So, the Village Wants Our Help. They Want to Know What We Think.

I think I've counted three e-blasts from the Village, asking us about our priorities, and our "vision" for the Village.  Each e-blast has been signed by Mario Diaz, who doesn't even work here any more.

If you're relatively new to the Village, you don't know what the problem is.  So, I'll tell you.  There are sort of two of them.  First, not so long ago, candidates for Commissioner campaigned.  They knew the Village well enough to know in what ways it worked well, and in what ways it didn't, and they had their own platforms, which they elaborated to you, when they campaigned, which included knocking on your door, and talking to you, or at least personally leaving for you a copy of their campaign flyer.  They didn't rely, as if they were blank slates, on finding out what was your vision.  They told you what was their vision.  It was on the basis of that, and whatever else you took into account, that you voted for them.  Or didn't.

Now, it appears to be backwards.  They somehow, on the basis of who knows what, get elected, and they then want you to tell them what they ought to do, or ought to want to do.  If it was that mindless, we could elect absolutely anyone, and then try to nudge them to meaning and effectiveness.  Frankly, it appears that that's what we've been doing for the past few years.  It's dramatically inefficient, and unreliable, which is why we are where we are.

Second, until 2016, new Commissions would have a sort of retreat at the beginning of the new Commission.  The purpose of that retreat was for the Commissioners/Commission we already elected to get to know each other better, and establish a vision to which they could ideally all ascribe.  We used to call those retreats, perhaps not very creatively, "visioning sessions."  Gone, as of 2016, as was any sense of "vision" beyond first just having power and control (over nothing), and now, just being satisfied somehow to have won an election, whatever the winner took that to mean, and filling a seat.

And now, the Keystone Kops, with the imprimatur of a manager who doesn't even work here any more, want us to tell them what their vision should be?  Or should have been?  That was their primary job -- having and communicating a vision -- and they can't do it.  They kind of need to resign.

John and Elena. And Tim. (And Fernando.) I Don't Mean to Be a Nag. I'm Helping You.

Last night's South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center concert was on my list.  It's true I expected it to be terrific, but it was on my list the way they're all on my list.  Because the ones that aren't what I might call terrific (more or less all of them are) are very, very good.  It's a long, 28-mile, ride from here?  Yeah, so?  It's always worth it.  Always.

At intermission, someone nearby called my name.  It was John Holland, in the row behind me, and two seats over.  Elena was with him.  Delaney was not.  Presumably, she's still too young for a late night out.  And John said he knew several other people who had come to see/hear that show.  He also wanted to know if the seat next to me was, in fact, not taken, because Tim Horner was much further back, and would love a closer seat.  I hadn't paid attention to that seat, so I asked the woman on the other side of it, and no, it was not taken.  Tim was welcome to it.  I told John and Elena to let me know next time they want to go down there.  We'll carpool.  I'm there for most of their shows anyway.

I don't know how many times I've talked about SMDCAC, but it's been many.  It's not near BP, but it's a beautiful venue, magnificently operated, with the friendliest staff on earth, low ticket prices, and free parking.  The manager/impresario is Eric Fliss, and no one is remotely as good as he is at choosing talent.  Last weekend, I was at a show that Eric said he'd been nursing for seven years.  It was a bluegrass group, and their program last weekend was 1980s songs.  There was a Bob Dylan, a Madonna, and many others.  I asked the leader of the group how on earth he managed to bluegrassize a program without including the Allman Brothers.  He corrected me, and told me the Allman Brothers as a formal group didn't have any output in the 1980s, although Gregg did.

Anyway, back to last night, I asked John, who plays guitar, if he had come down to SMDCAC to hear Bela Fleck play banjo.  No, he said, he came to hear all of them.  Zakir Hussain, whom many or most people consider the greatest living tabla player, Edgar Meyer, whose upright bass playing was magnificent, and a guy who is not familiar to me, who played a collection of wooden Indian (South Asian) flutes.

Not that it mattered much who played last night.  THEY'RE ALL GREAT!!  You're depriving yourself if you don't go there.  And if you need one more incentive, the more often you go, the even cheaper are the tickets.  They have packages, whereby if you buy tickets to X number of shows (dance, and other categories), the price you pay for your already low priced tickets gets lower.

