Black Humor Alert

Sometimes sick humor is the only response to the news.  Here are some headlines I expect to see soon.


1.  Guinness Book of Records' New Category:  Most People Killed and Injured By A Mass Shooter

Sick, but the news I heard on NPR kept saying "the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history" which to some will be a challenge to set a new record.  There will be records for one person shootings, two person shootings, police shootings, military massacres, etc. And surely there is someone out there who wants to know about the deadliest mass shooting BEFORE modern U.S. history, so they can beat that too.  And Listverse has gone where Guinness has yet to go.

2.  NRA Establish 24 Hour Massacre News Channel  

As I listened to NPR (looks pretty close to NRA, doesn't it) switch to all day coverage of Las Vegas today, I realized it's only a matter of time before we need full time coverage of mass murders.  They'll fill in with other more mundane murders on slower days.  The more shootings, the more people will want more guns to compete for the Guinness records or to protect themselves.



The gun control people want to limit who gets guns and the kinds of guns they get.

The pro-gun people (chiefly sponsored by the gun and arms industry through the NRA) argue that people, not guns, kill people, so everyone (except Muslims probably) should have unlimited access (it seems since they seem to start lobbying if a member of Congress even thinks about gun control.)

It's clear that both people and guns together kill people.  A person with a knife can kill a small crowd, but not fifty, and not from a distance.  People can also use bombs and vehicles and other ways to kill more people at once.  But automatic weapons seem to be the most efficient and effective way to kill many people in a short time.

Then there's the people.  The president used the word 'evil' to describe the Las Vegas killer.  That's a word that is bandied about whenever there is a mass killing.  Evil is a word that makes the killer seem to be inherently bad through and through.  An agent of Satan.  (ISIS claimed credit for the Las Vegas killing, but I haven't heard about Satan's claim yet.)  Not someone you might know and say hi to every day.

The stats on deaths by guns around the world, make it clear that the easy access to weapons in the United States plays a role in the carnage here.  And as we learn about people involved in mass shootings, there's always some sort of long simmering resentment of people in general or some group of people.  Mostly based on personal issues of some sort.

There is currently a high level of anger among people in the United States.  Our current president claims that anger is what got him elected and he may be right.  But my point here is that people who commit mass murders often are people with a great deal of anger about something - loss of a job, loss of a spouse.  But underlying it all is loss of respect, probably most importantly self-respect.

We have a society that produces a lot of angry people with declining self-esteem.  I would argue that a number of social, political, and economic factors play a part.

Capitalism, which reduces everything to money and making it as efficiently as possible, plays a role, by squeezing more work out of employees for less money and using much of the employee share to enrich officers and shareholders.  That's the abstract part.  More concretely technology is making workers redundant.  Technology and foisting work onto the customer is now rampant.  It started, in my experience, with self-service gas stations.  Now travel agents are almost gone as people have to go online to book their own tickets.  Receptionists are gone as we spend a minute or more listening to simulated voices giving us choices of buttons to push until we finally get to what we need - and the companies seem to hope we won't need a human.  We have self service lines in the grocery.  Each of these changes cuts out jobs.  Businesses have been fighting unions forever.  With fewer employees represented by unions, workers rights and wages and benefits erode and erode.  Lots of people work long hours for less money.  A smaller number of workers get good wages and benefits.

Pluralism is a political theory of governance that stems from the idea of separation of powers and the competition of interest groups to influence policy decisions.  The money spent by corporations to support candidates and ideas, to lobby legislators, and to spin truth to the public has gone up significantly.  So we have a majority party that wants to cut millions out of the health care programs and wants to cut taxes to the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower economic classes.

Both capitalism and pluralism share the idea that the best outcome comes from the competition of self-interested players.  And while surely different interests keeping watch on each other is helpful, the theory doesn't account for things like altruism and community spirit.  Self-interest was the only thing most economists counted as 'rational' thinking for years.  It's all about competition.  And the balance falls apart when some groups gain much greater power to compete than others.  And that's what has happened over the last 60 years as we've moved from a country where the gaps between the richest and poorest in society, and the lowest and highest paid employee in a company, were much lower, to our current (and worsening) situation where the gaps are growing greater and greater.  And if the Republicans manage to pass the kind of tax reform our president is extolling, it will get worse.

