consummate politicians? Indeed, I worry that, like Bill's weasel-worded "explanations" of his perjurious denials of sex with Monica, Hillary will later (depending on which way the wind is blowing) retract her announcement and we'll have to waste yet another election cycle driving another stake into her (alleged) heart.

It's my hope that we progressives can now turn to effective, even "radical," solution, not accommodation, of the issues of economic fairness, global peace, environmental sanity. The Clintons and their enablers (I include almost all politicians whom California Democrats have been sending to Washington, including Pelosi, Feinstein, Boxer – and, to my chagrin, Obama) have delayed, distracted and obstructed us long enough. As Bob Dylan enjoined "senators, congressmen" more than a generation ago, "Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall ... There's a battle outside and it's ragin'...For the times they are a-changin'."

Letter to the editor re World Peace Day

Herewith a letter to the editor of the SB News-Press that I sent today. I'll update this post when/if the letter is published.

Update: The letter was published in the News-Press on Sunday, October 2, 2016.

To the editor:

You likely missed World Peace Day, Wednesday, September 21 – understandable, since no major media source mentioned it. We're not talking about "World Days" for mosquitoes, (August 21), UFOs (July 2) or sleep (March 18).

No, World Peace Day is earnest, serious: proclaimed by the UN in 1981; designated in 2001 as a day of international peace; announced annually by ringing the Peace Bell at the UN building. However, last Wednesday, although the bell was once again rung, there was nowhere else the recognition or practice of peace.

Indeed, one senses that world peace is now so beyond possibility as to render the concept irrelevant – a preposterous, silly whim. With "wars" of various styles abounding – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia – and potential hotspots everywhere – the Koreas, Ukraine/Crimea, Kashmir (plus American and European cities) – the ideals that created World Peace Day seem distant, forgotten.

Have Americans given up on World Peace? According to the two major presidential candidates, apparently so. Both Trump and Clinton speak as if wars, in various configurations, are the order of the day. But both Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, and Gary Johnson, Libertarian – echoing the majority of Americans – find ongoing, endless war intolerable.

But we won't hear their voices, neither in the upcoming debates nor in the major media, which rarely gives them airtime and charges too much for ads. In sum, World Peace Day, once a founded aspiration, is now an unheard outlier's plea, or, to the cynic, a sad joke.  

Letter to the editor

Herewith, after a long spell of silence on this blog, is the text of a letter I wrote to the editor of the SB News-Press today. I'll update this blog if/when it's published.

Update: The letter was published in the News-Press on Sunday, July3, 2016.

Quo vadis, Bernie Babies?

The Brits' Brexit vote has shown that Americans aren't alone in yearning for substantive change in their system of governance. Indeed, if one were to string together the last decade's worldwide movements for real and dramatic change in the way things are – from a black U.S. President to Hugo Chavez; from Arab Spring to Occupy; from Tea Party to Donald Trump – it's clear: The Times They are A-changin'.

Or so we progressive Americans thought, we who so ardently worked and spent (an average of) $27 for Bernie Sanders' campaign for the Democratic nomination for President, a campaign carrying the banner of "A future to believe in," and calling for a "political revolution."

But no. Hillary Clinton will become the party's nominee and Bernie, after (at best) causing meaningless language to be inserted into the Democrats' meaningless platform at the convention, is going to vote for her, he says.

So, do we hold our noses and, out of fear of Trump, vote for her too? Do we stay home on election day, or move to Denmark (if they'll have us)? Do we vote for Trump in spite?

To me, the answer is simple: I shall do as my high school civics teacher taught us was the purpose of each citizen's vote in a democracy – to give voice to that person's unfettered choice of the best candidate. And that person, hands down, is Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party.

A Tragedy for Sweden and the world

Thirty years ago yesterday, the assassination of Olof Palme changed Sweden, Europe and the world. For the story, read this. (The video is in Swedish, but the story, in English, tells enough to understand what was lost that day.)

A great essay on voter ignorance

Follow this link to a fun and founded assessment of the American political system and its victims, the voters.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/13/american-politics-election-voters-suckers

Why am I not surprised

by the result of this study?

Letter to the editor

Here's the text of a letter I emailed today to the SB News-Press. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Full disclosure: I'm on the Bernie Bandwagon, a member of the Bernie Brigade – despite my advanced years, a Bernie Baby – and I'll tell you why. Certainly my political stance aligns with that of Senator Sanders on almost all issues (he's not addressed foreign policy as much as I would like, however), but I have a particularly compelling reason for supporting him: I cannot – simply cannot – abide the prospect of four (or eight!) years of a President Hillary Rodham Clinton. Indeed, I'm almost as much motivated to favor Bernie's candidacy by my aversion to Hillary's as I am by my support of Bernie's call for economic and social revolution.

I've had enough of what Hillary Clinton represents and presents: the squishy language of politico-speech; the constant maneuvering of stance and position on issues; the incessant test-the-waters approach to leadership – in short, the continued unprincipled, ad hoc, and visionless governance that we Americans have suffered under for decades.

I understand – although I don't for a moment agree with – many Republicans' support of right-wing candidates who don't mince their words and hedge their positions. I yearn for that clarity of principle and expression on the left side of the political spectrum, a yearning that Bernie Sanders satisfies and that Hillary Clinton is incapable of. In short, come time to vote for President next November, I want to punch my ballot with pride and hold it upraised with both hands – not with one hand holding my nose.

 

 

An apt opinion

In view of the increasing number of incidents of police arresting those who might be engaged in protesting the arrest of another (or, as is lately common, filming the arrest), I'm reminded of an Arizona Court of Appeals opinion on the point, State v. Tages. I note that the attorney for appellant Betty Lou Tages was an illustrious and brilliant one, to be sure.

Letter to the editor

Here's the text of a letter to the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press that I emailed today. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Update: The letter was published on July 10, 2015.

From Bob Dylan to Dylann Roof. I'm surely not the first person to note the similarity of these names, but I am among the dwindling few older Americans who traversed as adults the fifty-plus years from the first airing of Dylan's prescient lyrics from "Blowin' in the Wind" to the last month's outrage in Charleston, South Carolina. How many deaths, indeed, must it take 'til we know that too many people have died?

It's with inexpressible sadness that many of us elders reflect upon those five decades, years that have brought ceaseless violence and death: wars that end, only to begin; terror and militarism abroad and at home; racism and bigotry unending in its force; poverty, fear and injustice as pervasive as ever. The brief moments of respite from this ongoing agony – as few as they have been, and mostly in song or oratory, from Dr. King's dream speech to Mr. Obama's recent eulogy – haven't stopped the carnage and misery. The slaughter of innocents and the death and displacement of people through war, murder, starvation, disease is unabated despite the rhetoric, despite the efforts of a few humans who strive to end it.

In 1961, we were "the new generation of Americans" to whom President Kennedy passed the torch, who were entrusted with the fate of the nation, of the world. I wish I could reflect upon our passage with pride of accomplishment, but to do so would be disingenuous. The answer, my friends – you younger Americans – is still blowin' in the wind.     

I am the white cream-stuff inside the Oreo

Why don't I know anything about this amazing artist/person, recently featured on PBS "American Masters"?

Have you ever wondered ...

Why during a solar eclipse the moon appears to be the same size as the sun, therefore blocking its precise surface area? Well, according to scientists it's a coincidence, just a coincidence, and only a coincidence for a while, because the moon is moving away from Earth an inch a year, so in a few million years the moon will appear smaller than the sun, not blocking it out entirely.

Really -- coincidence? I prefer a conspiracy theory.

Read it and weep for humanity

This extended analysis of ISIS is more than disturbing: it's terrifying.