DURANCE VILE*

Both San Jose and Oakland are pulling people off the streets and holding them in detention centers built for drug addicts. Addicts, like everyone else, prefer to go to therapy in a support group scenario.

The best way to get over trauma, is to have a support group who will listen to your every word with kindness and sympathy, even if you are telling the same stupid story again and again. Sworn to secrecy, these support groups, based on the model of AA, are amazingly effective. To the rest of us, this is boring and sounds like whining, but it is the only thing that works.

Consequently, all of the really nice facilities we were using for drug clinics are going out of business. (They are perfect as homeless shelters for street kids, as long as we unlock the outside doors and let the kids lock their room doors.)

Instead of looking for a new use for their facilities, two clinics in San Jose and Oakland seem to prefer trolling the streets for anyone they can say can not care for themselves. Note that the criteria for not being able to take care of yourself is to have not have a home or a way to reach that home. Taxi money home should bring IMMEDIATE release.

I understand that this scam has expanded to include technical people who rent rooms while doing business in the Valley.

The law is pretty clear. You have to be a danger to yourself or others, or you have to be unable to care for yourself. The decision is made based on the person in front of the judge, on or off medication.

In my Oakland case, the defense asked if my ongoing rental of both a room with bath and an office had been verified. The court was assured that the information had been verified. I insured that the judge knew I had $300 in my purse and $2000 immediately available. She ordered me held as unable to care for myself.

These clinics use Kaiser referrals. I believe that they can be paid to target certain individuals. Trust me, if they were paid to keep me in durance vile for a total of almost three weeks, someone is right now following the money. When I left, they were in the middle of multiple Kaiser audits.

This could not have worked without the collusion of police, courts, and people at Kaiser. Have I ever mentioned the Federal False Claim Act to you? You NEED an attorney, but courts and hospitals keep records of EVERYTHING.

And, of course, you all are too busy putting nice working people out of business to pay attention to the governments of the cities and counties around you.

Why are there people still on the streets in this wealthy and innovative place?

Have I ever mention that not paying a decent wage to government workers would lead to BAD THINGS?

TRUMP GOT ELECTED BECAUSE THE INTERNET COMMUNITY DECIDED TO VALUE THINGS OVER PEOPLE!

* How old novels and poems spoke of the horrors of imprisonment.

THE SAD TRUTH

After the tragedy in Las Vegas, stock markets reported that stocks of gun manufacturers ROSE.

This is because the propaganda around gun sales results in people buying more guns every time you pass gun restrictions. Plus the fact that the US is awash with guns.

We need to put our energy into where it is the most effective.

Before we again try to tackle the gun problem, we need to solve health care and get rid of prohibition.

More people die from lack of health care than die from guns. We could afford more health care if we used visiting nurses to provide health care for the severely disabled. Many are in such pain that a doctor visit is torture for both them and their caretakers.

Almost all of the street violence is caused by prohibition. Take all recreational drugs off the DEA schedules and the violence will go down. It is unlikely that Sessions will do this as he owes his career to irrational, illogical and prejudicial policy towards blacks and browns.

I am extremely tired of even California thinking that a benign healing herb is a scourge on the universe.

Much of this is coming from stay at home mothers who are very easy to frighten with horror stories of addiction. Too many people still believe propaganda lies from 60 years ago.

BTW, algorithms are actually quite stupid. They can be reverse engineered so that Russian trolls can still mess with our news.

REAL PEOPLE, and professional advertizing agencies are needed to make and post ads that are not propaganda. Choosing the news feeds with real news, stopping the fake news, must be done by REAL PEOPLE.

You are all using math to substitute for human intelligence. I liked Spock also, but even Spock admitted that human emotions required solutions from humans.

THE TRAGIC STORY OF ESMERALDA

We all know that the truest evil is to stop someone else from exercising free will.

Esmeralda knew this. She knew that using a love potion to get herself a groom to love, was the most dire evil.

Loneliness is a dreadful thing.

Esmeralda was born brown, tiny, beautiful, in dire poverty. Her brown, tiny, beautiful sisters found marriage and moved to the big city. Esmeralda was not allowed into their homes. No one from her family would speak to her.

One night, Esmeralda met Charming Musician. Her Prince Charming, she thought. She fell completely and totally into the kind of love that is a mirage. Esmeralda's love was a mirage because the man was only being a musician as a hobby to relax from his powerful job.

Charming Musician discovered Esmeralda's secret, she had been born anatomically male. He remained her friend, laughing and teasing, and playing songs just for her.

Then Charming Musician turned back into Investment Banker.

Esmerelda was devastated. She did the evilest of evil, putting a love spell on Charming Musician. The spell backfired badly as Esmerelda did not even know Charming Musician well enough to set correct parameters for the spell.

Her spirit protects A Wedding Chapel For You in San Jose. Only during the month of October is she visable to muggles.

Free will is our human gift. Use it WISELY.

SAVING OUR SUPER CITIES*

SUPER STOCK SALES TAX (SSST) FOR SUPER CITIES that are home to stock, bond or commodity markets.

SSST will be a sales tax**, collected by the exchange, of .001% of every dollar of any transaction completed in under THREE SECONDS.

TWO THINGS WILL HAPPEN:

Suddenly cities will have plenty of money to fix social problems caused by the super rich.

There will be a dampening of the kind of trading that is just sophisticated gambling.

Right now, up to 75% of all capital may currently be invested in derivatives rather than invested in businesses, farms, etc. It is very difficult to have capitalism if you do not have capital. This tax will slowly free up needed capital for our water projects.

CITIES CAN TAX STUFF VERY QUICKLY

In most U.S. cities, a new sales tax city ordinance can be passed in about three months.

NEW YORK CITY -- YOU COULD HAVE MONEY FLOWING IN BY JANUARY! (And Trump will HATE it!)

I am fairly certain that the exchanges will not oppose this tax. They see the same possible future that I see.


* Since the dawn of civilization, the city-state has been where civilization moved forward. New laws, new art, new social fabric, all came from the cities. It is unfair that advances in farming always led to advances in the cities. Feeding people is the most critical part of a civilization.

** In the City of London, it will probably be called a VAT or value added tax.

AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN

AGAIN, they are going after health care AGAIN.

I honestly do not know WHY Republicans are trying to undo an increasingly popular method of providing needed health care to vulnerable people.

If you drop everything and write a letter TODAY, maybe you can change minds. If you are in a purple or red state*, your letter could save health care for us all.

Letters should go to: Trump, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, both your US Senators, and your US Representative. Do not forget to date your letter, and make a copy for yourself.

My legal opinion is that these letters are petitions to the government, and therefore part of the public record. It will be fun to do Freedom of Information Requests to insure that our letters do become part of the public record.

You can also email and call. But just as conservatives ignore demonstrations, they can erase email and take bad notes regarding your phone call.

I know this sounds like homework. Would you rather lose your medical coverage?

* For some unknown reason, states which sometimes elect Republicans and sometimes elect Democrats are called PURPLE states. Republicans get RED. Democrats get BLUE.

OUR DEBT TO THE DREAMERS

All this malarkey about "you have to immigrate the legal way".

Most of the children who desperately came to the US illegally, came to escape the violence caused when the DEA decided to escalate the War on Some Drugs by fighting drug dealers South of the Border.

The resulting violence decimated families. Mothers and children fled for their lives.

We blithely ignore the drug violence in Mexico. Shoot someone in Chicago and it makes headlines. Hang fifty headless bodies from a bridge in Mexico, and we ignore it.

WE CAN NOT WIN THE WAR ON SOME DRUGS. The only way to beat the drug scourge is to GET TREATMENT to those whose substance use interferes with their ability to live life.

Our experiment in off-shoring the drug violence, provided us with LOTS of traumatized children who we should embrace and care for. Especially since our DEA caused the violence.

NAFTA was an attempt to get decent jobs for the people of Mexico. Because wages are only one part of the equation, NAFTA has strict regulations for union organizing and environmental protections. The reason the neo-cons want to get rid of NAFTA is that they want to move the jobs to Mexico without the pesky unions demanding that workers be paid. And without those pesky environmental rules, so they can trash Mexico.

The real problem with neo-cons is that they think that laws and orders are the way to get people to do what you want people to do.

People are not computers. People often respond to laws in the exact opposite way that you want them to respond.