I'd argue that it is this spreading sense of loss of economic and political power that plays a huge role in the anger Americans feel these days.  If we don't address that, we won't affect the people who not only are angry, but are also unhinged enough to commit suicide through spectacular mass murders which give them so sort of attention.  And as I mentioned in the previous post (not at all thinking about writing this post since Las Vegas hadn't yet happened), bad attention is better than no attention.

These shooter know that their lives will be the center of national, if not world, attention for at least several days if not more.  They will get their 'glory' for the way society has treated them.  I'm not saying their thinking is right, but I'm just trying to offer a possible explanation for behavior that seems unexplainable.  Because if we don't understand why people commit such acts, we have no hope for finding ways to prevent them.  Calling them 'evil' essentially puts all the blame on the shooter and doesn't allow for reflecting on how our society helps to create so many angry, bitter people with access to weapons that can kill fifty people in a few minutes.

As I listened to NPR this morning, I kept hearing the same stories over and over.  They simply do not have enough information to fill the time with meaningful new news.  It's as though they feel that to compete with social media, they have to report each tidbit of new information - whether confirmed or not - because otherwise people won't listen.  I'd argue that people would like to hear more reasoned thoughtful stories and can wait a few hours for serious updates on the current crisis.  Only people who might have a direct connection to the story - people whose friends and family might be involved - have a compelling reason to stay closely tuned in.  And they'd probably do better with social media outlets where they can set up two way communication.

But we all have a responsibility to let the media know we want more thoughtful coverage.  Instant news is less important than well-done news.  And it may well be that people like me are in the minority.  That we have become, as a nation, sensation junkies.  That news, for most people, serves the functions of entertainment and confirmation of our own biases.  If that's the case, democracy won't survive.

Too Much Media Is Addicted To Trump Tweets

Trump's tweets are just irresistible to way too many political reporters.  They just can't stay away, they just can't resist commenting.

There is a certain obligation to challenge his falsehoods and to give context to what he writes.  He is the president after all.  But I had a student once in a 6th grade class who really had no friends.  He wanted attention.  He didn't know how to get good attention;  bad attention was better than being ignored.  So he hit people, and worse.  I had a year to show him that he could get good attention.  It worked.

I challenge all political writers to ignore Trump's tweets for a week.  At least don't write about them, at all.  Turn off Twitter and only check your phone if it's a call from someone on a real, serious story.

Spend more time listening to the birds tweeting.    Make your own music.  Play with your kids.  The world won't collapse if you goof off a bit for a week.  Even if all of you do.  Enjoy visitors to your home, like I did with this hairy woodpecker the other day.  Look at how exquisite he is.  Even if he was tapping on my house.

Let your mind think about how the world works.  Like why don't woodpeckers get brain damage?  One of my favorite old posts.

British Virgin Islands After Irma

There's not much to add:

On Rosh Hashanah It is Written, On Yom Kippur It Is Sealed

According to Jewish tradition, the Days of Awe, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews are supposed to consider all the transgressions they have committed, large and small, and atone for them and hope for forgiveness.  From God for transgressions against God, and from people for transgressions against people.  So we have these ten days or so, to atone and hope that our names are get onto the more positive lists before the lists are sealed.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.
How many will pass and how many will be created?
Who will live and who will die?
Who in their time, and who not their time?
Who by fire and who by water?
Who by sword and who by beast?
Who by hunger and who by thirst?
Who by earthquake and who by drowning?
Who by strangling and who by stoning?
Who will rest and who will wander?
Who will be safe and who will be torn?
Who will be calm and who will be tormented?
Who will become poor and who will get rich?
Who will be made humble and who will be raised up?
But teshuvah and tefillah and tzedakah (return and prayer and righteous acts)
deflect the evil of the decree. [from Tablet]

Whether one believes this literally or figuratively, I think it is good to spend time, at least annually, to think back on your morality.

