Why loging to control firestorms backfires

The Sea Ranch, CA, has for about 50 years lived adjacent to and in Redwood forest, and has dedicated itself to living in harmony with the land. It practices forest management, following the science.  Here is an excerpt of scientists addressing the issue of forest fuel:

The TSR Task Force decided to follow forest science to arrive at its conclusions about how TSR should properly manage its forest. For example, on the issue of forest biomass, the Task Force listened to, among others, Dr. Chad Hanson (B.S., UCLA, J.D., University of Oregon, Ph.D. UC Davis,) who is the director and principal ecologist at the John Muir Project. Dr. Hanson outlined the current scientific thinking on forests which does not parallel President Trump’s thinking. The following Chad Hanson comments are edited for space and clarity. 

[MODERATOR]:  So, some people to say we need to log more. That seems like the response, like Chad, we really, really need to log more, or you know, if we want to stop this crazy high intensity fire, we need to log more. Is that kind of what's happening?

DR. CHAD HANSON: That's certainly a political message that the [President!] and the logging industry has promoted and some other allies in Congress and elsewhere. The number of studies have looked at that, and what the science is telling us is very much the opposite. In fact, if logging happens ostensibly to try to curb fire, to try to pull trees out of the forest, under the guise of reducing fuels, what actually happens is a [number] of things.

First of all, in most cases increased logging is associated with increased fire intensity. So, in other words, the more trees that are pulled out of the forest, the fires don't tend to burn less intensely. The most heavily logged areas usually burn more intensely.

[Second,]  Logging reduces the cooling shade of the forest canopy. By removing a lot of trees, you have more sunlight reaching the forest floor, and what that does is it creates hotter and drier conditions and that means everything on the forest floor gets more dried out, more potentially combustible, and logging also spreads invasive grasses, which are very, very flammable.

[Third,] This is a little bit more technical, but basically when you have a lot more trees, it cuts down on the wind speeds that drive fires. It has a buffering effect in a sense. And when a lot of the trees are removed, that buffering effect is reduced or eliminated and fire spread through those forests faster.

[In] the forest areas where we've had tragic loss of homes and lives, these are mostly areas where we've had intensive logging, and it's as I mentioned earlier, you know, more logging is typically associated with more intense fire at a faster rate of spread. And we saw that tragically in the fire that burned most of the houses in the town of Paradise in northern California and where dozens of lives were lost. The area that it spread through before it burned down most of Paradise had been heavily logged on national forest lands and on private lands in the years prior to the campfire. And, so, this is a perfect example of what Donald Trump is trying to promote, is that kind of logging all across our forests.

Dr, Hanson also demolished Trump’s intuitive and incorrect assumptions about dead trees and dead leaves and forest floors. Our turning our forest floors into Donald Trump’s vision of clean swept parks increases fire risks and promotes more intense fires. 

DR. CHAD HANSON: [S]o many of the assumptions that drive fire and forest management policies seemed so obvious that no one bothered to test them scientifically for decades. I was a coauthor of the very first scientific study to look at [the issue of dead trees]  anywhere in the country. We actually had, you know, data on how many dead trees were in the forest.  Other researchers started doing more comprehensive analysis looking at more and more years after the trees die. Most of the data now, and this is not theoretical modeling, this is actual empirical data from real forest real fires. And what they're finding, is that with every year after the trees die, including after the dead trees fall, that went wild land fires come through, they tend to burn less intensely than in forests would have fewer dead trees or logs on the ground.  I mean, really what it comes down to is physics. In reality, dead fallen trees do not present much to drive flames or carry flames. And interestingly, when they fall, more than acting like fuel, they act in many ways like giant sponges because what they do is they soak up and they retain massive amounts of soil moisture and they keep the forest floor more moist.

We should not be surprised that a President who cares little about science does not know any modern forest science. We also should not be surprised that when seven intelligent TSR FTF members examined our forests with experts’ advice, they reached thoughtful, scientific recommendations which a unanimous TSR Board adopted.

Follow the science.

Trumpsters - wanting the power to crush their enemies and rule the world

I’m reading Michael Cohen’s book, “Disloyal” because nobody knows more about Trump’s dealings than his personal lawyer and vicious attack dog sent out to swindle and destroy on his behalf – Michael Cohen.  He went to jail for lying on behalf of Trump.  He has things to say.

The book is certainly about the depravity of Trump, but it is also a book about his own depravity and how he came to be Trump’s slave.  He asks and tries to answer the question – how did he end up stooping so low as to do the terrible things that Trump demanded.  His best answer is the one that I think tells us why the millions of Trump cultists are Trump’s cult.  After he explained his behavior with a list of more acceptable, policy driven reasons, he came upon the humiliating truth:

“But here’s the ugly truth—a motive I share with deep and abiding regret and shame, and one only unearthed after much soul searching and reflection as I painted the walls in prison and stared at the ceiling from my bunk. The real real truth about why I wanted Trump to be president was because I wanted the power that he would bring to me. I wanted to be able to crush my enemies and rule the world.”

That seems like hyperbole but I don’t think it is.  Someone else recently wrote the reason the Trump cult adores Trump is because he hates the same people they do.  And they want him to crush them on their behalf.

Here are a few other of his descriptions of his descent into Trump hell. 

His first meeting, Trump congratulated Cohen for getting such a good deal on the apartments he bought in Trump Tower.  The truth was that Cohen didn’t get a deal, he just paid the asking price.

