Being A Tourist In Town Where I Grew Up - The Observatory, Travel Town, Visiting Dad

A spectacularly clear day when we left this morning for the Griffith Park Observatory.  The freeway was fairly empty and we made great time, with views of mountains all around with lots of snow.  More than I remember ever seeing.  Not just Mt. Baldy and Mt. Wilson, but all the way around.  Here's just a portion from the Observatory.

 Once we got to Los Feliz, just below the Observatory we hit traffic.  The Observatory doesn't open until noon and it was only 11:45 am, but it was a great day to see views from this spot and everyone was there.  I remember as a kid coming often with my dad and even bringing my son here when we still lived in LA.  The parking lot was where on the right about where that car is.

There is still a lot fairly close, but it was full and most people parked below in the Greek Theater parking lot and walked about a mile up.  A continuous stream of people.  It was like a pilgrimage.  People from all over the world.  You can see a bit of the crowd in the picture below.

Below you can see the Hollywood sign from the upper deck of the Observatory.  

One of the telescope domes.

Inside was pretty chaotic.  But admission is free and there are lots of great astronomy exhibits.  You do have to pay for the planetarium shows

 Here's some of the art deco designs along the roof.

Then off to the other side of Griffith Park to Travel Town.  

Another free attraction.

Although it doesn't call itself a museum, it seems much more a museum than yesterday's visit to the Cayton Children's Museum.




If the photo isn't clear enough, it says:  "DEDICATED TO PRESERVING FOR POSTERITY THE VARIOUS TYPES OF TRANSPORTATION EQUIPMENT THAT HELPED BUILD OUR STATE AND OUR NATION."

The highlight for the kids was the two loops around Travel Town on the miniature train.  And buying snacks in the gift shop.

I took this picture of the hillside from the train to show how green things are after the recent rains.




And about a mile from Travel Town is the cemetery where my father is buried, so we went to visit him as well.  It too is in Griffith Park, a place that he and I spent a lot of time when I was a kid.

 As we pulled up near the grave site, there were deer visiting too.

The light was great as the sun was getting lower in the west.  Sunset in LA has been right about 5pm these days.  (LA is on the east side of the Pacific Time zone, so it's light at 6am, but dark early now.  Check a map.  LA is further east than Reno, Nevada!)

Lots Of Kid Time

We went to the Cayton Children's Museum in the Santa Monica Mall.  It was crowded and noisy and I'd say that museum is a pretentious name for this indoor playground.

A recently refined definition of 'museum'  from the International Councils of Museums

"Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people.
Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing."

Well, that certainly sounds like a definition created by a committee.  I imagine that many of the great museums of the world wouldn't qualify as museums under that definition.  I think the intention is good, but I'd probably separate those things that have been traditionally considered the basic of a museum  "hold artifacts and specimens in trust for society" etc. as the broad definition.  Then I would have listed the aspirational democratic standards (not for profit, participatory, diverse, transparent, etc.) as qualifications for museums that want to be members of the International Council of Museums.

I didn't notice any artifacts and specimens in this museum, unless they were thinking of this as a museum of children's play spaces.  I didn't notice too much addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present.  OK, I don't want to belabor the point.

There were great net tunnels hanging from the ceiling with kids climbing through.  And other fun spaces to navigate, but it wasn't much more than a glorified playground.  I didn't see any conflicts between kids, they all seemed to have enough to keep them busy.  And there was a diverse array of people enjoying the play space.

I've got lots of pictures, but most have my grandkids in them and I don't post their images on the blog.  Here's a picture of my son and myself as rendered in some sort of electronic wall.  I'm on the left.

And the quietest room had low tables with water colors and papers.

Car seat rules make life much more difficult than it was when I was a kid.  Even when my kids were kids.  Some of us drove home and some of us took the bus which had a pretty direct route for us and the SF kids are very used to riding the bus and we had lots of fun.

The weather has been kind.  The two rainy periods this week were during the night.  It was another sunny day, though the temperature only got up into the low 50s.

Why It's Easy To Stay A Trump Loyalist

One's political loyalties, are, at base, emotional.  Whether you're for Trump or against him, emotions play a big role.

