Wow, Philadelphia Inquirer. Well done.

This was such an antidote after being stunned at the weaselly dishonest complicity of William Lewis’s piece insulting the Washington Post’s readers re why the Post will not make an endorsement between two Presidential candidates that Lewis claims are equally worthy. The Philadelphia Inquirer showed just exactly how one stands up for democracy and the rule of law against the rapist commando-in-thief.

The Post’s Board wrote an endorsement of Harris–but Lewis refused to allow them to publish it.

Rupert Murdoch’s old henchman–remember the case of the dead girl being searched for whose phone was hacked and messages sent from it to her frantic parents as if she were still alive, in order to sell tabloids in Britain? Yeah that guy–has absolutely no business running the newspaper of Katherine Graham and Woodward and Bernstein, of Deep Throat, of the Pentagon Papers.

I read the Washington Post daily growing up and the moment years ago that reading it online became a possibility, I subscribed.

I now expect to read, but it won’t likely be reported there, just how large a percentage of their readers canceled today like I did in protest. There seem to be an awful lot of us.

Tonight, thirteen of their columnists put their careers on the line to speak against the decision at the once-great paper they have loved. (Update a few minutes later: now sixteen.)

Why we need to support local, locally-owned journalism: how many people these days get to have a newspaper that does a graph like this?

Across: the names of the candidates.

Down: the questions being asked them.

Their answers: No in red, Yes in green, with a little chat emoji to link to ‘see more of my answer on this’ if the candidate so desires.

Which also means that at a glance you can see which ones didn’t think it worth their time to explain their point of view nor to try to persuade.

It’s certainly not all you need to know about any of them but it is definitely a great starting point.

The vice presidential debate tonight: Walz was earnest, Vance was slick and fast and a clearly well-practiced gaslighter and liar. Trump capped the price of insulin at $35!

I was waiting for the moderators to say no, Biden did. Democrats had been trying to set price caps on Big Pharma ever since Medicare added drug coverage and Biden finally got Congress to pass a phase-in over several years of the most prescribed meds. This was huge.

Vance complained to the moderators that they’d promised no fact checking. Which, the Washington Post pointed out, was a complete lie. And even if it had been true, wouldn’t you WANT the facts to be presented?

Etc.

It was good to see how civil the two men were to each other. It was surprising that they seemed to agree on things like childcare to help young people make it ahead. It was gratifying that Vance was horrified that one of Walz’s children had witnessed a shooting.

It was astonishing and deeply disconcerting to hear how easily and quickly Vance lied about just about everything. Millions cut out of housing because of illegal immigrants? Just how many people who can’t get a Social Security number did he think were signing closing papers on houses, or even just rentals? My husband as a Red Cross volunteer responded to a two bedroom apartment fire that left twenty-two immigrants homeless. They were so poor and so crowded they slept in shifts. The Red Cross didn’t ask about their papers; they cared about the people.  Whom did Vance think were building those houses while being unable to afford one themselves? The Post wondered if he’d added up every bed in every homeless shelter to come up with that random number?

But then he already said he makes up stories to illustrate his political point. I have no doubt he slandered the Haitians in Springville Ohio because they were the darkest-skinned immigrants he could think of and he knows his base.

Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, but at this point you don’t know how much of that is his dementia. Vance–his eyes gave him away a number of times–knew exactly what he was doing and he did it anyway. Get elected, Article 25 that Alzheimer’s idiot at the top and it’s all yours, buddy, he seemed to be saying to himself.

Walz finally asked him point blank: who won the 2020 election?

Vance’s gish galloped off in the opposite direction just as fast as it could run.

Years ago, someone I know opened a candy shop near both a university and a high school: target audiences. It did so well she opened a second one in another town.

The guy she hired to run that one was a recent graduate of a top-notch culinary academy, I guess getting in on the ground floor.

This was when political ads were being run warning of a bogeyman–remember when superpredator got smushed into its own single word for awhile? Ie big and black and tall and on illegal drugs that supposedly made him extra strong. After all, the Willie Horton ads had worked for Bush and Dukakis’s candidacy had gone down in flames.

Her employee was a large African-American man.

