tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-110931622024-03-19T01:47:37.578-07:00Can it happen here?<big><p align="left"><b>SEEKING A WAY FORWARD ... since it has happened here</b></p></big>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.comBlogger8532125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-72725201551149105782024-03-18T07:18:00.000-07:002024-03-18T07:18:50.271-07:00Where is Christian nationalism?<p>The title here is really a secondary question. I should probably start from the framing question: "<i><b>what</b></i> is Christian nationalism?" </p><p>The progressive side of our culture is amply supplied with <a href="https://happening-here.blogspot.com/2023/02/black-patriotism-should-not-be-mistaken.html" target="_blank">sociological punditry</a>, <a href="https://happening-here.blogspot.com/2022/03/blame-it-on-emperor-constantine.html" target="_blank">historians of religion</a>, and <a href="https://happening-here.blogspot.com/2021/05/two-takes-on-christian-nationalism.html" target="_blank">political scientists</a> offering definitions of what has become a signal feature of our American times.</p><p>For today's purposes, I think I can go with a succinct definitoin from the (relatively) broad-minded U.S. evangelical publication, <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/february-web-only/what-is-christian-nationalism.html" target="_blank">Christianity Today</a>.</p><p class="question"><b></b></p><blockquote><p class="question"><b>What is Christian nationalism?</b></p>
Christian nationalism is the belief that the American
nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take
active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists
assert that America is and must remain a “Christian nation”—not merely
as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program
for what America must continue to be in the future. </blockquote><p>With that in mind, I can go to the related question here: <b>Where is Christian nationalism? </b><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinEMYjYlQFwrAYmXTaEdFkL4vYGZCQk2HupnbI9GVSZ5kCBlNj_jq_V4EoLDX5tgFJinMzF2RJxRLLg6Gkyb1Fepi31lhPslAmsgfZIaf4rtXPwvJfXusI9DJTRxaa-P2Vk0NH8M0g85-tKSIGs73OGtEqI1-eFHKJF5Zj0hHldWlyQVkNwb6C/s1396/Christian%20nationalism%20per%20PRRI.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1004" data-original-width="1396" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinEMYjYlQFwrAYmXTaEdFkL4vYGZCQk2HupnbI9GVSZ5kCBlNj_jq_V4EoLDX5tgFJinMzF2RJxRLLg6Gkyb1Fepi31lhPslAmsgfZIaf4rtXPwvJfXusI9DJTRxaa-P2Vk0NH8M0g85-tKSIGs73OGtEqI1-eFHKJF5Zj0hHldWlyQVkNwb6C/w400-h288/Christian%20nationalism%20per%20PRRI.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The Public Religion Research Institute came up with some answers recently, mapped here. Yes, the darker greens look a lot like one of those red state/blue state maps, though with slight nuances -- who'd have thought New Mexico had more Christian nationalists than Utah? Still the general picture is familiar.</p><p>But Pastor Daniel Schultz -- a United Church of Christ minister -- who has been trying to explain religious peoples' engagement with politics for a couple of decades, has <a href="https://religiondispatches.org/new-report-mapping-christian-nationalism-by-state-suggests-election-need-not-be-played-out-on-christian-nationalist-terms/" target="_blank">some interesting takes on this map:</a> </p><p></p><blockquote><p>Christian nationalism should not be ignored or downplayed, but at the same time the segment of the population that embraces it is punching above its weight. Two states—Mississippi and North Dakota—reach 50% support, and only a handful land in the 40s. The rest of the nation ranges from the teens to the mid-30s. That’s a significant minority, to be sure, but a minority all the same. ...<br /><br />That Christian nationalists are in a solid minority in places like Ohio, Texas, or Florida also demonstrates the perilous position of hard-right regimes in such states. Were it not for gerrymandering and other anti-democratic tactics, their agenda would be firmly rejected. To put things another way: there are a lot more places that could be opened up as swing states on the basis of rejecting Christian nationalism than the other way around.</p><p>... it may be the case that, much as it was before the Civil War, Americans are facing a theological reckoning as much as a political crisis. </p><p>On the one side is an aging, dwindling group that asserts that its understanding of God blesses and endorses a traditionalist social order. </p><p>On the other is a more diverse, more secular group suspicious of authoritarian faith and the ways in which invocations of religious values privilege inequality and repression. <br /></p></blockquote><blockquote><p>The 2024 campaign will be finally [?] a decision about which of these views should dominate and which candidate gives the best expression to authentic American values. </p></blockquote><p>Dan has always been in the optimism business. I find it hard to share his vision that a defeat for Christian nationalism in the 2024 campaign will get us over some kind of hump, but he's right to remind us we're up against a force that is dwindling.<br /></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-44230627422592240392024-03-17T12:46:00.000-07:002024-03-17T12:46:00.303-07:00Remedial kindergarten required?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ntqFJVK5C2RRQbWE9JWrqjT8w8rwMJ_TZVQR-ZtnSwzwoqw4Ps8jnTC02lStqx2uE7stTlZx9kfp6MVAGuAyEMIZI_z6LWU-ZYjNamruTuY-h2V56ftC6hnU5_AqNsKkqO0QjWyCQKeNSh-YvCJ2_02BDJQklJdrh8Nvh_wY72gR2Cwwd06v/s960/trump-biden%20felony%20counts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="960" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ntqFJVK5C2RRQbWE9JWrqjT8w8rwMJ_TZVQR-ZtnSwzwoqw4Ps8jnTC02lStqx2uE7stTlZx9kfp6MVAGuAyEMIZI_z6LWU-ZYjNamruTuY-h2V56ftC6hnU5_AqNsKkqO0QjWyCQKeNSh-YvCJ2_02BDJQklJdrh8Nvh_wY72gR2Cwwd06v/w400-h281/trump-biden%20felony%20counts.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>If our system of government were parliamentary, we might not be so fixated on just who is the president. At least maybe this would be so. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/opinion/columnists/trump-biden-rematch.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dE0.MY3W.s694TwaRGSgz&smid=url-share" target="_blank">Jamelle Bouie</a> offers some thoughts.<p></p><p></p><blockquote>Americans are accustomed to thinking of their presidential elections as a battle of personalities, a framework that is only encouraged by the candidate-centric nature of the American political system as well as the way that our media reports on elections. Even the way that most Americans think about their country’s history, always focused so intently on whoever occupies the White House in a given moment, works to reinforce this notion that presidential elections are mostly about the people and personalities involved. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>Personality certainly matters. But it might be more useful, in terms of the actual stakes of a contest, to think about the presidential election as a race between competing coalitions of Americans. Different groups, and different communities, who want very different — sometimes mutually incompatible — things for the country. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>The coalition behind Joe Biden wants what Democratic coalitions have wanted since at least the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt: government assistance for working people, federal support for the inclusion of more marginal Americans. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>As for the coalition behind Trump? Beyond the insatiable desire for lower taxes on the nation’s monied interests, there appears to be an even deeper desire for a politics of domination. Trump speaks less about policy, in any sense, than he does about getting revenge on his critics. He’s only concerned with the mechanisms of government to the extent that they are tools for punishing his enemies. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>And if what Trump wants tells us anything, it’s that the actual goal of the Trump coalition is not to govern the country, but to rule over others.</blockquote><p>There it is. The impending election will be a contest between people who never learned to curb toddler emotions of greed and grievance and those who internalized what kindergarten aims to teach: we all do better when we share. And it's all too close a call which way we choose to go.<br /></p><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-59599472823198236442024-03-16T07:00:00.000-07:002024-03-16T07:00:00.165-07:00An intimate view of a genocide<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi17t2qFmZCfyPshf0m68hpRWU0K-n__7jtF3mf4WPVAP6oXkfqFuIcmHmsnlJhmhMAcxvA22nqfS5xpBkrp-jlLgodrCWzApUZ0ulnzyzpeBz8z9VYS7YnGAVAOUISes3IjwwHlu0C1ZQla8SBOkVrnLSrxnnEiVVbLsrFXqKDZsmlcExS6tcc/s1500/Bartov.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1029" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi17t2qFmZCfyPshf0m68hpRWU0K-n__7jtF3mf4WPVAP6oXkfqFuIcmHmsnlJhmhMAcxvA22nqfS5xpBkrp-jlLgodrCWzApUZ0ulnzyzpeBz8z9VYS7YnGAVAOUISes3IjwwHlu0C1ZQla8SBOkVrnLSrxnnEiVVbLsrFXqKDZsmlcExS6tcc/w221-h320/Bartov.jpg" width="221" /></a></div>I find myself, once again, trying to fill in some understanding of the eastern reaches of Europe. My generation of Americans simply didn't get it that there was a swath of territory, roughly the nations and peoples between the Baltic Sea and the Black and Adriatic Seas, which were obliterated from our consciousness by the Soviet empire. Once this had been the heart of Europe; before 1990 for many of us, it barely existed. It is thirty years since the Iron Curtain evaporated, but I'm certain I'm not the only one who is catching up. To that end, I want to recommend a difficult history.<br /><p></p><p>Historian Omer Bartov, an Israeli academic who teaches the Holocaust at Brown University, brings alive life and death in one small place<span> in western Ukraine, before and after the Nazi slaughter. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Genocide-Death-Called-Buczacz/dp/1451684541" target="_blank">Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz</a> took two decades to write, collecting witness accounts, survivor stories, and old pictures. And, amazingly, it is readable and accessible.</span></p><p><span>Bertov explains his explication of local genocide this way:</span></p><p></p><blockquote><span>By letting those who lived that history lend their own words to the telling of it and providing accompanying photos, this book attempts to reconstruct the life of Buczacz in all its complexity and depict how the Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish inhabitants of the town lived side by side for several centuries -- weaving their separate tales of the past, articulating their distinctive understanding of the present, and making widely diverging plans for the future.</span> <br /></blockquote><blockquote><span>Life in towns such as Buczacz was premised on constant interaction between different religious and ethnic communities. The Jews did not live segregated from the Christian population; the entire notion of a <i>shtetl</i> existing in some sort of splendid (or sordid) isolation is merely a figment of the Jewish literary and folkloristic imagination. That integration was what made the genocide there, when it occurred, a communal event both cruel and intimate, filled with gratuitous violence and betrayal as well as flashes of altruism and kindness. <br /></span></blockquote><p><span>Buczacz had been part of the thousand year Hapsburg empire which died conclusively </span><span>in 1918 </span><span>with what we call the First World War. During the subsequent period, until 1939, the town was both a battleground and a haven for the nationalisms of the day, ruled, badly by Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian-oriented Soviet partisans.</span></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote>The three decades that followed the destruction and erasure of pre-1914 ... society belonged to the nationalists and ideologues, fanatics and zealots of a new breed, more willing to shed blood than to seek compromise, more determined to assert their hegemony than to preserve coexistence: impatient men with guns and bombs, often led by the half educated and thirsting for a fight. ... Jews were cast in the role of a minority whose status could never be truly acceptable to either of the warring parties. Jews could be ignored, tolerated, or expelled, but by the nationalism that had evolved in this region, could neither be recognized as a separate indigenous national group or assimilated as ethnically kindred ... both Poles and Ukrainians increasingly felt that the Jews were their enemy's friends ...