Trump does a great job of distracting attention from what's really important.  His Twitter ranting keeps the Left occupied with disbelief, outrage, and non-stop explanations of why Trump is wrong, demented, lying, evil, and/or (pick your own adjective.)  Making the Left angry (a too commonly felt emotion these days)  is one of the things Trump supporters love about him.

Meanwhile there are many ways that Trump is using his presidential power to help himself and his financial supporters - from filling his hotels to cutting regulations and on and on.  A few of these are covered briefly and sporadically the media.  They spend much more time covering his tweets or the horse-race aspects of the Democratic nomination processes. (Who's ahead or behind and why.)

Refuting Trump's claims to his followers is hard, not only because of Fox Lies (a better title than News)  and trolls from wherever, but ALSO because the stories are so complicated.

Seth Abramson keeps telling us to pay attention to the details of the Trump shenanigans.

I've been following Seth Abramson  on Twitter for a couple of years now.(I can't figure out how to tell when I started following someone on Twitter, but it's at least before Proof of Collusion came out.)  He's been tracking all the media reports on Trump related activities for his books Proof of Collusion and Proof of Conspiracy.  These are two excellent ways to get the big picture of many of Trump's convoluted intrigues.

IT'S EASY TO STAY A TRUMP LOYALIST BECAUSE  all the intrigue is so complicated.  There are so many players and so many things done clandestinely. Abramson's books are like the program you get at the baseball game or the theater that explains who all the players are.

Abramson has a long Twitter thread today which makes this point.  I'm embedding the thread at the end of this post because I realize lots of my readers don't use Twitter and don't know quite how it works. Tweets can only  be 280 characters.   A thread is a series of linked Tweets so someone can tell a longer story.)

The thread explains the Trump Ukraine history from today, back through the July 24, 2019 phone call through to March 2016.

Here's some of the thread:

Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
2/ The Ukraine scandal is *insanely* complex. My research suggests it's *more* complex than the Russia case—which was already wild as hell...but media *must* find a way to explain it to America during this "lull" in the impeachment story. *Teach* America about the Naftogaz angle.
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3/ Here's the simple version: Trump has been laundering campaign donations using Giuliani and Parnas in exchange for helping the two men do business in Ukraine. All of which is part of a shakedown of Ukraine to politically *and* financially benefit Trump, Putin...and nobody else.
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4/ The Ukraine scandal begins in *March 2016*. Yes—I'm serious. Trump has been scheming over how to use Ukraine to his benefit for *over four and a half years*. The July 25 Zelensky call was a *minor episode* in a *years-long* course of conduct that was criminal, start to finish.
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5/ Within *two days* of pro-Kremlin operative-in-Ukraine Paul Manafort joining Trump's campaign in March 2016, Trump—whose only Ukraine policy to that point was "let Russia have Crimea without penalty"—was *directing his national security team* to deep-six all lethal aid to Kyiv.
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6/ So Kremlin agent Manafort—who signed a deal with Putin lieutenant Deripaska in 2006 to aid Putin in America; Google it—joins Trump's campaign and *immediately* Trump is *proactively* setting up an anti-Ukraine foreign policy that goes *beyond* opposing sanctions on Russia.
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7/ Within *days* of Russia's hack of the DNC being caught, that same Kremlin agent—Manafort—is telling Trump Ukraine did it, not Russia, and Trump is going on the stump and saying "no one knows" who did the hack. Folks, this... *isn't* rocket science for a criminal investigator.
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8/ Trump then spends the next two years trying to ensure Manafort doesn't talk to the feds... partly by *threatening Ukraine* out of assisting Mueller. And that includes blocking military aid to Ukraine...*in 2017*. And yet we're pretending this is all about one call in mid-2019?
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9/ I mean *jeez*, do people realize Mulvaney was only *made* Trump's acting chief of staff in December 2018 (but Trump made *sure* he kept his OMB job!) *because* Mulvaney helped Trump shake down Ukraine in late 2017 and early 2018? That is *how Mulvaney got his damn job*, folks.
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Here are a couple more:

