Dear Red States… We’ve decided we’re leaving.

Originally posted August 19, 2020

DEAR RED STATES… WE’VE DECIDED WE’RE LEAVING.

We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and Washington D.C.

We also get Costco and Boeing

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.

We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.

We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy League and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties. By the way, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Oh, and you can have all the new Coronavirus cases since you’re too dumb and self-centered to wear a mask.

Peace out, we are the people, Blue States.

Thank you.

Author unknown

The Wile Politician – Joe Biden

The wile politician never sustains his positions very long. He says what is necessary to keep his constituents happy for the next election. After all it is his job that provides pay and perks that are outstanding. No one really knows his positions on issues.

That is my best description of Joe Biden. He is the empathetic politician who plays his part well enough to win an Oscar.

The contradictions in his life are publicly known.

Starting with his religion. He is a Catholic who attends services frequently. The Roman Catholic Church – opposes abortion in all circumstances. So how can he support abortion rights?

This summary of his position on school busing in the New York Times is worth your consideration.

In 1974 Mr. Biden, who was then a senator for Delaware, voted two times to protect court-ordered busing to achieve desegregation, including the decisive vote on an amendment that would have effectively done away with it.

But months after an angry crowd in a school auditorium criticized him for that vote, Mr. Biden said in a speech on the Senate floor that he had become “more and more disenchanted with busing as a remedy.”

In a television interview in 1975, Mr. Biden called busing an “asinine concept” and said he had “gotten to the point where I think our only recourse to eliminate busing may be a constitutional amendment.”

Mr. Biden is a supporter of Free Trade agreements despite his denials. In the Senate, Biden voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement and permanent normal trade relations with China. As then-President Barack Obama’s No. 2, he supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But today he says he is opposed to those agreements.

The controversial 1994 crime law that Joe Biden helped write is explained at this site, Vox. The summary:

The 1994 crime law passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, which was meant to reverse decades of rising crime, was one of the key contributors to mass incarceration in the 1990s. They say it led to more prison sentences, more prison cells, and more aggressive policing — especially hurting black and brown Americans, who are disproportionately likely to be incarcerated.

The law imposed tougher prison sentences at the federal level and encouraged states to do the same. It provided funds for states to build more prisons, aimed to fund 100,000 more cops, and backed grant programs that encouraged police officers to carry out more drug-related arrests — an escalation of the war on drugs.

From the Detroit News. To be fair to Biden, he was an exceptionally incompetent and indecisive chairman (of the Senate Judiciary Committee), easily cowed and unable to control the hearings. After promising to support Bork, he switched his vote. After promising to afford Thomas some semblance of due process, he presided over what the future justice famously called a “high-tech lynching.”

Biden now claims to regret that he “couldn’t come up with a way” to give Hill “the kind of hearing she deserved.” What does Biden think Hill deserved? Without any supporting evidence, the Senate gave her the opportunity to make her case. She was given enormous coverage by the media when her allegations emerged — leaked to the press, most likely by Democrats — despite the obvious problems with her story from the start. No one ever stopped Hill from telling that story. Hill still tells her story. Hill wrote a book telling her story. There are hagiographic movies and documentaries about her story. Even today, journalists interview her without a hint of journalistic skepticism.

The Senate confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52 to 48 on Oct. 15, 1991.

From a Doyle McManus column in the Los Angeles Times: Richard A. Harpootlian, a South Carolina state senator who’s long been a Biden supporter, “You can’t judge people by what they did 50 years ago,” Harpootlian argued. “To measure what they said then by today’s standards is just wrong.”

I am not a politician but I have held the same views on critical issues all of my life. Why can’t politicians? I answered that question in the second sentence of this posting.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87

On the eve of Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) A sad day for America. Leading the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc, Ginsburg was a legal pioneer who backed affirmative action and defended abortion rights. Her notable rulings and dissents advanced feminist themes, including the groundbreaking 1996 decision ordering the Virginia Military Institute to allow women to enroll.

The battle for who will take her place on the Supreme Court will be brutal.

Biden Townhall

Donald Trump has contended that Joe Biden can’t put two sentences together. That argument was put to bed at this townhall event. His answers were cogent and given without hesitation.

There were no hardball questions thrown at Joe Biden. No one knows if he was prepared for any tough questions. One woman who said she was a Republican questioned the $600 weekly unemployment support that ended in July saying that it had discouraged people going back to work. Biden responded saying the money was needed to help pay their rent or mortgage and that was a clear answer.

CNN provided a good summary of six lines.

• Trump’s response to the pandemic: “But he knew it. He knew it, and did nothing. It is close to criminal. … The idea that you are not going to not tell people what you have been told that this virus is incredibly contagious — seven times more contagious than the flu — you breathe the air and you get it sucked into your lungs — what has he done?”

• Police must be held accountable: “The vast majority of police are decent, honorable people. One of the things I’ve found is, the only people who don’t like bad cops more than we don’t like them are police officers. And so what we have to do is we have to have a much more transparent means by which we provide for accountability within police departments,” Biden said.