Services begin tonight, the eve of Yom Kippur, and we begin fasting from sunset to sunset.  Wishing everyone a happy new year, 5778.

When Will Corporations Get The Right To Vote?

I was talking to a friend who's active in the Move to Amend group.  They're working on getting support from the Anchorage Assembly and others to support a Constitutional Amendment already in Congress that would define the word 'people' in the Constitution as referring to individual humans, NOT corporations.  Here's the whole amendment:

House Joint Resolution 48 introduced January 30, 2017
Click here for most up to date list of co-sponsors

Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.

Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]

Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

The key arguments I've heard against this motion is that there are some situations where corporations should have rights that the constitution protects - like free speech.  The response I hear from supporters of the amendments that individual states that set up the laws for corporations can legislate those rights (like lobbying Congress, etc.).

The genesis of the amendment was the Supreme Court case Citizens United which upturned campaign finance laws and allowed corporations and others to contribute huge sums of money.

But you're better off checking their arguments on their website.   There are other attempts to counter act Citizens United.  

Is Corporate Voting Next?

So as I was thinking about this, I thought well, perhaps the corporations, since they are now considered persons, will be asking for the right to vote.  They already have lots of shell corporations for this and that.  Just think how many they could create if there were a tight election.  Would the corporation have to be 18 years old or older?  

Vietnam, Alabama, Puerto Rico, NFL And Rape - We're With Alice In Wonderland

Just some running thoughts.

Ken Burns' Vietnam series is sponsored by David Koch and Bank of America among others.

Watching planes and helicopters fly into makeshift landing zones in the Vietnam series made me scratch my head when NPR reported that planes couldn't land in Puerto Rico because there was no electricity or navigation.  People have forgotten that navigation is nice, but not necessary in emergency situations.

But then Puerto Rico's 3+ million American citizens can't vote for president and their congress member doesn't have a real vote.  And you thought voter suppression was bad in Texas.  Maybe they should establish residency in Alabama, so they can vote  for Doug Jones for US Senate against the new Republican Senatorial Candidate Roy Moore.  You know, the guy who's been kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court because of his insistence on putting up a Ten Commandments sculpture in the Supreme Court.  Go to the link, this guy got support from Bannon and Palin for a reason.  He's way out there.

Blacks make up 25% of the Alabama population.  But restrictions on voting are a serious obstacle.  If you've been convicted of a crime, and blacks are much more likely to be in Alabama than whites, it's hard to recover your vote.  A Mother Jones article says a new law loosens that, but convicted felons are still barred forever.  The article says about 15% of black voters are affected by these laws.  So with an influx of Puerto Rican voters, maybe Doug Jones could win.  The election's in December so there isn't much time for Puerto Ricans to get their residency.

Then there's football.  People kneel when they pray to God, but if they kneel when the national anthem is played that's bad.  Because they are equating the flag and anthem with God?  That doesn't seem to be the logic.  But, in his Jabberwocky way, Trump is trying to change the debate from killing of blacks to honoring the flag.  Distinguishing between symbols of a false reality of America's justice for all and the harsh reality of rampant white supremacy is hard for most Americans.

Just as the Vietnam series is showing us how killing innocent civilians was  seen as ok to get better body counts,  to show we were winning when we weren't, Americans still believe that killing innocent black American citizens is ok, because - well I guess, you can't tell the good ones from the bad, like with the Vietnamese.

Betsy Devos is showing us the real values, by changing Title IX so that innocent men don't get besmirched by wrongful accusations of rape or sexual harassment.  Yes, that's not good, but it's not as bad as being raped. ["Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes."] and it's very difficult to get justice.  But we protecting men from being falsely accused of such crimes is more important.  As I say, Alice in Wonderland, we're there.  Just like it's better to be outraged that black men don't stand up for the anthem, than be outraged over innocent blacks being killed by police.

Terms I Didn't Know

The Glomar Response - from a tweet -

"Leopold's trying to up the bar now that everyone is getting Glomars."

In response to an image of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was completely redacted.