“But there it was: within the first few seconds of our meeting, Donald Trump had lied to me, directly, demonstrably and without doubt. What was I supposed to do, if I had possessed the wherewithal to gather my wits and take on the implications? Call Trump on it? The lie seemed silly, harmless, and childish, the kind of fib that was pointless to contest; it occurred to me that Trump might actually believe it, too. In a matter of a couple of sentences, with no conscious thought or understanding of what was actually happening, I had given my unspoken consent to start to play along in a charade that I would come to learn was all-devouring and deadly serious”….

Elsewhere:

“I confess I never really did understand why pleasing Trump meant so much to me, and others. To this day I don’t have the full answer. In a matter of a couple of months, I had started falling under the spell of Donald Trump. The question no longer was what I would do for Trump—the question was what I wouldn’t do….

Like a confidence artist, Trump was showing me that he inhabited a different type of reality, one that he would share with me alone, a world that was filled with wonder and excitement and power and intrigue and adulation. All I had to do was do what I was told, without question or a second thought. I didn’t just accept this invitation; I leapt at it. I wasn’t Trump’s mark as much as I was his acolyte, a willing participant in a fantasy that heightened my senses and my sense of self…. “Stay close, my man,” Trump whispered to me in the lobby. “These are Trump people. Isn’t this something?”

Elsewhere Cohen said that Trump was a master at spotting those who would be subservient to him.  Look at the news.  You see these people lying for Trump every day.  They have sold their integrity, honor, and souls to a soulless and bottomless pit of greed, hostility, and grandiose ego.

Cohen, Michael. Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump  Skyhorse. Kindle Edition.

The War on Fire plus Climate Change are creating unprecedented firestorms

Why have the last four years had mega-firestorms in California?  Certainly we are experiencing increasingly toxic climate change, from extended droughts to record heat waves.  And these climate changes have created conditions that create fires and the fires have become catastrophic.

But, why else? The science to keep this from happening has been known and advocate for decades.  The problem is a culture in the state and in the state government that won't follow the science. Scientists have warned that the California management of the forests has long created conditions that would eventually lead to catastrophe, and the catastrophe has arrived. Elizabeth Weil of ProPublica has an excellent article  that explores this (“They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?”).

Around 1905 the State of California adopted a "War-on-Fire" approach to California fires.  From her article:

“The overarching reason is culture. In 1905, the U.S. Forest Service was created with a military mindset…The war-on-fire mentality found especially fertile ground in California, a state that had emerged from the genocide and cultural destruction of tribes who understood fire and relied on its benefits to tend their land. That state then repopulated itself in the Gold Rush with extraction enthusiasts, and a little more than half a century later, it suffered a truly devastating fire. Three-thousand people died, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and attendant fires. The overwhelming majority of the destruction came from the flames, not the quake. Small wonder California’s fire ethos has much more in common with a field surgeon wielding a bone saw than a preventive medicine specialist with a tray full of vaccines.

How do you wage war on fire?  What that means is that if there is a fire, CalFire goes and puts it out.  That sounds like a good approach, right?  I always thought so.  But, woe is us, it has terrible consequences.

The science says that we need to let fuel burn.  If we don't, the fuel builds up and builds up and builds up.  And then Climate Change enters the picture and we get record heat and winds and a spark from lightening or a campfire or some stupid fireworks display sets off a fire that turns into a conflagration that ends up creating its own weather and roars to unprecedented extremes.

From her article:

"A seventy-word primer: We dug ourselves into a deep, dangerous fuel imbalance due to one simple fact. We live in a Mediterranean climate that’s designed to burn, and we’ve prevented it from burning anywhere close to enough for well over a hundred years. Now climate change has made it hotter and drier than ever before, and the fire we’ve been forestalling is going to happen, fast, whether we plan for it or not." 

So, forest mismanagement has been going on for 100 years, and climate change just keeps getting worse.  How much excess fuel needs to burn? 20 million acres.  How much are we burning? About 40,000 acres per year.  The rest will burn itself.  Nature will do what our War of Fire won’t do.

What other factors are at cause?  Money.

It turns out that CalFire is a giant financial enterprise that gets paid to wage war on fires, to put out fires.  And it turns out that doing controlled burns is a financial and career risk for "burn bosses" because if they do a controlled burn and it gets out of hand their career suffers.  And, environmental laws have strict limits on air quality that prevent some controlled burns because of other air quality issues at the time of the scheduled burn.  So it just becomes a bureaucratic obstacle course to do controlled burns. So, not there is actually a financial incentive to have a War on Fire.  By the way, apparently in the Southeast U.S. a stronger policy of controlled burns are practiced and accepted.

The governor and the U.S. Forest Service agreed to allow more controlled burns.  Nice, except it is woefully inadequate.  We need to burn a million acres a year, and we’re increasing from about 20,000 to 40,000.  Whoopee.

The firefighters are stretched too thin and are wearing out.  And we haven’t even entered the traditional fire season of October November.  From the article:

“As Ingalsbee said, “You won’t find any climate deniers on the fire line.”

We need change.  Fires are indigenous to California and the dry west.  We need to stop the War-on-Fire and learn to live in balance with fire.  We need to learn to live with fire, manage fire, control fire, live in dominion with fire not try to dominate fire – fire will win that war.

We need to do both - properly manage the forests in California and stop and reverse climate change nationally and internationally.  The world is becoming uninhabitable.  It is all different now.

The Clausius-Clapeyron relationship creating explosive firestorms

For the fourth consecutive year California is ablaze with catastrophic firestorms.  We had a record setting heat wave the last few days and a new set of firestorms are on us again.  The Clausius-Clapeyron relationship explains these catastrophic firestorms.

