Today’s announcement. Harris. And now Walz. Integrity, honor, calling out to the best in all of us–and the joy! The officer turned teacher and coach turned Representative turned Governor saying, ‘Yeah I’m a monster, I fed the kids so they could learn.’ You knew he knew what he was talking about in those classrooms, he’d seen it.

And if you feed all the kids, nobody feels singled out and embarrassed for being visibly poor at that lunch room counter, no lunchboxes get accidentally left on the bus, no parent has to scramble to make sandwiches in the morning while trying to get a distracted kid out the door–and the mass production of food means it actually costs less anyway.

An avid hunter who got gun regulations passed in his state, a politician who is willing to say that kids shouldn’t have to worry about being shot in school–and he has done and will do everything he can about it.

He got criticized on Fox for looking older than he is and Walz just laughed, Yeah, you’d lose your hair too if you ran the high school lunchroom for twenty years!

We’ve got this. But don’t take my word for it and never take it for granted. Vote!

So some of the Republicans have been saying loudly that Biden should quit, be 25thed if need be, because clearly his decision not to seek reelection means he’s too old and feeble to continue in office. They’re claiming the Democrats are covering up his decrepitude.

The lies get tiresome, don’t they. But hear me out on why they’re pushing that.

It’s because if Biden did leave now, Harris would be President and would need to pick a vice president. Which both the House and the Senate would then have to approve by simple majority vote, per section 2 of the 25th Amendment.

Mike Johnson would be a single heartbeat away from the Presidency, and Mike Johnson would be the one whose job it would be to call a vote in the House to vote on that VP pick.

Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t think he would McConnell that vote?

A refusal to vote on a nominee should be legally considered a de facto confirmation. Make the members of Congress do their jobs and put their names to their votes. That should be one of the first reforms come January; democracy demands it.

I do think he would have won. But passing the torch and letting the next generation shine to the world was absolutely the right thing to do. The Presidency ages one as it is and the telomeres were growing short.

Never since George Washington have we had a President who felt he could win the next election but chose not to run in it for the sake of the country’s well-being. My late Republican Senator Uncle Bob was right: Joseph Biden is a very good man.

I was glad when Kamala Harris ran for California Attorney General, ie finally a statewide office so I could  vote for her, and I have every chance since.

I’m really, really curious who the new VP candidate will be!

I got a breaking news email right as it was happening, and could not not look. It took me straight back to Reagan’s face in pain and hand in the air as the Secret Service gave their all to protect him from the crazy who had just shot him.

I wish harm on no one. Ever. It hurt to see him hurt.

My attempt at prayer, though, could only be an honest, Lord, I…I’m… so sorry that I’m having a really hard time praying for him because I know he would only twist it towards evil intentions if he could and I know what he intends to do to innocent people (again–how many years did those little kids live in metal cages thinking their mothers had abandoned them? While depriving each side of information of where the other had been taken? And that’s not even starting on the whole January 6 and dead cops thing and the vice president who won’t run with him again because he, y’know, tried to kill him), so I’m just going to leave it up to You. You know what’s best for him and for the whole country, and I’m asking for You to bless all of us in this horrific moment and especially the critically hurt and the families of the dead. Forgive me my hesitancy. I know that even that man is one of Your children. I’m trying. Thank You for being better than me.

Maybe we’ll finally now vote out the people who voted to allow the convicted, the violent, the underage, and the mentally ill to have war-level weaponry. Maybe we can fund taking care of the mentally ill again. Maybe we can value the life of a child above a gun. Maybe we can pass the bill sponsored by Senators Hinreich and King to allow no sale nor gifting of any automatic-type weapon from here on out: let the current owner register it, have it as long as they’re in good standing with the law, and have it die along with them someday.

And then I checked the updates: every single Democrat expressed their horror and their prayers for Trump’s well-being and safety, Biden, Pelosi, Harris, Obama, on down to the state level. Every single one. Their prayers. They are better than I, and it humbles me.

So it comes down to, yes I want his well-being and safety, too–and I want the country’s. And eventually I was able to offer up a real one of my own.

Nearly every Republican the reporters talked to tried to somehow blame Trump’s opponent for the thing that Biden was most horrified by, to use the shootings as a political tool towards power for their own, to blame blame blame and falsely accuse of the most vile accusations.

And that level of gaslighting is how we ended up here in the first place.

 (That subject line was for my dad. He’d have loved it.)

Sink, bowl, plate, small bowl. Far right, right, middle, left. Faucet for occasionally washing leafy bits off.

Pick up a cherry, swivel it in your fingers to where you feel and see the belly button of the thing pointing towards the left. Gently squish the pit out and grab it with your left hand and into its bowl while dropping the fruit onto the plate with your right. Each hand going in its natural direction, thus less likely to mix up which goes where.

With the small soft tart cherries, doing it by hand is faster than dealing with the pitter and you know you’re not missing any stones.

When I was done I drained the pits and added their juice to the bag.

I’d always wanted to know what the weight ratio of pit to pulp was. So now I know: for my English Morellos, it was 2.29 lbs of fruit for today’s picking and .314 lbs of pits.