You have to PERSUADE people. You can not just ORDER people around. Even torture will not get people to do what you ORDER tham to do.

I am tired of the neo-con fantasy that all people on welfare are lazy and stupid.

I am tired of the neo-con fantasy that they can bully us into discriminating against our neighbors.

I am tired of the neo-con fantasy that the only way to get respect is to get RICH.

I am seriously tired of the neo-con fantasy that men have an obligation to keep women from power.

The way you get respect is to acknowledge that you can make mistakes, and to do your best to fix the mistakes you did make.

Although prostitutes are willing to trade money for a pretend respect.

Stop reading Atlas Shrugged. You are not that architect. Start watching Citizen Kane. Do you really want to die a lonely death?

TOTAL INCOMPETANCE

The CA Unclaimed Property Office has NO IDEA how to deal with stock certificates escheated to the state.

Betty Yee must be the most incompetent comptroller in the universe.

I have been trying to help a disabled friend get his escheated stock back. One of the stock certificates escheated to the state does not even show up on the unclaimed property data base.

The other two stock certificates are on record as having been escheated to the state. So I helped my friends put in an application. They were told in might take ONE YEAR to even give her an answer. Recently they sent back her entire packet of correctly filled out forms and documents regarding the two stocks they can actually find in their data base. (The packet was returned six months after it was sent, with no explanation.)

I called up the controller's office and they told me that I could not even give them the information they need to start fixing the problem. Understand that I told the poor receptionist that I only wanted to give information, not be given information. FOR WHICH I DO NOT NEED TO HAVE PERMISSION FROM ANYBODY!

The receptionist was so poorly trained that she did not even respond to the words attorney, disabled person, please help get me to a person so I can inform you of a crises in your office.

So I told her I would blog about the problem.

You need a computer program that can remove the escheat on the stock, so the person owning the stock can sell it. You do not need to sell it yourself.

This problem has been festering for about five years. This means that the controller is NOT PROPERLY EXERCISING HER AUTHORITY over the unclaimed property office.

This means that the controller is DELIBERATELY REFUSING TO BE GIVEN ANY UNPLEASANT INFORMATION.

SO HERE IS YOUR UNPLEASANT INFORMATION. It is LEGALLY THEFT if you withhold property from the actual owner.

So the STATE OF CALIFORNIA is guilty of THEFT!

If you think I am wrong, you could ask the Attorney General.

THE EYES OF TEXAS ARE WATERING

My thoughts are with the people of Houston.

Water is both the life blood of the planet and one of the most destructive forces on the planet.

Much of civilization arose around the need to bring water and control flooding.

RIGHT NOW, is a UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY to make maps of where the water comes and goes during this flood. Once you know where there is low lying land you can set building standards and plans for the next flood.

All of Houston lies within the threatened 500 year floodplain*.

If you make maps NOW, you will have an excellent idea of the way water moves in the area around Houston.

Last night I saw the innards of a 500 year old Dutch windmill. It showed the Archimedes screw which augers up the water, the huge gears for turning a small force into a large force. They are attractive and do not kill birds. They are totally off the grid, pumping using wind power alone. They do need caretakers, who can also keep track of the water flow.

Now is the time to contact Holland. Maybe some Dutch engineers can help us with immediate answers on who to evacuate next.

The Dutch method would also work for much of Bangladesh. Bangladesh could even use wooden gears like the medieval Dutch did.

Meanwhile, we all hope that the weather reports are wrong, although I have noticed that the reports were accurate the last several times Napa flooded.

* This means an area where floods are expected about every 500 years. Currently we are building for 100 year floodplains, I think. It should be noted that the 100 years is an estimate over several hundred thousand years. Mother Nature, a flighty creature, is totally capable of giving us two 500 year floods in a single year.

GUESS THE BOOK*

My Dears (in French): ( French phrases scattered throughout.)

I have discovered the greatest art talent of the twenty first century. Why has no one else but me spotted this talent?

Those who know me, know that I prefer buying and producing forged old masters to having anything to do with the ugly modern art admired by today's pretentious art critics.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered first class talent. Bohemians relaxed in a street cafe, smoking and looking attractive. A pallet of greens and golds, echoing the green from Absinthe and the mellow yellow of relaxation.

Beautiful, some room sized. A new voice, with a new perspective, rifting on the master of the masters, the impressionists. Don't you just love those paintings that are both gorgeous and easy to forge. I stick to the old masters, where the art challenge is to forge in oils and canvas circa 1400.

So why has no one noticed this talented paragon? Well, she is a woman. Art is still in the dark ages about women artists.

She paints using acrylics, which the art snobs consider to be lower class art. Of course you read the book by Dick Francis called By The Hilt, where the short jockey again teaches us, this time about using acrylics. I have nothing to add to his analysis.

Why the game?

I want to keep the price down until after I have bought one or two.

* I have written this blog in the style of a blog from a book. Prizes for those who guess correctly. If I come into some money the prize will be boffer weapons. Have you ever had a pillow fight with a sexual partner? Boffing is so much more sexy. (Remember this is for fun and technique, not for hurting and bullying.)

"IF I WERE A RICH MAN*"

I dream so being so rich that I can throw dinner parties where everyone gets to pretend to be a person from history.

I was hoping to trigger discussions of prejudice, by discussing ideas using the words of history or fiction.

Today I am mourning the loss of a vibrant young person, peacefully marching for equality. It could have been me, or any of us, run over by an angry young man.

If alt-right types can only get attention by acting badly, they will act as badly as possible. Because the internet is no longer feeding "click" money to those making outrageously untrue statements, the alt-right needs to act out in public in the hopes of getting donated monies.

Child psychiatrists warn parents that, if you only pay attention to your child's bad behavior, your child will behave badly in order to get attention.

Naturally, they chose to demonstrate in a place that reverberates with Jefferson's words of freedom. Robert E. Lee would have been APPALLED at the actions of those purporting to defend his statue. General Lee was not only the most effective general in the entire war, but he made it as clear as possible that he was reluctantly siding with his home state of Virginia. After the war, he did not want any statutes of himself.

Sadly, family and friends of angry white men may need to report them to the authorities.

IF YOU WANT TO BE PART OF THE SOLUTION.... It is SO simple. You LISTEN to everybody. You look everybody in the eye and smile. TALK TO EACH OTHER.

If you are talking, please try to say what you feel IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Sometimes, quoting other people, or quoting internet memes, is a way to keep yourself from thinking about your own possible prejudices.

SOMEHOW, WE NEED TO STOP YOUNG MEN FROM MONSTERING** THEIR LIVES.

     * In 1755, Samuel Johnson published the FIRST Dictionary of the English language, which is now online. On page 1252 of his dictionary, the FIRST definition, meaning the main definition, of the word MAN, was "human being".
     Thomas Jefferson almost certainly knew this meaning of the word "man", when he used the plural of MAN to write that it is self evident that all MEN are created equal.
     So I can sing, "If I were a rich man", about myself, as I am a human being.
     Feminists have complained for years that our collective nouns are very sexist. It is true that the 1755 second definition of MAN is NOT A WOMAN.

     ** In 1755, monstering was a verb meaning to totally ruin your life with a voluntary act.

NORTH KOREA v US

The problem with never leaving your little country, is that you have no idea how little your country is.

With luck and determination, North Korea may be able to use rockets to deliver a nuclear bomb into territory controlled by the United States.

If North Korea does fire a nuclear missile at ANY target, the United States will almost certainly retaliate.

I worry greatly about the ordinary North Koreans, who already are on a semi-starvation diet.

So may I make suggestions for North Korean targets for retaliation, if retaliation becomes necessary?

We should obliterate all of the fancy amusement areas that North Korea has built for its elite.

We should also change the geography of the mountain that spawned the Kim family. Mount Paektu is central to the myth that the Kim family uses to justify its power. I am certain that we do not even need nuclear bombs to open the crater of the volcano, and to wipe out any buildings built on the mountain by the Kim family.

I am an environmentalist, but people are also part of the environment.

The people of North Korea are not our enemy.

I am so sorry that North Korea is being run by people who are so incompetent that they can not even feed their own people.

ZERO SUM GAME

In tech, diversity is NOT a ZERO SUM GAME. In fact, diversity in tech will almost certainly result in expansion of business. This is because multiple cultural viewpoints actually result in new thoughts, which results in new businesses.