“You may have heard of the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship.” he said to a reporter, hopefully.

The reporter had not.

“It’s an exponential function that describes moisture as a function of temperature.”

For every one-degree increase (Celsius) in temperature, he explained, the amount of water vapor that could be in the air increases by 7% — “like compounding interest.”

What does that have to do with wildfire risk?

As the amount of water vapor that could be in the air goes up, the amount that is actually in the air can’t keep up. That gap creates a vacuum that sucks moisture out of trees and plants. It makes them drier, more parched, more flammable.

It resulted, during those infamous August lightning storms, in an exceptionally high ignition rate: between 4% and 6% of each strike resulting in a fire, Swain estimated, due to the dryness of the vegetation.

The fires spawned by that lightning moved with a speed that surprised Swain. “We’ve seen some of these crazy fires in the past, moving very fast, taking out neighborhoods and killing people,” he said. “But almost all of those have been wind-driven events” — conflagrations abetted by offshore winds coming from the east and north.

The blazes that blackened over a million acres in Northern California over the past three weeks did so without help from the kinds of offshore winds that accelerated the Tubbs and Kincade fires.

The winds whipping these latest blazes were generated, in large part, by the fires themselves. “That’s part of the story,” Swain said, “when you have drier fuel that burns hotter, more intensely.“

The fires themselves are creating their own wind.  Terrifying.

I know I have some conservative friends who want to say it is mismanagement of forests is the cause of these firestorms, and the failure to clear out debris on the forest floors certainly doesn't help. And we have a nitwit president that says it's California's fault for not "raking the forests".  But the explosion of these formerly unprecedented firestorm seasons is new, and is because of climate change.  I myself, back in my conservative days, thought that the climate change people were just trying to find a way to attack productive industry.  I finally had to relent and admit that climate change is real, way too real.  By all means, do better forest management , but the issue is climate change.   It's really obvious.

Climate change is creating extreme weather conditions around the world, and we are approaching a time when some parts of the world may become uninhabitable.

I am not about to abandon my beloved California but I know many who are giving it serious consideration.

It is not even that we have a new normal.  A new normal hasn't been reached.  We have ever growing effects of climate change, and we don't know where it is going to end up.

Left wing violenced is re-electing Donald Trump

BLM protests are mostly peaceful, and persistent, and effective.  I welcome them and agree with them wholeheartedly, but they are being overshadowed by left wing crazies who are just wanting violence and destruction.  They are doing their best to re-elect Donald Trump.  They must stop. 

Indeed, right wing crazies are showing up with weapons wanting to cause as much violence as possible.  They know burning and violence at night shown on TV helps their hero in the White House.  And some of the mayhem attributed to the left comes from the right who are posing as part of the Antifa and others on the left.

But, the point is that the Antifa, or any others on the left who want to affect this election must go home after the curfew is in place.  They need to stop the looting, stop the burning, stop the violence.

Trump has nothing to run on.  His record in office is an abomination of incompetence, corruption, and greed.  So, he desperately needs an issue - and the violence by left wing crazies becomes his whole campaign.

Please stop!

The RINO in the White House

I know that some of my conservative friends are thinking of voting for Trump because they always vote for the Republican.  But is Trump a Republican?

Of course not!  There is nothing about this childish bully that is Republican.  The real Republicans are denouncing him, the Lincoln Project of conservatives is a good example.  There are hundreds of former Republican politicians and Administration officials strongly opposing him.

Trump is a RINO (Republican In Name Only). He terrifies elected Republicans who are afraid that his attacks will cost them their seats.  And very, very sadly Republican voters have devolved into some strange kind of Trump Cult, ready to drink whatever Kool Aid Trump tells them to.

If real Republicans don’t vote against him this year the real Republican Party will forever disappear. The start of the killing of the GOP was the Tea Party.  Trump is just the next step of its total annihilation. 

My plea to my conservative friends is to vote against this man that you know that you disdain. 

Cults- Trump - Jim Jones

 In 1978 918 people drank poisoned Kool Aid and died because their insane cult leader, Jim Jones, told them to. Incomprehensible. 

In 2020 over 1000 people assembled on the White House lawn to hear Trump accept his nomination for the 2020 presidential run. They did not follow scientific medical advice to socially distance at least 6 feet and wear masks. They did so because their insane cult leader, Donald Trump, told them to.  Incomprehensible. 

It only takes one infected but non symptomatic COVID19 person to spread the virus to many. COVID19 kills, causes heart, organ, and brain damage in some people. 

Trump, of course, has no interest in the health or welfare of anyone other than himself, so we can expect that he would see COVID19 deaths as a welcome tribute to his importance.  

Incomprehensible. 

Convention chaos?

 The Dems put together a tightly produced professional convention rolling out Joe Biden. 

The Reps start theirs now.  Trump is a TV guy, so it might be good. But Trump is also a chaotic ball of incompetence and impulse and incompetence. So, it could be a mess. 

I can’t watch because I can’t stand to watch the mentally ill man. But I’m thinking there may be some strange stuff coming. 

BIden's call for the Light to overcome the Darkness

Joe opened with a call for the Light:”

“Give people light and they will find a way. Give people light. Those are words for our time.

The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.

Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness.”

He ended with a promise of the Light:

“With passion and purpose, let us begin — you and I together, one nation, under God — united in our love for America and united in our love for each other.

For love is more powerful than hate.

Hope is more powerful than fear.

Light is more powerful than dark.

This is our moment. This is our mission.”

I celebrate a man with a vision of the Light overcoming the deep and disturbing darkness of Trump and his Trumpsters.