The chance of randomly landing that second number hints at a sense of humor of the Divine. Love it.

Okay, so, divide the one into the other and you get 7.3 times and it’s all good.

Don’t forget Thursday’s debate. Whatever one’s political affiliations, we’ll get to see the candidates as they actually are, not as presented by political hacks doing video slices-and-dices.

Jamie Raskin, former Constitutional law professor, later impeachment manager in the House, wrote a piece for the New York Times.

Most of us have heard of the insurrectionist flag Samual Alito flew at his beach house and the upside down US flag (also a symbol co-opted by the January Six-ers) at his home. He claims the latter started after his wife had had a tiff with a neighbor and that she did it; but his story keeps changing. (Edit: new details here.)

Meantime, the Supreme Court majority has refused for months to rule on Trump’s absurd claim of absolute immunity, including, it was spelled out, the right to assassinate his opponents.

Which, a year from now, could include the Supreme Court itself.

Senator Durbin wrote to John Roberts asking that Alito recuse on the immunity case.

Alito himself wrote back defying him.

For those who don’t get the Times, Raskin said that there is another option: the Justice Department can request that the other members of the Court require Alito to recuse.

And here’s why that’s possible: there was an elected Chief Justice in West Virginia fourteen years ago who had a case before him of a coal executive who had donated millions to the campaign that got that judge that judgeship. Not cool.

So Congress passed a law stating that in cases where there is a reasonably perceived lack of impartiality, judges and justices–specifically including those on the Supreme Court–can be required by law to recuse themselves and it spelled out how that is to be done.

The Supreme Court Justices can do it themselves, whether Merrick Garland moves on this or not, but if he does, then, by law, they must order that recusal.

And it wouldn’t just be Alito. Clarence Thomas’s wife allegedly funded transportation for busloads of insurrectionists and Thomas was the sole vote backing Trump’s effort to keep his Presidential records out of the hands of the Congressional January 6 investigative committee.

So now we’ll see whether the other members of the Supreme Court will choose to uphold the Constitution and the law. Now that the rest of us know what that one says.

Or not.

VOTE. Our democracy depends on every single vote.

The first San Jose peregrine falcon eyas of the year hatched today, three more eggs to come.

Remember the two guys in our House race, Simitian and Low, who got the exact same number of votes for second place and so we had three winners in the primary? Someone not currently affiliated with any of them paid for a recount and it was decided today.

But not till after Low had thrown a fit, calling the person paying for it a stooge of the guy who’d come out #1 because they’d had connections in the past, and when asked, Is it not democracy to make the effort to find out who the voters wanted the most?, continued to call doing a recount a corruption.

Well well well guess who came out ahead by five votes after that recount? Egg, meet face.

Personally, I think he found an effective way to make sure Liccardo stays in the #1 spot come November. Real leaders don’t bully.

4/20/2024 is the same backwards and forwards. His birthday number is, too.

Aid approved at long long last by the House of Representatives for Ukraine’s survival was the best present he could have asked for.

We went to a barbecue at a friend’s, where I offered a young mom a hummingbird finger puppet and found out it was her daughter’s third birthday. Everybody sang the song to the both of them as she happily waved her new pet bird way high and I’m sure to her it was singing, too.

I came home and planted future-8-foot-high sunflower seedlings at the fence line in celebration of the news of the day, back there where it turns a corner.

The deadline is done. The ballots they could cure that needed curing, done. There were eleven names on the Super Tuesday ballot and one came out well ahead of the pack at 21.9% and the other two relatively well known names came in second.

At exactly, it has now been certified, the same number of votes.

Throw in all the voters for those eight other candidates who are now out of the race and there is no easily predictable winner in November at all.

If either Simitian or Low calls for a recount they pay the expenses, and it ain’t cheap–but get reimbursed. IF they win.

California law says the top two vote getters go on to the general, regardless of party. We have never had a threesome before.

Tell this to anyone who thinks their vote doesn’t count, because man does it ever.

p.s. On a random note: gerbils in an art museum. Just for fun.

If you ever thought your vote didn’t count…

California voters signed a petition several years back which became a ballot proposition which became law: the two top vote getters in the primaries would go on to the general regardless of party affiliation. The idea was that if the politicians had to appeal to everyone from the get-go, we would have fewer extremists running and better representations of the people–and it has pretty much worked out that way. Darrell Issa the alleged car thief in San Diego who made his millions selling anti-car-theft devices notwithstanding.

The guy who wanted to make it illegal to produce any government document or anything in anything but English, to not provide any translation for health emergencies nor in schools for those struggling to integrate nor for voting materials nor warnings at street level or anything, has at long last vanished from our politisphere. Good.

So.

They’re still counting ballots from Super Tuesday. They are going to the doors of voters whose signatures were wonky: those who mailed their ballots in but forgot to sign the outer envelope or signed it in the wrong place (there’s a line for the voter dropping it off themselves and one for the person dropping it off for them if that happens.) Is this indeed your ballot or not. They have till Tuesday.

Because, in the race for that second place for the House of Representatives, Evan Low, 40, was ahead.