I watched as Yahoo and Google became HUGE doing the brand new thing of searching the internet to get me information.

I have been doing research on the internet since before it was called the internet. I find Google Scholar to be especially helpful for legal research.

I have watched women come up with brilliant ideas, only to have them stolen by men, who then denigrated the woman so that she could not effectively complain. I have watched men sneer at women because women often treat computers as tools, not as toys. Oh, she can't be any good, she does not even enjoy War Craft, they say as justification.

Almost all men, world wide, were raised by people who believed that men and women had different roles in society. This can leave the men with a lifetime of unacknowledged belief in the inability of women to be effective in a male society.

Oh, aren't you pretty, we say to the girls.

Oh, aren't you smart, we say to the boys.

Unless we talk about this, we will not solve it. By yelling or not listening to the concerns of men, women are making solutions more difficult. 

It is entirely possible that women test with more empathy because they are required to do all the family tasks requiring empathy. (Nature versus nurture, if you want to look it up.)

Just do not say that women and minorities can not program or code, because of how their brains are wired.

Because in twenty years, you will be quoted and sound like John Wayne talking about Blacks.

Personally, I think my brain is as good as the brain of any man I know.

DO NOT BLIND THE CHILDREN

ECLIPSE GLASSES MUST MAKE THE DAY LOOK TOTALLY DARK. THE DAY SUN SHOULD LOOK LIKE A CLEAR FULL MOON.

FYI, STARING AT THE SUN DURING AN ECLIPSE CAN MAKE YOU GO BLIND!

This year, the continental US will have the first total eclipse in 100 years.

Astronomers worked hard on preparing the event by inventing glasses where an ordinary person can safely view an eclipse. Viewing the sun with the naked eye can burn your retina, which puts a black spot in the middle of your vision. The retina does NOT heal itself.

Do not bother to check the technicalities of your glasses. The evil fraudsters are copying the specifications and posting fake test results. The glasses should make the day look like the darkest night. The glasses should make the sun look like a clear full moon. If they do not do this, you got ripped off.

The amount of fraud regarding these glasses is totally out of control, because:

     Too many people think that being rich proves that they are good and smart.

     Too often being rich only proves that you were willing to do things like blind children in order to make money.

     Normally, there are customs officers, consumer fraud inspectors, and consumer fraud advocates, who warn us about dangerous goods being sold, and actually sometimes stop the goods being sold. The new administration is both unorganized and true believers in a free market. 

     The government, who should be warning us about these shoddy fraudulent dangerous eclipse glasses, is busily fighting over who gets the corner office, who gets fired, and who may not get paid.

You can view the eclipse using the old school method my father taught me. Get a small deep box. Cut out the top of the box. Poke a hole in the middle of one side. Put the hole side towards the sun. A small bright dot will appear on the inside of the box, opposite the hole. Then you can watch the shadow of the moon go across the bright dot on the inside of the box. This is two experiments in one. (Look up camera obscura.)

ENJOY YOUR ECLIPSE!

FUTURE SHOCK

I HATE not getting a Sunday newspaper. I want to feel the paper on the colored comics, and read the comics the editors chose for me. I do not want to have to use the stupid small calendar to find Sunday Doonesbury.

I gave into my insanity, buying a Sunday paper that weighed two pounds just to get four pages of colored comics.

Is the ObamaCare debate affected by future shock?

Personally, I think that the Republican Senators should vote for funding the subsidy under the Affordable Care Act, and then go on vacation.

Health insurance is too important to us all. Please do not pay midnight games of stealing health care bit by bit. Please just stabilize the market for health insurance and go home.

SUMMER OF SPIES

Gosh! I was thinking of buying a spy novel. No need.

First, Donald Trump, Junior, demonstrates spy craft that would be laughed at by Encyclopedia Brown.*

Then** the United Arab Emirates decides to take down Al Jazeera by hacking Qatar, then encouraging Saudi Arabia to post the fake information planted during the hack as real information. This particular idea got so out of control that many Arab states have agreed to blockade Qatar.

If UAE wants to have a media presence, then it should start or revamp its own TV station. I personally think that the format we call 'daytime soap opera' would be an excellent way to get viewers. I can understand why people do not want to watch government propaganda all day long.

Junior was just trying to impress his father. Frankly, I would worry if Junior was responsible for my business.

Someone needs to let our fearless leader*** know that Congress can stay in session amusing us all with live testimony of his family's naive forays into gathering intelligence.

Or better yet, Congress can go on vacation.

* Encyclopedia Brown is a pre-teen fictional detective.

** I think I have this right, but I only saw it once, which may mean it is an urban rumor. The Junior stuff has been confirmed by Junior.

*** sarcasm

SUMMER FUN

I am really tired of Congress thinking they can impress us by staying in session to "work" on an intransigent project.

GO HOME AND REST! Go fishing, go hunting, go swimming, get away from the stress of politics.

When you come back, your mind may have already solved the problems you thought you could not solve.

Yes, Russian propaganda, delivered in an unexpected way, almost certainly affected the results of our election.

The propaganda would not have had any effect unless large numbers of people were looking for ANY story that would confirm the myth of Hillary as the 'personification of the devil'.

We need to confront the massive sexism that caused us to blame Hillary for minor infractions of protocol, while allowing Donald massive infractions of both manners and normal political behavior.

LATER.

Please pass me the cold beer.

SIT DOWN, YOU ARE SCARING THE FISH!

"ON THE ROAD AGAIN"*

"Sitting on the dock of the Bay,"** watching the dock rot away.

Looking at the sunset from the mountain road closed due to washouts.

It is calming to be alone with nature, communing with the decaying splendor of once impressive infrastructure.

It would be amazing if we could all agree to maintain and add to our impressive infrastructure.

If you are tired of yelling at your congressperson about health care, consider asking your congressperson to pass a bill fixing, improving and constructing the infrastructure we need to conquer the challenges of the twenty first century.

Both country roads and city trains are falling into disrepair. LET US FIX OUR TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS.

Our young people need recreational facilities. LET US BUILD YOUTH CENTERS OF ARTS AND SPORTS.

Many government buildings have problems with rats. LET US FIX AND BUILD PUBLIC BUILDINGS WE CAN BRAG ABOUT.

Too many of our citizens sleep in the streets. LET US BUILD WELL DESIGNED HOUSING FOR OUR SICK AND OUR POOR.

Some of our infrastructure building should be over the top impressive. No one mentions normal railway stations, but Grand Central Station does not even need a city designation.

The Sydney Opera House is a great example of a building setting the tone for an entire country.

INVESTING IN OURSELVES IS A GOOD INVESTMENT.

* Willie Nelson

** Otis Redding

EXERCISE YOUR BRAIN

The brain puzzles the Apple store showed me are incredibly boring. Perhaps total math geeks find them interesting. I prefer art and stories as part of my puzzle solving.

In the games I play, I get to pretend to walk into a cartoon landscape, look for stuff, find clues, stop the bad guys, and solve often hard puzzles.

I think these games are also really good for young persons, as they might actually learn some math, etc., while playing.

Originally, these virtual cartoon games, often called IHOPs, were for 9 year old girls, full of fairies and evil sorcerers. Which, of course, I LOVED. But at a game habit of several $6.99 Apple ap games per week, I soon began running out of games. This problem is made worse by some of the best games not upgrading for new operating systems.

So I expanded into games with real pretend murders, detectives seeking ghosts or werewolves, ships sinking due to evil, skulls coming to life.

My main search criteria for these games is the amount I have to pay. I pay less than $10 total per game, and I do not even look at games that charge per hint or object. Almost all of these games allow a free download of the first chapters so you can know what you are buying.

These are the kinds of games that kept my children and their friends busy for hours. They would show friends the game, and laugh as the friends could not do some of the puzzles. The puzzles can be a fun 'right brain, left brain' test as no one can easily do all of the puzzles. I never play the puzzles on HARD. I always go for easy and then can not do some of the math, plumbing, and gear puzzles.

I play the IHOP games without looking at the list of objects. Sort of a, what would the game designer choose, puzzle just for me. I like a fast hint and skip recharge because I find searching scenes to be tedious. I turn off the computer generated music. The sound effects make the game more immersive anyway.

