RFK Jr.

It is unclear why Donald Trump would appoint this madman.

Three and a half years to go!

President Theodore Roosevelt said “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

In merely four months Donald Trump has turned the United States from a functioning democracy into a country on the edge of a fascist dictatorship.

The following reports I found on the internet from reliable news sources confirm what my beliefs.

The courts including the Supreme Court have given the power for Donald Trump to do as he wishes. The Supreme Court has ruled that President Trump is at least presumptively immune from criminal liability for his official acts, and is absolutely immune for some “core” of them — including his attempts to use the Justice Department to obstruct the results of an election.

Since late February, President Trump has used the power of the presidency to punish law firms that he accuses of weaponizing the justice system and undermining the national interest, part of his promised campaign of vengeance against his perceived political enemies.

Donald Trump expanded on his threats to the media suggesting actions of the press should be deemed illegal and subject to investigation.

“I believe that CNN and MS-DNC, who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat [sic] party and in my opinion, they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal, what do they do is illegal,” the president said during a contentious speech at the Department of Justice.

The Trump administration is seeking to exert extraordinary influence over American universities by withholding the kind of federal financial support that has flowed to campuses for decades. His claim it’s all about anti-semitism. His initial attack is on Harvard, a private university. But it has been expanded.

So far, seven universities have been singled out for punitive funding cuts or have been explicitly notified that their funding is in serious jeopardy. They are:

Harvard University, which has approximately $9 billion at stake. The government has already canceled more than $2.2 billion in retaliation after Harvard publicly rebuffed the Trump administration’s demands. Harvard quickly sued the administration, and the case is pending. The president has also threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
Brown University, which the Trump administration said stood to lose $510 million.
Columbia, which is hoping to regain about $400 million in canceled grants and contracts after it bowed to a list of demands from the federal government.
Cornell University, the target of a cut of at least $1 billion.
Northwestern, which Trump administration officials said would be stripped of $790 million.
The University of Pennsylvania, which saw $175 million in federal funding suspended in response to its approach to a transgender athlete’s sports participation in 2022.
Princeton University, which said “dozens” of grants had been suspended. The White House indicated that $210 million was at risk.

Now Trump is planning attacks on California universities who chose not to follow his directions.

Now Trump is planning to stop California’s environmental regulations.

What will Trump do next? I do not know. With more than 3 1/2 (three and a half years of his term to go it will be a bumpy ride.

Why all the Rain in a La Niña winter?

The forecast in October by the Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service, indicated the odds were stacked against the Golden State: a rare third year of La Niña was expected. And California had already recorded its three driest years in the historical record.

The center’s seasonal forecast for December, January and February said there were equal chances of a dry or wet season in Northern California. But for Southern California, the agency reported there was a 33% to 50% chance of below-normal precipitation.

Every California state water agency and every local water agency were preparing for another winter of drought.

Then the surprise started at the beginning of December 2022. Rain storm after rain storm hit Southen California.

How could that happen when this season was a predicted La Niña winter?

The meteorologists (climate scientists) provide us with an exclamation. One meteorologist who has warned against putting too many eggs in the La Niña basket is Jan Null, a former lead forecaster for the National Weather Service. In late 2020, as La Niña was developing, he tweeted of the phenomenon: “What does it mean for California and U.S. rainfall? Almost anything!”

So while La Niña and El Niño do factor into Southern California weather, another phenomenon known as the Madden-Julian Oscillation can affect whether storms hit. And instead of being forecast months in advance, they can be predicted only weeks ahead of time.

The Madden-Julian Oscillation — or MJO — is separate from La Niña and El Niño. It’s another way of predicting rain and it provides an excuse for incorrect forecasting.

1997-1998 was a year when the El Niño was accurately predicted (48.3 inches) and that started my collection of rain at my home. What I learned is that the average amount to rain is not a guide to how much rain will fall in any given year. Last year the total rain was just of 6 inches. This year the rainy season is only half completed and the rain received is approaching 16 inches.

Technology Effecting Everyday Life

More than three dozen Regal movie theaters, including a total of three in Los Angeles and Orange counties, will be closing as the chain’s parent company winds its way through bankruptcy.

The causes should be obvious. I have a 55 inch flatscreen television with an excellent sound system that has the capability of streaming movies from Disney, Paramount, Universal, and others. The cost is relatively low. I can stop the movie if I need to use the bathroom or get a snack from the kitchen. On top of that there is no potential for contracting COVID or other communicable diseases.

Phonograph records, eight track tapes, and CDs are all part of the past. Despite a recent surge in popularity of vinyl and record players, music streaming continues to be king. A wide variety of subscription-based music streaming services now grant access to millions of songs that you can access on any device you own. Spotify is the most popular streaming platform in the world, with 350 million users and 150 million subscribers.

Satellite radio means broadcasts through a satellite that ensures you can always hear the broadcast as you drive from Los Angeles to Chicago. It’s not just in your car. The SXM App delivers the ultimate SiriusXM experience including ad-free music, plus live sports, original talk shows where ever you are. I’m hooked.

Smart speakers are a 21st century tool that is part of the advance of technology that is called AI (artificial intelligence). The speakers have a microphone that hears what you are saying. The unit can play music, podcasts, news and radio, just with a simple voice request. This is just the beginning of even more advanced robotics. As I am writing this article WordPress is suggesting my next words.