PS: Fernando doesn't live in BP.  He's a percussionist, who is particularly interested in Indian percussion, especially tabla, and I know him from an Indian classical music organization of which I'm a part.  But he was there, definitely to see Zakir Hussain.

PPS: Next weekend is the last show for this regular season.  It's a kids'/family show, so I won't be there.  But very soon, they're coming out with their summer schedule.  Do yourselves a favor.  smdcac.org.  786-573-5300.  If you call them, you'll probably talk to Dora, Rico, or Alex.  Tell them I said to take good care of you.

Chris Christie Gets It, Too.

'I'm so angry!' Chris Christie tells furious Donna Brazile to 'calm down' over abortion rights (msn.com)

The point is not that Christie was annoyed with Donna Brazile.  It's why he was annoyed with her.

Christie, a Republican, said "I was pro-life [it's unknown to me if this is strictly true] governor in New Jersey, which is one of the most pro-choice states in America."  I don't know how Christie would know if NJ is one of the most pro-choice states in America, but let's assume either that it's up there, or that he recognized enough pro-choice sentiment among his constituents that he used this assertion to make a point.

"'But you weren't attempting to ban abortion in NJ', ABC host Jonathan Karl noted."

"I wasn't, but John -- your personal views were, I mean, I was very clear about my personal views, though...And if people believe it comes from your heart and that you have a legitimate, not a political explanation for what you're doing, lots of people, not all voters, but lots of people will say to you, all right, we can disagree on that one."

So, Christie gets it.  He understands.  He's entitled to his "personal views," and his constituents are entitled to theirs.  And since his personal views are personal to him, and his constituents don't agree, and they're his constituents, then he didn't try to impose his personal views on them.  This is as it should be.

Republican legislators are in the midst of being offered a very arresting lesson in what happens when you go against the voters' wishes, and most of them still don't get it.  Ann Coulter does.  Chris Christie did.  But most of them don't seem to.  Whether it's about abortion access or gun control, for which most Americans are pleading, Republican legislators, to the extent there still are any, don't get it.  They're so filled with unexplained rage, and intoxicated with what power they still have, that they can't smell the increasingly suffocating smoke.

I've read some reports that say that it might take 50 years for Republicans to recover from the beat-down some pundits say they're going to get in November next year.  And they'll have no one to blame but themselves.  It has just now been determined that they can't blame Dominion.  And that massive settlement was to ward off the smaller lawsuit against them (FoxNews).

There has reportedly been some talk that Disney might demolish Disney World, and leave Florida over Ronnie DeSantis' insane and raging attempts to punish and dominate (punish Disney World for saying gay).  I wonder how much revenue flows to the state from visitors to Disney World.  If they do leave, I wonder if DeSantis will personally make up the lost revenue.  All because DeSantis can't listen to anyone, including that he can't listen to Chris Christie.

"Open For Debate" and "No Labels"

Maybe it depends which media you frequent.  The ones I frequent seem to talk a lot about a "divided country."  I rely mostly on public radio and two homepages, one of which is not NPR.  But it's also fair to say that people like Marjorie Greene are said to advocate for division (or, as she calls it, divorce), as the south attempted in the Civil War, and Ms Greene has never been quoted as saying she doesn't feel that way.  So maybe everyone agrees that ours is now a divided country.

But there are some movements against division.  One of them is a group that calls itself "No Labels," and it advocates for reduction of (combative) partisanship and increase in both general appeal (not the "labels" of right and left) and in the inclusion of "independent" candidates.  Of interest, some left wing advocates have argued recently that "No Labels" is really a screen for right wing dark money, intended to promote even more right wing candidates.  "No Labels" sent out an e-blast yesterday reassuring, without mentioning the left wing source of the accusation, that this was in no way true.  (My reading of "No Labels" communications over recent years has certainly suggested that it doesn't appear to be true.)

I have to confess that I was in the garage working out, and I had the radio on, as I always do.  So, I was half focusing on my workout, and half paying close attention to the radio.  I didn't catch what was the recent former name of the organization now called "Open For Debate," but the new name certainly speaks for itself in what it promotes: non-combative debate, and an effort at mutual recognition and even a degree of acceptance of other people's positions, even if one person or side doesn't agree with the other person's or side's position.  You don't have to agree, but you should understand what the other party is saying, and what it means to them.