To get you started, let me recommend a few game series from my favorite publisher.

Big Fish Games. Grim Tales. Dark Parables. League of Light.

My kids and I did gaming weekends where we all three together, at the same computer, played the first run through of the game. Remember Seventh Guest?

MIDSUMMER BREAK

Today is both midsummer and the beginning of summer. I stayed up until midnight last night, but alas, I had no bonfire to jump over. Not that I could jump over a bonfire.

I am going to take some time off and celebrate that I have finished a difficult task. Celebration is a very important part of life.

The world is changing, and change is very upsetting.

But there are good changes happening as well as bad changes. If you live in the US and object to any proposed government policy, please do NOT broadcast anger. Societal anger can cause the mentally ill to do horrible things, like shoot up baseball games.

If you are angry, do what US citizens have the absolute right to do. Send a letter outlining the policy to which you object and what you think would be a better plan. Send a copy of your letter to YOUR US Representative, YOUR two US Senators, to the President of the US, and to the head of the US Department in charge of implementing any policy change. Make certain that your voting address is in the letter.

There is something magical about letters. Lawyers and courts use letters as legal notification of an event. A letter is an undeniable physical manifestation of your objections. Before the internet, rock stars based their assessment of popularity by the sacks of fan mail that arrived.

BE POLITE in your letter.

Your letter can look like:

Your name and address at the top.

The names of all people who were sent the letter come next.

Open with Dear Sir or Madam:

Then put ONE issue into the body of the letter.

Sign it, "Sincerely, Your name" Sign the letter.

Put a return address on the envelope. If you want, you can put the subject of your letter in the lower left hand corner where many people put the ATTN: ____________. Doing this will help sort the letters.

Roomfuls of letters will have a greater effect than streets full of protestors.

Feel free to send multiple letters if you are concerned about more than one issue.

DO NOT PUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN SEVERAL PIECES OF PAPER INTO YOUR LETTERS.

Do not give up the good fight. But please go to the beach or pool or hiking. Touch base with the nature that we are committed to saving.

JAMES BOND VILLIANS

Terrorists are like James Bond villains, all of whom wish to destroy the world, so that they can rule the mess that is left.

I intend to keep asking everyone to run the world as if the terrorists had not just attacked another stomach churning target.

Islam is doing a good job in trying to stop the crazy murderers from using Islam as their excuse. No religion can stop every single crazy person from using religion as their excuse to do violence.

The current attacks in Britain are intended to affect the British elections.

I have a strong belief that Putin's operatives are encouraging crazies to do horrible acts.

In his Megan Kelly interview, Putin implied that he had nothing to do with trying to affect the U.S. elections. Smirking like a James Bond villain, he said that there was no real proof and that Western intelligence services could not be trusted.

I am certain that he would also deny that his psyc bots* affected the Brexit election.

I believe that Putin wants all the territory the old Soviet Union used to have.

I believe that Putin wants to destabilize Western democracies. His psyc bots support candidates who truly believe in austerity. Since austerity results in overwhelming social problems, he believes the resulting social problems will keep those governments from interfering with his agenda.

All of this sounds like he is in control.

But Bond villains are always out of control.

* Many "people" on social media are not real people. If the postings are to look like real people, the posting have to have variety. This variety is written by the kind of computer programs that were experiments in whether computers could write books, or be mistaken for a human. The plan was, and is, to amplify the voices of racism, intolerance, and selfishness. I figure it is now about 1 human per 1000 pretend humans, (A bot is a computer program that can do internet things, like buy tickets.)

UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES

Amazon is surprised that the sale of ebooks has declined by 20%. I think it is because they intrusively follow how you read a book. Worse, they actually interact with readers of young adult books.

I think that they thought that young adults would welcome a chance to interact about their reading.

We all expect that Amazon would keep track of the books we read. But keeping track of the when, how and if, we actually read the book is intrusive beyond belief. Reading a book is one of the truly private things that people do.

I would go back to real books, but my hands can no longer hold a book open. Kindle is the only book app that offers white letters on a black background, which is way easier on the eyes.

So I ignore Amazon's intrusions into my privacy. But I will not encourage my grandchildren to read ebooks, because of Amazon's intrusions into the privacy of children who read ebooks.

I think part of the reason that Theresa May is going down in the polls is because she tried eating in public.

I still remember my first taste of fish and chips. I was appalled at the smell of vinegar, and the greasy newspaper it was wrapped in. "Just try it," said my friend from Blackpool.

YUM! I did refrain from licking the newspaper as I thought the ink might be bad for me.

Minister May ate her chips with CATSUP! And the look on her face indicated that she had not enjoyed her chips.

Then she had the same look on her face as she contemplated eating a cheese sample.

This could be dismissed as the reactions of a skinny person who only eats rabbit food.

But Brexit will badly affect the British farmer. Continental foodies have discovered the joys of artisan cheese. (You should try Cheshire cheese, a taste to almost die for.)

By looking at Brexit as a task to complete, she is not paying attention to the very real harm Brexit will cause to fishers, farmers, and artisan cheesemakers. For small operations, losing even 10% of their customers could be a death sentence to their business.

Readers of my blog know that I am against almost all austerity measures. I think that protecting the rich at the expense of the poor is both immoral and stupid.

Remember that the French revolution started over a shortage of their fabulous bread.

JUSTICE AND THE SILENT MAJORITY

Without money for court systems, the courts struggle to have the time to listen to the frightened.

Most people are frightened of speaking in public. In a courtroom, they can barely state their name for the record.

In order to bring justice to the usually silent, courts need to actively LISTEN.

THIS TAKES MONEY!

Judges need to be able to take the time to encourage people to tell their side of the story.

Interpreters need to be available to translate what people say.

Information about court appearances must be available on the telephone as well as on a website.

Clerks, court reporters, translators, facilitators, all need to be trained and paid a living wage.

As the method for resolving disputes, courts need to be safe places for people. Otherwise people may resolve their own disputes, using bullying and perhaps violence.

The US has few vigilantes, because we believe that the courts will judge and punish those guilty of crimes.

Court systems are an easy target for budget cuts, because the general public does not notice that there is a problem with the courts until they have to go to court to resolve a dispute.

This is like not paying your insurance for your house. If the house burns down, you are really in trouble, but if the house never burns down, gee what money you saved.

Well funded courts are insurance that, if you are treated unjustly, there is a way to achieve justice.

Jerry, please increase the budget for California courts. LET CALIFORNIA BE A SHINING BEACON OF JUSTICE FOR ALL.

THE BAD OLD DAYS

How can we afford to help people get through college if huge amounts of our money pays for putting non violent drug offenders into federal prisons, sometimes for life?

Attorney General Sessions wants to bring back the openly racist mandatory sentencing for federal criminals. The result will be that minority defendants will be sentenced to a lifetime in jail for the same amount of drugs that gets a white dealer a much lighter sentence. (This is because sentencing is based on the form of the drug. Ounce by ounce, crack cocaine used by minorities gets much longer sentences than the type of cocaine sniffed by the upper class.)

Alcohol prohibition did not stop people from being alcoholics. Drug prohibition will not stop people being druggies. Substance abusers need to recognize that they need help, and help must be available to those who want to learn to live their lives without being impacted by substance abuse.

I believe much of the anti-drug propaganda is funded by drug dealers who want to keep their enormous tax free profits. For instance, the "opioid epidemic" is not just opioids. Almost always, the autopsy reveals that the overdose may have been caused by a combination of opioids and antidepressant medication, which seems to be a lethal combination.

It is not surprising that violence in our inner cities has increased. Just before prohibition ended, the FBI tried its very best to stop alcohol consumption. The result was an unacceptable increase in violence, which led to the end of prohibition.

Escalating the futile War on Some Drugs has caused sharp increases in violence every time the tactic is tried. Session rails against the term "recreational drug".

Those of us opposed to the futile drug wars use the term  "recreational drug" for a drug that is less harmful to the user and the person than alcohol.

TREATMENT FOR ADDICTION is the answer to misusing drugs.

BIRTH DEFECT -- LIFETIME SENTENCE

Babies born with birth defects have a life time sentence of a pre-existing condition.

It is a fantasy that high risk pools can replace the requirement that health insurance covers all persons, regardless of pre-existing conditions.