15/ The president's personal attorney as recently as 48 hours ago *flew on the private jet* of the chief villain in this whole story, Dmytro Firtash.
That's right: the degrees of separation between Trump and the chief villain of this years-long story is {*checks math*}... *one*.
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16/ Except it's not! It's *zero*. Because—surprise ending!—it turns out that Donald Trump was going to *go into business with Firtash* in the late 2000s, in a deal that was to be set up by... hmm, let me check my records... someone pretty obscure, surel—
—Paul Manafort.
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17/ Is anyone surprised Trump lied about how well he knows Manafort, just like he's lied about how well he knows Felix Sater (that lie was under oath!) or Lev Parnas or even (now that he's saying he never told Giuliani to go to Ukraine, and doesn't know who his clients are) Rudy?

It's so complicated that most Lefties trying to dispute Trumpies don't really have an inkling of all the details and those that do have trouble keeping it all straight.

Here's a link to the whole thread.

And I shouldn't neglect wishing a Merry Christmas to those celebrating.  Tonight is the fourth night of Chanunka.  Some might say that the fact that one of the holiest days of Christianity is a national holiday is proof that Christians hold a privileged role in the US.  But others might argue that Christmas as it's celebrated in the US nowadays is proof of the power of capitalism instead.

Enjoy your life whatever you celebrate.  Find good in every day and everyone.  

Gramping Trumps Blogging

Grandkids are a great source of energy.  LA has defied the weather predictions.  Yesterday there was just the slightest drizzles.  Today there were ominous clouds off on the horizon as we set out for the Page Museum at La Brea Tar Pits.

This is one of those places I spent a lot of time as a kid.  Before the museum and the other neighboring museums.  Before most of the big buildings along Wilshire.  When there were just a few fenced off tar pits and concrete replicas of giant sloths, saber tooth tigers, and other critters.

For those who don't know, these tar pits, smack in the middle of Los Angeles, trapped many, many Pleistocene Era animals.   Here's a the largest tar pit there with a replica of three mastodons, one trapped in the tar.

 From Live Science:

The Pleistocene Epoch is typically defined as the time period that began about 2.6 million years ago and lasted until about 11,700 years ago. The most recent Ice Age occurred then, as glaciers covered huge parts of the planet Earth.

I guess those folks who believe in a literal bible and that the earth is only 6000-15,000 years old just don't take their kids to places like this where their beliefs will be challenged.


Dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period.  From the Natural History Museum (London):

". . .  66 million years ago, over a relatively short time, dinosaurs disappeared completely (except for birds). Many other animals also died out, including pterosaurs, large marine reptiles, and ammonites."

So this was after dinosaurs were gone and there's no dinosaur bones at the La Brea Tar Pits.

I was very skeptical about them messing up "my park" when they began the Page Museum, but they hid most of the building under this build up grass hill that kids can climb up.  And the frieze on top depicts the various large animals found here.









It's hard to pick favorites.  The saber tooth tigers have to be up there.

This is still a very active excavation and you can see workers meticulously cleaning bones that come out of the hard asphalt.  They also find insects and even seeds of plants.










Then we regrouped at Santa Monica Beach so the kids could play at the sandy playground near the Santa Monica pier.  Unfortunately the carousel was closed for a private party.

The clouds were moving in and the wind was blowing, but the kids had a good time.  It still hasn't begun to rain, but it's coming surely.

I remember Christmas Eve being a day of horrible traffic in LA, but today it was almost a ghost town.

The Man Who Bought Alaska Checking Some Claims

As occasionally happens, this post began with one destination in mind and ended up somewhere else.  I'll make this Part I and do a second post to cover my original intention - some historical references that give a little more perspective on our present day situation.

[Actually, it's ending up with yet a different ending.  I'm putting the sentences of the second revision in [brackets] so you'll know what was in the original post and the revised post.  The original post was really just going to be quotes putting today's politics into some context.  And that's still coming.]


I read Mike Dunham's The Man Who Bought Alaska on the plane down here.  It was a gift for a friend who couldn't find it in LA.  He also wanted The Man Who Sold Alaska but Title Wave didn't have it.

Alaskans probably can figure out that it's about William Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State.  It's just over 100 pages and written at about a high school level (intended reader level, not writing level.)  So a lot of things were mentioned about Seward, but there wasn't much back up other than a bibliography in the back.