• When it comes to the pandemic, trust the science: “I don’t trust the President on vaccines. I trust Dr. [Anthony] Fauci. If Fauci says a vaccine is safe, I would take the vaccine. We should listen to the scientists, not to the President,” Biden said.

• Characterizing his campaign: “I view this campaign as a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue,” Biden said. “All Trump can see from Park Avenue is Wall Street. All he thinks about as the stock market.”

• Trump’s troubling administration: “I’ve been doing this a long time. I never, ever thought I would see such a thoroughly, totally irresponsible administration.”

• Bridging the divide: “I plan to unite the nation. I’m running as a Democrat but I’m going to be everyone’s president. I’m not going to be a Democratic president. I’m going to be America’s president.”

The six hottest years on record include 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019

The above photo was shown on sfgate.com on September 9. The smoke from the fires has obliterated the sun for the past week in Los Angeles. My eyes sting. So what is the problem?

An Inconvenient Truth presents in film form an illustrated talk on climate by by former Vice President Al Gore, aimed at alerting the public to an increasing “planetary emergency” due to global warming. He may have had the dates wrong but we are having another once in a life time crises almost every year. Available on Amazon.

The temperature in Los Angeles suburb Woodland Hills set a new record on September 6, 2020. 121°F (49.444°C).

Consider an exchange that took place in California at an event focused on the fires. Wade Crowfoot, head of the state’s Natural Resources Agency, called on Trump to recognize the role of climate change in the historic conflagrations.

“We’ve had temperatures explode this summer,” Crowfoot said. “You may have learned that we broke a world record in the Death Valley: 130 degrees. But even in greater L.A., 120-plus degrees. And we’re seeing this warming trend make our summers warmer, but also our winters warmer as well.”

He acknowledged Trump’s that ground cover and fallen trees contribute to fires.

“But I think we want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forest — and actually work together with that science,” he continued. “That science is going to be key, because if we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together in protecting Californians.”

“It’ll start getting cooler,” Trump replied. “You just — you just watch.”

“I wish science agreed with you,” Crowfoot said.

“I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump responded.

As it turns out, science knows quite well. For more than 100 years, it’s been speculated that burning fossil fuels (in particular coal) emits gas that can trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. By now, that effect is well documented and obviously manifested, with atmospheric carbon dioxide hitting levels never before measured and the effects of that saturation felt everywhere from increased droughts to increased severe precipitation events (since warmer air can hold more moisture) to higher temperatures to things such as dissolving shells on marine life.

Throw Everything at the Wall

Donald Trump is trailing in every election poll. This past week has been a disaster for him thanks to his own words.

He privately disparaged dead American soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.”

In a February interview with Bob Woodward admitting to that the coronavirus was much more deadly than the flu and easily transmitted through the air — while saying virtually the opposite publicly and most recently Trump has insisted that the U.S. is “rounding the turn” on coronavirus.

So there is only one thing he can do to win on November 3. Throw everything he can say about Joe Biden at the wall and hope some of it sticks.

September 10, 2020 Tweet, ‘If I don’t win, America’s Suburbs will be OVERRUN with Low Income Projects, Anarchists, Agitators, Looters and, of course, “Friendly Protesters”.’

“If Biden gets in, this market’s going to crash,” Trump asserted in an interview on Fox Business Network with host Maria Bartiromo. Invoking Biden’s tax plans, Trump also claimed that the former vice president would “tax this country into a depression like in 1929.”

Fox News will broadcast an interview tonight Saturday, September 12, 2020 in which Donald Trump accuses Joe Biden of taking performance-enhancing drugs. What drug would that be? A Consumer Reports doctor says there’s virtually no good evidence that such products can prevent or delay memory lapses, mild cognitive impairment, or dementia in older adults. Some may do more harm than good.

He previously accused Joe Biden of not being psychologically fit for office.

With 53 days to go until election day Trump will keep throwing the mud. Sadly Biden is too quiet. Unless he starts punching some of that mud is going to stick.

If Trump does win you can say good-bye to the American democracy.

La Niña may be Coming to California

The U.S. Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that La Niña — a phenomenon that occurs when the surface of the Pacific Ocean cools — has officially formed.

Between the two phases there is a neutral phase that’s neither El Niño nor La Niña — what climatologist Bill Patzert calls “La Nada.” That’s where we find ourselves at the moment — and where we expect to stay through the summer. But NOAA predicts that there’s a 50% to 55% chance of our current neutral phase shifting into a La Niña this fall and winter. Hence the watch. But there’s also a 40% to 45% chance, according to NOAA, that we will remain stuck in neutral for the fall and winter. In addition, there’s about a 5% to 10% chance of an El Niño developing.

Rain in Canoga Park has been decent the past two years. 18.47 inches in this past year and 23.23 inches the year before. Since 1997 when I started collecting rain data in my yard the lowest seasonal total was 4.53 inches in the 2001-2002 period.