The AMC DINE-IN Topanga 12 just opened June 2, 2022. I can’t understand the decision building a new theater when there is a shrinking number of theater goers. They are appealing to the same people who love phonograph records.

I admit playing the music I love on CDs. I must be part of that dying breed too.

Amazon still enjoys something of a first-mover advantage with its voice-controlled digital assistant, Alexa. That means you’ll find a robust selection of third-party tasks—or “skills,” in Amazon Alexa parlance—that the speaker can perform and a wide array of devices that work with Alexa-powered smart speakers. I’m thinking about trying this AI machine.

The West is Facing a Drought

It appears I was ahead of the curve in anticipating a major water shortage in Los Angeles. I cut watering my lawns to one day a week over the past two months. MWD wants a 35% reduction in consumption. My reduced watering resulted in a 30% reduction. The lawns are now half brown. Hot summers will likely mean a dead or very brown grass during the hot summer months.

While MWD brings water from northern California to Southern California the other project brining water here is from the Colorado River. That river is running dry too. The water is so low there that the intake valves below Hoover Dam can now be seen. Lake Powell on that river, the country’s second-largest reservoir, is drying up. If water levels at the lake were to drop another 32 feet, all hydroelectricity production would be halted at the reservoir’s Glen Canyon Dam.

Interestingly a desalination facility in Orange County California is being opposed by environmentalists.

Tennessee, USA

Tennessee, USA is the heart of where country music really began – Nashville! The Birthplace of Country Music Museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, tells the story of the 1927 Bristol Sessions recordings by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Ernest V. Stoneman, and others.

“These recordings in Bristol in 1927 are the single most important event in the history of country music.” -Johnny Cash

Sadly Tennessee is also the state that hates scientific theory and the free press.

Recall July 10–21, 1925, Dayton, Tennessee. That was the dates of the Scopes Trial, also called Scopes Monkey Trial. High-school teacher, John T. Scopes, charged with violating state law by teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The trial’s proceedings helped to bring the scientific evidence for evolution into the public sphere while also stoking a national debate over the veracity of evolution that continues to the present day.

The two sides brought in the biggest legal names in the nation, William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense. Scopes was convicted and fined $100.

The film Inherit the Wind is a fictionalized account and made religious people look like fools.

Now almost one hundred years later a Tennessee school district bans “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel depicting the horrors of the Holocaust. McMinn County, Tennessee, Board of Education removed “Maus” from the eighth-grade English language arts curriculum, citing “rough, objectionable language” and a drawing of a nude woman.

Other banned books include

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Color Purple

The Catcher in the Rye

Tennessee is a state of contradictions.

Climate Change – United States is Not Prepared

Hurricane Sandy, which was also called “Superstorm Sandy” hit NYC October 29,2012. The New York Stock Exchange was closed, all airports in and around NYC were closed, 7.9 million businesses and households in 15 states were without electric power.

Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx, New York after Hurricane Ida

Within two weeks, two storms — Henri and Ida — broke rainfall records in the Northeast. Flash flood emergencies from the remnants of Hurricane Ida stretched for 190 miles from Philadelphia to New York City. Central Park recorded its wettest hour on record.

Meanwhile in the western United States the long-term drought continues to take a toll on the Colorado River, the federal government, in mid August, for the first time, declared a water shortage at Lake Mead, one of the river’s main reservoirs. CNN says there is a looming battle over the available water.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency in 41 of California’s 58 counties on May 10. In that same month, many farmers were warned that they would receive little or nothing from two large allocation systems, the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.

FEMA is only there to help after a weather event. There doesn’t appear to be a federal agency working to minimize the impact of a weather condition.

The Words Of Larry Elder

Larry Elder is running to be elected California’s next governor if Governor Gavin Newsom is recalled. Elder is the front runner in most polls. These are quotes collected by CNN. The recall election will be September 14.

Larry Elder has a long history of making disparaging remarks about women.

“Glass ceiling? Ha! What glass ceiling? Women, women exaggerate the problem of sexism,” radio host Larry Elder said in a 1996 ad for his radio show.

“Blacks exaggerate the significance of racism”

“Medicare should be abolished”

He has mocked premenstrual syndrome, known as PMS, calling it “Punish My Spouse (or Significant Other).” He prominently promoted on his webpage a 1950s textbook on “how to be a good wife” that said women should “have dinner ready” and told them, “Don’t complain.”

His disparaging comments have been as recent as January 2017, when he deleted a tweet that implied women taking part in the Women’s March were too unattractive to be sexually assaulted, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In another previously unreported comment from a January 2017 radio show, Elder mocked women attending the Women’s March as “obese.”

Elder suggested in a video news conference with U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) that he would end the “war on oil and gas” and the “attack on the logging industry,” adding that he would reduce regulation of fracking and deemphasize wind and solar power, which he called “not very efficient.”

“For somebody who’s never run a business to tell business people… ‘I’m going to jack up your price of labor, and you’re going to deal with it,’ to me, it’s offensive, The ideal minimum wage is $0.00.”

Are you OK with Larry Elder’s views on the issues he has discussed? If so, go ahead and vote for him but don’t be surprised about the outcome.