But I learned a lot in a short time about someone important to Alaska.  It also highlights Alaska's first governor - the military man first put in charge of the state after it was purchased from Russia.  His name was Jef Davis.

Some things I learned about Seward.  Again these are things that Dunham claims.

• As Governor of New York he started the practice of giving books to prisoners.
• As Secretary of State he initiated the transatlantic telegraph cable because he was frustrated by how long it took to communicate with Europe.*
• He initiated the cross continent railroad system.**  
• The plot to assassinate Lincoln include assassinating Vice President Johnson AND Secretary of State Seward.  And a knife wielding intruder, according to Dunhan, did gain access and did stab Seward several times.  Johnson's assassin, Dunham tells us, chickened out.  (A Smithsonian story confirms that Johnson and Seward were targets.  And also Grant.)

[The second revision comes because when I tried to find quotes to support my characterizations of what Dunham wrote, I couldn't.  I had marked page numbers for some quotes (and I have those), but I also thought these actions were also noteworthy.  I did find the assertion about the books to prisoners, and that doesn't seem totally unreasonable.  I was more concerned about the transatlantic telegraph wire and the transcontinental railroad.  The best I could find on a quick perusal (I gave the book to a friend and I didn't have much time to check carefully when we met again) were much more limited than I remember.  Like he played an important role in . . .   So, I'll keep this post in as a lesson on the need to actually check and document what you're asserting and point out that I couldn't do that here.]

*These seemed like outlandish claims.  When I googled who initiated the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable, I got the name Cyrus West Field.  When I added William Seward to the search terms I got a CIA Library document that said, in part:

"Seward had first discussed the new transatlantic cable with the parent company, the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, at a celebration in New York on 29 August 1866 honoring President Andrew Johnson. At the conclusion of the evening's festivities, one of the directors of the company, Mr. Wilson G. Hunt, asked Seward why the federal government did not use the new Atlantic cable. It was a question that would eventually lead to a $32,000 claim against the State Department. Seward told Hunt that the tariff was too costly and that 'the Government of the United States was not rich enough to use the telegraph.'"2

**About the Railroad, Wikipedia says:

In 1852, Judah was chief engineer for the newly formed Sacramento Valley Railroad, the first railroad built west of the Mississippi River.  .   .
In 1856, Judah wrote a 13,000-word proposal in support of a Pacific railroad and distributed it to Cabinet secretaries, congressmen and other influential people. In September 1859, Judah was chosen to be the accredited lobbyist for the Pacific Railroad Convention, which indeed approved his plan to survey, finance and engineer the road. Judah returned to Washington in December 1859. He had a lobbying office in the United States Capitol, received an audience with President James Buchanan, and represented the Convention before Congress.[30] . . .
In February 1860, Iowa Representative Samuel Curtis introduced a bill to fund the railroad. It passed the House but died when it could not be reconciled with the Senate version due to opposition from southern states who wanted a southern route near the 42nd parallel.[30] Curtis tried and failed again in 1861. After the southern states seceded from the Union, the House of Representatives approved the bill on May 6, 1862, and the Senate on June 20. Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 into law on July 1."

There's no mention of Seward.  Now, Seward may have persuaded Lincoln to sign the bill, but Dunham's claim gave Seward a much greater responsibility for the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad.
This is a very different slant than what Dunham offered.  [And, it seems I can't actually find the words in Dunham's book that made believe he'd made such claims.  So when I wrote the title - Checking Some Claims - I meant I was going to check whether the claims were accurate.  But it turns out Checking Some Claims means checking whether he actually made such claims.  And I couldn't find that he did.]

Bernie Sanders Rally at Venice Beach Today - Lots of Pics

When we preparing for this trip to LA I was thinking I should see if any of the presidential candidates were having rallies while we are there.  We just don't get this sort of thing in Anchorage.  Jane Sanders did come up to Anchorage in March 2016, and  the Alaskan Democrats went for Sanders in the caucuses.

 It seemed this was a chance.  And when I saw the poster the other day, for a rally with AOC and Bernie Sanders just two miles away, well, I had to go.  Glad I did.  Seeing candidates in real life with a big crowd makes a difference.  But, of course, that sort of chemistry also excites Trump supporters.


