Bamboo Club Opening Soiree

The Thingz at the Bamboo Club, Long Beach, CA, March 8, 2019

Naughty or Nice?

Me:  Anybody know what claustrophobia means?
Student:  When you're afraid of Santa!

Take Care of Yourselves, Loves

"Sadness seems to clump.
Its seems I go for a while without much, and then a big clump of it all happens at once.
And sometimes it comes for no reason and leaves just as mysteriously.
Often I cant even identify where it comes from or why.
Other times it comes in waves of sad occurrences.
Sometimes sad things happen but they dont seem to get me.
Sometimes everyday problems hit like I had never had them before.
But the feeling of being trapped, no escape, no relief. I am so glad I dont have to deal with it all the time like so many do.
I know a lot of people that are sad now, and they have good reason to be, I hope they endure and find some peace and relief.
My sadness is like an unwanted visitor who drops in unannounced, but doesnt stay long, and that is something I can be thankful about.
But I fear that sadness that comes and unpacks and repaints the walls and leaves its dishes in my sink and rearranges the furniture and squats in the spare bedroom and won't move out even when I tell it I am calling the police.
I fear the sadness that lies in bed snoring and driving away the sleep, or puts its ice cold feet on me under the covers, or won't shut up and let me escape into the peace of unconsciousness.
For all who are sad, depressed, feeling hopeless and in distress, I know it doesnt help, but I feel for you. And for those who battle these things on a daily basis because of things you cannot control in your bodies or your lives, the little sadnesses I have endured have made me appreciate the strength you must have to go on.
xo" - J. Paul Stevens

"Event Politics"

"This is just the latest instance of a phenomenon you could call “event politics”—that familiar flurry of knee-jerk responses sparked by a single image or clip that a little too perfectly illustrates one side’s worldview. There was the notorious Melania jacket that launched a feverish outrage cycle as soon as she appeared in it. There was the photograph of the little girl crying at the border that went viral and ended up on the cover of Time because it put a face and a feeling to the cruelty of Trump’s family separations. The problem: She herself wasn’t separated from her mother...This is motivated reasoning, the kind everyone uses when an image that seemingly proved something—whether it’s that antifa is a danger to society or that Kavanaugh-lite teens are entitled and racist—collapses into irresolution. To the people circulating it, that the image doesn’t portray exactly what they thought it did matters little. They knew the truth it demonstrated before and still know it after the image is debunked. The image was a convenient piece of viscerally persuasive evidence. It was the kind of thing one posts because one understands it, ultimately, as a recruitment tool for others...This is where event politics always seem to wind up: A ton of energy gets spent, but there’s no cognitively satisfying conclusion—no understanding, resolution, or shared meaning that helps the country progress in its conversations with itself. 'It’s a jacket' might be the White House equivalent of the 'it’s just a hat' defense of the Covington Catholic teens’ MAGA caps. It’s not true, and everyone knows it, but it seems dumb to overlegislate such petty terrain... I suspect, though, that event politics are a lot better at preserving power than disrupting it." (Read the rest here)

Priorities

May we remember MLK's words about Vietnam and our nation's priorities when we can't find money to fight homelessness and poverty or fund education and health care but have no problem finding the funds for war so hawks like Bolton, et al can attack Iran...

"I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. President Kennedy said on one occasion, 'Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.' The world must hear this. I pray to God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war.

I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty." - MLK, jr.

Red for Ed

Bret Harte Teachers Support Striking LAUSD Teachers

Love for The Thingz

Thanks to Falling James of the LA Weekly for including The Thingz latest album, Supersonic Saucer, in his Top Ten 2018 punk/indie releases.  Grateful is a great way to start the new year!!

Ancient Hallmark Sympathy Card

"Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God." - Aeschylus

We Are Devo

“Presently, the fabric that holds a society together has shredded in the wind. Everyone has their own facts, their own private Idaho stored in their expensive cellular phones. The earbuds are in, the feedback loops are locked, and the Frappuccino’s are flowing freely. Social media provides the highway straight back to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The restless natives react to digital shadows on the wall, reduced to fear, hate, and superstition.” - Gerald Casale

Would You Like to Buy a Monkey?