Then Joe Simitian, 71, was ahead.

Then Evan Low was ahead.

Then good old Joe again, termed out from just about everything else after all these years.

Joe gradually went from city to county to state assembly, where he sponsored a contest: There Ought To Be a Law. Once a–week, I think it was, (month?) he would announce the winner whose idea he’d picked and he would submit it as a bill to the Assembly. And that is why you now legally have to turn on your lights in California if your windshield wipers are on.

His contest got his name in the paper, it was a teaching moment for school kids re representative government, and it did some good in this state of ours. Now go turn on those lights so others can see you coming.

The distance has been eight votes, four votes, one single solitary vote, eight again nope it’s four now and if I check again in a few minutes it’ll be something different.

Joe’s and Evan’s totals combined come to about 33%, the guy they’re trying to catch up to won the primary with 21.1%. There were a LOT of people gunning for the seat of the retiring woman who’d been our Rep since our youngest was a baby.

So all of us who want Liccardo to win (sorry Joe) need to remember that his opponent will be in that race by possibly one single vote and ours is going to matter that much, too.

Always.

(Insert side chatter of what a relief it is that Evan, Joe, Sam, they’re all decent people trying to do the right thing. It’s the other race that–yeah. Vote!)

Best part of the day: calling our youngest for his birthday.

Next best part of the day: watching President Biden making the speech of my lifetime. Quick on his feet, ad-libbing perfect comebacks to hecklers, making Lindsey Graham laugh so hard his moussed hair shook like quills on an ambling porcupine.

Justice Alito had written in Dobbs that “women are not without electoral or political power.”

Biden told the Justices, and all of us, “With all due respect, Justices, women are not without electoral or political power. You’re about to realize just how much.”

I loved his recognition of the woman who had marched on the Edmund Pettus Bridge 50 years ago today as he called out for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to be passed.

He was on fire!

He thanked Republican Senator Jim Lankford for his work on the bipartisan border bill that the Republicans had then tossed aside after Trump told them not to fix it before the election. Lankford’s un-microphoned mouth in response, as he nodded affirmation: “It’s true.”

The convicted fraudster rapist mobster criminal who stated that he’ll be a dictator on day one or the wise, loving, empathetic, grandfather figure who knows his way around the world stage and knows how to get people to do the right thing and to see the long game.

Hey, America: you’ve got this. You’ve totally got this.

I walked up to the tall drop box at the library as an older woman was coming up from the other direction. I got there first, read the instructions plastered on the thing, figured out where/how you open it–and then couldn’t quite tell for sure if my ballot and Richard’s had gone all the way down inside there and out of retrievable reach or not. That thing is designed not to let anything in that shouldn’t be in there but a few years ago I did encounter one so overstuffed (even though it was emptied every hour) that there were edges of a few envelopes poking out.

So I was hunching down to see below its protective overhang while tapping with my fingers in that very tight space to make sure they’d actually fallen. Go on, git!

At that point the other woman arrived. She chuckled as she watched me.

We had ourselves a small celebration as our eyes met that we were there together making our voices heard. It didn’t matter what each other’s ballots said, it was the fact that we got to say it and we got to witness our fellow American speaking up alongside us and the power of that shared humanity and the power of having our say was so joyful.

Smiles, a sentence or two, and then having made instant friends on the spot we nodded a happy good day to each other and headed back out to the rest of our unknowable lives.

Wow. Linda Greenhouse nailed it.

When a woman wants an abortion, for medical reasons or social no matter how dire, it’s her fault and her problem.

When a couple is denied in vitro while trying to have a baby, there is a man being denied what he wants–and that is why Republicans in Alabama and the like are scrambling to affirm and reinstate in vitro in spite of their Supreme Court judge’s invocation of anti-Constitutional theocracy re zygotes.

I will say it again, the Mormon Church’s official stance on abortion is that it is between a woman, her doctor, and her God. Nobody else’s opinion should rule re pregnancy but the one who has to live it.

I wanted to see the moment that number hit 21, sealing the Virginia Senate for the Democrats. My yarn was red, my hopes were blue.

I glanced down at the next stitch, quickly back up, and in that amount of time there it was.

Their Senate and House both have a one-vote margin on the Democrat side as I turn in for the night and I have 6.5″ of a new cowl to show for it.

He checked the date: Nov 1 last year, Nov 1 today. Aargh.

I was supposed to come in tomorrow, I told him, but the front desk called me to cancel and said they could move me up a day.

? -Oh that’s right there’s a seminar tomorrow (leaving me thinking, Which you really don’t want to go to.) He explained why that reschedule was a goof: it doesn’t matter that it’s a year apart–the insurance company requires that eye checkups be a year *and a day*, even if they don’t tell you that, or they won’t cover it.

I said, Why don’t we just have a national medical system and get it over with?

He, having recently returned from several weeks in Germany, thoroughly agreed. He said, It’s not a perfect system over there. But it’s a whole lot better than ours.

And so I have a new appointment in about six weeks.

All the more waiting-room knitting time, right? And he did manage to get me a badly-needed new glasses prescription as long as I was there, because, he said, They don’t cover that part anyway.