</blockquote><p>In 1939, Hitler and Stalin cut a deal to dismember Poland and seize the lands between the two powers. Russia overran <span>Buczacz and brought in NKVD (Secret Police) to rule with the support of Ukrainian nationalists. Bertov reports the opinions of Jadwiga Janika, the wife of a Polish Army captain, about this period. </span></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote>"At the the moment of of the Red Army's invasion," she testified, "an indescribable depression dominated the Polish population. Conversely, there was lively enthusiasm among the Jews and the Ukrainians." ... The early wave of fraternal killings [Ukrainians of Poles] evoked questions about the meaning and reality of interethnic relations, friendships, and communities, certainly among Poles and Ukrainians, who frequently intermarried, but also among Jews, who recalled many gentile friends and acquaintances. People repeatedly asked, Why did our neighbors, classmates, teachers, colleagues, friends, even family members turn their backs on us, betray us to the perpetrators, or join in the killings?"</blockquote><p>Many Poles were shipped off to Soviet Kazakhstan; to Ukrainian nationalists, the Poles were interlopers, "colonists." Some locals hope the joint hatred felt by Poles and Ukrainians for the Jews might serve as "an agenda for Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation."</p><p>Hitler's German forces overran Buczacz in 1941. The exploitation and eventual extermination of the Jews became a central item on the occupiers' agenda. First came the Gestapo - the <i>Einsatzgruppen</i> -- charged with eliminating "political and racial foes." After the first bloody wave, came the <i>Wehrmacht</i>, the regular German Army. Finally the occupation, and the final solution, was left to Security Police, often men who had held a similar job in peacetime Germany. They believed Germany had achieved permanent conquest; they brought their wives and children along.<br /></p><blockquote><p>The new order established by the Security Police ... was almost exclusively dedicated to the exploitation and murder of the Jews. ... Beyond the extraordinary bloodletting this undertaking entailed, perhaps its most scandalous aspect was the astonishing ease with which it was accomplished and the extent to which the killers, along with their spouses and children, lovers and colleagues, friends and parents, appear to have enjoyed their brief murderous sojourn in the region. For many of them, this was clearly the best time of their lives: they had almost unlimited access to food, liquor, tobacco, and sex, and most important, they became supreme masters over life and death. <br /></p></blockquote><blockquote><p>And when they were done, they packed up and left, often returning to their previous occupations as if nothing had happened ... <br /></p></blockquote><blockquote><p> [N]ormalization of murder, the removal of the Jews as part of a day's work, as background noise to drinking bouts or amorous relationships, along with puzzlement at the Jew's conduct mixed with anger at them for making it so easy to kill them -- these were part and parcel of the German experience of genocide ... Jewish slave labor was taken for granted ... Many of the German personnel used Jewish dentists ...</p></blockquote><p>Jews were rounded up in groups of several hundred, marched to the surrounding forests, and shot. Over and over again. In total some 10,000 Jews from the Buczacz area were killed; only 2000 of those were transported to a death camp. The others were eliminated personally by gun shots. </p><p>A (very) few Jews survived:</p><p></p><blockquote>Jewish accounts of the German occupation in the Buczacz district are invariably about rescue and betrayal by local gentiles. This is why testimonies are filled with mixed emotions of rage and vengeance, on the one hand, and gratitude and guilt on the other ... The most instructive feature to emerge from these accounts is the ambivalence of goodness: even those who took in Jews could at any point instruct them to leave or summon the authorities ... Evil was less ambivalent: most of the perpetrators killed thoughtlessly and displayed no pangs of conscience ... But occasionally, out of impulse, the pleasure of displaying their absolute power over life and death, or even a momentary recognition of the victim's humanity, individual perpetrators could spare lives in capricious acts of goodness in the midst of slaughter. For those spared, such haphazard decisions were a momentous event that determined the rest of their lives and were never forgotten, even if for the perpetrators they could be nothing more than a blur in an ocean of blood and horror.</blockquote><p>Bertov can't let go the conundrum -- what made the difference between the vicious criminality of so many of the Germans and the occasional acts of kindness or decency? Why did a few Jews live while others died? Accidents mattered. He reports the terrible saga of one Jewish teenager which captures the contingency of life and death:</p><p></p><blockquote>Alicja Jurman faced the whole range of attitudes under German rule. Having already lost one brother to Soviet brutality, she lost another to Nazi forced labor, a third to local denunciation, and the youngest to a Ukrainian policeman. Her father was murdered early on in the [Jewish] registration action; her mother, denounced by a Polish neighbor, was shot in front of her eyes just before the end. Alicja herself was handed over to the Gestapo by her best friend's father, who joined the Ukrainian police; she was hidden for a lengthy period by an eccentric elderly Polish nobleman living on the edge of the village, a "splendid, beautiful man" who defied all threats from the local Ukrainians; she was denounced by a local peasant after escaping mass execution, but the soldier who spotted her told her to run, saying "you are an innocent girl, after all." <br /></blockquote><blockquote>Both her survival and the murder of many family members, then, were largely the result of choices made by neighbors and strangers.</blockquote><p>This is not something that can be made much moral sense of. This is a book of "fraught and traumatized memories [that] contain as much forgetting as remembering."<br /></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">And then, in 1944, the Russians drove out the Nazis. More people were killed in Buczacz, whether for aiding the occupation or to settle scores. The whole area was given new national borders by fiat of the victors and "harmonized" by transfer of peoples -- there weren't many Jews left to come out of hiding. Poles were forcibly moved north to contemporary Poland, while Ukrainians who had lived north of the new border were moved into Soviet Ukraine. </p><blockquote><p>All three ethnic groups living in Buczacz and its district underwent extreme suffering although their agony peaked at different times and often at the hands of different perpetrators ... And yet, at the time and long after, each group sought to present itself as the main victim, both of the occupying powers and of its neighbors. Poles and Ukrainians were particularly keen on highlighting these martyrdom, in part out of fear that the Nazi genocide of the Jews would overshadow their own victimhood ...</p></blockquote><p>Buczacz is today a Ukrainian backwater, going by the name of Buchach. </p><p style="text-align: center;">• • •</p><p style="text-align: left;">Very relevant to the present day, one of the things I learned from Timothy Snyder's free Yale course on <a href="https://online.yale.edu/courses/making-modern-ukraine" target="_blank">the making of modern Ukraine</a> is that, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the governments of free and independent Poland and Ukraine agreed not to reopen the (legitimate) grievances of the parts of their populations who had been forced to move. This, and the desire to be part of European Union culture and society, is probably an essential part of how a Ukrainian Jew, <span>Volodymyr Zelenskyy, </span> can today be the elected leader of a (mostly) new kind Ukrainian nationalism.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Bertov's history also supports one of the pillar's of Snyder's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Black-Earth-Holocaust-History-Warning/dp/1101903473" target="_blank">Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warnin</a>g. The Holocaust reached its most horrific thoroughness where state authority, both before the war and under Nazi occupation, was least intact. Buczacz makes a terrible example of a long term war of all against all, interspersed with grudging co-existence over several centuries.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><br /><p></p><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-59368635833438187952024-03-15T07:19:00.000-07:002024-03-15T07:19:00.188-07:00Friday cat blogging<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYjTLZchB0hq-PSijAkBvDBOkUOs645NlN8itq3yB3uS7SoghOj12O4D1lFqb3nnMVU6VZqih4bs3Nl9s42peXkxF5AhmDKdJeYOXWQz1ApC44z0Nja4zeG-35NlpOXz_bWP5sqzPpAEhXUzaxwspw-gDvrUqZd68g6LtRE_D2wf_OfMcxt15e/s1600/Mio-%20its%20a%20cat%20heating%20pad.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYjTLZchB0hq-PSijAkBvDBOkUOs645NlN8itq3yB3uS7SoghOj12O4D1lFqb3nnMVU6VZqih4bs3Nl9s42peXkxF5AhmDKdJeYOXWQz1ApC44z0Nja4zeG-35NlpOXz_bWP5sqzPpAEhXUzaxwspw-gDvrUqZd68g6LtRE_D2wf_OfMcxt15e/w400-h300/Mio-%20its%20a%20cat%20heating%20pad.jpeg" width="400" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We think Mio considers E.P's laptop a kind of heating pad. Not sure if that stare means "what you gonna do about it?" Shifting Mio is heavy lifting.<br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinuwS0LGnUhm6hCETaVA1sqTfATChZ7NN8M-rQyVjxy9w2CnCCDCzJMbLuTnl8shEPo5SV_PcsG0jgdt1dlBHF0bfSpj_mvNbM4c2XilizcbAKfE54Y1hyOVu5qyJzlqlXG5VqN740SYPUra4fK2Qen80xtvsgVn2Ua7_sqDsAIc6IboYE9ABK/s4032/Janeway-paws.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinuwS0LGnUhm6hCETaVA1sqTfATChZ7NN8M-rQyVjxy9w2CnCCDCzJMbLuTnl8shEPo5SV_PcsG0jgdt1dlBHF0bfSpj_mvNbM4c2XilizcbAKfE54Y1hyOVu5qyJzlqlXG5VqN740SYPUra4fK2Qen80xtvsgVn2Ua7_sqDsAIc6IboYE9ABK/s320/Janeway-paws.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div>Janeway can pretend to be so demure -- right before she gets the zoomies and leaps over Mio and the couch ...<br /></div>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-13393538486798023682024-03-14T09:55:00.000-07:002024-03-14T09:55:19.999-07:00Consider the alternative<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSJ0V5-t65uq38ftvEAt-qhSSJ08q5XLYsn032FQ6wId03Pw8h9oL_2g2dwkKltZ4-m7LGQY2CkVSAf9NT0EJbEEhcBvIIdX9d2E343y22rel1BNsvmzmP5Ick148O24-6ipV2PMtDd5noYEjleaOuKO87wq0qZK2znTfOXNrtimHPz4If1s7u/s915/trump-that's%20all%20folks.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="612" data-original-width="915" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSJ0V5-t65uq38ftvEAt-qhSSJ08q5XLYsn032FQ6wId03Pw8h9oL_2g2dwkKltZ4-m7LGQY2CkVSAf9NT0EJbEEhcBvIIdX9d2E343y22rel1BNsvmzmP5Ick148O24-6ipV2PMtDd5noYEjleaOuKO87wq0qZK2znTfOXNrtimHPz4If1s7u/s320/trump-that's%20all%20folks.png" width="320" /></a></div>Erudite Partner tackles <a href="https://www.laprogressive.com/election-and-campaigns/vote-for-biden" target="_blank">the moral dilemma of our moment</a>: can we, in order to block Donald Trump's ambitious fascist plans, vote to re-elect the enabler of Bibi Netanyahu's slaughter of Gaza Palestinians? Can we? She reports a recent conversation.<br /><p></p><p></p><blockquote>... [a] college student told us he wouldn’t be voting for Joe Biden—and that
none of his friends would either. The president’s initial support of,
and later far too-tepid objections to, the genocidal horror transpiring
in Gaza were simply too much for him. That Biden has managed to use his
executive powers to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/03/06/biden-student-loan-forgiveness/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">cancel $138 billion</a> in
student debt didn’t outweigh the repugnance he and his friends feel for
the president’s largely unquestioning support of Israel’s destruction
of that 25-mile strip of land on the Mediterranean Sea. To vote for
Biden would be like taking a knife to his conscience. And I do
understand.</blockquote><p>Oh, do I ever understand! My first vote for President was for Democrat Hubert Humphrey in 1968, a moral coward who dared not repudiate Lyndon Johnson's futile, endless war against the Vietnamese and Vietnamese nationalism. I had spent years working to turn a confused country around, yet I was stuck with only a lesser evil choice. The alternative was Richard Nixon who got us more war and finally corruption and disgrace. </p><p>The E.P. reminds us what we'd get with the alternative to Biden:</p><p></p><blockquote>... lest we forget, this is the man who tried once before to end American