California attempted to have a high risk pool. The insurance was both prohibitively expensive and often unavailable due to lack of funding. People who lost their jobs were devastated to learn that they could not afford the COBRA policy offered and that the high risk pools were also not affordable.

I think it is time to explore the idea that people can buy into the Medicare insurance plan.

I find it distressing that some Republicans are joyfully trying to destabilize ObamaCare. A policy of attempting to break the current system ignores the multitudes whose lives were saved or improved by ObamaCare.

I am pleased with the temporary, through September, budget. Except it does include a huge amount of new debt to pay for the military and border patrols. It seems to me that Republicans only hate debt when they are running for office. Once they are in office, they seem to believe that debt is better than taxes.

Democrats can also be short sighted. I support the so called sanctuary city idea. But to totally refuse to cooperate with federal immigration is dangerous and does not help immigrants who are being deported.

For instance, many rural California counties make money by incarcerating immigrants who are being deported. The county provides jail space, but the federal government pays the county for the jail space. If the immigrant is not held in a jail in California, the federal government can put them in a jail anywhere in the country. At least an immigrant who is incarcerated in California has access to California attorneys.

By the time something is a federal problem, it is a complex problem that is not easy to solve. If the problem was actually easy to solve, it would have been solved by local or state government, or by private industries or charities.

PUTIN'S PLAN -- KILL THE EU

Propaganda can be VERY POWERFUL. Fictional news gets LOTS of attention. Robots pretending to be people post comments designed to trigger your deepest fears.

The easiest fear to trigger is that a stranger is going to take your children, all your food, your life, or your job.

Since fear is irrational, the only way to fight propaganda is to be rational.

Rationally, we know that Putin is making every effort to support candidates who might remove their country from the EU.

France is holding an historic election. Please, France, pay attention to what happened in Britain and the US. Listen to your basic values of liberty, equality and fraternity. Russia wants you to treat Muslims in the same way the Vichy treated the Jews.

Putin succeeded in fooling the British into leaving the EU. Worse, Britain is unwilling to admit that propaganda influenced the election, and that rational Brits think leaving the EU is expensive, dangerous, and plays into Putin's hands.

It is fairly amazing what is happening in the US now that the robot trolls no longer control most of our social media.

Please France, learn from the mistakes made by your closest allies. Do NOT vote for Le Pen.

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

My iPad keeps telling me that I may have won $1000. I NEVER reply to such ads. The virus I get will be expensive to fix, or I will get LOTS of trash emails and NO money.

Some of the email offers I get have fooled large law firms. Everyone seems to want something for nothing. I NEVER download an attachment unless I know who it is from and what it is about.

Emails from banks asking for ID information, Amazon free gift cards, warnings to change my password RIGHT NOW by clicking on a provided link -- all get my distain.

Even with all my vigilance, I still got a virus today. My entire computer stopped with a notice to call Microsoft at 855-624-0094. I panicked, took a photo of my screen and called my trusted techies at CorpWest in Campbell, CA. I followed their advice and my computer is now working and virus free. THANK YOU CorpWest.

Many people seem to be focused on the Mexican border. BAD guys can come into our country, they say. I have actually known many undocumented people. As a disabled person, sometimes the undocumented are the only persons I can find who are willing to work for a few hours moving boxes and cleaning floors and windows.

If we would stop the FUTILE War on Some Drugs, then the drug violence will stop in the same way that the bootlegger violence stopped when prohibition was repealed.

What is actually really hurting the old, the poor, the credulous, and the trusting, is the BILLIONS OF DOLLARS STOLEN BY HACKERS.

If you stupidly give out your banking password to a fake bank website, the bank can take the position that they are not responsible for the subsequent theft. Since the thieves are almost always NOT in the U.S., law enforcement has almost no way to get your money back or to put the thieves in jail.

It is my humble opinion that WWIII will be fought on the internet.

So is our country ready for the fight? Most of us have computers that are more modern than the computers used by most of the federal government. Many of the government's computers can not even load modern virus software.

Some of our power plants are using computers which take large floppy disks. I hope they are copying the disks often, as the floppy with my book died. I am lucky I kept a paper copy.

We are becoming more and more dependent on wireless communications. If cell phone towers go down, we will be helpless to even navigate home if our usual road is blocked.

Hordes of strawberry picking Mexicans pose WAY LESS danger than HACKERS living half a world away.

--BTW, the free trash pick up offered by California Waste Solutions is not free. The person paying the garbage bill can get two free pickups in one year, ending in July, I think.

MORE IMPORTANT THAN A WALL*

It is easy to climb over a wall, or tunnel under a wall, if there is nobody guarding the wall.

Our "wall guards" are correctly termed border patrol agents. Often, trained ICE agents quit when they discover the grueling work conditions.

I am totally AGAINST building a wall, which I consider a waste of money.

However, I am TOTALLY IN FAVOR OF GIVING A LARGE RAISE IN PAY TO BORDER PATROL AGENTS.

May I suggest a compromise? Do NOT put funding the wall into the current budget resolution. DO authorize a 20% raise in pay for all federal employees who work with immigration and border patrol.

BTW, sanctuary cities are NOT sanctuaries. They are just cities where the city police force concentrates on solving crimes, rather than on deporting the undocumented.

This is the way that ALL of our law enforcement agencies work.

The FBI investigates federal and interstate crime.

Local law enforcement investigates what we citizens need the most. Murder, arson, rape, spousal abuse, robbery are all investigated by local law enforcement. These are the crimes that affect the quality of the lives of most of us.

ATF investigates alcohol, tobacco, and fire arm crimes.

The DEA investigates large drug cartels.

ICE is in charge of immigration enforcement.

Sanctuary city is a non-descriptive term which means that the local police will not do the job of immigration enforcement, in large part to assure that their jurisdiction does NOT spiral into the violence caused when law abiding people are afraid to call the police for help with solving crime.

* The WALL is the proposed wall along the Mexican border. From photos, this looks like another problem that has already been solved.

COSTS NOW vs. COSTS LATER

San Jose now has a recycle program which picks up your bulky unwanted items FOR FREE. California Waste Solutions will make an appointment to take your unwanted TV, appliances, chairs, etc. 

Now you can get rid of your stuff without driving it to the dump. And you can be GUILT FREE as you know your stuff will not end up in the creek.

San Jose will hopefully save money since correct recycling keeps items out of our creeks and canyons, where they are EXPENSIVE to remove.

There are other decisions which can be made to spend money now to save money later.

If children do not get enough to eat, their brains do not develop correctly. This means that the taxpayers face coping with damaged children for the LIFETIME of the damaged child. Food is MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE than supporting a brain damaged adult.

It is much easier to fix a sewage problem before rising water levels cause the sewers to back up. Working in dry conditions is ALWAYS less expensive than working in wet conditions. (You may think coastal water levels are not rising, but insurance companies are starting to deny flood insurance for coastal buildings.)

I strongly disagree with suspending children from school. An uneducated adult is almost always an unproductive adult. Leaving disruptive children in the classroom can ruin the education of the entire class. I believe we should have what we called 'continuation school' where the disruptive children can be taught by teachers who know how to deal with disruptive students. Saving money on school psychologists, just means that we will may not be able to get disruptive children the help they need to become productive members of society.

Currently, many of our tax dollars come disproportionately from the poor. The poor do not get to save sales taxes by buying on line. The poor do not get to save sales taxes by buying an automobile in another county. The poor cannot afford electric cars. 

Many of you are not choosing wisely to avoid a future full of expensive problems.

WASTING ONE MILLION DOLLARS

Santa Clara County is about to spend ONE MILLION DOLLARS on REBRANDING the county. Worse, they have hired a NEW YORK firm to rebrand a CALIFORNIA county.

May I make some suggestions for spending the million dollars in a way that will automatically rebrand the county.*

ANNOUNCE THAT THE FUTURE REQUIRES JUSTICE FOR ALL.

Equalize the funding of the public defender and the district attorney, so that each public attorney on both sides of a criminal matter can draw on equal resources. Many people get convicted just because they are poor and inarticulate.

Fund the legal services corporation to provide legal services to those too poor to get legal services. In my experience, providing effective legal help for the poor fixes problems that affect us all.