I got there about 9:45am.  It said doors open at 10:30, but I wanted to be sure I got in.  I needn't have worried. It was an outdoor rally just south of the skate board park.  It was extremely well organized and there were volunteers everywhere:  guiding where to go, with petitions to sign, selling T-shirts, hats, etc.  Passing out posters and pins.   Once I got through security, I found a spot on a small grassy hill.  There was already loud piped in music.  I was only two hours early.

A lot of people just settled in.















Then it switched to live music with a band called Local Natives. 












  Jessey and Joy played.  






And Young The Giant.











Bernie Sanders may be the oldest candidate, but the music was young and so was the crowd.

Councilman Mike Bonin spoke.












Councilman Gil Cedillo spoke

Treeman was there too.

Cornel West introduced AOC.

And finally Bernie came on to speak at 2:30pm.

 Here are two men who were close by during the whole event.  William (I think, but it could have been Michael - if you see this correct me) and James (he gave me his card - he's a stuntman.)  And no, they didn't know each other before today.  They're just posing for the picture.

And this is the back of Mark's shirt.  He was on the other side of me.













And I couldn't resist talking to the guy who made this giant Bernie flag in Thai and English.  J was hungry - it was 4pm and the only thing she'd eaten all day were the granola bars I had in my backpack.  So I only got part of the flag in the picture.

I understand that there are people who react to Bernie the way I react to Trump.  (Some have already made snide comments on my Tweets today (easier to do at the rally.)  But the problems I have with Trump were reflected in the Tweets - nothing substantive, just negative.  As I see the world AOC and Bernie Sanders understand the world and that humanity not cruelty and nastiness is what the US should be about.  They understand that Climate Change is like the waterfall we are headed towards and if we don't make serious adjustments now, everything else that people are fighting about simply won't matter.  

I've got some video and I'll try to get that up soon.  

Some LA/Venice/Santa Monica Views

We're at my mom's house in LA. The bike still gets me around and things are in decent shape. Here are a few photos.

Venice Beach at Rose.

Santa Monica is doubling the bike path along the beach so there will be separate space for pedestrians and bikes

Pelicans at Santa Monica Pier.


















When you bike, you get to see signs like this.  We're going to see if we can get in tomorrow.

This is at a Persian ice cream shop in Westwood.

Back at the beach, this is a view looking north toward Santa Monica from the Venice Pier.











Looking south now from the pier.

Just So You Know When You Hear Pam Bondi Defending Trump

NPR's Steve Innskeep interviewed Trump spokesperson Pam Bondi this morning.  While he pushed back strongly on some of her assertions, the piece didn't remind listeners of her shady past with Trump.  Like how she dropped out of the lawsuit against Trump University after she got a $25,000 illegal campaign contribution from the supposedly non-profit charitable Trump Foundation.

Bondi interview begins about 1:20 into the audio.

In her role as Attorney General of Florida, she had a decision to make whether Florida should join with many other states on the lawsuit against Trump University.  From her Wikipedia page:

"The Florida Attorney General's office received at least 22 fraud complaints about Trump University. In 2013 a spokesperson for Bondi announced that her office was considering joining a lawsuit initiated by New York's Attorney General against Trump regarding tax fraud.^[20][21] Four days later 'And Justice for All', a political action committee (PAC) established by Bondi to support her re-election campaign, received a $25,000 donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, after which Bondi declined to join the lawsuit against Trump University. When controversy over their actions first arose in 2013, both the Bondi PAC and Donald Trump defended the propriety of the nonprofit foundation's political donation.^[22][23]By contrast in March 2016, after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service about the illegal donation, the Trump Foundation stated that the donation had been made in error. It said that the Foundation had intended for the donation to go not to Bondi's PAC but instead to an unrelated Kansas non-profit called Justice for All.^[24][25] However in June 2016, as Bondi was facing renewed criticism over the Trump donation and her decision not to join the lawsuit, her spokesman said that Bondi had solicited the donation directly from Trump several weeks before her office announced it was considering joining the lawsuit against him.^[21][26][27] Bondi and Trump did not reconcile their competing versions of events. On March 14, 2016, Bondi endorsed Trump in the Florida presidential primary, saying she has been friends with Trump "for many years."^[28][29] In June 2016, a spokesperson for Governor Rick Scott stated that the state's ethics commission is looking into the matter.^[30] Nothing further came from that investigation. In September 2016, the IRS determined that the donation to Bondi's PAC violated laws against political contributions from nonprofit organizations, and ordered Donald Trump to pay a fine for the illegal contribution. Trump also was required to reimburse the foundation for the sum that had been donated to Bondi.^[31] Neither Bondi nor her PAC were fined or criminally charged for soliciting and accepting an illegal donation. In November 2019, Trump was ordered by a New York state court to close down the foundation and pay $2 million in damages for misusing it, including the illegal payment to Bondi.^[32]Pam Bondi also pressured two attorneys to resign who were investigating the technology giant Black Knight, then LPS, following the robosigning scandal, as part of their work for Florida's Economic Crime Division, after she received large campaign contributions from LPS.^[33]"