democracy. It would be true madness to give him a second chance.</blockquote><p>In the California primary, I left the presidential line blank. I cast that vote before the campaign in Michigan to protest through voting "uncommitted" took off -- my protest was instinctive and it seems about 10 percent of Californians did the same without much organizing. </p><p>But in the fall I'll be working to re-elect Biden in some swing state, I hope. Maybe I'll skip Biden again on my California ballot. But people located where their presidential votes matter, should consider the alternative.<br /></p><p></p><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-27445371787671174662024-03-13T08:52:00.000-07:002024-03-13T08:52:59.458-07:00Can we turn a corner?<p>Georgetown University political historian Thomas Zimmer waited a couple of days before offering his take on Joe Biden's State of the Union (SOTU) speech. He's a smart German commentator on American discontents; his perspective reminds me of the picture of our national history we owe to such 20th century observers (and participants) as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studs_Terkel" target="_blank">Studs Terkel</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn" target="_blank">Howard Zinn</a>. </p><p>I wonder, does anyone study Zinn's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-dp-0062397346/dp/0062397346/" target="_blank">People's History of the United States</a> these day? It remains relevant.<br /></p><p><a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/thomaszimmer/p/what-does-defend-democracy-actually" target="_blank">Zimmer sees the SOTU</a> as signaling Biden's turn, facing the threat of GOP/Trump fascism, away from "let's all get back to normal" toward "let's advance a new vision of national possibility." <br /></p><p></p><blockquote>... if the rise of Trumpism is a manifestation, rather than the cause, of forces and ideas that have always prevented the nation from living up to the egalitarian vision it has often proclaimed, from realizing its truly democratic aspirations, then restoration is not enough. The answer, based on this acknowledgment, can’t possibly be to merely restore the deeply deficient pre-2016 type of “liberal” democracy, to just turn the clock back to a situation that resulted in Trump’s rise in the first place. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>If the danger is truly as great as Joe Biden says, must we not look for a response that is commensurate with such an immense threat – one that propels America forward and transforms it into something closer to the kind of egalitarian multiracial, pluralistic democracy it never has been yet?<br /><br />Last week, Joe Biden insisted he would not walk away from the egalitarian ideal that all people are created equal, that he would fight against those who envision an America “of resentment, revenge, and retribution.” Trying to turn his age from a liability into an asset, the president proudly declared: “I was born amid World War Two, when America stood for the freedom of the world.” Deliberately or not, by referencing the global war against Hitler, Mussolini, and Imperial Japan, Biden invoked the anti-fascist consensus that has indeed crumbled. <br /><br />In post-1945 America, it was certainly never enough, in and of itself, to turn the nation from a racial caste system to a fully realized multiracial, pluralistic democracy. But it did provide those who desired egalitarian pluralism with a strong argument they could deploy in their struggle against rightwing extremism – it helped police the boundaries of what was considered acceptable within mainstream politics. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>If Joe Biden can help us re-imagine an anti-fascist consensus not in service of a purely restorative project, but as a reminder of the nation’s egalitarian aspirations, as a plea to finally defeat those anti-democratic forces in our midst and push America forward, I am all for it.</blockquote><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrtx-9CJ8ZolDA5GMYofy8Lby9I_OZCTGCMg6SqCIc36NEgGrInqrvQzDcM1omB6ptxSp85As-9-IIV-2d6vVV3O9qMrqXb7xD3-9mUkoqAUiBjHw9IKw1AcUPlxlcr0WTuqrbez-jJL1TGK5hfeyJmNXwMIgsgkrYUhhipZmicstDLjMzUfnT/s2702/democracy-reject%20the%20cover%20up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1518" data-original-width="2702" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrtx-9CJ8ZolDA5GMYofy8Lby9I_OZCTGCMg6SqCIc36NEgGrInqrvQzDcM1omB6ptxSp85As-9-IIV-2d6vVV3O9qMrqXb7xD3-9mUkoqAUiBjHw9IKw1AcUPlxlcr0WTuqrbez-jJL1TGK5hfeyJmNXwMIgsgkrYUhhipZmicstDLjMzUfnT/s320/democracy-reject%20the%20cover%20up.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marchers in 2020; never discount aroused people<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Obviously, we need that new vision of a multi-racial, multi-gender, egalitarian nation for "defending democracy" to have true vitality.</p><p>It is broadening to have an historian from afar to comment on our condition. Here's Zimmer from May, 2023: </p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><b><a href="https://www.damemagazine.com/2023/05/30/the-unraveling-of-the-united-states-of-america/" target="_blank">The Unraveling of the United States of America</a></b><br />Here is my glass-half-full reading of recent U.S. history and our current moment: The reactionary counter-mobilization from the Right is not coming from a place of strength: Conservatives are radicalizing because they understand they are in the minority and feel their backs against the wall, leading to a veritable siege mentality. The Right is radicalizing out of a sense of weakness, and they are reacting to something real: Due to political, social, cultural, and demographic developments, the country has indeed moved closer than ever before to becoming an egalitarian multiracial, pluralistic democracy. <br /></blockquote><blockquote> America has the chance to demonstrate that such a true democracy, one in which the individual’s status is not significantly determined by race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or wealth is actually feasible under conditions of multiracial, multi-religious pluralism. It’s a chance of world-historic significance, as such a democracy has basically never existed anywhere. But we need to acknowledge that as of right now, it is, at best, an open question whether or not this vision of true democracy can overcome the radicalizing forces of reaction.</blockquote>It would be a relief to take a rest from this struggle. But apathy is not an option.<br /><p></p><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-55288347586783034962024-03-12T10:55:00.000-07:002024-03-12T10:55:30.213-07:00Where's the housing?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwY3xDQ48Z_8SBNuzURrR0muoz3PoQokwD6moiO2tYuqIstu83T1jTFUXRWAV8r3zJc0_CFsHExo6nzRkxtXTlRp7ubu7sZD-MUF0Gn2953HhvF4Tr8RUZEOzzra7i1emSNfPWWHMwZLmyIH_LqgMKUGu6YxpFf_czyKrgugLvXAKwqFwjddFY/s1394/subsidized%20housing.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1222" data-original-width="1394" height="351" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwY3xDQ48Z_8SBNuzURrR0muoz3PoQokwD6moiO2tYuqIstu83T1jTFUXRWAV8r3zJc0_CFsHExo6nzRkxtXTlRp7ubu7sZD-MUF0Gn2953HhvF4Tr8RUZEOzzra7i1emSNfPWWHMwZLmyIH_LqgMKUGu6YxpFf_czyKrgugLvXAKwqFwjddFY/w400-h351/subsidized%20housing.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>I suppose I might have expected this if I'd thought about it, but this picture draws attention to the reality that "subsidized housing" -- living spaces built, owned, and/or sometimes managed outside the real estate economy -- is mostly a feature of older states in the northeast, with a pocket in the poorest states of the deep south. In <a href="https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-have-the-most-and-least-subsidized-housing/" target="_blank">the original graphic</a>, you can click on each state and see the number of units per thousand people.</p><p data-block-key="uqpgg"></p><blockquote><p data-block-key="uqpgg">Rhode Island had the most subsidized housing units of any US state in 2022, with over <a href="https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/assthsg.html#year2009-2022" target="_blank">35 units per 1,000 people</a>.
Arizona had the least, with fewer than six units per 1,000 people.
These figures represent all housing under contract for federal subsidy,
occupied and unoccupied units.</p><p>The need for subsidized housing often outweighs the number of units available, meaning applicants can wait years to be approved. ...</p><p>... Between 2004 and 2022, the number of units under federal contract as
subsidized housing, both occupied and unoccupied, decreased by about 11%
nationally. In 2004, there were 17.3 units per 1,000 people; in 2022,
there were 15.4.</p></blockquote><p>It's hard to avoid concluding that where there has been decreased supply, there may be greater homelessness. On the other hand, having been inside plenty of public housing in my time, I'm aware that the government is often a lousy landlord -- as are the private firms that governments contract with for management. <br /></p><p></p><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-75682173297744345852024-03-11T18:24:00.000-07:002024-03-11T18:24:08.251-07:00Sign of the times<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmlUof3yAvgmLizwXCqqHkJjDMn4tOGBI82pqfb86FkWUJ6oOGVVzD_kDoN76gVANQLoFpeQFr54n8wdsF3_-A7ivK1az5h61xjGNVhaEPhyphenhyphen3a-CvAxJkHkRSZqHOV17mu9PqOSAQa_LXLzAdZe9qBJejAmllOUMg1a4yjivca_7Ulgh5gCp5/w400-h300/Flood%20level%20on%20Marin%20plain.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">click to read the pole<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: left;">Marin County aims to educate cyclists and joggers about the implications of climate change warming on sea level rise in San Francisco Bay. Even at the lowest, dark blue, base level of 2 more feet, this whole path adjacent to Mill Valley will be long gone. Just saying ...<br /></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-74281654989525676142024-03-10T17:56:00.000-07:002024-03-10T17:56:52.318-07:00One cheer for shrinkflation<p>Apparently there's a wave of companies putting less of their stuff in packages without acknowledging by way of size changes that the same $2.69 for a small bag gets you less Fritos, for example. That's shrinkflation. When people notice, some howl.<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/business/economy/shrinkflation-groceries.html?unlocked_article_code=1.b00.AEqR.MOohOZjzJc9y&smid=url-share" target="_blank">Companies do this because it works. </a><br /></p></blockquote><blockquote><p>Companies choose to shrink their products rather than charge more for a simple reason: Consumers often pay more attention to prices than sizes.</p><p>When quantity goes down, “people might notice, but often, they don’t,” said John Gourville, a professor at Harvard Business School. “You don’t get sticker shock.”</p></blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI0-GBJk3FM3bDh33bLhlmBJkWlCby86q3tuiGMDYr__UENFZzxYvzruBIZkq2baplhX33v25RSCB-0LvSPcsRlHKPzEY1RuSfBINQHFpsJSAmsuoZrMonfb9-VHf_vZ4RqDGzmkmJaQE-xvQI8b3SrfR1qoXy2ORH3wlvjHPlOKLOvPH3rMu5/s3280/TP%204x4.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3280" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI0-GBJk3FM3bDh33bLhlmBJkWlCby86q3tuiGMDYr__UENFZzxYvzruBIZkq2baplhX33v25RSCB-0LvSPcsRlHKPzEY1RuSfBINQHFpsJSAmsuoZrMonfb9-VHf_vZ4RqDGzmkmJaQE-xvQI8b3SrfR1qoXy2ORH3wlvjHPlOKLOvPH3rMu5/s320/TP%204x4.jpeg" width="295" /></a></div><br />One of the goods to which this is happening seems be rolls of toilet paper. Four years ago, rolls came almost 5 inches wide and similarly thick, advertised as super and jumbo. Today, many rolls seem to be more like 4x4 inches. <p></p><p>In this household, that's cause for celebration. One of our bathrooms comes with a neatly tiled, recessed TP nook. Before the current wave of TP downsizing, it was a struggle to find rolls that would fit. The current 4x4 size is just what the builders built for. The annoyance wasn't so great as to cause us to remodel, but it was persistent and nagging. Yay for this instance of shrinkflation; we don't want or need monster size toilet paper!</p><p>I'm sure this respite from the TP hunt will pass. Pretty soon the makers will try to upsell larger rolls of paper as "abundance" and I'll be hunting for the little old rolls again ... The free market, ain't it great?<br /></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-63864062868415451462024-03-09T12:08:00.000-08:002024-03-09T12:08:14.044-08:00It isn't just about the money<p>Joe Biden did well in the State of the Union speech. Given where the world is, he could hardly have done better, at least so I think. There's plenty to pick at -- and plenty to push against -- but just consider the alternative... He's still got game.<br /></p><p>A lot of people agree. Just look at this representation of where Biden and Trump are getting their campaign contributions showing "<b>Who's donating to whom?</b>" Via JVL at <a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/" target="_blank">The Bulwark</a> who snagged it from the Financial Times.<br /></p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbUrE9xoiiwyfy8B-aa_HlnC2R_sYRtKVmnb9zsLHfC_MtSK39McqrtkCh7kQK2RS6kid0qjmtxHkepiNFIYEK9XqK2Y85WUnVaBnftrUqRRvcu9sPSU1KUKm8biGxdipiAferXE7XUnpB7Yozutiy_xeFaWTxnK6TLOaGGNPsP0uCtGVPwxxi/s2098/who%20is%20donating%20to%20who%20%5BJVL-FT%20%5D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1748" data-original-width="2098" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbUrE9xoiiwyfy8B-aa_HlnC2R_sYRtKVmnb9zsLHfC_MtSK39McqrtkCh7kQK2RS6kid0qjmtxHkepiNFIYEK9XqK2Y85WUnVaBnftrUqRRvcu9sPSU1KUKm8biGxdipiAferXE7XUnpB7Yozutiy_xeFaWTxnK6TLOaGGNPsP0uCtGVPwxxi/w400-h334/who%20is%20donating%20to%20who%20%5BJVL-FT%20%5D.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Unequivocally, I'd rather be on the blue team than the Trump team here. I'm with team Teachers, Nurses and Scientists any day.</p><p>Obviously, Trump's got some big robber barons on his side, but he is emphatically not winning the dollar chase. Maybe the big money Republicans don't trust him either. According to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/politics/campaign-finance-takeaways-january/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>: </p><p><cite class="source__cite">