The story at Unredacted about the history of the Glomar Response is fascinating.  CIA told a FOIA requester that it could

 “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence” of  “the use of unmanned aerial vehicles”

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Revanche

"It was thought by Obama and some of his allies that this toxicity was the result of a relentless assault waged by Fox News and right-wing talk radio. Trump’s genius was to see that it was something more, that it was a hunger for revanche so strong that a political novice and accused rapist could topple the leadership of one major party and throttle the heavily favored nominee of the other."  From Ta-Nejosi Coats, "The First White President" in The Atlantic.

From Merriam Webster:

"Definition of revanche
:revenge; especially: a usually political policy designed to recover lost territory or status"

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Eldritch

Also from the Ta-Nehisi Coats article:

"To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies." 

From Wikipedia:

"Eldritch is an English word used to describe something as otherworldly, weird, ghostly, or uncanny.
Eldritch may refer to:
Andrew Eldritch (born 1959), singer, songwriter
Eldritch (band), an Italian heavy metal band
Eldritch Wizardry, a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game supplement
Eldritch (video game), a video game for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux based on the Cthulhu Mythos
Eldritch Moon, an expansion from the Magic the Gathering card game
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, a 1965 science fiction novel by US writer Philip K. Dick" 

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Topoi (plural of typos)

From a review of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Vietnam  in the Mekong Review:

"The even-handedness, the flag-draped history, bittersweet narrative, redemptive homecomings and the urge toward “healing” rather than truth are cinematic topoi that we have come to expect from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick through their films about the Civil War, Prohibition, baseball, jazz and other themes in United States history."

From Merriam Webster:

Definition of topos
plural topoi play  \-ˌpȯi\
:a traditional or conventional literary or rhetorical theme or topic 

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I heard today that Twitter is going from 140 characters to 280.  That doesn't sound like a good idea.  As one tweeter responded:  140 characters was my best editor ever.   These terms have been building up as a draft post.  I think four are enough for most people, so I'll quit here.

Cautious Optimism on Upcoming Supreme Court Gerrymandering Case - Gill vs. Whitford

I've mentioned this case before. This post goes through the legal logic for proving gerrymandering.  It's about efficiency and 'wasted votes.'

The case is scheduled before the US Supreme Court October 3.  If the Wisconsin voters who brought this case to the Supreme Court prevail, it would go a long way to curb the egregious gerrymandering that went on in Wisconsin.  Here's an excerpt from a LA Times piece on this case.

"Several crucial factors have aligned to make judicial action both relatively easy and absolutely necessary.
To start, the Wisconsin voters who brought the case aren’t asking the court to rule on everything that’s problematic about the ways our districts are created and our legislatures operate. They simply want the court to determine if Wisconsin’s General Assembly map — a textbook example of extreme gerrymandering — is beyond the constitutional pale. (Of course, a ruling against Wisconsin would have ramifications for extreme gerrymanders elsewhere in the country.)"

Click the link to see the whole article.

The article does mention some bi-partisan support for the bill.  I'd add that given how extreme gerrymandering has made life difficult for traditional/moderate Republicans to win primaries, it may well be that such Republicans are supporting the Wisconsin voters against the state in this case.


A Crime Without Consequences for the Perpetrators?

 However, this doesn't address the issue of when there is election fraud - via gerrymandering, voter suppression, or other means used to help one party win an unfair number of seats - there really is no remedy for the harm they do.  The courts have found Texas and North Carolina to have illegally manipulated their districts after the 2010 census.  But what's the downside for those who committed these acts?  I haven't heard of anyone going to prison and all the legislation passed by the legislatures that were packed with (in these cases) Republicans, still stands.

So there are plenty of incentives to cheat and none that I can see to not cheat.  Perhaps prison sentences and nullification of legislation passed by illegally created legislatures might help, though nullification would probably prove chaotic.  But this is a topic we need to begin discussing.

Of course, whenever I write something like "I haven't heard of (anyone going to prison) . . ." I realize I need to look and see if there are examples.  This Huffington Post article talks about Let America Vote, an organization fighting voter suppression.  Their form of punishment, based on the article, would appear to be by voting them out of office, not prison.  I realize that prison for legislators doing their jobs as legislators is a double edged sword, but when they are plotting to restrict voters from voting, that seems to be a very serious violation of American democracy.