Obama at the convention - Trump using his power to help only himself and his friends

President Obama spoke at the Democratic Convention last night:

"For close to four years now, he's shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves. Donald Trump hasn't grown into the job because he can't. And the consequences of that failure are severe….

So let me tell you about my friend, Joe Biden…what I quickly came to admire about Joe Biden is his resilience, born of too much struggle; his empathy, born of too much grief. Joe's a man who learned – early on – to treat every person he meets with respect and dignity, living by the words his parents taught him: "No one's better than you, Joe, but you're better than nobody…..

This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that's what it takes to win. So we have to get busy building it up – by pouring all our effort into these 76 days, and by voting like never before – for Joe and Kamala, and candidates up and down the ticket, so that we leave no doubt about what this country that we love stands for – today and for all our days to come.”

I feel sorry for Donald Trump because he really is doing the best he can, he just doesn’t know that he is supposed to do the best he can for the country, not do the best he can for himself.  He is literally mentally ill and a host of other very unflattering descriptors. 

But, his time has come and he will go.  Joe’s time has come.  The world will take a big sigh of relief when we stop the dictatorship of Trump from becoming worse and even uglier.

Michele - if we think things can't get worse --- they CAN

Michele Obama gave her speech at the Democratic Convention last night.  She said some very important things:

“But right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another. They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we truly value.

They see people shouting in grocery stores, unwilling to wear a mask to keep us all safe. They see people calling the police on folks minding their own business just because of the color of their skin. They see an entitlement that says only certain people belong here, that greed is good, and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top, it doesn’t matter what happens to everyone else. And they see what happens when that lack of empathy is ginned up into outright disdain.

They see our leaders labeling fellow citizens enemies of the state while emboldening torch-bearing white supremacists. They watch in horror as children are torn from their families and thrown into cages, and pepper spray and rubber bullets are used on peaceful protestors for a photo-op.

So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.

So if you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election. If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”

Trump has proven that the job is way too hard for him, and if he is re-elected he will go full fascist dictator. 

Sanders calls out Trump's authoritarianism

Bernie Sanders gave his speech at the Democratic Convention last night.  He said some important things, pointing out the obvious, that Trump is acting like an authoritarian tyrant overthrowing democracy:

“This election is the most important in the modern history of this country. In response to the unprecedented crises we face, we need an unprecedented response …At its most basic, this election is about preserving our democracy. During this president's term, the unthinkable has become normal. He has tried to prevent people from voting, undermined the U.S. Postal Service, deployed the military and federal agents against peaceful protesters, threatened to delay the election and suggested that he will not leave office if he loses. This is not normal, and we must never treat it like it is.

Under this administration, authoritarianism has taken root in our country.”

He must be voted out, and when he refuses to leave he must be dragged out.

CLEAN IT UP

We are on the verge of the Democratic Party Convention.  There is just one theme needed for the Democrats this election - CLEAN IT UP!

After astonishing levels of incompetency, corruption, racism, and just plain crudeness and crassness, it is time TO CLEAN IT UP!

INCOMPETENCY?  Just look at the United States of America  - we lead the world, by far, in continuous outbreaks of infection and deaths from COVID-19.

CORRUPTION?  Corruption is this president’s business plan, and governing plan.

RACISM?  Trump makes it clear that his hard core base is racist, like him.

CRUDENESS?  Trump embarrasses this country with his crass, insulting, low life remarks and attacks daily.

We can each come up with countless examples in each category, I am sure. 

The worst of it all is his authoritarianism, and the authoritarian staff, department heads, and elected officials, and followers. 

It is time to CLEAN IT UP!

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Prepare for war

If you understand that Donald Trump is psychotically narcissistic, you will expect that he will do anything to keep from going to jail after he is thrown out of office. Anything means anything. Do not be surprised if he tries to start a war. Harming other people is not even on his radar screen, let alone something he thinks he should not do. Watch out world. He needs big-time distractions, and nothing is bigger than war.

Mary Trump's book about Donald Trump and the family that formed him.

I just finished "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man by [Mary L. Trump]" It was more about the incredible toxic effect of Donald's father, Fred Trump, than Donald himself. I always wondered what kind of father Fred Trump was to have his oldest son die of despair and alcoholism and the age of 42, and his next son, Donald, be such a cruel, self centered, heartless monster. Well, she answers the question.

The main point of the book is that the father forced Donald to cut off all human feeling - sympathy, empathy, compassion, caring for the feelings or well being of others were a form of weakness. And it was clear that weakness was severely punished with ridicule, humiliation, disapproval, personal destruction. Indeed, the first son, Freddie, was too human to take on the legacy of his father's cruel real estate empire, failed continuously in his cruel father's eyes, and was a crushed human being who tried to escape the tyranny by becoming a pilot. It wasn't enough, he couldn't escape and disappeared into alcoholism and early death.

Next in line, was the second son, Donald. Donald knew just one thing, don't be like his older brother, Freddy. So Donald's only way of surviving his cruel father was to be like his father - fight back, be more cruel, be more heartless, be less a feeling human being, be more driven to expand the cruelty and greed of his father. He succeeded in becoming his father's path to conserving and extending his financial empire.

So, Donald went off into the real estate business, and became the personification of his father's mythology. The myth was that Donald was a brash entrepreneur who had giant visions and achieved great wealth. Well, the reality beneath the myth was that his father had the political and financial contacts that made the deals in New York real estate - connections, tax breaks, the entire hidden infrastructure that made it all possible.