</cite>
</p><p class="paragraph inline-placeholder" data-analytics-observe="off" data-article-gutter="true" data-component-name="paragraph" data-editable="text" data-uri="cms.cnn.com/_components/paragraph/instances/clsvcndee003628ns1a3xhgys@published">
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/joe-biden"></a></p><blockquote><p class="paragraph inline-placeholder" data-analytics-observe="off" data-article-gutter="true" data-component-name="paragraph" data-editable="text" data-uri="cms.cnn.com/_components/paragraph/instances/clsvcndee003628ns1a3xhgys@published"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/joe-biden">President Joe Biden</a>’s political operation has expanded its financial advantage over former <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/president-donald-trump-45">President Donald Trump</a>’s campaign as the two men hurtle toward an expected general election confrontation, new filings show. ...</p><p class="paragraph inline-placeholder" data-analytics-observe="off" data-article-gutter="true" data-component-name="paragraph" data-editable="text" data-uri="cms.cnn.com/_components/paragraph/instances/clsvcndee003628ns1a3xhgys@published">... The Democratic National Committee outraised its GOP
counterpart in January, bringing in $17.4 million and ended the month
with $24 million in available cash. That far surpasses the $8.7 million
in available cash for the RNC, which marked a slight uptick from the $8
million it reported having in reserves at the end of last year, but
still represents its lowest total in about a decade.</p></blockquote><p>Maybe Trump's potential donors assume he'll use their gifts to pay his legal expenses and don't want go there? Seems likely.</p><p>The presidential election will not be decided by campaign cash. The two guys are already well known to most every eligible voter. So no ad is going to change things much. But the Dems sure will be able to go heavy, hard, and early to define Trump as the self-centered conman he has always been. </p><p>Here's a nice post-State of the Union sample:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="333" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R6e4ruziZBI" width="455" youtube-src-id="R6e4ruziZBI"></iframe></div>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-9530840938584074332024-03-08T09:21:00.000-08:002024-03-08T09:21:18.926-08:00Friday cat blogging<p>The cats greet each other to meet the day.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVFen4ZPk1HPyVi64mQmfUEH14QKs13TgJivyTSdepCrEXeh6IbOxutszsbg1_pMx-DyXrU_HorrGBmyWztOWgry-u22jIV7oyXYu0XC8E_R2ykOZimf3dd2DeIhsTq4NaHAjSHfe0LbMvUBsV6krNVOpLqXQ2OWFhw0sX6MIiIbwrUEdSLGNV/s2472/Ghost%20cats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1790" data-original-width="2472" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVFen4ZPk1HPyVi64mQmfUEH14QKs13TgJivyTSdepCrEXeh6IbOxutszsbg1_pMx-DyXrU_HorrGBmyWztOWgry-u22jIV7oyXYu0XC8E_R2ykOZimf3dd2DeIhsTq4NaHAjSHfe0LbMvUBsV6krNVOpLqXQ2OWFhw0sX6MIiIbwrUEdSLGNV/w400-h290/Ghost%20cats.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Mio is such a big boy that one often wonders what's with the unseen far side of the cat. Janeway seems fond of her big, blundering brother. <br /><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-50522488360074612562024-03-07T09:54:00.000-08:002024-03-07T09:54:15.737-08:00Spring in the Mission<p>I know, it is not even the end of standard time. Spring is officially two weeks away. Yet the coming season is in the air. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix5nWhNemxXWoxIqvhzybGtypv1qJOtlBEMDC-FwJ7YMlRm3Mm9MvKxBy6VqYy3VV5FHOV_YJs5d86s1kGUU4QM3z9hFUD_e3-xNNWBCZiH7qVaAY3AkXgRMQP_LES8yDIHNVj3jb6UEc-okCbAoJRhKkXsU9sqzsjhCvBLB47RhgagqiOmFch/s4032/spring%20mission.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix5nWhNemxXWoxIqvhzybGtypv1qJOtlBEMDC-FwJ7YMlRm3Mm9MvKxBy6VqYy3VV5FHOV_YJs5d86s1kGUU4QM3z9hFUD_e3-xNNWBCZiH7qVaAY3AkXgRMQP_LES8yDIHNVj3jb6UEc-okCbAoJRhKkXsU9sqzsjhCvBLB47RhgagqiOmFch/w300-h400/spring%20mission.jpeg" width="300" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The view out my window is wildly lush.</div><p>The people gather as well. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIeX7GAJKolsWtjHltKI8cxKqv9_ocb_QlWbDXKnQRRmi8PLpOgs9knv-mseEuhAxnaGxaXfYTy2qZreZxp93eFMCg-wTMYhN2XWy-70_XL10sOUp_HicMmuojxHZPsoiS1zQyp1z3i1y3O4HbhQwbfwq_3MLZHJuSC9TMiX-bQAbOGYkXHUw-/s711/FiA.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="711" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIeX7GAJKolsWtjHltKI8cxKqv9_ocb_QlWbDXKnQRRmi8PLpOgs9knv-mseEuhAxnaGxaXfYTy2qZreZxp93eFMCg-wTMYhN2XWy-70_XL10sOUp_HicMmuojxHZPsoiS1zQyp1z3i1y3O4HbhQwbfwq_3MLZHJuSC9TMiX-bQAbOGYkXHUw-/s320/FiA.jpeg" width="270" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">San Franciscans demand to be heard.</div><p>And on light polls and walls around the Mission, these flyers turn up.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0l0EYzvkF_MWmKCapYdHjRScCsp12uR76A930N9Lt3gbgbFWQk5_Pf-xNdbfqKP8Pfd1t0zg5SpaDq248Zp_PvBw1qxg2PXXKi5u1BNKbLwBXQ2mIqn60Nzp-bCkXITM-Km2VLgague6tXKtbfxhD2DlQYfbGhaI08jFQ6gWB8ChtqNBEROnP/s5574/breed%20poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5574" data-original-width="4000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0l0EYzvkF_MWmKCapYdHjRScCsp12uR76A930N9Lt3gbgbFWQk5_Pf-xNdbfqKP8Pfd1t0zg5SpaDq248Zp_PvBw1qxg2PXXKi5u1BNKbLwBXQ2mIqn60Nzp-bCkXITM-Km2VLgague6tXKtbfxhD2DlQYfbGhaI08jFQ6gWB8ChtqNBEROnP/s320/breed%20poster.jpg" width="230" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">click to enlarge if you want to read.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Odd one this. I'm as little a fan of Mayor London Breed as anyone. </p><p>But these flyers call to mind a long time useful axiom I've developed for understanding San Francisco leftist politics: if somebody seems to be trying to co-opt the legitimate moral energy of your justice movement, run -- don't walk -- away from them. These aren't your friends. They are either bloodsuckers or opportunists. They may be actual enemies of justice or they may be deluded, but they aren't your friends. They are trying to seize the legitimate space you are fighting to open. <br /></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-86837853443200747372024-03-06T10:05:00.000-08:002024-03-06T10:05:59.408-08:00Let me steal a headline: on the uses of a Snoozer<p><a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/author/joe-perticone/" target="_blank">Joe Perticone</a> of The Bulwark called it "Snoozer Tuesday." I like that. I can think of nothing that came out of the primary on Super Tuesday except perhaps a chance for media outlets to take a practice run in multiple state for their work next November. We've known the presidential candidates since perhaps last May; the rest was mostly expenisve noise.<br /></p><p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-05/2024-california-primary-election-not-voting-turnout" target="_blank">Erika D. Smith</a> of the LA Times aptly describes what it felt like to be a California voter in this oh-so-predetermined exercise: </p><p></p><blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBMKLSwxuo1DS2qfmMH8frcGcmxMJQ0FERnNndIf6LtxOgvXVVDHEbqZY_Jol8oExgnDzQkiXRPsNE-G6J54dqFxjuGx594XyQvg3fDl2UBFXUujFRqLsqEv8Uy6L1S8ZcVq29FOtsjl6IdpjyYw9Bj0d65tc7NkUgIMROzAuLW379OH4Qashl/s348/Screenshot%202024-03-06%20at%208.35.53%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="348" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBMKLSwxuo1DS2qfmMH8frcGcmxMJQ0FERnNndIf6LtxOgvXVVDHEbqZY_Jol8oExgnDzQkiXRPsNE-G6J54dqFxjuGx594XyQvg3fDl2UBFXUujFRqLsqEv8Uy6L1S8ZcVq29FOtsjl6IdpjyYw9Bj0d65tc7NkUgIMROzAuLW379OH4Qashl/w200-h196/Screenshot%202024-03-06%20at%208.35.53%20AM.png" width="200" /></a></div>We used to hear: “Vote for who you think is the best candidate for the office or who best represents your interests.”<p></p><p>Now it’s about the mass gamification of elections.</p><p>More fantasy football than rooting for the red or blue home team. More chess than checkers. There’s a slow shift underway from thinking of voting as a simple act of civic duty. Instead it’s becoming a series of strategic decisions and complicated calculations made in a desperate attempt to create a government of politicians who will actually improve our lives.</p><p></p><p>In practice, gamification looks like obsessively reading polls in an
attempt to gain an edge or dispel rumors about your party. Or “wasting”
your vote on the candidate you want to win, even if the polls say they
won’t win, because you want to send a message to the political
establishment. Or, my favorite, voting for a candidate you don’t like in
a primary to help a candidate you do like win the general election. </p><p>Sure,
not all of this is new. We’ve been told to “vote for the lesser of two
evils” for decades. This country’s electoral process has always been
imperfect. ...<br /></p></blockquote><p>Smith ended up following her heart and voting for Barbara Lee in the US Senate contest, knowing this was a sort of protest vote against calculated decision making. I applaud her, even though I did not take the same tack.</p><p>In the Washington Post, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/05/nikki-haley-voters-super-tuesday/" target="_blank">Robin Givhan</a> hopefully speaks to what is meaningful amid the clutter and noise of an empty primary season; she reminds that there are a deep rights at stake here.<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRwPIXLELHk6SG9rOwNMS7N2QRR4R8XPCPBEwDv2J5GB4a32jmuD4x_P2Pc5JbddNN6jijBHbaWtEc1QIqBOLL9rdaMIN5xK3KocOpvVYCwf-euRyPQGAJ05Cy7SXaCQfnaKii9bzlmb5B5tIWifpEC4gKtKzheGtO5SrB9e8KX0hqe3t1znFZ/s356/Screenshot%202024-03-06%20at%208.36.30%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="334" data-original-width="356" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRwPIXLELHk6SG9rOwNMS7N2QRR4R8XPCPBEwDv2J5GB4a32jmuD4x_P2Pc5JbddNN6jijBHbaWtEc1QIqBOLL9rdaMIN5xK3KocOpvVYCwf-euRyPQGAJ05Cy7SXaCQfnaKii9bzlmb5B5tIWifpEC4gKtKzheGtO5SrB9e8KX0hqe3t1znFZ/w200-h188/Screenshot%202024-03-06%20at%208.36.30%20AM.png" width="200" /></a></div>Voting isn’t merely a zero-sum game that ends with the winners crowing over their victory and the losers slinking away in defeat. That’s part of it, but not all of it. In a free and fair election, it’s sometimes not even the most important thing. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>The vote itself is proof of faith. The person casting it believes that it matters. Denying them the opportunity is a callous dismissal. The depth of meaning in a single vote comes from our troubled history, our collective ability to effect change and the dignity inherent in expressing our singular desires to the lofty state, as well as to our next-door neighbor.<br /><br />... As a country, we like to speak about the right to vote as a sacred act. But in the next breath, we characterize it as a tedious chore that must be accomplished in a blizzard or downpour. And when candidates dare to linger longer than electoral math suggests that they should — we liken voting to an enabling act in service to a narcissist. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>But a vote has never only been fundamentally about wins and losses. Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, the lack of access to the ballot box was characterized by activists as something that was humiliating, degrading and unjust. In contrast, the act of choosing one’s representative was an expression of dignity and respect. Victory wasn’t assured. Progress was elusive. How long would it take? Not long. But justice wouldn’t be instantaneous. It wasn’t a matter of a single election or the success of one candidate. The work was in the voting, which is to say, the work was in making one’s voice heard. Again and again. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>It matters if one’s candidate wins or loses. Profoundly. Today, it matters more than ever. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>But there’s nothing quite as searing as a loss in which a voter had to stand by in silence and watch as it happened.</blockquote><p>People have died for the right to have a say; even when our choices lose, our vote shouts "we are here."<br /></p><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-85582247196495213202024-03-05T07:00:00.000-08:002024-03-05T07:00:00.136-08:00It's primary day: about those languages<blockquote><p>“Everybody I speak to says how horrible it is,” [Donald Trump] said during an event at the border on Thursday. “Nobody [can] explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages — we have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They are truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.” -- <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/01/donald-trump-migrants-fear/" target="_blank">Washington Post</a><br /></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Okay, we know that Donald is both clueless and bigoted when it comes to people who speak a language other than English -- though if he ever had an English teacher, she might wonder she'd made any impact on his ability to construct meaning in his native tongue.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSIi7GEUxq3JY3iJDLTCP5vnumP2zQn1eP3VCM0l8Ybtsb3dGA-iSLiRglTcC2CQi0FhWvucwO44lq8C1xr2vxCj4TK5XyGLfE_I3HKfzAbbq1blT7VlNDMlnbusm8QUlk9JIaSCHcXNw7AKpxO0UbEAMv3B3cjOAbUGfGujH6L5iOpBBztPuv/s1628/Screenshot%202024-03-04%20at%207.17.10%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1286" data-original-width="1628" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSIi7GEUxq3JY3iJDLTCP5vnumP2zQn1eP3VCM0l8Ybtsb3dGA-iSLiRglTcC2CQi0FhWvucwO44lq8C1xr2vxCj4TK5XyGLfE_I3HKfzAbbq1blT7VlNDMlnbusm8QUlk9JIaSCHcXNw7AKpxO0UbEAMv3B3cjOAbUGfGujH6L5iOpBBztPuv/w400-h316/Screenshot%202024-03-04%20at%207.17.10%20PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>Meanwhile, here in California, the legislature is considering a bill to ensure that all the citizens of this state can express themselves by casting a ballot. <a href="https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2024/03/immigrant-voter-rights/" target="_blank">Calmatters</a> reports: <br /><blockquote>California lawmakers are considering a bill that would expand language assistance and election services to immigrants who don’t speak English fluently, but a group representing voter registrars throughout the state says it will cost counties too much money. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>California has the <a href="https://calmatters.org/politics/2022/02/california-election-languages/" target="_blank">nation’s highest proportion of households</a> that speak languages other than English. Nearly 3 million voting age Californians have limited English knowledge. <br /></blockquote><blockquote><p>Assemblymember Evan Low, the Cupertino Democrat who co-authored Assembly Bill 884, said he hopes it will increase voter participation and strengthen democracy in California. <br /></p></blockquote><blockquote><p>“California is one of the most diverse states and leads the nation in language diversity,” he said, “so it is important that we lead the way to providing in-language ballots and voting materials to reduce barriers and enfranchise more Californians.”</p></blockquote><blockquote>The bill, which passed the Assembly in late January and is before the Senate, would require California’s Secretary of State to identify the languages spoken by at least 5,000 voting-age individuals in a county who don’t speak English fluently, including groups not covered by current federal voting rights laws, such as Middle Eastern or African immigrants. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>The Secretary of State would then have to provide language assistance, including a toll-free hotline and funding for county language coordinators, in areas where the need is most acute.</blockquote>I can easily image that, to many harried election administrators, Low's bill looks like one more underfunded mandate. But, in my experience, people who do those jobs usually want everyone who is eligible to have a chance to vote, so they'll want to make this work.<p></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">... “We want voters to trust the government and that boils down to a voter in any community being able to understand what is happening in their own community,” said Pedro Hernandez, a policy director at California Common Cause, which cosponsored the bill. <br /></p></blockquote><p>This is the great California experiment, something to cherish on primary day. <br /></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-90304253495639792002024-03-04T08:00:00.000-08:002024-03-04T08:00:00.159-08:00Does Trump really want to run against NATO?<p>Having grown up in Buffalo, NY, a city where <a href="https://culture.pl/en/article/7-most-polish-cities-outside-of-poland-part-2" target="_blank">150,000 people claim Polish ancestry</a>, I do sometimes wonder whether American voters with eastern European roots might look askance at a Republican party which wants to let Putin's Russia overrun its neighbors. The old country(s) are important to many. There are pockets of ethnic pride in communities across the nation which might make an electoral difference.<br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF40Uyu_KN9LPa85daCRtncaQ616zlw4MCggCGIcLQQIeIvXVE0rBLYPEs7lJ3fCd2Kh8_sxYFMFqBcPwmbEaWzIZEl9oOnnrYzwZSMXXjvCDc7yHSI6CwQFcB6oyAVz_8PG0hcKw5LbZpdHbs3LtZBz-N3RWRkKnHN4ErdsUFOPJs90Ggfsic/s897/trump%20v.%20eastern%20european%20voters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="589" data-original-width="897" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF40Uyu_KN9LPa85daCRtncaQ616zlw4MCggCGIcLQQIeIvXVE0rBLYPEs7lJ3fCd2Kh8_sxYFMFqBcPwmbEaWzIZEl9oOnnrYzwZSMXXjvCDc7yHSI6CwQFcB6oyAVz_8PG0hcKw5LbZpdHbs3LtZBz-N3RWRkKnHN4ErdsUFOPJs90Ggfsic/w400-h263/trump%20v.%20eastern%20european%20voters.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>These are American states where a few votes can make a difference. I would not assume these folks are open to Putin love.<br />janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-29195845006230061052024-03-03T08:30:00.000-08:002024-03-03T08:30:00.142-08:00A different kind of woman<p>Caster Semenya knows who she is. She's had it with authorities, especially white and European ones, telling her they know her better than she does herself. She tells it like it is for her in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Race-Be-Myself-Memoir/dp/1324035773" target="_blank">The Race to Be Myself: A Memoir</a>.</p><p>I love this book. I recommend it unreservedly, especially in the audio version, some of which Semenya performs herself.<br /><br />She sets up her story like this:</p><blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih5jQsJHU8-Tvns_AoykL8d0VnaqIveRK1Z5hXALwA8LgP3TY2HXC1WWNhgY351UvucGhyphenhyphenYZhgkSSFWIv6bbXtJxETGF59tlHZlV-CuG1B-jQCdmJHzyQNxHDaypM0GkNx20Emf-enQl-ZoTSZ5nS4IChemZdl3PMIS3Ff0g6V86s8k2X2Yqjd/s1200/caster%20better.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="795" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih5jQsJHU8-Tvns_AoykL8d0VnaqIveRK1Z5hXALwA8LgP3TY2HXC1WWNhgY351UvucGhyphenhyphenYZhgkSSFWIv6bbXtJxETGF59tlHZlV-CuG1B-jQCdmJHzyQNxHDaypM0GkNx20Emf-enQl-ZoTSZ5nS4IChemZdl3PMIS3Ff0g6V86s8k2X2Yqjd/s320/caster%20better.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>I am Mokgadi Caster Semenya. I am one of the greatest track and field athletes to ever run the 800-m distance. I've won two Olympic gold medals and three world championships ...<p></p></blockquote><blockquote>... I have what is called a difference in sex development (DSD), an umbrella term that refers to the generic conditions where an embryo in a different way to the hormones that spark the development of internal and external sexual organs. To put it simply, on the outside I am female, I have a vagina, but I do not have a uterus. ... I can't biologically contribute to making new life. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>I did not know any of this about my body until soon after August 2009, when I won the gold medal in the 800-m race at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany. I was only eighteen years old and had been subjected to invasive and humiliating gender confirmation tests without my consent just prior to the race. What followed was a media firestorm that continues to this day. ... <br /></blockquote><blockquote>... I am a tall, dark-skinned, African woman with well-defined muscles, a deep voice, and not a lot up on top. I know I look like a man. I know I sound like a man and maybe even walk like a man and dress like one, too. But I'm not a man. ... I'm a different kind of woman, I know. But I'm still a woman. ... <br /></blockquote><blockquote>I accept and love myself just the way I am. I always have and I always will. God made me. I am fortunate to have had a family who never tried to change me, and a country that wrapped its arms around me and fought for my right to run. ... <br /></blockquote><blockquote>... I am a proud South African woman born in a tiny village to people who loved me.They have survived more humiliations than I could possibly know. It is from them that I know about maintaining dignity in the face of oppression. It is my hope that by telling my truth, I inspire others to be unafraid, to love and accept themselves. May this story contribute to a more tolerant world for us all.</blockquote>Semenya's birth village is in Limpopo, the northernmost province of South Africa. Though the nation boasts gleaming modern cities like Cape Town and Pretoria, agricultural villages in the countryside -- African villages in the racial frame of that nation -- don't even show up on Google maps. It was a long time before Semenya was pulled into the multi-racial, multi-class modernity of South Africa upon leaving the hinterland to take up an athletic scholarship to the University of Pretoria.<br /><br />It wasn't until she started winning international races that the International Amateur Athletic Federation (now World Athletics) began to get hot and bothered about her gender. And it seems fair to say, then the shit hit the fan. She was tested and barred from competition unless she took testosterone blocking drugs that made her ill. The basis in science for requiring the drug regimen was poorly documented and eventually tossed out by courts. Meanwhile, she strove to stay sane and train hard amidst the dissonance of strangers questioning who she knew herself to be.<br /><blockquote>... Gender is a simple thing in my part of the world. Mostly people are born boys, or they are born girls. There is also what in our Pedi language we call <i>lahara matana</i> -- a person born with two genders, meaning they are born with both a penis and a vagina. In my culture, these people are not assigned a gender. They are allowed to live their lives and decide which gender is dominant in their soul. They go about their business and everyone is supposed to mind theirs. I have heard that in rich countries doctors can "fix" a child born like this. But how can you "fix" something if you don't know what a child will want to be? We don't believe in surgical intervention on infants for such a thing. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>No one ever told me specifically about <i>lahara matanas</i>. I just knew there were people like this when I was growing up. And I wasn't one of them. I was born a girl, and I have never felt confused by that because there is nothing confusing about having a vagina, even if my mannerisms and interests were considered boyish. ... <br /></blockquote><blockquote>I knew growing up there were other girls like me, meaning girls who didn't sprout breasts, who had deep voices, or girls who were not into girl things. I grew up with some of them, played soccer with them. They were around, just like I was around. ... <br /></blockquote><blockquote>... My family accepted me the way I was, but it didn't mean they didn't deal with comments about my looks and behavior. But my actual gender has never been a thing to be questioned, much less tested. That's the thing people didn't seem to understand -- it was one thing to talk about how I behaved, how I looked on the outside -- my clothes, my voice, my musculature -- but questioning someone's gender, discussing it in public ... that was unheard of in my culture. ... <br /></blockquote><blockquote>The gender issue became a difficult one for the politicians in my country. Everyone seemed to support me and my right to run. They saw me as an innocent Black child caught in a terrible situation. For us, it became more than about gender, it became about race. It became about White people coming and telling us Africans what we were and what we were not based on our looks -- the same categorizations and violations of human rights that were happening during apartheid. I became a symbol of how Black people had been violated and exploited throughout history. Would this be happening to a White European teenage girl? When did "rumors" become an official accusation that had to be investigated? My blood and urine had been tested dozens of times by ASA [Athletics South Africa] and the IAAF [International Amateur Athletic Federation] ...