And before I go on, here's an example of failing to understand the other person's or side's position, and of essentially arguing for the sake of arguing.  From "30K feet," as they say, it appears that there is stark division about abortion.  One side is seen as disapproving of any abortion at any time under any circumstances, and the other side is portrayed as permissive of abortion willy-nilly, with a claim, even, that that side is permissive of abortion up to the moment of birth.  But neither is true.  These posturings apply labels where they don't belong, and they suppress debate.  The facts are that the "vast majority" (that's the term I heard used a day or two ago) of Americans are in favor of abortion access, and it's more commonly legislators, who are "going rogue," and not representing their supposed constituents, and who propose to limit in unrealistic ways.  But even some of those legislators include permissiveness for things like rape, incest, and maternal health.  And some proposals even offer a limit of 15 weeks, after which those legislators want to ban abortion.  There's some flexibility there.  And the other camp, that doesn't want any limits, does not propose abortion access up to the moment of birth.  The fact of the matter is that 93% of abortions, when they can happen any time anyone wants them to, occur during the first trimester, which is just over 14 weeks.  Ninety-nine percent of abortions occur by 20 weeks (6% more between 15 and 20 weeks).  So, if Americans were open to debate, and were not distracted by an impulse to apply, or sometimes invent, labels, there would be a lot more room for agreement, or at least compromise.

This blog offers an example of the problem, too.  I write almost all of the posts, and I say what I want.  I used to confine myself, and guest authors, to matters of specific interest to BP residents, but more recently, I've dispensed with that restriction, and I talk a lot about politics, as I'm doing now.  There's a comment opportunity, for anyone who has something to say, add, dispute, or echo.  Generally speaking, I welcome the conversation.  Or I would welcome it, if there was one.  There increasingly commonly isn't one.  And I know very well that I write things with which some readers of this blog will disagree, or agree.  I wouldn't normally expect people who agree with me to bother to enter a comment to that effect, but it always surprises me that people I know read this blog, and who I know don't agree, don't say anything.  There should be a "Debate," and there isn't one.  I don't learn anything from people who agree with me.  I learn from people who look at things in a way I don't, or didn't, or which hadn't occurred to me: people who disagree with me.

One person, or possibly a couple of people (the assertion is "four or five"), sometimes enter inane and entirely off topic comments, generally ad hominem about me (or sometimes about someone else), and they don't sign their comments.  They're not offering a "debate," and they don't want one.

One of my non-BP friends does his own blog, also on blogspot.  I'm on his new post circulation.  He writes all the posts.  I comment often enough.  It is either rare or unheard-of that anyone else comments, and if I offer a different view than my friend has proposed in his post, even he doesn't "debate" the matter with me.  And he's a lawyer!  If anyone should be disposed to "debate," and be relatively good at it, he should.

So, we're stuck right now.  People are being territorial, or just blindly combative, and they don't want to, to put it in a familiar way, cross the aisle.  I don't know if it's even worth hoping this will change.  "Open For Debate" and "No Labels" hope it does.  I do, too.

I Don't Understand Ronnie's Thinking Here. (I Won't Call It "Logic," Because There Isn't Any.)

Ron 'DeathSantis' Slammed For Florida's New Death Penalty Bill (msn.com)

So, Ronnie is so bloodthirsty that he wants the state of Florida to execute convicted people if eight of 12 jurors vote that way.  It's always been unanimous, but Ronnie doesn't want too much that would "derail" the chance to execute more people.  We can set aside any concern about whether or not anyone gets a fair trial, or whether sentencing is applied blindly.

If there was any "good news" here, it's that Ronnie has made abundantly clear that he is in no way, for what it's worth, "pro-life."  He likes people killed.  What he claims has so motivated him to want the court system to be able to kill more people is Nikolas Cruz and the Parkland school massacre.  Cruz was of course doing exactly what Ronnie, now also called "DeathSantis," wants done: he heavily armed himself, as Ronnie believes Floridians should feel free to do, and he punished people who he told himself made him feel bad.  Ronnie doesn't concern himself with Cruz's state of mind any more than he concerns himself with what people like jurors think.