Fund a housing program aimed at helping the poor find, and keep, housing, similar to the Section 8 housing that kept families housed in well maintained apartments, which paid reasonable rents to the landlords. Rents were set as a percentage of income. It is sinful that people are sleeping under bridges in one of the richest areas on earth.

Begin a reforestation project in large county parks. Once, the entire area was covered in redwoods. We can restart a forest, returning the land to how it was before we built all those neat Victorian painted ladies.

If you are set on wasting money on a self congratulatory project, at least hire a West Coast firm that understands the unique points of view held by Silicon Valley.

* I am leaving out fixing pot holes, putting in curb cuts, and other mundane things that need doing. I am aiming at spending the money in a way that will get international reporting on how Santa Clara County progressively represents the best of Silicon Valley.

IT IS A SAD DAY FOR POOR WOMEN

Women with money will always have access to family planning alternatives like birth control. Now we have a new Supreme Court Justice who has ruled that religious people can prevent women from having birth control medication though insurance.

I know many people are focused on the 2018 elections. Getting out the vote will be particularly important.

Do not forget that we can make many changes at the local level. The good news today is that the notorious tent city jail in Phoenix is being closed. Courts failed to close this jail, it took the voters electing a new sheriff to close tent city.

However, it is time to assess the daily annoyance caused by some liberal policies.

Low flow toilets were a brilliant idea to save water. Then someone decided that it would be even better if the toilets took half an hour to refill. Plumbers were told they would lose their plumbing license if they changed the toilet to fill up faster.

If you are a person who does not share a toilet, the slow refill is not a usually a problem.

If you have two people sharing one toilet, then the second user may have to accept a not completely empty toilet bowl. If it is a household with children, a bucket may have to be filed from the bathtub in order to get the toilet to flush out solid wastes so that the children can get to school on time.

The low flow can cause plumbing to back up as there is not enough water to move the waste into the sewer.

It is these little insanities that give liberals a reputation for over regulating things.

I do not want our rivers on fire, and our lakes filled with acid instead of fish.

But it is important for us all to realize that people are part of the environment.

Generally, the long term solution to problems take the middle road. Even though I believe that a woman should be in total control of all her health care decisions, I am willing to accept the principles set out in Roe v Wade. I am not willing to allow Republicans to prevent access to family planning clinics.

RETRIBUTION

If I were a Republican US congressperson, I would want to face the 2018 elections wearing a hard hat. I would want to be photographed putting the first shovel into the ground to upgrade a bridge, to expand a highway, or to bring sports and arts centers to small towns.

There is a long lead time between Congress funding a project and the project being built. For those of you used to the pace of business building, it is necessary to factor in the proposal process, the bidding process, the review process. In order to protect the government from fraud and shoddy work, the system is complex and time consuming.

If you want to be putting a shovel into the ground in 2018, you need to get started NOW.

It is time that you all overcame your desire for petty revenge, and worked together to fix our infrastructure and give small towns hope for the future. I believe that there are projects where everyone agrees that 'something should be done.'

So dust off the 'wish list' for your district. Do not quarrel over whether a project was proposed by Democrats or Republicans. GET THINGS FIXED AND GET THINGS BUILT! START NOW!

I would fund these projects by STOPPING STOCK GAMBLING. I propose a .001% tax on any stock sale completed within 2 seconds. Have the stock exchange collect the tax and transmit the revenue to the IRS.

I believe that rational bankers would welcome a 'brake' on the buying and selling of stock by computer programs basing the computer's decision on stock movement, with no regard to the actual value of this stock.

It is important to remember that farmers need reliable transportation systems into and out of our cities. Railroad beds need to be upgraded no matter where they are located. Some highways need to be expanded, even if the expansion happens to be in California.

Let's make America's infrastructure great again.

THE SUPREME COURT NOMINEE

Some newspapers are saying that the Democrats might oppose the confirmation of Nominee Gorsuch just because no one held a hearing regarding Obama's last nominee.

I oppose the confirmation of Gorsuch, because Gorsuch believes that religious people can deny women access to full health care benefits.

I have no problem with religious people practicing their religion without government interference. I do, however, greatly object to court rulings allowing religious people to make ME obey their religious beliefs.

I believe women's rights are extremely important. Based on his court rulings, I believe that the Democrats should do everything possible to prevent the confirmation of Nominee Gorsuch.

It should be remembered that Gorsuch was nominated by a President who believes that weapons are the only thing worthy of our tax dollars.

Any parent knows that a hungry child is a misbehaving child just waiting to happen. I used to carry healthy snacks with me so that I could avoid the child meltdown which comes with hunger.

But the President's people believe that there is no problem with hungry children learning great things.

I have always found that art is a way to calm my mind. Looking at art, attempting to make art, listening to art, reading art, watching art, has often helped me make better life decisions. Art, in all its forms, is a way to bring communities together. Government support of art makes our world a better place. To take revenge on the arts by failure to fund PBS, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the National Endowment of Humanities, is equivalent to a bully pushing over angel statutes because the bully is upset about something.

Worse, our President is not even planning on fixing our infrastructure.

I have noticed that the brunt of the proposed budget cuts will be against people and things that can not easily defend themselves.

Eagles, rivers, blue sky, the school play, the marching band, the mural project, hungry children, sick people, intercities, our aging transportation infrastructure. Who defends them except the Democrats?

WHY WE NEED REGULATING

33 years ago, car aficionados all purchased car alarms. These alarms went off in piercing decibels until the car was tilted to be towed or the battery ran out. (Batteries would last long enough to blare the noise for 3 - 5 hours.)

At the time, I was living in downtown Berkeley, raising a toddler and a baby. The car alarms in the parking lot across the street would go off and howl for hours, usually during nap time. This was not because of robbers, but because children thought it great fun to set off the alarms.

Every time I heard that a friend was buying a car alarm, I would talk to them about how everyone seemed to just ignore the alarms. I pointed out that if the police were called, they would just order the car be towed so that the alarm would shut off. One and all bought the alarms anyway. Not a single person cared about the social costs of the loud alarms ringing for hours. They just cared about their own car.

Then California required that no car alarm could be installed in a car if the alarm sounded for over 60 seconds. 

We are still woken in the middle of the night by our selfish neighbor's car alarm. But at least the horrible sound only lasts for a minute.

I believe we need a new regulation regarding the word 'milk'. I am particularly concerned with 'almond milk', which is basically flavored water. At least 'soy milk' has protein.

It is an open secret that most children's cereal contains no protein, with REAL MILK (from a cow) providing that necessary ingredient.

It is easy for a mother to think that the supposedly healthy almond 'milk' is good for her children. Instead, the mother may be sending her children to school hungry for the protein necessary to learn and to grow.

I have reached the conclusion that if a movie/TV person recommends any diet, then that diet is almost certainly very bad for your body.

TRUMPERY TWEETING

Anyone who has knowledge of the ability of hackers to get personal data becomes really paranoid about other people learning their darkest secrets. This paranoia often surfaces at 3 in the morning.

I can understand a person new to the spotlight of politics becoming worried about blackmail from hackers.

The latest from Wikileaks is a good/bad thing. It lets the rest of us know just how paranoid a person is power needs to be.

For instance, attorneys with that hackable TV in their conference rooms need to be really certain that they have downloaded all of the patches. Even if all the janitors cleaning the attorney offices are trusted people, it is still way too easy to put a thumb drive into the TV. Now that the problem is known, I do not think the courts are going to by sympathetic to attorneys who did not take security measures and allowed confidential information to be accessed by hackers.

Most of you are WAY too careless regarding your phones. Once a spy gets physical access to your phone, they can hack your phone in various ways.

One of the reasons that US law enforcement is divided into different agencies, is so that each agency can only get information within his jurisdictional area.

We all have to realize that much of WWIII is going to be fought on the internet.

ISIS recruits using the internet. Terrorist make plans and carry out attacks using burner phones and internet communications, rather than dangerously meeting in person.

If we do not have excellent internet spying, we will be unable to stop the bad guys before they blow up innocents.

This means that the intelligence community must be trustworthy like our armed forces are trustworthy. Just like our armed services obey the Commander in Chief, the intelligence community obeys our Commander in Chief.

Just because someone can do something does not mean that they will do something.

All companies need to patch the holes through which hackers hack. Unfortunately, some of them deny they are hackable. An Apple icon called TATSU turned my iPad into a brick, and I had to pay the deductible for a new iPad, while the Apple geniuses informed me that no one can hack Apple.