Projection And Displacement- A Possible Reason That Republicans Are Venting So Hard Against Democrats

In the Intelligence Committee and then the Judiciary Committee we saw some very angry Republicans.  People like Doug Collins, Jim Jordan, Matthew Gaetz,  and Louie Gohmert.

I think it key to try to understand anger and the reasons people are angry.  It's usually for a valid reason, but it's often not the incident at hand.  It's often an anger that has been repressed because the real target of the anger is someone the angry people feel they cannot confront.  So they lash out at someone 'safer' to attack.

In this case, like the Democrats and the witnesses.

Projection and Displacement are two psychological terms used to describe this type.


From Good Therapy

Projection is a psychological defense mechanism in which individuals attribute characteristics they find unacceptable in themselves to another person. For example, a husband who has a hostile nature might attribute this hostility to his wife and say she has an anger management problem.

In some cases projection can result in false accusations. For example, someone with adulterous feelings might accuse their partner of infidelity.

TYPES OF PROJECTION

Like other defense mechanisms, projection is typically unconscious and can distort, transform, or somehow affect reality. A classic example of the defense mechanism is when an individual says “She hates me” instead of expressing what is actually felt, which is “I hate her.”

There are three generally accepted types of projection:

1. Neurotic projection is the most common variety of projection and most clearly meets the definition of defense mechanism. In this type of projection, people may attribute feelings, motives, or attitudes they find unacceptable in themselves to someone else. 
2. Complementary projection occurs when individuals assume others feel the same way they do. For example, a person with a particular political persuasion might take it for granted that friends and family members share those beliefs.
3. Complimentary projection is the assumption other people can do the same things as well as oneself. For example, an accomplished pianist might take it for granted that other piano students can play the piano equally well.

Closely related is Displacement.  Taking your anger at someone you are afraid to attack and instead attacking someone less powerful.  From VeryWellMind:

"Displaced aggression is one of the classic examples of this defense. When people feel angry but cannot direct that anger toward the source of their frustration, they transfer those feelings to someone or something else. A person who becomes angry at her professor, for example, may come home and take her anger out on her spouse. The spouse may, in turn, displace this anger towards their children, who then take out their frustrations on each other."

If we look at the key arguments being made by the Republicans, we can see that they really are things that Trump himself does or the Republican Members of Congress and the Senate do.  For example:

1. Republicans argue:  There is not one shred of evidence to impeach Trump
1. They're saying this in defense of their President who's made, according to the Washington Post 13,435 false or misleading claims, which are simply claims without a credible evidence
2. Republicans argue:  The proceedings are simply partisan attacks on the President
1. We can look at the US Senate where Majority Leader McConnell has blatantly blocked Democratic judges - most notoriously Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland.  President Trump's attacks are not as much partisan as personal attacks against anyone who doesn't do as he wants
3. Republicans argue: The Democrats have wanted to impeach Trump since day one
1. That merely echoes McConnell's vow that his number one priority was to deny Obama a second term
4. Republicans argue:  The President was legitimately looking at the corruption of Hunter Biden
1. Trump is unquestionably the most corrupt president we've had in modern times, and quite possibly ever.  He's only concerned about corruption that isn't working in his favor
2. Calling out Hunter Biden for taking advantage of his father's name and position is a rich claim when defending the father of Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr, and son-in-law Jerod Kushner, all of whom are taking advantage of their father's name and position to enrich themselves.
5. Republicans argue:  Impeachment is an illegal overturning of the will of the people in the 2016 election.  Democrats are just angry about losing
1. The 'will of the people' is best measured by what the majority wants.  In the 2016 election nearly 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton.  The electoral college's arcane rules could be said to have usurped the will of the people.
2. In the 2018 Congressional election, the people voted out of Congress, many Republicans who supported Trump and voted in Democrats, giving them a significant majority in the House, therefore one can argue easily that the will of the people was for the Democrats in the House to impeach the president
3. And we can say that the Republicans are just angry for having lost their majority in the House

All these angry attacks on the Democrats reflect things that Republicans themselves are guilty of.  But Republicans feel that their political careers are in danger if they oppose Trump.  Funds will be withheld from them when the run for reelection.  Their Republican opponents in the primaries will get those funds.  And the rabid - really, that's not an exaggeration for many Republicans - Trump supporters will defeat them in the primaries.

But they also know that many of them will be vulnerable in the general election.  And even if they don't lose in their gerrymandered districts, they won't win back the House Majority and may even lose the House and the Presidency.

And so, they are angry.  But they can't rant against the President.  So they rant against the Democrats.  Transference.  Displacement.

How To Use LAX's Taxi, Lyft, Uber Lot

LAX's new system for taxis, Uber, and Lyft began rather disastrously at the beginning of November this year.  We'd heard it was a little better, but weren't sure how we were going to negotiate it.  Turned out to be reasonably easy.  There are big light green signs all over telling you how to get to the new lot - via shuttles that stop on the inside lane by those same green signs.

We asked an employee about when to order the car.  J has Lyft and I have Uber (which I got last summer when we were in Argentina and there was no Lyft).  She said to do it before getting on the shuttle.

Shuttle came quick and wandered through a maze of curving roads.  (It was 8:30 pm on a Monday so we decided not to take the bus.)  I ordered the Uber on the bus and got a code number and instructions to go to 2A, 3A, or 4A.  When we got off the bus there were lots of people helping people figure out what to do and where to go.

Taxis were in one place, Lyft in another direction and there were long lines of cars waiting to pick people up.  Not that many people.

At the front of the line there was someone guiding people into cars.  We got into the next car and gave the driver our PIN.  With the canopy and lights, and all the staff directing people, it felt like going to some big event with crowd control.

So the difference here is that you aren't ordering a specific driver - just the next one in line, like in a taxi line.  And the driver said, from his perspective, he doesn't get to screen the customers.

Normally, Uber drivers, he said, anyone with a rating of less that 4.8 (out of 5)!  That's a pretty high standard I thought.  But here, he has to take whoever is next in line.  Of course, we don't get to pick drivers either.  I asked what got people a good rating.  Tips* and then whether you're decent people.  I suspect it's more about whether you're a jerk.  But still 4.8 out of 5 is a high bar.  If you've taken as few Ubers as we have, one 2 rating would make us untouchables.  If you had a hundred rides a few big negatives wouldn't matter, but I'm not sure how a jerk would get enough rides to render a 2 from someone not a big deal.

I asked what our rating was.  Turns out were a 5, but that's only out of three rides.  Ali, our driver, was a 4.95.  He said we could find our own rating, but I haven't figured out how.  But, of course, Google to the rescue.  Turns out you need 5 rides for your rating to show up on your profile.  We aren't there yet.

Anyway, it was easy, one-third cheaper than a cab (though I don't know if their price has gone down since Uber and Lyft are now here big time).  Though when the crowds get really bad next week, not sure how easy this will be.

And I'd note that the big red and white billboard in the back was for My UBER Lawyer, offering to help with accidents and other problems with Uber.

*I tend to tip cab (and Uber and Lyft) drivers generously since I drove a cab out of LAX long ago after graduating UCLA and before Peace Corps training resumed.  I needed to earn some money and this let me beach during the day and then work the 4pm to midnight shift.