Ronnie's proposal is that a jury should be able to impose a death sentence on the strength of a "supermajority."  What's curious is that although he whines that one juror should not have the power to "derail" Ronnie's blood lust, "DeSantis said he [emphasis mine] believed...Cruz...deserved the death penalty."  So, one juror should not be able to prevent an execution, but one person who was not a juror should be able to cause one.  (I know, Ronnie did say he wanted eight jurors to agree with him, but this is the blood lust, if I so much as think you seem threatening, the state will let me kill you, "make my day," state of Florida, and Ronnie seems to feel fairly sure that if he can just disqualify four jurors who spent however much time listening to all the evidence, and conferring with each other, he can find eight who are as lusty as he is.

And he was slightly grudging about agreeing to having to rely on eight jurors: "Fine, have a supermajority."  Maybe in reality, as much as it would offend or gall him to have one juror who didn't think someone should be executed, it would not have bothered him to rely on just one juror who did think someone should be executed.

This kind of initiative puts Florida in elite company, too.  At the moment, only Alabama (when Alabama's ahead of you, you know you're not trying hard enough, unless we're talking college sports) allows death sentences on less than unanimous agreement from a jury.  So, Ronnie wants us to be like Alabama in terms of a frenzy to execute people.

In fact, Ronnie has a small collection of initiatives that will allow more Floridians to die.  He doesn't want them protected from the coronavirus, he wants them all heavily armed, and in a mindset to kill each other, and he gives a wide berth to farmers who are poisoning the water supply.

I liked Charlie Crist when he was our governor.  He was a Republican in those days.  But Floridian voters chose Ronnie over Crist by a substantial margin last year.  There's something very wrong with us.

Matt Gaetz Flirted With Getting It (Strategically Side-Stepped Getting It), Too.

AFRICOM Chief to Congress: We Share “Core Values” With Coup Leaders (theintercept.com)

Gaetz appeared to be close to saying that we shouldn't train militaries that then overthrow civilian governments.  And there was mention in this article of how many African militaries that then overthrew civilian governments we trained.  It seemed like extremely simple arithmetic to do -- if we train militaries that increasingly overthrow civilian governments, then we shouldn't train those militaries -- and I agree completely with Gaetz: If you do something that has an increasingly bad effect, then stop doing it.  Or, as the saying goes, "when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging."  Got it, Matt.  We are in full agreement.

The problem for Gaetz is that if he continues along that line of extremely reasonable reasoning (or perhaps if he saw this "checkmate" coming), he'd have to come to the exact same conclusion about guns in civilian hands: If we don't want people killing each other, and more guns in American hands results in more Americans killing each other, then the answer is to have fewer (or no) guns in civilian American hands.  But it would take very little conversation with Gaetz to find out that he would never go in that direction.  He gets it about trained African militaries, but he doesn't get it about armed American civilians.  Even though the issue is identical.

And maybe Gaetz realized into what corner he was painting himself.  I don't know what was the entire conversation.  I only know what part of it (assuming it was only part of it) was quoted in this article.  It's made to sound as if Gaetz started out making a clear and direct, if somewhat wiseass (Matt Gaetz?  Wiseass?!) point, and then suddenly dropped out of the conversation.  Was he just being a wiseass, and had he finished making his wiseass point, or did he consciously or unconsciously realize where this line of reasoning would very naturally flow?

It's been interesting over a period of time now to see, for example, the former Trump supporters who now call Trump a liar, a thief, and an idiot.  And I have to admit that I'd love to talk to those people, and ask them why they were so completely unaware of what was so obvious to me and most voters, but now, they see it, too.  What "woke" them up?  And likewise, how is a matter like the inadvisability -- fool heartedness! -- of training African militaries that then overthrow the civilian governments they claim to aim to uphold such an obvious conclusion for Matt Gaetz, but he cannot even begin to find his way to advocating for the thing that would lead to law and order, and reduced mass murders, in this country?

Oh, Matt...  Are you a lost cause?

Wow, Wow, Wow, WOW!!! Marjorie Greene is Starting to Get Something, Too!

MTG blames school shootings on 'SSRIs or whatever else' (msn.com)

So, Marjorie Greene has now hit upon a theory (which she more than likely invented, although that's beside the point) that people who take medication for anxiety or depression -- she appears particularly to imagine this is about a class of antidepressants called serotonin specific reuptake inhibitors, or SSRI, which she thinks "trigger the production of [serotonin] (they don't) -- or people who have testosterone in their systems (that's everyone, although she appears to have suggested to herself that she thinks this applies to female-to-male transsexuals) are led to be violent.  And Marjorie Greene, who is of course an endocrinologist, specifies that "testosterone creates aggression, and if [the Nashville mass murderer] had too much in her body, how was that affected with SSRIs [never mind the grammar, but Dr Greene has offered no basis to assume the Nashville mass murderer was taking an SSRI] or whatever else?"  (So we've now expanded Marjorie Greene's self-suggestion to "whatever else," whatever that means.)