And then, Donald made a dumb mistake. He believed the myth about himself and he went off to New Jersey and bought three casinos. But he was without the only thing that had given him any success in New York - his father's connections and management talent needed to make it work.

He went bankrupt. He failed, but his failure could be twisted in his childish mind into success because the people who suffered were his vendors, his workers, his bankers - other people. And what did he care about other people? He was formed by his cruel father to see other people as having no value other than how they could make him money, or in Donald's case, fame.

By the way, Mary Trump was the source of the huge trove of financial documents for the New York Times investigative article showing that Dondald inherited over $450 million from his father. His myth of being a self made man was just smoke and mirrors.

She doesn't go into Donald's other bankruptcies, but they are the true record of his inability to run anything:

1. Trump Steaks

2. GoTrump

3. Trump Airlines

4. Trump Vodka

5. Trump Mortgage

6. Trump: The Game

7. Trump Magazine

8. Trump University

9. Trump Ice

10. The New Jersey Generals

11. Tour de Trump

12. Trump Network

13. Trumped!

Trump companies that sought bankruptcy protection:

1. Trump Taj Mahal

2. Trump’s Castle

3. Trump Plaza Casinos

4. Trump Plaza Hotel

5. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts

6. Trump Entertainment Resorts

So, what is her message from her book? She opened the book with a quote from Victor Hugo saying that one who is raised in loveless and cruel darkness is less responsible for the sins committed than the one who was the darkness in the first place. The villain of the book is Donald's father, Fred Trump. Donald is his victim. His older brother Freddie was the first son crushed by his father, and his second son, Donald, became a twisted monster of incompetence and cruelty as his second victim.

In the end, Donald is what he has always been, a terrified three year old. And everything he does, from blaming others, to his astonishing levels of grandiosity and over-hyping everything (the best, the greatest, the biggest, the grandest, the most historic, etc.)- it is delusional, and it is compensation to protect one of the most fragile and twisted egos in the country.

Trump's sad camaign

It looks to me like Donald Trump has only three issues he can campaign on - "Law and Order" and the "China Flu" and "socialism!!!".  Pretty weak.


Given the persistent demonstrations about Black Lives Matter our president has decided that the only way to respond is to dominate the "blue cities" with para-military force.  Hey, it worked for Nixon in 1968, so what the heck?  Well 1968 had assassinations, massive anti-war demonstrations, civil rights demonstrations, Weather Underground bombings, violent anti-war demonstrations at the Democratic convention in Chicago, etc.  It was a violent time.  And the "silent majority" was afraid of the violence and responded to Nixon's appeal to the fear in the middle class.  2020 does not have that kind of violence from today's left.  Indeed, today's heavily armed intimidators and killers are the radical white supremacists who have actually been killing people.


So, trying to whip up fear about a violent left falls way short in the face of a profound multi-racial and primarily peaceful support of anti-racism being demonstrated for by both left and right today.


The next issue is what he insists on calling the "Chinese Flu".  Good grief.  First he calls it a flu as if it is no more deadly than what we are familiar with - the flu.  COVID-19 is more deadly, spreads much easier since people can carry the virus for 14 days without symptoms, and can cause heart, organ, and brain damage in those who do not die. 


Second, and even worse, is by calling it the "Chinese flu" he gets to do the only thing he is good at - blaming others for his failures.  Sure, it started in China.  And sure, the Chinese reacted poorly at the start.  But the one who refused to see and act on how terrible the pandemic was to become is Trump - he dismissed it, downplayed it, bragged about how great he was responding to it, etc. etc.  He caused it to become much, much worse in America than any other prosperous democracy.  He did not use emergency powers to mandate manufacture and use of masks and other Personal Protective Equipment, or tests, or vaccines.  There is NO national response to the pandemic other than a national collapse of the economy as it spreads throughout our country.  Astonishing level of presidential failure.


Third, is his pathetic warning about himself being the last defense against tyrannical socialism.  The Democratic voters spoke very loud and clear - they went against the left wingers of Sanders and Warren.  They looked at the field and chose Biden as the moderate to support.  And they did so decisively and very quickly.  Biden is not a fire breathing leftie no matter how much Trump and Fox News wants people to think he is.  He is a moderate, stable, sane politician with decades of experience and history that prove he is not about to nationalize the oil industry.


So, Trump has no issue to run on other than those that excite the hard core right wing who are lost in the media bubbles of Fox News and talk radio shouters. 


His desperation to keep from going down in history as one of the biggest losers of all time becomes increasingly evident as he hysterically grabs headlines with more and more outlandish statements and threats.  He is a very wounded man, psychologically, and increasingly, a very wounded man politically as well.


Thank the dear Lord.

Trump's ideological support

Trump's support is eroding, but he still shows an approval rating of 41% of likely or registered voters per fivethirtyeight.com.  This despite his deep and pervasive corruption, cruelty, stupidity, and delusions.  Why?


Mugambi Jouet of the New Republic says it is because he has support of those too dedicated to their ideologies to turn against him.


There are four ideological underpinning of the Republican Party - anti-intellectualism, Christian Fundamentalism, market fundamentalism, and racial "resentment".


Anti-intellectualism.  We see this in a terrible way today as Trump and the right wing media bubble attacks the expertise of the country's top immunologist, Dr. Fauci.  The tragic result is conservatives refusing to protect themselves and the rest of us, and America is the only democratic country that has not dramatically reduced the number of infections and deaths from COVID-19.  It goes way beyond the virus, of course, since Trump and the Republicans have driven scientists and experts from every branch of government. 