**** Note: the adjective trumpery means showy but worthless.

STOPPING PUTIN'S NASTY GAMES

Putin enjoys playing a worldwide game of being the 'bad boy'. As we all know, bad boys get WAY too much attention.

Putin believes that attention to Russia makes Russia a more important country.

Because Putin has less money, he needs to get his attention fix at a discount rate.

The easiest way Putin gets attention is to fund 'rebellions', especially if the distraction of violence will slow or stop natural gas and/or oil production.

Not content with the violence in Syria, Putin is now funding violence in Libya.

We used to counter the violence caused by Putin by offering aid to countries to fight insurgencies, to train troops, to feed and educate people. This is so much LESS expensive than building aircraft carriers and fancy new planes.

Giving aid to countries is also more effective in keeping us safe. We may have nuclear weapons, but we wisely hesitate to use those weapons. If providing food can stop violence, then we should provide food. If our embassies are funded, the ambassadors have a chance at negotiating a truce to stop the violence.

Our President is worried about wire-tapping of Trump Towers. He forgets that there are at least two people on a phone conversation. I am fairly certain that we tap the phones of Russian operatives. The Russian operatives know this, and should have been more careful in their conversations, if any, with the Trump election campaign.

Unfortunately, our President is going to allow Putin a free playing field around the world.

Saving money by refusing to adequately fund foreign aid and our embassies, will make the entire world less safe.

WHO KNEW FOREIGN POLICY COULD BE SO COMPLEX?   %<)

WHAT EISENHOWER KNEW

After World War II, the general who led our troops in a resounding defeat of the Nazis, came home and started building our interstate highways.

He supported the Marshall Plan, which helped Europe, including Germany, from starving due to destruction of both farms and the means to get the food from the farms to the people.

He helped Japan recover and become a modern democracy.

He helped our former enemies so that they would become our friends.

He warned that the military industrial complex would continue to lobby for expensive and unnecessary weapons systems.

Russia loves to foster fighting in poor countries. When poor countries can not provide upward mobility for its citizens, some citizens become so frustrated that they embrace terrorism. A small amount of foreign aid can bring peace and emerging prosperity.

By cutting the budget of the State Department, much intel about what other countries are doing and saying will be lost.

The proposal to spend hundreds of billions on defense and nothing on US infrastructure makes only defense contractors rich. It does not help the interior of the country repair and build bridges, roads, DAMS.

The new administration has a love affair with military men.

Even military men are saying that the priorities in the possible new budget are stunningly incorrect.

This is not just about expensive equipment. What is the life of a Navy Seal worth?

Foreign aid and intelligence based diplomacy can make it less necessary to expend the lives of our spies, our soldiers, our sailors, our pilots and our diplomates.

I LOVED 'THE WALL'

I am a life time fan of sword and sorcery movies. 'The Wall' is more of a sword and medieval science movie. I loved it!

Trolls seem to be ruining the intercultural movie experience. 'The Wall' has a Chinese woman protagonist who thinks, fights, and talks often. She is not the love interest. All but two of the roles are Chinese. The Europeans fight better in one on one combat because they have been fighting for their lives since childhood. The Chinese are excellent fighters, but practice is not the same as combat experience.

How is all this racist?

It is amazing to see the Great Wall of China recreated. I noticed that as The Wall ran through the mountains, it provided a quick road through very rough territory. (The top of The Wall is a fairly wide road.)

The Wall has a wall lesson. The bad creatures tunnel through The Wall. With the army concentrating on defending The Wall, the interior of the country is defenseless.

In The Wall, a young, frightened soldier blows himself up to block a passage, giving the heroes time to try to kill the enemy leader. If you wanted a definition of jihadist, then such an action is what being a jihadist means.

If you want to call a Muslim a terrorist, the please use the word, mufsidun. It is pronounced muf-see-dune. It means evil-doer.

Bill Maher has been looking for the correct word to call Muslim terrorists. He can be helpful by using the word mufsidun.

BTW, someone once said that it is unwise to build a wall that blocks your view of the other side.

REBEL vs TERRORIST

In the English speaking world, a rebel is admired and a terrorist is denigrated.

In the Muslim world, we are using the WRONG TERM for terrorist. THE CORRECT TERM IS "MUFSIDUN". If all people used the correct term there could be an instantaneous change in attitudes.

I will quote Nathaniel Burney*, because I do not think I could write a better explanation.

"You can mis-use words yourself, giving an advantage to the enemy.

"'Jihadist,' for example, is the wrong word to use when attacking islamist terrorists. In Islam, the word 'jihadist' has strong connotations of goodness and proper behavior. Calling someone a jihadist confers on them real religious legitimacy. The proper word to use would be 'mufsidun,' which means 'evildoer.'

"In 2008, the local sheikhs and tribal leaders in Iraq began using the word 'mufsidun' when describing terrorism, with real results. Their people began opposing and punishing terrorist behavior, and generally began acting like terrorism was wrong and bad. Even with the significant progress under the military's 'surge' strategy, this single conceptual change was considered the biggest change on the ground in 2008." 

* Nathaniel Burney, author of Primer on International Law

DROWNED BY THE DAMN DAM*

A dam is a potentially lethal weapon. After one builds a dam, one has to continue to maintain the dam. Dams do not last forever, they sometimes need to be replaced early.

Right now, in California, officials are worried about the small possibility of complete failure of the Oroville dam. The latest news is that 200,000 people have been ordered to evacuate.

How did it come to this?

Unfortunately, in California, we have voters who object to paying taxes, and voters who want environmental perfection in any new energy expenditure. This makes it fairly easy to stop necessary funding for maintenance and/or repair of already built systems.

California is not the only US state to have a dam that needs replacement or repair. A dam in Nevada has already failed.

I believe it is time to have the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inspect every dam in the US, starting with known problems, and with dams where the failure threatens people. I am fairly certain that the POSTUS** has the authority to order such inspections.***

After the Corps inspects, then our 45th president can introduce emergency legislation to fund necessary repairs or replacement.

These dams provide flood control, generate electricity without using fossil fuels, and provide recreation. We often forget that major roads are located along the tops of dams.

It would be fun to be Dumbledore, and have a spell called DAM FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. Then 200,000 people could go home tonight.

* Damn is the special word used when you ask God "to damn someone to Hell." It is considered to be impolite to use this phrase. Dam is the construction that stops up a river.

** President of the United States.

*** The federal government has authority over any moving body of water that is large enough to float a log down the waterway.

ATTORNEY v PUBLIC RELATIONS ADVICE

Generally, attorneys can advise you on how best to win a lawsuit. Attorneys are UNABLE to advise you on how a lawsuit can RUIN your IMAGE.

Currently, Melania Trump is suing the Daily Mail for a story they later withdrew, which implied that Melania may have been an escort back when she first came to the US.

Almost certainly told that the libel suit would bring no money without damages, Melania's attorney advised Melania to state that Melania intended to use her position as First Lady to make money from the products Melania sells.

This excellent legal advice was an incredibly stupid political move. Now we all get to talk about the lawsuit and its salacious allegations. (It is not slander or libel to report on a filed court case.) Worse, Melania's image as a First Lady has been seriously undermined. Making money off of being First Lady is incredibly tacky if not actually illegal.

Corporations make this mistake all the time. We can WIN that lawsuit, they tell themselves. They rarely check with their public relations department about the stupidity of using a lawsuit to beat up a vulnerable person. SOMETIMES SETTLING QUICKLY IS THE BEST WAY TO GET THE ENTIRE MATTER OUT OF THE PUBLIC DISCUSSION. (The Disney crocodile incident is an excellent example of a corporation (probably) accepting responsibility for something even if they had a robust defense available.)

There is absolutely NO WAY to PROVE the allegations against Melania.

My first reaction was, WHO CARES? A slightly racy First Lady is OK by me.

My second reaction was, DO YOU SUPPOSE THAT PRETTY WOMAN WAS BASED ON A REAL ROMANCE?

As a fan of the fallen woman with a heart of gold fictional plot device, I found Pretty Woman to be an entirely new take on the issue. Could it have been based on rumors of a real relationship?

Melania should drop her lawsuit, have lunch with Julia Roberts and then move into the White House.