But here's the point.  Dr Marjorie Greene has now suggested that the "Second Amendment" should be repealed -- I wholeheartedly agree, and it already has been, indirectly -- and that people who take medications for anxiety or depression, especially if the medication is an SSRI, or anyone with testosterone in their systems, which is everyone, or at least everyone who has whatever Dr Greene believes is too much testosterone, however she determines that, should not have an uninfringed right, or more safely any right, to "keep and bear Arms."  As I said, I completely agree with her.  We have already outlawed for private possession all the "Arms" that would be necessary to be an effective member of a militia (that, and nothing else, is what the "Second Amendment" is about), and Dr Greene goes the last step, and says that no one should have a right to "keep and bear Arms."  If we take away the people who take medication for anxiety or depression, and all the people who have testosterone in their systems, there's no one left.

Except that of course, Dr Greene reroutes herself onto a road to nowhere, and she suggests we "harden our schools," which can only mean that she thinks that even more of the people who shouldn't have guns should have them, so she's really chasing her tail here.  I'm going to guess she'll never catch her tail, and that she'll just exhaust herself trying.  Or make herself psychotic.  Which...

FPL Wanted to Know If I Got Satisfactory Service. How Thoughtful of Them. There's Also the Weirdly Less Disheartening Conclusion to the Matter of Clarence Thomas.

Two days ago, I lost power early in the afternoon.  It was out for about two hours.  It could have been worse, since the original estimate for resumption was 3-4 hours.  It was maybe slightly drizzling that afternoon, there were no noticeable winds, I was unaware of any branch that fell, and it was a mystery as to why the power went out.  I did see an FPL truck drive by at some point, and the power later came back on.

Yesterday, I lost power again.  This time, it was late afternoon/early evening, and this time, it was raining.  It wasn't pouring, and there were no other obvious factors, and I needed to eat dinner.  So I went out.  By the time I got home, the power was back on.  I have no idea how long it was out.  Or why.

And both times, FPL communicated by e-mail and text message, to let me know that, you know, the power was out (um, yeah, I can tell), and they included a fact that wouldn't generally appear to have any meaning for an individual homeowner: the power was out at 43 properties.  Both days.  Hmm.

Do you want to know if the power is going to go out today some time?  Ask me tonight, and I'll tell you if it did.

Early this morning, FPL sent an e-survey asking about my experience, and how, you know, satisfied I was with FPL's handling of this mystery problem (never explained), and with FPL.

Well, you know, not very.  I'd like the power not to go out.  If it does, I'd like to know why it did.  And whatever is the reason, I'd like it not to happen to (the same?) 43 properties two days in a row.  And besides all that, I'd like FPL not to rip me off by charging me for electricity I don't use, and suddenly and inexplicably tripling their "minimum" monthly charge so their brass and investors can continue to pick my pocket, and so that FPL won't be under any pressure to modernize and innovate.  "Heaven" forbid they should have to compete.  There's a limit to how far capitalism should have to go.

Then, there's the matter of Clarence Thomas.  Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court by GHWB.  Over the 30 years since then, it has been maddening to see how Thomas executes his responsibility.  He more or less never asks any questions during hearings, and he used to vote along with his uncle Tony Scalia, unless he could find a position even further to the right than that.  (I know.  There's a position further to the right than Tony Scalia's?  Rarely, but sometimes.  And Thomas could find it.)  So I'm sorry to say that I concluded that Thomas was stupid.  I thought he was an unthinking and disinterested (except in which direction is furthest to the right) dimwit.

But it has recently been coming out that Thomas has a sponsor.  His sponsor (possibly apart from the late Scalia) is a Texas real estate mogul named Harlan Crow.  Crow, who is himself very far right, lavishes on Thomas and Thomas' wife imaginable and unimaginable luxuries.  Or, to put it slightly differently, Crow pays Thomas to represent an ideology.  And I have every confidence that Crow pays Thomas more than we do.