Christian Fundamentalism.  Fundamentalists have essentially sold their souls to Trump to get their Christian judges.  Well, mission accomplished - the U.S. now has a bunch of Christian judges and fundamentalists have lost connection with their consciences and their souls.


Market Fundamentalism.  I used to be a conservative and thought that the market was so much smarter than any central planning.  There is some truth to that, but when you take that idea too far, the results are catastrophic.  The market will never address Climate Change, or environmental destruction, or massive income inequality, or public services that only government can provide like roads, fire and police protection, libraries, nuclear waste protection, a judicial system, food and drug safety, etc. - there are thousands of services that only the government can provide.  This disregard of government services goes hand in hand with anti-intellectualism.


Racial resentment. "Resentment" spans the range from white people who feel left out of the efforts of government assistance (despite programs of health, unemployment, disability, education, etc that mostly benefit whites), to those who are simply racist and believe in white supremacy.  The Republican Party became the party playing upon white resentment ever since Nixon's Southern Strategy switched the Confederate States from Democrat to Republican.


But, many conservatives and Republicans have broken away from the extraordinarily dangerous child in the White House, and have led the attack on him and his sycophants - from George Will to the Lincoln Project. Good for them. 


It is just a question of waking up and smelling the disease.

Tear down the statues?

Across the land, symbols of white supremacy are being gotten rid of.  Mississippi just removed the symbol of the Confederacy from its state flag - the last state to do so.  Richmond VA, the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War, removed statues of Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson.  Statues commemorating the Confederacy are coming down.  Should they?  Absolutely.


The argument against the removal of the statues is that to do so is somehow to eliminate history.  Well, if you want to depict the history of the Confederate Generals, the best way would be to place another statue next to the statue of the general - only this one would be a statue of the whipping and raping of slaves.  That is the actual history of what the Confederate generals were fighting to save - slavery. 


There are no statues in Germany honoring the history of noble Nazi soldiers and generals who fought in WWII.  Why?  Because enough of the Germans had the decency of being deeply ashamed of the inhumanity of the Nazis to tear down all symbols of that ideology of hatred - the ideology of white supremacy.  It didn't happen overnight and the process is never done, but nobody is erecting statues to Goering or Hitler, and they never will.


I know that the South has been on a 150 year propaganda campaign to convince themselves and the rest of us that they seceded from the United States of America for some kind of noble reason to do with taxation, or agricultural policy, or some ridiculous abstraction about State's Rights, but is was just to save their economic way of life, slavery, and to preserve their most intensely held belief - the supremacy or the white race. 


This 4th of July weekend has been a tough one for me.  I usually enthusiastically celebrate the ideals of America on the 4th, but this 4th has a U.S. president openly praising and encouraging racism and hatred.  America has become a place to be ashamed of because of its president, and because of too much of the Republican Party who are racist themselves or at least still supporting this appalling and racist "man". 


It is a dark time in America.  It is time for a renewal of the decency and integrity of this once great country.  We can become great again, but it will have to be by loudly saying "NO" of the cruelty, stupidity, and racism of this president and far too many of his Republican Party.


Vote.

Trump blocks high tech talent?

Why has Trump blocked high tech talent from coming into America?  This is an assault on the one  remaining area of U.S. excellence - technology. Silicon Valley is shocked.  Business leaders are shocked.  U.S. technology leads the world because it attracts the world’s smartest people. 

“Putting up a ‘not welcome’ sign for engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other workers won’t help our country, it will hold us back,” said Thomas J. Donohue, the chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce”

I see three reason for This Trump idiocy:

1.  Racism.  Trump, and his closest adviser Stephen Miller, are stone cold racists.  His entire campaign is about racism - America first, foreign workers not welcome, white supremacy.   Disgusting - and stupid.

2.  Stupidity.  Trump is clearly below average intelligence. If he ever was average intelligence he has clearly devolved. Many who have worked with him have said he was a “moron”, an “idiot”, and incapable of comprehending anything complex. Keep it simple - America Good, White people Good, people of color Bad. 

3.  Putin.  He works for Putin. Putin tells him what to do. Putin is weakening America. This is just another in a long line of ways Putin has been and is weakening America. America no longer leads the world in anything. Putin is winning. 

Disgusting, as usual. 

How to better understand what Black Lives Matter means

I think women should more easily understand what blacks are trying to say when they say Black Lives Matter.


For example, can we imagine a man who loves his wife, loves his daughters, loves his mother, respects women of achievement - and yet is still sexist?  still chauvinist?  Of course we can imagine that.  Women have been telling us that for decades, or more.  For a man to love some women does not mean that he does not automatically diminish women, that he does not think women are too emotional, or at the mercy of their hormones, or not as smart, or as dedicated, or as capable of leadership, or don't belong in the workforce, or don't belong in management, or are too soft, or too nice, or toooooooooo….. or not enoughhhhhhhh….fill in the blank. 


Loving some women, and admiring some women does not let sexist and chauvinist men off the hook.  They can be and usually are to at least some degree sexist and chauvinist. We are raised in and surrounded by a world that diminishes women and the feminine.  We carry it in us and have to free ourselves from it.  It requires a conscious choice, and the first step in that choice is to know that a choice needs to be made.


So too with Black Lives Matter.  We can fool ourselves into thinking that we are not racists because we have black people in our lives that we admire, trust, and love.  OK, great, that is wonderful.  But it does not mean that we don't have centuries of racist biases in us - and have to overcome those deeply ingrained biases - not smart? lazy? dangerous? promiscuous? uppity?  pick a word, it is hard to continue with these pejoratives.