</blockquote>Mostly Semenya's attitude in this book is simple amazement at the stupidity of people questioning her gender -- and proud fury as she asserts herself. She has no time for other women competitors who she thinks don't have it in them to work as hard as she does.<br /><blockquote>I remember reading how women were barred from running in the early days of organized sports because men thought their body parts would fall out and that it was "unseemly" for women to sweat in public. Well, look closely at professional women's races. Most of us run, cross the line, congratulate each other, and go on with the rest of our business. ... If you are an elite athlete and you really can't breathe and you fall down when you're done with a race, train harder.</blockquote>I read this book from a stance of awareness that all world class athletes are freaks of nature. It's just that sometimes we can't see quite how. Human diversity is enormous and a very few people can turn their biological divergence from the mean into athletic success -- such success only comes if they train to their limits and beyond. The best are disciplined freaks. The Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has some of the largest hands you'll ever see. Brock Purdy apparently has a preternatural ability to see around him and remain decisive when facing being beat to a pulp. They are different, but they wouldn't achieve the athletic successes they have without brutal hard work. <br /><br />I love the dedication of Caster Semenya's memoir. It seems about right to me:<br /><blockquote><i>For those who are born different<br />and feel they don't belong in this world, <br />it is because you were brought here<br />to help create a new one.</i></blockquote><p>Thanks, Mokgadi Caster Semenya!</p><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-44678665330436776822024-03-02T10:29:00.000-08:002024-03-02T10:29:33.941-08:00Republicans kiss up to Trump; a righteous Froomkin rant<p>Republican U.S. Senator John Thune of South Dakota leaped out to endorse Donald Trump the other day. There was no reason for the timing of this endorsement -- except that he wants to lead Senate Republicans when Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell steps back. </p><p>Meanwhile, McConnell is fully expected to endorse Trump immanently -- endorse a man who called the Senate leader a "loser" and threw racist insults at McConnell's Chinese American wife. </p><p>For many years, journalist Dan Froomkin wrote the White House Watch column at the Washington Post; he took no prisoners, exposing politicians' stupidity and malfeasance. When his employers found him too hot to handle, he was fired and went on to the <a href="https://theintercept.com/about/" target="_blank">Intercept</a> and then his own website, <a href="https://presswatchers.org/" target="_blank">PressWatch</a>. </p><p>Froomkin has nothing good to say about Republican pols who've seen Trump try once to overthrow our democracy and are flocking to him now.<a href="https://presswatchers.org/2024/03/every-new-trump-endorsement-is-a-story-of-profound-moral-collapse/" target="_blank"> He's disgusted with the Trump endorsements by formerly serious figures.</a> And he's disgusted by political media which treat the coming presidential election as just one more normal contest.</p><p></p><blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4JtxPH9IvRz9IYHbE51FjSH2IPqEy_nCnHi_an-shKWG5HCltn0Vwi1BFEua2_qqVZlVZ59FJ7QgdtpiweF9MVf6eU4vsvQ9I5_I4SfLJzlfoJzh0xFfFcaBNAoBd8ezeuYpKmdh2I16yXZsdSECdctH1s64ryiXuB0eeyJdmkW5iPeAH3mYo/s1440/media%20blows%20trump%20copy.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1418" data-original-width="1440" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4JtxPH9IvRz9IYHbE51FjSH2IPqEy_nCnHi_an-shKWG5HCltn0Vwi1BFEua2_qqVZlVZ59FJ7QgdtpiweF9MVf6eU4vsvQ9I5_I4SfLJzlfoJzh0xFfFcaBNAoBd8ezeuYpKmdh2I16yXZsdSECdctH1s64ryiXuB0eeyJdmkW5iPeAH3mYo/w200-h197/media%20blows%20trump%20copy.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div>... the powerful people who knew better — who are bending the knee to Trump only now — are hypocritical, craven opportunists going through a very public and newsworthy moral collapse.<br /><br />That is how the media should be covering them. These people are forsaking the principles they had previously proclaimed — and why? Because they want something (mostly power and money) more than they care about those principles.<br /><br />Every time that happens ought to be a major news story. Another person has sacrificed their self-respect to become an enabler of tyranny and chaos.<br /><br />But I’m not seeing that.<br /><br />I’m seeing reporters writing without any sense of shock or alarm about members of Congress, titans of industry, and others bending the knee as if it’s just a normal part of a normal presidential race.<br /><br />It is, however, not remotely normal that a major-party nominee for president is an irrational impulsive lying rapist racist crime lord and would-be dictator.<br /><br />Bending the knee to Trump is a break with core human values like empathy and decency – and democracy. It’s an expression of approval for lying, cheating, stealing, and attempted insurrection.<br /><br />... Every single new public figure who endorses Trump should be asked by reporters to explain how that squares with their moral beliefs. <p></p><p>Do they consider Trump trustworthy? Reliable? Do they agree that the government should root out certain people like vermin? Do they condone his contempt for pluralism? Do they share his willingness to turn over parts of Europe to Vladimir Putin? Do they support setting up camps for the mass deportation of long-time U.S. residents who lack documentation? </p><p>And if not, why are they so willing to abandon their principles? What exactly do they think makes that worth it?</p></blockquote><p> These are not just normal times.<br /></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-67843138393334783702024-03-01T08:16:00.000-08:002024-03-01T08:16:38.417-08:00Friday cat blogging<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitknIn397GIgYu8NJTlSkXLXIlGXmTvLgrazU8rETYGOatqA9PbZez6Ds6iZ20ziUd0XkIoaQa2TFatZi-7GFwfIxmawABSMnTb1YGMC-OmAW8VI2xmUH_hjNOClHD98OmYqs6meTSdoexFjeSe9t6Yjeo61YCveZFz567t3fsb_hE-sqcqXDk/s3024/J&M%20family%20portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2816" data-original-width="3024" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitknIn397GIgYu8NJTlSkXLXIlGXmTvLgrazU8rETYGOatqA9PbZez6Ds6iZ20ziUd0XkIoaQa2TFatZi-7GFwfIxmawABSMnTb1YGMC-OmAW8VI2xmUH_hjNOClHD98OmYqs6meTSdoexFjeSe9t6Yjeo61YCveZFz567t3fsb_hE-sqcqXDk/w400-h373/J&M%20family%20portrait.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>There was a sunbeam. Mio and Janeway shared it amicably. It's their sunbeam, not our kitchen table. This is life around here. There's the cat team and the human team.<br />janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-34627534747562390692024-02-29T13:14:00.000-08:002024-02-29T13:14:11.487-08:00For love or money, people get around<p>You might think that a deadly war in somebody else's country would repel most people who had any option to stay well away. And, in general, that's true. But there are exceptions.<br /><br />In <b>Ukraine</b>, from the earliest days of Russia's attempt at conquest, there have been quite a few voluntary international participants. According to the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-colombian-foreign-fighters-professional-soldiers-07b5cb7949bd10234e7456f9c1c20b08/" target="_blank">Associated Press</a>:<br /></p><blockquote>In early 2022, authorities said 20,000 people from 52 countries were in Ukraine. Now, in keeping with the secrecy surrounding any military numbers, authorities will not say how many are on the battlefield but they do say fighters’ profile has changed. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>The first waves of volunteers came mostly from post-Soviet or English-speaking countries. Speaking Russian or English made it easier for them to integrate into Ukraine’s military, [Oleksandr Shahuri, an officer of the Department of Coordination of Foreigners in the Armed Forces of Ukraine] said. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>Last year the military developed an infrastructure of Spanish-speaking recruiters, instructors and junior operational officers, he added.</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeQq2E9pcp2UPkjRUiiJEpPsRlS-Pui9-FuW0rdWd7Xv_lgnUC5y-c2KNzf5aGBvZdfx8nEJ8dM4ZVOJsoll3zDHnvulb1nUuY3kI0wGDRH7fF7uCA-CHpYQ7Yb7gmpqfEJ6TzOMCMC71BNuZwgEO75jQwlo9vP3dUTKyd63VYvYzijNnD2HDg/s1256/Screenshot%202024-02-29%20at%2012.46.18%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1174" data-original-width="1256" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeQq2E9pcp2UPkjRUiiJEpPsRlS-Pui9-FuW0rdWd7Xv_lgnUC5y-c2KNzf5aGBvZdfx8nEJ8dM4ZVOJsoll3zDHnvulb1nUuY3kI0wGDRH7fF7uCA-CHpYQ7Yb7gmpqfEJ6TzOMCMC71BNuZwgEO75jQwlo9vP3dUTKyd63VYvYzijNnD2HDg/s320/Screenshot%202024-02-29%20at%2012.46.18%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />And recruitment is succeeding in Bogota, Columbia where 10,000 highly trained soldiers retire every year. Service in Ukraine is a good deal for these vets.<br /><blockquote>Corporals in Colombia get a basic salary of around $400 a month, while experienced drill sergeants can earn up to $900. Colombia’s monthly minimum wage is currently $330. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>In Ukraine any member of the armed forces, regardless of citizenship, is entitled to a monthly salary of up to $3,300, depending on their rank and type of service. They are also entitled to up to $28,660 if they are injured, depending on the severity of the wounds. If they are killed in action, their families are due $400,000 compensation.</blockquote>Let's hope these recruits are not bringing a Columbian record of human rights abuses with them.<p></p><p>Meanwhile on the other side of that war, in <b>Russia</b>, hungry Cubans are providing recruits to be ground up in mass human wave operations, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/whatsapp-war-how-cubans-were-recruited-fight-russia-2023-09-30/" target="_blank">Reuters</a>:<br /></p><blockquote>Cuban seamstress Yamidely Cervantes has bought a new sewing machine for the first time in years, plus a refrigerator and a cellphone - all on Russia's dime. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>She said her 49-year-old husband Enrique Gonzalez, a struggling bricklayer, left their home in the small town of La Federal on July 19 to fight for the Russian army in Ukraine. Days later, he wired her part of his signing-on bonus of about 200,000 roubles ($2,040) which she received in Cuban pesos, Cervantes told Reuters. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>... On the 100-meter dirt road where Cervantes lives, at least three men have left for Russia since June, and another had sold his home in anticipation of going, she said. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>"You can count on one hand those who are left," the 42-year-old said as she surveyed the street from a small terrace where she'd repurposed two broken toilet bowls as flower pots. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>"Necessity is what is driving this."</blockquote>From its onset, the <b>Israeli war on Gaza</b> has presented challenges to Israel's human economy. The war pushes Israel toward becoming ever more <a href="https://happening-here.blogspot.com/2023/12/israel-makes-unsustainable-malignant.html" target="_blank">an unsustainable, malignant Sparta</a>. Many men who make its modern economy hum were called up to serve in the Israeli Defense Force, while Palestinian laborers were locked out of the agricultural sector to be replaced by whatever migrant workers Israel could import. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihs1qOxE8wexWh7yUAALz2wO0g8PW6WDPOe3Y5tmJaTo9bABFYog_XTnHFN1_onDGMlu_ju-zYVJVm_i7Lhdbusgen4yAhsUc9nUPAPZlmHlm_ZlHkPTtUVFQjXBn4MQbkKqzusbivMoedIZ3VM6-b76WxWc0sStBRQUXG6XHY7Em73_eok9U6/s1272/Screenshot%202024-02-29%20at%2012.52.21%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="932" data-original-width="1272" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihs1qOxE8wexWh7yUAALz2wO0g8PW6WDPOe3Y5tmJaTo9bABFYog_XTnHFN1_onDGMlu_ju-zYVJVm_i7Lhdbusgen4yAhsUc9nUPAPZlmHlm_ZlHkPTtUVFQjXBn4MQbkKqzusbivMoedIZ3VM6-b76WxWc0sStBRQUXG6XHY7Em73_eok9U6/w400-h293/Screenshot%202024-02-29%20at%2012.52.21%20PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>According to a report in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/29/we-do-not-have-many-options-growing-unease-over-recruitment-of-indian-labourers-by-israel" target="_blank">Guardian</a>, Israeli recruitment of foreign construction workers is focusing on India. <br /><blockquote>The industry relied on approximately 80,000 Palestinian workers, who are now barred from entering Israeli territory. As a result, half-finished residential blocks are everywhere, yellow tower cranes waiting motionlessly overhead. In the West Bank, poverty rates have soared. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>The economic impact for Israel could also be severe. The finance ministry has estimated the expulsion of Palestinian construction workers is costing 3bn shekels (£656m) a month, and could eventually lead to a loss of 3% of GDP because the building and housing industries owe 400bn shekels in loans. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>... “Right now I earn around 15,000 rupees (£150) a month,” said Rajat Kumar, 27, from the north Indian state of Haryana. Though he has a bachelor’s degree, for six years he had been unable to get any other job except construction, earning a salary he described as “peanuts”. The prospect of travelling abroad to a country engulfed in conflict was a small price to pay for regular, well-paid work, said Kumar, who got his first passport in order to apply for a job as a plasterer in Israel. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>The job he has applied for in Israel would pay 138,000 rupees a month, with accommodation provided, which he saw as a small fortune. “When I compare it with what I earn here, I can’t think of anything but the better life I and my family will have,” he said. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>A bilateral labour agreement was signed between Israel and New Delhi last May, before the war in Gaza broke out, but has since become a priority for both countries. Israeli transportation minister, Miri Regev, said during a visit to India earlier this month that Israel would be “lessening its dependence on Palestinian workers” by replacing them with skilled foreign workers.</blockquote>As always in contemplating migrant flows, let's hope this is worth it to the human individuals caught up in the flow of people. But people always get around, something US immigration restrictionists fail to understand.<br /><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-50608919585562604542024-02-28T21:19:00.000-08:002024-02-28T21:19:59.446-08:00Blogiversary<p>I've been writing this blog, in this antiquated medium, for 19 years, ever since 2005.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAedzZV3EHeT14O0Wpd1_ipvC7AU9cbKN5aZppylSeTDSatEXoyMpyVTETlx2V2BWzisxLvGpzmispQXp4h5S3Xya_TtHBMAus1ATBO6NQoGb_n4jGzeioeA1rL3zHHOJgkcjRgd3L8Ry7Hb6bAYdLT2t3u2rA3cVKmyT-ytJZO44VMZToFSCj/s4032/GGP%20Lake.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAedzZV3EHeT14O0Wpd1_ipvC7AU9cbKN5aZppylSeTDSatEXoyMpyVTETlx2V2BWzisxLvGpzmispQXp4h5S3Xya_TtHBMAus1ATBO6NQoGb_n4jGzeioeA1rL3zHHOJgkcjRgd3L8Ry7Hb6bAYdLT2t3u2rA3cVKmyT-ytJZO44VMZToFSCj/w300-h400/GGP%20Lake.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div>No post today. I'm doing what makes me happiest, walking out of doors. See you soon enough.<br />janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-71635243385324922832024-02-27T10:03:00.000-08:002024-02-27T10:03:35.313-08:00Old friends<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEiHzo_0eoQ_AwZvihW0SpMRW5WHm5mBwVWHV0wBpSzZBSNwADarraOKUISYzCZUHdbNFjaeOadRlCQ6gmIlT6v7accj_3pIsgRdf2nRCWm8Ku4_NkiyDA3N4-JF8cluIUVOIuS3s6X3WUwUQf-e1XII_0rWoAK2X3ZEZrbw_OwNiSVJK7bGXP/s3019/It's%20weird%20being%20the%20same%20age%20as%20old%20people.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1993" data-original-width="3019" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEiHzo_0eoQ_AwZvihW0SpMRW5WHm5mBwVWHV0wBpSzZBSNwADarraOKUISYzCZUHdbNFjaeOadRlCQ6gmIlT6v7accj_3pIsgRdf2nRCWm8Ku4_NkiyDA3N4-JF8cluIUVOIuS3s6X3WUwUQf-e1XII_0rWoAK2X3ZEZrbw_OwNiSVJK7bGXP/s320/It's%20weird%20being%20the%20same%20age%20as%20old%20people.jpeg" width="320" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We went to a lovely birthday party last weekend; the happy recipient of this excellent t-shirt had just turned 70, a mere youth from my perch. But there we are.</div><p>It seems appropriate to mark this occasion with some reflections from the great <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/kareem/p/my-body-and-me-a-lovehate-story-texas?r=bi4o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web" target="_blank">Kareem Abdul Jabbar</a> -- the GOAT basketball wizard and reflective elder: </p><p></p><blockquote><p>My body is an assassin. And his main target is me. He wants to kill me, but not all at once. He’s a sadistic sniper, hitting me here, allowing me to recover, then hitting me again in a different spot. He shot me with leukemia, prostate cancer, and Afib. He’s not done. He’s waiting out there somewhere, crouching in the bushes, controlling his breathing, line up his crosshairs on a fresh part of my body.</p><p>Oh, the betrayal. My body and I used to be best buds. We chummed around everywhere together, eating great food, playing basketball, enjoying romantic relationships. Sometimes we got hurt, but we healed fast and laughed it off. Together we felt like we could do anything, achieve greatness. And we did.</p><p>Now I sometimes feel about my body like I’m caring for a gruff hobbling parent, hauling him to appointment after appointment, while he shows no gratitude. Yet, he leans all his considerable weight on me as I schlep him around all day. It’s exhausting.</p><p>Still, I love the old curmudgeon. He may trip me when I’m not looking. May make me forget a book title or where I left my glasses. May be adding a laser scope to his rifle. But sometimes he forgets his sinister mission and comes out from the bushes to hang with old friends, play with grandchildren, and comfort others. He’s not all bad.</p><p>Our evolving relationship has actually done me more good than harm. I learned how to lean on others when I was ill. That is not a small accomplishment. Each clumsy potshot he’s taken has brought me closer to my friends and family. Plus, seeing dedicated doctors and nurses doing all they could to help me nurtured my faith in humanity. Faith in humanity is an endangered emotion these days, so I’m happy whenever I experience it anew.</p><p>Maybe my body isn’t an assassin. Maybe it’s still my best buddy. It’s just that now we have a different, more mature relationship, based on shared joys and shared struggles. In his song “Old Friends,” Paul Simon wrote about two old men sitting on a park bench: “Old friends, memory brushes the same years/Silently sharing the same fears.” Me and my body are those old friends. Maybe we do share the same fears about deterioration and death, but they’re a lot less scary facing them together.</p><p>And neither of us intends, as Dylan Thomas said, to “go gentle into that good night.”</p></blockquote><p>Further wisdom from <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/kareem/p/does-woke-mean-broke-desantis-proposes?r=bi4o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email" target="_blank">Kareem</a>:</p><p></p><blockquote>I realize that my purpose isn’t to solve problems. That’s way too grandiose. Problems of some sort will always plague humanity. I just want to lend a hand in pushing the giant rock up the hill while also giving comfort to others who are struggling with the weight. The more we work together, the lighter the load for everyone. That’s my real purpose: to lighten the load. </blockquote><p>Though his body betrays him, he's aging deeply and sharing meaningfully. <br /></p><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-25720837897034688042024-02-26T09:57:00.000-08:002024-02-26T18:44:40.853-08:00Polls - national and local<p>Ever wondered why national polls are so inadequate for understanding the opinions and leanings of people who aren't white/don't consider themselves "white"? </p><p>Here's the answer in one simple chart:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="749" data-original-width="1024" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK9O0twK8_yJZDHzVeX5dZtbOg5OE5thAuoCiffhQ0xXDxnKh3G6EWI8iOFHP8TFOsZk2By0LPJjjn3alK12Hp2IQNW-_5DhPHQLdTZZp7D5ppeHjF6XRDQ0Ttl1g-2U5HcrVcgVkqBcsFLQ0ViFW7wUwxC48uuRfmTEBmHhkejCgYuF_bAchT/w400-h293/polling%20by%20race%20is%20hard.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/24/us/asian-americans-polling.html" target="_blank">Source</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK9O0twK8_yJZDHzVeX5dZtbOg5OE5thAuoCiffhQ0xXDxnKh3G6EWI8iOFHP8TFOsZk2By0LPJjjn3alK12Hp2IQNW-_5DhPHQLdTZZp7D5ppeHjF6XRDQ0Ttl1g-2U5HcrVcgVkqBcsFLQ0ViFW7wUwxC48uuRfmTEBmHhkejCgYuF_bAchT/s1024/polling%20by%20race%20is%20hard.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Even though there are plenty of Asian-origin, Black, and Latino (and other!) Americans, unless pollsters really work on enlarging their samples ("over sampling"), they just aren't talking to enough people to avoid distortions caused by small sample size. This is hard and expensive and often doesn't happen.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Thinking about this made me wonder about the intricacies of accurate polling in San Francisco, especially about the upcoming mayoral race. Here's a picture:</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk8Sd20X9MHguOJXmwRQ_LqpnRV6QUR0CjWFOncbAl7VoBkObB5SBFriKBcjG36PXBOpAcqihWDhqrHRTBBD0C5lWkwsgsQF9s_A4kqOz1Nz-M_AG11midOGpQmF58TZhSbKXjvNN-SSaUC3qP_JnFgm1QOPX1RCFD815sjSqJkIQ0f83533oy/s1380/Screenshot%202024-02-26%20at%209.47.53%20AM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1134" data-original-width="1380" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk8Sd20X9MHguOJXmwRQ_LqpnRV6QUR0CjWFOncbAl7VoBkObB5SBFriKBcjG36PXBOpAcqihWDhqrHRTBBD0C5lWkwsgsQF9s_A4kqOz1Nz-M_AG11midOGpQmF58TZhSbKXjvNN-SSaUC3qP_JnFgm1QOPX1RCFD815sjSqJkIQ0f83533oy/w400-h329/Screenshot%202024-02-26%20at%209.47.53%20AM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco#/media/File:San-francisco-race-and-origins.png" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> - click to enlarge<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The sheer complexity of the project is very costly to do well -- and the cost will contribute to why we are in danger of only having well-heeled choices come November. That's too bad for the city. Most of us don't live in the tech-bro bubble and have different needs and hopes for this place.<br /></div>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-35806654176834300852024-02-25T09:18:00.000-08:002024-02-25T09:18:46.832-08:00Two meditations on the murder of Alexei Navalny<p>On this second Sunday of the Christian season of reflection called Lent, I find two of my favorite preachers writing of the murdered Russian activist Alexei Navalny.</p><p>Before his death, I had not been aware that Navalny was a Christian. He had placed himself at the dictator Putin's mercy by returning to the Russia he hoped to free after that state had poisoned him. That choice always seemed incomprehensible. Perhaps it is less so in the context of belief that the power of the good is released by a love so strong that killing it only multiplies the amount of love in the world. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkDIlPy_qeB0CuBU0xoZ0qd2jwb7lWycK8wU9DG4-o36X8x6RpsT72__boCfJF0MYfCmVvJhuvZpKaWcwd2CzJceeaqA3PDl13SNPv-4JDtwon7_vQ3NGS6CNA-RCG7r8BXppFrp1ItaTpY7MFJ_qgpDnaIs1RyOpbJGx3PNTLe_pifHNQM2dl/s1360/navalny.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1360" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkDIlPy_qeB0CuBU0xoZ0qd2jwb7lWycK8wU9DG4-o36X8x6RpsT72__boCfJF0MYfCmVvJhuvZpKaWcwd2CzJceeaqA3PDl13SNPv-4JDtwon7_vQ3NGS6CNA-RCG7r8BXppFrp1ItaTpY7MFJ_qgpDnaIs1RyOpbJGx3PNTLe_pifHNQM2dl/w400-h225/navalny.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/dianabutlerbass/p/sunday-musings-691?r=bi4o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web" target="_blank">Diana Butler Bass</a> distinguishes between whines of victimization (see Trump and his MAGA acolytes) and taking up the terrible power that is (relatively) selfless love.<p></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><p><span>Ultimately, a martyr complex is about you, what you’ve lost, what you have sacrificed, your troubles: </span><em>Look
at what I’ve done for others! See what I carry on your behalf. But look
how I’m suffering and despised! No one appreciates me! No one says
‘thank you’! </em><span>You may, indeed, have taken up a cross.