Is it in some sense unfair, or even wrong, for Thomas, or anyone, to take pay from two sources that want potentially opposite things, and satisfy one of them, and frustrate the other?  Yeah, it sort of is.  What would prevent that would be something like rules of ethics on the Supreme Court.  Except we don't have any -- never really thought we needed them, presumably -- and the moral "compass" for someone like Thomas can be whichever direction is furthest right, or whoever pays more.

But the point is that I was wrong about Thomas.  He's not (necessarily) a dimwit.  He's a craftsman.  He has a clear understanding of what his customer wants, which is not unlikely what he, too, wants, and he delivers as perfect a finished product as he can.  That's not good for the Court, or for the country, but it's good for Thomas and his patron.

So, What Would it Take?

You know all about Nashville.  I'm talking, of course, about the assassinations of three elementary school students, and three adults, one of whom was reportedly the father of seven children.  And about the urging of three state legislators for tighter gun laws, and how two of the legislators (the 20-something African-American ones) were thrown out of the state legislature for urging action, but the 60-something Caucasian woman who made the same plea was not thrown out of the legislature, and suggested that the reason her two colleagues were thrown out, and she wasn't, had something to do with the color of their skin.

Today, I heard a radio story about some country singing woman whose name I didn't recognize and don't remember, who was asked to sing a song in the context of memorializing this unimaginable tragedy.  She chose Bob Dylan's "Tears of Rage," and she said there were rules against her making this too political, for example.  (That's right.  It was just an unfortunate event, and it had nothing to do with politics.)  As it turned out, this woman had children who were in school in the same neighborhood where this slaughter happened, but not at that school.  All she knew at first was in what area this mass murder took place, and she was most certainly pissing her pants worrying about her children.  She soon enough learned that the tragedy was not personally hers, but even so, she said she had to work hard to control her emotions singing the song she chose.

The mind-blowing thing, or among the mind-blowing things, was that this woman -- the one whose children were, luckily for her, not murdered at school -- said she'd grown up around guns, had one, and was not arguing that people shouldn't have guns.  (I wonder to what extent her luck influenced her not to get too extreme about this.)

It was a few, or perhaps several, years ago that I heard another radio story about guns, and as I recall, that one, too, came from Tennessee.  It was about a guy who had also grown up around guns, and had been comfortable with them, and using them, for target practice and shooting things like rabbits.  But he later became a medical doctor, and he might have been an emergency room specialist.  He started keeping statistics, and he calculated that for every gun-related ER visit that happened for a "good" reason (someone gets shot committing a crime, for example), there were 42 gun-related ER visits that happened for a "bad" reason (accidental discharge with injury, suicide attempt, crime of disturbed passion, young kid who finds, and discharges, gun that was supposed to have been locked up somewhere, etc).  This doctor, unlike the lucky country singer, changed his mind about guns in civilian hands.  (Well, somebody's got their head screwed on in the right direction.)

I recently talked about Michael Moore, who had been a decorated marksman in his younger days, and who made a documentary about the "Columbine" problem.  He wound up frankly concluding that there's something very wrong with Americans, and it's evidenced by our frenzy to kill each other with guns.  His ultimate thesis was that we're terrified.  If you know a worse idea than giving someone who's practically paralyzed with fear, or possibly even paranoid, a loaded gun, I'd be curious to know what that even worse idea is.

At what point do we look back over how things have been going, and realize we made a mistake?  And it's literally killing us.  I know some people will mindlessly and reflexly talk about the "Second Amendment," but there is no "Second Amendment."  We have functionally made it impotent, useless, and we've repealed it by making illegal all the "Arms" we would need to carry out the clearly and explicitly stated intention and meaning of the "Second Amendment."

Should we wait for more random groups of adults to be assassinated with guns in civilian hands?  How about more children in school?  It seems as if something ought to get us to recognize and correct our massively destructive mistake.  How about if it was your kid, and not just someone else's?  Would that do it?

Really? Something Very Bad Could Get Even Worse? And Thanks to the People Who Are Supposed to Make it Better? That Brings Disheartening to a New Low.

Yesterday (Saturday), I was leaving the Village at 4:30 in the afternoon.  I was driving south on 6th Avenue.  Just as I got to Griffing Park (the northern border of which is 115th St), a dark and semi-marked BP police cruiser (SUV style) shot across 6th Avenue, without emergency lights flashing, or siren blaring, and cut across Griffing Park.  By driving over it.