Or we can dodge the issue by just saying that we love all people, that All Lives Matter.  But that just lets us not examine and make corrections to the centuries of bias baked into our country and our world and into ourselves.


Black Lives Matter is a scream of anguish from the black community saying that in this country black lives don't matter - you can tell by the endless shooting of unarmed black men, by the social snubbing, by the fact that every black parent has to train their children in how not to get killed by a cop, etc. etc. etc. 


So, in the same way that women know that they have to make sure they don't get raped - for which they will be shamed and blamed - blacks know they have to make sure they don't get shot by cops - for which they will be shamed and blamed.


I hope the analogy helps clarify.


To discover your own biases go to implicit.harvard.edu.  It shows your implicit reactions - your subconscious mind.  It is a disturbing test to take, but the courageous will.

Take your feet/knees off our knecks

Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said: "I ask no favor for my sex.  All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks”  as she spoke to sexist men.


George Floyd famously said: "I can't breathe" as he was being killed by a racist cop.


That's all.  Get your sexist feet off the necks of the women that you cruelly dominate.


Get your racist knees off the necks of the blacks that you cruelly dominate. 


Trumpsters have a president that they elected and idolize that said to governors during the multiracial Black Lives Matter protests; "You have to dominate"


But, of course, having to dominate is actually the problem itself - dominate blacks, and browns, and reds, and yellows and women, and children and other countries, and everyone and everything that looks threatening to the fragile and precarious egos of white men, white supremacists, white authoritarians.


Leadership, not domination.  
Inspiration, not domination. 
Example, not domination. 
Character, not domination.
Integrity, not domination.
Honesty, not domination.
Responsibility, not domination.
Caring, not domination.
Empathy, not domination.
Understanding, not domination.
Humanity, not domination.
Love, not domination.

I Can’t Breathe - Me Too - no going back

A friend pointed out that this “I Can’t Breathe” moment is a moment where there is no going back, just like the “Me Too” moment changed life for women. There is no going back.  In both cases twisted, domineering men have been told that their reigns of terror are over. The “domination” which is so beloved and admired by this twisted president has been exposed, reviled, and will be defeated. 

About time. 

"All men are created equal" Thomas Jefferson - what does that mean?

What does the founding idea of America as written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence mean - "All men are created equal"?


All men are not equally strong, or fast, or smart, or tall, or skilled, or talented, or young, or old, or wise, or foolish, or....


Philosopher Mortimer J Adler answered that question in his wonderful book "We Hold These Truths" in 1987. 


All Men Are Created Equal means all men, and women of course, are equally one thing - we are all equally HUMAN.


When our male chauvinists think they are superior to women, they are wrong - all humans are equally human.  When our racist white supremacist men and women think they are superior to blacks, and browns, and reds, and yellows - they are wrong - all humans are equally human.  And all humans are equally endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It's in the Declaration of Independence for all of us to read.


There is another wonderful book - "Guns Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.  He asks the question - how did the European white race dominate and over-run the world?  His answer is the dominance of the white race is NOT because of any genetic superiority (sorry white supremacists) but rather the accident of geography. 


Europe, by mere chance, had the confluence of grains, animals, and climate that made Europe the first to very gradually develop agricultural societies which then led them to become the first to develop guns, ships, steel, etc.  For example, you can domesticate sheep, cows, pigs, and horses but you can't domesticate lions, zebras, hippopotamuses etc.   And, by centuries of exposure to their domestic animals the Europeans developed immunities to the contagious diseases that came from those animals - smallpox, chickenpox, cholera, measles, etc. that killed more of them than the brave cavalry enforcing the spread of the white European Americans across the land did with their guns (against the arrows and spears of the natives)


So, the message to white supremacists is this - white blood is not superior - white genes are not superior - white Europeans were just lucky to be in the geography to develop guns, germs, and steel before others. 


You could say that the white Europeans were nastier than the others, I suppose.  Because they certainly brutalized all in their way to their own "manifest destinies".  Not exactly something to be proud of, even though our current temporary president seems to think that Domination is the highest human "virtue."

Outsiders bringing violence

It’s looking like left wing anarchists and right wing anarchists are the one bringing violence to Minneapolis. I see the hand of Russia in this - turn Americans against each other. 

Too bad we don’t have a president who can deal with this. 

We need transformative purges

The cold blooded murder of George Floyd by racist police officers has sparked protests, and eventually riots, across the nation. 


Riots are the natural expression of the powerless. Most of the protest is legal, and some is just criminal, so by all means prosecute the criminals.  BUT, don't try to dismiss these actions as anything other than the rage of the powerless who see, time and time and time and time and time again, police killing unarmed and helpless black men. 


How are blacks supposed to respond?  Peacefully?  How about Colin Kaepernick?  He lost his job for protesting peacefully.


When star football players took a knee prior to a football game to protest police killings of unarmed black men, the racist reaction was vicious.  They changed the story from an attempt to call attention to a terrible injustice to a story of blacks disrespecting the flag and the military who gave their lives for the freedoms that the flag represents.  Their protest had nothing to do with disrespecting the flag and had nothing to do with disrespecting the military. It was calling attention to a system that allowed police to kill blacks with little consequence.


It is time for a transformative purge of police departments across America.  I am encouraged that so many police chiefs are outraged by the actions of the killers of George Floyd.  And I hope that many police departments have already made good strides in cleaning up their act.


But, I have no doubt that every officer in every police department knows exactly who the racist and violent officers are.  And, I have no doubt that every police chief knows that same information.  My deepest wish is that every police department uses this event as permission to cleanse themselves of these poisons. 