"Cabin Boy doesn’t care whether you laugh or not. It’s dangerously indifferent to anything but its own need to confuse, which is one reason squares hated it. This deep affection for the non sequitur, for the random joke, for the thing that will thrill a few and befuddle many, would later be refined by Late Night With Conan O’Brien and elevated by Mr. Show With Bob and David. Adult Swim would make it, if not mainstream, then at least the lingua franca of college night owls. Dan Harmon would turn it into something akin to a theology. But it was Resnick and Elliott who stopped making sense first, and for their efforts they were shunned and mocked before becoming heroes to weird kids everywhere." (Link here)

Make America Guileless Again

"'Nothing on this page is real,' read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual. What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker. 'No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back,' Blair once wrote, on his own personal Facebook page. 'Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?'” (Link here)

Frameworks and Metaphors > Facts

“A lot of Democrats believe in what is called Enlightenment reasoning, and that if you just tell people the facts, they’ll reach the right conclusion. That just isn’t true. People think in terms of conceptual structures called frames and metaphors. It’s not just the facts. They have values, and they understand which facts fit into their conceptual framework. You can’t understand something if your brain doesn’t allow it, if your brain filters it out in terms of your values. Democrats seem not to understand this, and they keep trying to employ reason as a persuasive vehicle. I wish Enlightenment reasoning was an accurate model for how most people think and judge, but it isn’t, and we better acknowledge that fact.” - George Lakoff

Orange is the New Blue

Counter Intuitive

"If you notice how good the drummer is, then they’re a good drummer. If you don’t notice how good the drummer is, then they’re a great drummer."

The Almaybe

"Saying that God does not exist is not so different from saying that we cannot comprehend God’s existence. In both cases, the material world may be characterized by limited understanding and limitless wonder. That is the charity so seldom extended to atheists in America: the notion that they, too, may be awed by and struggling to make sense of the human and the cosmic. 'A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think,' Gray writes."

Happy Halloween!

"The internet is the technology paradox writ more monstrous than ever. It’s a nonpareil tool for learning, roving and constructive community-building. But it’s unrivaled, too, in the spread of lies, narrowing of interests and erosion of common cause. It’s a glorious buffet, but it pushes individual users toward only the red meat or just the kale. We’re ridiculously overfed and ruinously undernourished."  (Link here)

Hate, Violence, and the Pursuit of Vengeance

How many more innocent lives have to be sacrificed on the man-made altar of the 2nd Amendment before the unalienable Rights endowed by our Creator to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness take precedence?

Spirits of the Season

The Bottled Spirits at Gallagher's Pub in Huntington Beach, CA 

Why I Believe Dr. Ford (My Response to a Conservative Friend)

Have you seen this chart?  Ask any man what he does to NOT be raped - the only thing they might come up with is "stay out of prison" (or the Catholic Church, haha) -  but ask a woman and the list goes on and on and on.  Sadly, I'll have to be teaching my daughter all these ways to stay safe, if we don't create a culture where boys and men are held accountable for their sexual predation.

Do conservative really believe that "Kavanaugh has been smeared by the media."  How so?  I listened to his testimony myself.  He was not forthcoming - he was evasive and combative - he dissembled and gave misleading statements about ways to drink, ("Boofing") "drinking games," (Devil's Triangle is NOT a drinking game AT ALL) and drinking ages.  Have you seen this graphic?

More significantly though, he continually said Dr. Ford's account had been "refuted" by the very people she named at the party.  Actually, one has said she believes Dr. Ford, and the others have said they don't remember or can't recall.  That's a FAR cry from "refuted," as Kavanaugh repeatedly and erroneously claimed. 

I also listened to Dr. Ford's testimony which sounded anything but "hazy" to me.  She remembered specific details  (She went upstairs to use the restroom, she was pushed from behind into a bedroom, she was wearing a bathing suit under her clothes, there was music playing and Kavanaugh turned it up, he covered her mouth when she screamed, etc.) and was quite forthright about wanting to provide as much information as possible (See graph above).

Are you implying she doesn't actually suffer PTSD since she didn't want to fly to DC before the FBI investigated her claims?  (Speaking of which, Kavanaugh has been investigated six times in his lifetime, PRIOR to Dr. Ford's allegations - until now, none of those FBI investigations would have included Ford's claims.)  Nonetheless, do you think there might be a difference between flying somewhere in the world on vacation and flying to DC to detail and relive the most horrendous moment of your life in front of the whole wide world?