It would have taken about five seconds, or possibly up to 10 seconds, longer to drive north on 6th Avenue, and take a left (west) on 115th St.

Griffing Park contains a flag pole, several trees, some sort of memorial that looks like a brick barbecue, and two sculptures.  The ground cover is grass.

In "full disclosure," let me say I hate grass.  I think it's a menace plant.  It takes a great deal of time, work (and/or money), chemicals, and water, and it commonly doesn't look good anyway.  There are a few places in the Village where the ground cover is grass that does look good.  Griffing Park is one of them.  Grass in more or less all other public places in the Village -- most glaringly the medians -- does not look good.  It more commonly than not looks terrible.  So the apparently carefully cared for grass in Griffing Park is very noteworthy.

Of course, that grass won't look good for long with people (our police?!!) driving over it.

We even have scattered signs, posted by the Village, telling people to "keep off the medians."  No, people don't keep off the medians, but they're supposed to.  In theory, if a BP police officer happened to see someone driving on a median, that officer would cite the driver.  So, the BP police officer is the driver driving on the median?  And that officer was not on an emergency call, and had an alternative that would have taken 5-10 extra seconds?

I realize this complaint is on the list of examples of all the people who don't care about BP (even though they live or work here), and it's not a short list of examples, or of people.  But it was so glaring, so unnecessary, and, as my brother used to say, like sticking your finger in someone's eye.

Can't we be bothered about anything?  This is either part of our land use Code, or it's an Ordinance.  And our own police/employees violate it?

Sometimes, we act like a two-bit municipality.  Sometimes, it seems we value ourselves at under two bits.

Wow!! Ann Coulter Gets It!

Ann Coulter Begs Conservatives to ‘Stop Pushing Strict Limits on Abortion’ (msn.com)

So, Ann Coulter now understands that frustrating the wishes of a significant majority of Americans has a downside: it costs Republicans votes.  It doesn't cost them votes where they can gerrymander the daylights out of a state (although it did cost them the "red wave" they promised themselves last year), but it costs them votes in the Senate.  It may have contributed to costing them the White House.

Although oddly, Coulter's plea to back off the anti-abortion crusade included the comment "Pro-lifers. [they're not]: WE WON.  Abortion is not a 'Constitutional right' any more."  There's a part of her that can't quite give up the idea that this failure was somehow a victory.

Someone involved in Coulter's Twitter life mentioned the Republican Party's "ineptitude at winning elections," and Coulter herself retweeted one Twitter commenter (do we call them Twits?) as having said "Serious political parties have one job -- win general elections [no mention of representing Americans].  The Republican Party is currently not a serious party, and it won't be until it kicks its Trump/MAGA habit."  It sure sounds like that was Tweeted by some Republican Twit, and it represents yet someone else who gets it.  (Although someone who still thinks the main aim of political parties is to dominate.)  And to add further insult to the self-inflicted injury, that Twit concluded with "Right now, [the Republican Party is] more of a grievance social club.  It's fun, but useless."

Seriously, Wow!!  They acknowledge they have no agenda but to whine or clutch pearls or whatever people do at grievance social clubs (and counter anything Democrats want), they're just hurting themselves, and they're doing it exactly as all addicts do it.  There's no detox, rehab, or AA for Republicans, but someone recognizes they have a habit they need to kick.  Someone, and, up to a point, Ann Coulter, realize they're hitting bottom.

But to come back to Coulter's other assertion, which is connected to assertions made by many Republicans, she still thinks she's/they've "WON" something.  Kevin McCarthy is slightly uninhibited about saying that what Republicans want is power.  And he's not at all the only one.  They want power over everyone, and most certainly over all Americans.  They have their personal agendas, from wherever they come, and they want an American government that is so massive and imposing that it will control the lives of all Americans in the image of what some Republicans personally believe.  It's hard to get less democratic than that.  That's standard issue autocracy.  That's Vladimir Putin, the Taliban, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Attila the Hun, or any of a collection of them.

Benjamin Franklin, and his comment about having given us a democracy "if [we] can keep it," indeed.  It appears we couldn't.

The Great News and the Terrible News.