THE BETRAYAL OF THEIL

Peter Theil* was an early supporter of Trump, donating a million dollars to his campaign.

In response, Trump made numerous comments that he supported gay rights and that gay marriage was settled law. Then Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court.

Gorsuch is an originalist, which is the belief that he should make legal decisions as if he was one of the people who wrote the constitution.

I greatly admire the people who wrote the constitution. They wrote a document that is still a vibrant outline of how our government should be run.

At the time of the US revolution, women were chattels, with about the same legal status as a cow. Practicing gay sex was considered to be immoral, illegal, and beyond reprehensible. Child labor was common.

As a Judge, Gorsuch was able to reach the conclusion that a person could use religious belief as a legally acceptable reason to deny rights to another person. I believe our founders would have been appalled at such a ruling.

If you are gay and/or a woman, you should do everything you can to oppose the confirmation of Gorsuch.

If you believe that my analysis of Gorsuch is incorrect, please talk to a gay rights attorney, to a labor lawyer, or a women's rights advocate.

The cleanest way to stop this appointment is to pressure Republican Senators to vote against the confirmation of Gorsuch. I think snail mail is an excellent way to get the attention of YOUR Senator. Please write "Re: Gorsuch" in the lower left of the envelope to make mail sorting easier.

Every person who lives in a state with a Republican Senator should write a snail mail letter to each Senator, send an email copy, and make a phone call to the Senator. WE DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. WE OPPOSE THE CONFIRMATION OF GORSUCH.

* Peter Theil is a Silicon Valley billionaire who said, "I am proud to be gay," when he spoke just before Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2016.

KING FOR A DAY

Over the weekend, we have had a demonstration of how Presidential power is limited by the US Constitution. My biggest worry was that Homeland Security would NOT obey judicial orders. However, the judicial orders were obeyed.

Therefore, I can be secure in my belief that I live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The country of the US has THREE branches of government.*

The EXECUTIVE branch, headed by the President, is tasked with running the day to day business of the government.

The legislative branch consists of the House of Representatives, elected every two years from districts of substantially equal populations; and the Senate, elected every six years, with two senators per state.** The legislature passes laws and approves funding.

The JUDICIAL branch decides the outcome of lawsuits and has the authority to find that a law or proclamation is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Federal judges are appointed for life. Federal judges can void a law passed by congress or find an action by the President to be unconstitutional. SUCH JUDICIAL ORDERS ARE OBEYED.

It is important to note that ALL court decisions on unconstitutionality require that the law, order, regulation, be unambiguous. One is actually not allowed to say, "Well, I meant this to apply to green cards, but I have changed my mind." People who have to obey the laws, etc. must be supplied with a written manifestation of the law, regulation, etc.

People are giving money to the ACLU. Excellent.

But if immigration is your key issue, please consider giving to the National Immigration Law Center and the International Refugee Assistance Project. 

Do NOT protest at airports. Demonstrations at airports are an excellent excuse for Homeland Security to deny attorneys access to clients being held at airports. These immigrants need attorneys way more than they need protesters. If you must protest, do not protest at airports.

THIS IS ALSO A RED HERRING, AFFECTING ONLY HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE.

WHO GETS APPOINTED TO THE US SUPREME COURT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE FACING THIS NATION.

* Each state also has a government with three branches. Counties, cities, and towns, have governments. Many regional areas form governments for very special purposes like running regional transit.

** Currently, there are 50 US states, so there are 100 senators. There are 435 representatives.

BY THE NUMBERS

The largest one day protest ever.*

400,000 in New York City
100,000 in Boston
250,000 in Chicago
500,000 in Los Angeles
60,000 in St. Paul
50,000 in Philadelphia
40,000 in San Diego
50,000 in Austin
85,000 in San Francisco Bay Area
20,000 in both Houston and Phoenix (40,000)
10,000+ crowds in Tucson, Sacramento, Kansas City, New Orleans, Charlotte, Nashville, Raleigh, Miami and Olympia (90,000)
500,000 in DC
+ marchers in small towns throughout the entire US, including Alaska and Hawaii
1,000,000 outside the US

Perusal of photos of the crowds leads me to believe that the majority of the marchers were SOCCER MOMS.** It is generally considered to be a bad political idea to anger soccer moms. It is an even worse idea to anger politically active, internet connected, politically organized soccer moms.

For the future of women's equality, there is nothing more important than the next US Supreme Court Justice.

The US President nominates the candidate for the US Supreme Court, and the US Senate confirms the candidate.

This nomination is important for EVERYBODY.

It is important that the candidate support equal treatment of marginalized people.

It is also important that the candidate support the constitutional protections against governmental search and seizure.

Do not let numbers denial distract you from shouting*** your objections to any appointment that does not meet with your approval.

* The Women March, January 21, 2017. Number sources from thehill.com.

** No longer used political slang for middle class women who invest time in driving their children to activities.

*** Hopefully, social media will start reflecting the beliefs of actual people rather than the beliefs of Russian trolls.

SAY IT ISN'T SO!

We tried to "make it so." Instead, the Trump is going to be our President.

Stop saying, "Let's (violent act) Trump." We are a DEMOCRACY. At all times, at least 50 % of us disagree with the other 50% regarding a political issue.

This is not "Game of Thrones" or "House of Cards."

In the United States of America, WE DO NOT KILL PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH US!

Take your anger and use it to reform your local political process. We need to fix each gerrymandered district.

Take your anger and write Trump a letter telling him, in human terms, just how much he can help you.

We need homes for people, we need health care for people, we need equal opportunity for all of our citizens. We need to protect the sick, the poor, and the disabled.

STOP THREATENING TO KILL THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

If you can not celebrate, join me as I watch Bill Maher. He will make jokes. I will have a toke and a drink and mourn my dreams of fair and equal treatment for women.

Honestly, if you want to know how I truly feel, I feel that women have supported Black, Brown and Gay causes, and that many Blacks, Browns, and Gays have NOT supported women being in power.

I told you that we would all "hang together or hang separately". I enjoy hanging out with you all. But it is time for you all to examine yourself. In my humble opinion, many men do not truly accept women as human beings who are totally equal to men.

Enjoy your peaceful protests. I will be there in spirit.

FAKE MEDICINE

We have now all experienced the dangers of fake news.

Let us now consider the dangers of fake medical advice.

As a January ritual, many of us try to improve ourselves and our lives by making New Year Resolutions. Usually these are propaganda based decisions. Women have to be skinny. Men have to have great jobs.

It is VERY LUCRATIVE to sell diet stuff.

There is a recent study that dietary supplements are USELESS. The study did NOT involve vitamins.

SO PLEASE IGNORE THE EVIL IDIOTS WHO ARE TELLING YOU NOT TO TAKE PRENATAL VITAMINS. Prospective mothers' use of prenatal vitamins has greatly reduced nerve and brain based birth defects.

ANYTIME someone tells you that a medicine does or does not work, you can look at various websites to see if the person is totally unscientific and/or lying to you in order to make lots of money. I prefer websites connected with real science and medicine, like the Mayo Clinic website. University Hospitals have good info also.

There are an incredible number of wanna be healers out there. If you want to experiment with your own body, be my guest. But please do not spread fake medical information. The grandchild who is harmed may be your own.

THE BARD'S TALE

I ADORE the fantasy history stories about bards, especially how bards had immunity from retaliation.

Life in a small town can lack really excellent music, especially prior to recorded music. If you cut off a bard's head for singing an obnoxious song, then you would not have anybody to play at your daughter's wedding.

So an unspoken deal was made. The bard was allowed a few songs which reminded the king (actually little more than a warlord) that he was not omnipotent. But the rest of the night would be light, fun, excellent music.

One of the reasons the king allowed such liberties was that the king got 'cred' for hosting such amazing entertainment. The king also got a sense of what his people were secretly thinking by listening to the 'protest' songs.

Live music is still appreciated, especially at milestone events.

I am ashamed that our musicians will not play for our new president. I think that 'shunning' is a useless tactic. Without access to our president, how can we convince him that he is wrong?

Elizabeth Ferguson has NAILED the solution. She will sing for our new president, if she can sing "Strange Fruit". This is a win, win, win. She and Trump win by getting publicity. We all win by rehearing old songs that we should rehear.

I vote for Billy Joel singing, 'We Didn't Start the Fire",