However, such adversities can become laden with bitterness — and often
become a weapon wielded first at one’s self (self pity) and then at
others (manipulation or revenge). </span></p><p>That’s not a cross. That’s a millstone.</p><p><span>But
those who find themselves bearing the cross — whether they wind up as
martyrs or not — understand that following Jesus isn’t about nurturing
and carrying grievances. It is about letting go of what weighs one down
to make room for something bigger, a giving of one’s self to love and
service to create a different kind of world. You understand that taking
this path might involve hardship and trial. You still go — you still
take up the cross — not for yourself, but </span><em>for others. </em></p><p><span>Taking
up a cross isn’t just an inconvenient ordeal, a persistent sin, or
annoying demand. Taking up the cross doesn’t mean whining or seeking
attention when confronted with trouble. When you take up Jesus’ cross,
you </span><em>choose</em><span> to surrender the burdens of
self-pretension in favor of cumbering yourself with compassion and love
of neighbor. This cross puts one in tension with injustice, the
powerful, violence, bigotry, and delusions of grandeur. That’s the cross
Jesus instructs his followers to pick up. The “yoke” of this cross is
ultimately not heavy but light. </span></p></blockquote><p>For my friend <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/johnkirkley/p/redemptive-and-stupid-suffering?r=bi4o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web" target="_blank">John Kirkley</a>, Alexei Navalny's trajectory provides a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1744912-an-autobiography-or-the-story-of-my-experiments-with-truth" target="_blank">"glimpse of truth"</a> -- a fact of the universe in which we live -- as Gandhi once explained in his autobiography. Kirkley says of Navalny:</p><p><em></em></p><blockquote><p><em>"It’s fine, because I did the right thing</em><span>." One doesn’t
have to be a Christian in order to do the right thing. Christians do
not have a monopoly on moral courage. But Navalny clearly grounded his
commitment to nonviolent resistance against evil in Christian faith.
More specifically, [he] trusted in the power of redemptive suffering, in
the willingness to suffer for doing what is good no matter the
consequences. </span></p><p><span>... </span>the point is that suffering is intrinsic to the energetic dynamics of
affirming and denying forces in creation, as well as the conscious
attention that seeks to intervene in their reconciliation. Such
suffering is not “stupid suffering,” it is simply a given condition for
the emergence of life and the manifestation of agape love – a love that
acts as a conscious force of attention to catalyze reconciliation. The
suffering of birth pangs is not stupid suffering. The suffering of the
decay of the body over time is not stupid suffering. The suffering of
an exploding star is not stupid suffering. The suffering of the great
flaring forth in the creative fire of the emergence of something out of
nothing is not stupid suffering. </p></blockquote><p>Navalny's self-sacrificial choice has released a power we should contemplate. (And, as so often in the history of humankind, it leaves one wondering about what this self-sacrificial heroism means to the women left behind ...)<br /></p><p><span></span></p><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-70980475012665445072024-02-23T14:46:00.000-08:002024-02-23T14:46:18.890-08:00We like IVF and many medical fertility interventions<p>It turns out that availability of In Vitro Fertility offerings is so popular that even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/23/us/politics/trump-supports-ivf-treatment.html?smid=url-share" target="_blank">Donald Trump is running away</a> as fast as he can scamper from the decision by Alabama judicial theocrats that frozen 7-cell embryos are people.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBdZYVJxglJhwMKNIjPq7JXoA3-5X9pO4a-XU7nyEXkehZ2K-j27M0lnuOIVHGZMKCBmzuSFXScaMsaSZoUO7Eof3OFzOd6_Aiy9mKQVzv3iDATEuIZmoH0fVWWwoXQr-89m4qoY_DB_35ZYFaDil_FGeipotbiBtUSqibGySuOTQiL8bu3BqC/s1350/trump%20IVF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBdZYVJxglJhwMKNIjPq7JXoA3-5X9pO4a-XU7nyEXkehZ2K-j27M0lnuOIVHGZMKCBmzuSFXScaMsaSZoUO7Eof3OFzOd6_Aiy9mKQVzv3iDATEuIZmoH0fVWWwoXQr-89m4qoY_DB_35ZYFaDil_FGeipotbiBtUSqibGySuOTQiL8bu3BqC/s320/trump%20IVF.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br />Alabama U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville is merely confused. I suspect he's backtracked, but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/23/tommy-tuberville-alabama-embryo-ruling" target="_blank">this was his first reaction. </a><br /><p></p><p></p><blockquote>“Yeah, I was all for it. We need to have more kids, we need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do.”</blockquote><p>All forms of medical assistance with fertility are <a href="https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/will-trump-will-try-to-ban-ivf-nationwide?r=bi4o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web" target="_blank">very popular</a>. In 2020, Republicans knew this:</p><p></p><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">The polling on IVF is such that even former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway advised Republicans to support the procedure. As Alice Ollstein wrote in <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/21/alabama-ivf-abortion-00142536" target="_blank">Politico</a>, polling from Conway’s firm found:<br /></div><blockquote>86 percent of all respondents supported access to IVF, with 78 percent support among self-identified “pro-life advocates” and 83 percent among Evangelical Christians.</blockquote></blockquote><p>According to Pew, a very substantial number of us have direct experience of or proximity to various fertility treatments. This is not rare. Or cheap as the data suggest.<br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1a7EZuXFEydghnn2TGm96qxkO3oOdQkRBmJep2t_JbCKCyM0N2qy0OSHMfYQXWeVeEf6VdNYM1xJF8S86W8Iu7EKwKqpbHK3sPxInD6NuM4S37nyMPA_1YQWp2mIMPTjXQjZzJhRXTP_T-lz6YQwhztDafX1vkqBz4N9FSUJ7HEmNh80C7pwR/s1036/42%20percent%20fertility.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1036" data-original-width="620" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1a7EZuXFEydghnn2TGm96qxkO3oOdQkRBmJep2t_JbCKCyM0N2qy0OSHMfYQXWeVeEf6VdNYM1xJF8S86W8Iu7EKwKqpbHK3sPxInD6NuM4S37nyMPA_1YQWp2mIMPTjXQjZzJhRXTP_T-lz6YQwhztDafX1vkqBz4N9FSUJ7HEmNh80C7pwR/w240-h400/42%20percent%20fertility.png" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977063/" target="_blank">Research</a> describes a general, global decline in fertility. <p></p><p></p><blockquote>Over the past half-century, the world has witnessed a steep decline in
fertility rates in virtually every country on Earth. This universal
decline in fertility is being driven by increasing prosperity largely
through the mediation of social factors, the most powerful of which are
the education of women and an accompanying shift in life’s purpose away
from procreation. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>In addition, it is clear that environmental and
lifestyle factors are also having a profound impact on our reproductive
competence particularly in the male where increasing prosperity is
associated with a significant rise in the incidence of testicular cancer
and a secular decline in semen quality and testosterone levels. <br /></blockquote><blockquote>On a
different timescale, we should also recognize that the increased
prosperity associated with the demographic transition greatly reduces
the selection pressure on high fertility genes by lowering the rates of
infant and childhood mortality. </blockquote><p>Whether this seems a good or bad thing often depends on whether you are or care about women in poor countries. </p><p>In all this discussion of mediated fertility, something that gets lost is the role of medical interventions which enable LGBTQ+ folks to have children. It's substantial, as I know from living in my queer community. The judicial theocrats wouldn't like that either.<br /></p><p></p>janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-40947103262116798692024-02-23T08:07:00.000-08:002024-02-23T08:07:06.114-08:00Friday cat blogging<p>Let's give the local felines a rest. I like this.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEA0ujf11rRgKzVC5lZAtLw4-wwqMEpy6LGe1sj_H_0dhl-MUgUlbxBu5rwrKweR528Bh7jDZlGRIvV7-Axr75qK0qBnH0OhqFrdnVPsuUG2a-jMPe6MHzq7MdKRXBpsmDumJ9rEXwwUrOPXO0usKL2AGc94SlMJAF40EbJ1XTJpBrNSbPp8Xp/s828/cats-smarter%20than%20trump%20cat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="828" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEA0ujf11rRgKzVC5lZAtLw4-wwqMEpy6LGe1sj_H_0dhl-MUgUlbxBu5rwrKweR528Bh7jDZlGRIvV7-Axr75qK0qBnH0OhqFrdnVPsuUG2a-jMPe6MHzq7MdKRXBpsmDumJ9rEXwwUrOPXO0usKL2AGc94SlMJAF40EbJ1XTJpBrNSbPp8Xp/w400-h240/cats-smarter%20than%20trump%20cat.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>I think Janeway might concur.<br />janinsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.com1