Yesterday (4:00 PM to 10:00 PM!), the Village held one of its outdoor events.  This one was centered on jazz music, and there were some vendors, mostly selling food and some drinks.

I was there from about 5:30 to about 8:00.

In the past, we've engaged one combo/band/ensemble, and it played for maybe 1 1/2 hours.  Yesterday, we engaged at least three that I saw and heard, and there could well have been more.  Tal Cohen, a jazz pianist I have seen and heard many times around town, was there, Mike Gerber, who, with his wife, does or did live in the Park, was there (dressed to the nines!), and performers I didn't know were there.

The music was terrific (that was the best of the great news), and the crowd was a decent size.  Rain threatened from time to time, but didn't interfere much.

The food was excellent.  There were plates of what amounted to dinner (and I was able to avoid eating animals or dairy), and there were exceptionally good baked items, some of which were vegan.  All of the food and drinks, except for the offerings from one vendor, were overpriced.  But we were all there to have a nice time, the event/music was free, and it was worth the not-terribly-painful pocket-picking.

My nextdoor neighbors were there with their six month old twins, and various other neighbors were there.  My impression was that everyone was having a good time.  That, of course, was the point, so that was the great news (not to mention the quality of the music).

So, here's the terrible news.  Mac Kennedy was there, of course, and he was mingling avidly, and being his usual friendly, outgoing self.  Art Gonzalez was sitting, possibly with some family members, in a corner, not interacting with anyone, except probably his presumed family members.  Veronica Amsler eventually showed up.  I had spoken to her once on the telephone when she was "running" for office, and I had a real opportunity to meet her in actual person, and talk to her more about her sort of impossible self-inflicted project of being a Commissioner, and how to negotiate it.  As of about 8:00, Jonathan Groth, Veronica Olivera, and Mario Diaz never showed up.  I asked someone -- not unlikely Mac -- where Mario (you know, our supposed manager) was, and I was reminded that yesterday was Saturday.  That never, ever, not once stopped Ana Garcia and Heidi Siegel, and we pay low, but not chicken feed.  There was absolutely no possible excuse for Mario not to have been there, not to mention the other people who had been elected by their neighbors to be Commissioners.  That kind of disinterest never used to happen, at least not when I was ever involved.  I'm very sure that was true of all of us who, you know, gave a shit.  I, personally, was probably always one of the first ones there and the last to leave, unless Issa and Derrick told me everything was under control, and I could go.  (Yes, of course Issa and Derrick, and a number of our police, were there yesterday, even though it was...Saturday.  Did we pay any of them overtime?  Good.  I hope so.  They had a lot to do.)

It would never have happened like that starting when I moved here in 2005.  Even Steve Bernard would have been there in his time.  Things held up until 2016, and then, they crashed.  If our best effort to get ourselves back on some sort of adaptive track, that reflected self-esteem, is electing Mac Kennedy, it's the least we could do, and it's not good enough.  We need a whole Commission, or at least a majority of one, like that.

The Unraveling Continues.

Poll shows Americans' values shifting | Watch (msn.com)

This is an interview based on a survey about American "values."  The reference points were 1998 and 2023, which are 25 years apart.

All of the things that have deteriorated, which is more or less everything, are socially hopeful, and the kinds of things that bind people together, and lead them to want what would colloquially be called a "better world."  Or at least a better country.

In 2023, only one thing is of greater interest than it was 25 years ago, and that's money.  Money is solipsistic.  Many people with a good deal of money have more of it than they need, or can use, or sometimes even want.  They just can't stop pursuing it, as this survey shows, and it has become the equivalent of an addiction.

One of the things I always say is that the vast, vast, vast majority of people who get money are not counterfeiters: they don't create their own money.  The money they get they take from other people, and they ought to think about that (and about the other people).  The linked survey says they're not thinking about any of that, or about anything, except getting money.  They have no sense of attachment to others, or to the value of something like college, which leads to expanded interests and experiences and ambitions.  They're uniquely no longer thinking even about their own children.  More people now can't be bothered to want children, and they're no longer confident that their children will come to be better off than they are.  The unspoken presumption is that they don't particularly want their children to be better off than they are.

So, that's what's happened to Americans' "values" in the last 25 years.  The interview says some of it started with Reagan, and it accelerated (wildly) with Trump.  But whenever, it's pretty pathetic.  It's hard to avoid the conclusion that so are we.