It is time for a transformative purge of racist and violent officers from every police and sheriff department in the country.

If a police chief isn't sure who the bad cops are, you can be sure the black and brown residents who suffer from them do know.  Just ask.....

The virus is opening our hearts to a new "normal"

This world wide virus is making the world slow down, pause, stop.  This has never happened before.  Contrary to some who are trying to diminish the impact of this gigantic event, I see this as the most disruptive and world changing event since WWII. 


I don't know the answers, but I can certainly see the problems - the two main structural defects in America and the world are an economy that produces huge economic disparities in the country, and that produces world wide environmental destruction.


I don't know the solutions, but I am sure that we are not going to return to "normal" - a "normal" that continues these structural deformities. 


This gigantic world wide event shows us that we are all connected, whether we like it or not.  The virus spreads, first among the poor who can't protect themselves as the wealthy can, and then to all  It connects us also, through our seeing the suffering and devastation - it connects us through compassion.


My vision is that this world wide crisis helps us all to open your hearts to care about each other. Which will diminish the greed of the predatory business models. Which will diminish the greed of environmentally destructive business models. Which will create supportive business models that nurture and care for workers. Which will create business models that nurture and restore the environment.


I don’t know what these emerging business models are. But I can dream them.  And I can expect them.  And I can sincerely hope and pray that the smartest young minds turn from previous generations' focus on getting rich into a focus on taking care of each other, economically and environmentally.  Turn to a true prosperity for themselves and for the world and for humanity. 


In the '60s the smartest minds went into science and engineering to create the miracle of getting to the moon.  And they succeeded.


Then, the smartest minds turned to making huge fortunes, and the Harvard and MIT geniuses went to Wall Street.  That has not been a wonderful thing for the country, as it ended up in the financial crash of 2008, ended up in too much economic inequality, ended up in a planet becoming inhospitable for human habitation. 


It is time for a fundamental change in goals, in dreams, in destinies, in deciding what matters.  I have great faith in today's youth who are facing these realities in ways that we Boomers can't really imagine.  I have every expectation that the new world they create will be an answer to the current deformities.


I am not talking about some kind of left wing politics.   I am talking about each of us opening our hearts to care about others and the world.  And out of that, the predatory destructions of the economics of greed just fade away.


I can dream.....

Is Trump trying to kill his cult?

The president has just demanded that churches open up "right now".  I guess he thinks that is what his evangelical cult followers want, so he thinks this is going to boost his ratings.  And, of course, the only thing (other than money) that he cares about is his ratings.


Of course, we know that if you ignore social distancing and ignore sheltering in place you dramatically increase the spread of the virus.  But, maybe he is actually too dense to accept that obvious fact.


So, he seems to be on a campaign to get his evangelical followers, his Fox News followers, his white supremacist followers killed off.  Very strange.


And, of course, the spread will go well beyond his cult and increase the spread of the virus geometrically to all of us.


There hasn't  been a more blatant example of the damage that an out of control ego can do since WWI and WWII.  This is really hard  to believe.

Trump claims he is taking hydroxichloriquine.

I don’t believe him.


He wants people to think that if you get the disease there is a miracle cure. The drug doesn’t work. 



He pretends that it does so that the economy speeds up. And the stock market goes up. And his ratings go up. Which is all that he thinks about. So he is pretending to take the drug to prove that it is not harmful and works. No way Is he actually taking the drug. 



The drug will have no negative effects on him because he won’t be taking it.



Always remember that he is a con man. 

It's not over

Everyone is really tired of this COVID-19 pandemic.  Everyone is really tired of sheltering in place.  So, lots and lots of people want to come out and go back to work and back to the way it was.  But....


It is true that the collapse of the economy is forcing us to open businesses back up.  It is true that the economic toll is so dire that we can't just shelter in place forever.  But we have to do it with what we have learned so far - social distancing and masks are absolutely needed, please.


And we desperately need tests, tests, tests, tests...


Because we don't have a national strategy from the Trump administration we don't have the two mandatory things we need to actually go back into the world - millions and millions of tests to give to people as a condition of being in public, and an effective drug or other remedy to help people come back from the disease easier and quicker.  These are massive failings on the part of our national government.  It is literally unimaginable to me that we don't have a national strategy and funding to work our way through this plague. 


I wrote on April 1 that there are two huge structural problems in our economy - first, an ever increasing inequality of income between the rich and the poor.  The Middle Class has been hollowed out for four decades.  Huge percentages of people cannot go two paychecks without going hungry or lose their homes.  When the poor are forced into an unbearable suffering, revolutions happen.


Second, our economy is destroying the environment - e.g. ocean warming is wiping out the coral reefs which generate a food chain that goes all the way up to us.


So, during the Democratic Primaries I wanted a moderate like Biden because I was certain that Sanders or Yang would be too socialist and lose to a man who is pathologically cruel, arrogantly ignorant, and grandiosely unable to deal with reality.  His latest delusion is that the virus will go away by itself without vaccines.  Hard to believe that anyone voted for him.


But, how does Yang's UBI, Universal Basic Income, look now?  He was talking about jobs and careers disappearing to computers and automation, but what will our economy look like in two years?  How many industries just won't come back?


And, how does Medicare for All sound now?   How many millions have lost not only their job but have lost their health coverage?  Can we live in a country where so many millions are left to the cruelties of this terrible pandemic?  or the next health catastrophe?


It's not over.  The next big wave of COVID-19 cases will be the rural areas of Trump's red states.  And the second wave in the cities is also likely to come. 


It's not over.  It's just starting.