I've also seen conservatives wonder aloud what took so long for her to come forward.  I'm sure you've seen the posts going around by women titled, "Why I Didn't Report My Assault" - needless to say, shame and disbelief rank high among the reasons why women don't report sooner.  I guess you don't believe Dr. Ford when she said it was "her duty as a citizen" to testify when she saw that Kavanaugh was being considered as the next justice of the SCOTUS?  Or maybe you are suggesting Feinstein should've broken her pledge of confidentiality to Dr. Ford and told the Judiciary Committee about the letter before the media leaked her name?  (Btw, The Intercept - the site that broke the story about Ford's letter - tweeted a few days ago that Feinstein's office did not leak her letter to them.) https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1045441295282556928

I think everyone can agree on presumption of innocence for the accused.  Where we may disagree is to whom this principle is afforded.  Does it apply to POC?  How about Dems?  For example, do you think that Hillary Clinton is innocent?  What did those Benghazi investigations find, anyway? (As a side note,  do you think she could have shouted and cried during her testimony like Kavanaugh did and then been praised for it?)  Seriously, has "Crooked Hillary" ever been convicted of any crime?  But do conservatives still think she is guilty?  Where's that presumption of innocence for her?  And what's up with Kavanaugh blaming Clinton for Dr. Ford stepping forward?  Was he feeding the base a line reminiscent of, "Lock her up," an applause line that contradicts your insistence on due process?  What does he have against the Clintons anyway?  After all, Kavanaugh was the one that reopened the Vince Foster case years after it had been proven he killed himself.  Here's a recent excerpt from the Times about this very topic:

WILENTZ (9/5/18):  "Mr. Kavanaugh served under Mr. Starr as associate independent counsel between 1994 and 1997, and then again in 1998. Although not yet a judge, he was charged with investigating impartially what Attorney General Janet Reno deemed substantial accusations of misconduct arising from a failed real estate investment known as Whitewater. 

Judge Starr’s predecessor as independent counsel, Robert Fiske, had looked into unfounded claims that the White House counsel Vincent Foster, who committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park in 1993, had in fact been murdered as part of an alleged White House cover-up related to Whitewater. After a thorough investigation, Mr. Fiske concluded in 1994 that there was nothing to the conspiracy theories and that Mr. Foster, who suffered from depression, had indeed killed himself. Official accounts by the National Park Service in 1993 and by a Republican congressman, William Clinger, the ranking member of the House Government Affairs Committee in 1994, came to an identical conclusion, as did a bipartisan report of the Senate Banking Committee early in 1995.

But shortly after the Senate report was released, Mr. Kavanaugh convinced Mr. Starr to reopen what he called a “full-fledged” investigation of the Foster matter, telling his colleagues, as justification, that “we have received allegations that Mr. Foster’s death related to President and Mrs. Clinton’s involvement” in Whitewater and other alleged scandals.
...
Mr. Kavanaugh noted in various memos that he personally believed that Mr. Foster had indeed committed suicide — “my thoughts, not the Office’s position,” he clarified at one point. But he did not file away the harebrained theories; instead, he apparently felt obligated to address the conspiracy-mongers’ already disproved fantasies. And for nearly three years at a cost of $2 million he aggressively followed up.
...
Of course, Mr. Kavanaugh proved nothing new, as there was nothing new to prove except in conspiratorial illusion. But there was nothing funny about his Inspector Clouseau performance. For months, his inquiries callously harassed a grieving family and Mr. Foster’s friends. His office spread malicious sexual innuendo about Hillary Clinton, whom he seems to have regarded as prey. By reopening a closed investigation, he irresponsibly gave the Foster conspiracy freaks credibility to continue smearing the Clintons and poison public debate for another three years, all at the taxpayers’ expense."

 

Is it any wonder that last week, Kavanaugh blamed a left-wing conspiracy by the Clintons for his troubles?  (Project much?) Also, Wilentz is being extremely kind by saying Kavanaugh's Clinton obsession helped "poison public debate for another three years." Try more like twenty years, helping to solidify Trump's phony, "Crooked Hillary" nom in 2016.

Anyway, how has that sacred principle of presumption of innocence worked out for POC who've run afoul of the law? After all, there's a long list of deceased POC that weren't afforded this privilege since they were killed by law enforcement before they could exercise their right as an American to due process in a court of law.  Could race also play a role in whether the police presume your innocence?  I'm just asking.

But I guess when it comes right down to it, I just have to wonder what evidence the FBI could possibly find that would make you believe Dr. Ford over Judge Kavanaugh.  Is there anything that persuasive? 

Either way, regardless of whether you believe Dr. Ford or not, if Kavanaugh's testimony last week - his blatant partisanship, injudicious temperament, and misleading statements - doesn't already make you think he might not be cut out for a lifetime position as one of the most powerful people in our country, then what new piece of information from 36 years ago could the FBI possibly find that will change your mind?

And that's not even mentioning how Repubs handled Merrick Garland...  But, if you've made it this far, I'm sure you've heard quite enough from me.  I'll save it for another time. :)

Things You Learn Reading Children's Books

The REAL reason Grandma's cakes were the BEST!!