You can check out Let America Vote here.

Getting Into the Woods And Marsh - Swans Fueling Up At Potter Marsh And Eagles

It wasn't raining any more and I needed to get out.  So we headed to McHugh Creek and did a short uphill hike.  I hadn't been there since last summer's fire.  There are signs of the fire, but a lot of stuff is growing back vigorously.

I think this might be an oyster mushroom, but I'm not sure.  My mushroom book* says

"On many deciduous trees, especially willow and aspen."

View from the trail, looking out at Turnagain arm, with Kenai Peninsula on the other side of the inlet.
Luckily, as you can see, we got a fair amount of blue sky and sunshine.

Then back to Potter Marsh where we'd seen lots of swans as we drove by on the way.

They spent most of their time with their heads under water and it took a while to get a picture with both their heads above water at the same time.

I'm pretty confident these are trumpeter swans.

I counted 15 that I could see all at once and be reasonably sure I wasn't double counting.  Seven in the picture above.

Then to the boardwalk, where I got this fall view of the marsh.

Walking on the boardwalk, I notice a dozen or so ducks suddenly take flight, and then this bald eagle flew right by me.   If you click on the image below, you can also see one of the ducks in the air.  It's on the left side, just under the blurred leaf.  The eagle's left wing points at it.

And here's another eagle - or maybe the same one - off in the distance zooming down.  It's the Y shaped thing just about in the middle of the picture.  Again, click on the picture to enlarge and focus.

*The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms

Been Raining, Creek's Rising, But Nothing Serious

Took advantage of a long break in the rain as well as in my lethargy to get on the bike and move my legs.  The rain's made an obvious difference on Campbell Creek.

Last time I looked, that picnic table was on gravel.  (This is near Campbell Creek park.)

I went on.



There was a bit a blue sky reflected in a puddle on the bike trail.















And when I got near the State Troopers Headquarters, I saw the only white stuff near the mountain tops was cloud.   It's September 23, and no termination dust so far.

Then up the new bike trail along Campbell Airstrip Road.  You can see a greener version of this spot about a month ago here.

I figured the bridge at the Campbell Airstrip trailhead would be a good place to turn around.  That gives me about 9 miles round trip.

Here is today's picture on top of one 11 days ago.  I wanted to compare the water levels.  If you click on the image, it will enlarge and sharpen and if you look carefully you can see differences in the water level.  But nothing like the picnic table.





Here's looking to the west from the bridge.  On this one the water level is more apparent.  The gravel bank is now an island, and there's white water along the left bank.  Again, clicking on it will enlarge it.









On the way home, I stopped on the viewing platform that just reopened a couple of weeks ago.  There's a little stream of water coming in from the east.  There's a much bigger one coming from the west (the creek flows basically east to west but has various loops.)


I'm not quite sure what I thought the many other times I've been at this spot.  Maybe it was the bright yellow/orange of the birch tree, but I focused on this little water way coming in from the left (east).  I wondered how Campbell Creek had gotten so small.


Then I looked right (west) to see the much larger flow of water.  I think I'd always thought this was a loop in the creek, but both bodies of water were flowing toward the platform and the little one essentially joined the bigger one.  Were these two different creeks?


Humility is a good trait.  All these years and I never even thought about this.






So when I got home I checked the maps.












The red is the reduced sized platform (see this post) with the boardwalk from the bike trail.  You can see clearly from the map the one from the east is the North Fork of Campbell Creek and the one from the west is the South Fork.  Unless you go out onto the platform, you never see the North Fork join the South Fork.






Below is a map of the Campbell Airstrip road a few miles east of the top map.  We still have both the north and south branches of the creek.  The bridge I took the pictures (above) from is the red rectangle going over the south fork.  The bike trail ends at the turnout for the Campbell Airstrip trailhead.  The new bike trail ends just before the bridge over the north fork of the creek.  I took that bridge picture for the post about the new bike trail.  The pics are there just to help anyone who's trying to connect the pictures and the location.

Click on image to enlarge