Her husband was the one who told me of the phone calls–multiple, he reiterated over my stunned disbelief, not just one and not just one person, of people telling them they would not step foot in that second store unless they fired the guy. They had walked in, seen him, and walked right back out.

Instead she offered him a job at the first store and closed the second and made a point of telling that town why. She wasn’t going to be in any way associated with a populace that treated a good man that way and they should be ashamed of themselves.

That was thirty years ago.

Today I was in that town. My audiologist is there, and my hearing aids needed cleaning. Since I have a lot of knitting I want to do on that afghan I brought it with me, carry-around project or not. They warned me it would be awhile, and I knew that, no worries.

So I had a front row seat.

A couple came in. Mid-eighties, easily. He was tall and stooped and walked carefully; she was just as old but more easily mobile. Perfectly coiffed in the kind of hairsprayed upswept curls my grandmother’s generation regularly saw their beauticians for, and perfectly sculpted and tummy-tucked in her skin-tight clothes. She looked seriously about 85 pounds but for the improbably large chest. There is a posh country club nearby and all they needed was the golf cart to complete the look.

He settled down on the couch and she went to the desk. I had started an afghan row with its five dangly balls of yarn.

I finished the row.

Started another one.

Finished it.

Finally, she walked back towards her husband and did a disdainful little yank with her head back towards the young African-American woman who had been trying to help her with all the graciousness one could ever ask for.

There had been others before her who had appointments (including me.) They were going to have to wait.

My friend’s story of long ago came flooding back and I knew I had to do something to show support without putting the young woman on the spot. How do you do this right especially when you know you didn’t hear everything. But I’d seen.

Turns out that technician was the one to bring my finished hearing aids out from the back room two thirds of an afghan row later (and after the couple had left.) The insides had collected water because I’d let it go too long since the last cleaning and that means it takes awhile to dry the electronics safely. So mine took longer.

No worries, truly.

As I put them in I looked at her and asked a little sheepishly, knowing it would be cutting into her work time, Can I show off my moose?

Sure!

I spread the afghan out a bit so she could see and she exclaimed over it and reached to touch that inviting, beautiful wool as I held it so she could. I thanked her; she beamed; she told me, sounding less convinced of it as the words were coming out of her mouth, I could never have the patience for that, while her face started to say maybe I could? I actually want to, no really want to now…

I said, You start off small and work your way up.

Her face! Made me wish I could have taken the time to teach her on the spot.

There’s a yarn store maybe two blocks away; maybe we will have a new knitter soon.

But I loved that the fact that I’m one gave us a means to make each other’s day and, as much as could be done, make up for that earlier experience.

—

(Let me add here that having written most of this earlier and walked away to think about it some more, I’ve reflected on how hard it is to be elderly and stuck being a caretaker, if that was their case. And as someone whose own husband is 15″ taller and quite a bit bigger I know there are limitations on how one would be able to manage. But you just don’t demean others who are trying their best to do right by you. You just don’t. She should have known by now at long last that treating others badly can never make her happier.)

James Fallows is both a reporter and pilot and you’ll often get a cockpit’s-eye view of the world from him.

One of the first things they teach you about flying in DC, he writes, is how absolute the rules are on restricted flight space there.

Last Wednesday a plane took off from DC National Airport (now called Reagan.) It flew straight.

There is only one take-off runway and every plane on it must immediately turn left over the Potomac River.

It did not.

Its flight path was about to take it directly over the White House.

The air traffic controllers reminded the pilot to make that turn. Still no turn.

Finally, they commanded the pilot to call a number upon landing. Fallows says no pilot ever wants to hear that command. He doesn’t say outright that their license is forfeit but it’s certainly an implied possibility, along with I’d guess potential criminal charges.

To my knowledge, this is the first time that airspace has been breached by an unauthorized plane since 9/11. This happened last Wednesday. The name of the plane was the Eastern Express.

It was the chartered campaign plane of one Donald Trump, with JD Vance listed as passenger.

One can only wildly guess at what was going on: was Vance trying to say this will all be mine soon? Was the pilot a MAGA who’d fallen for the rules don’t apply to us mentality of his boss? Was the pilot out to lunch?

But you just can’t be, and certainly not there.

By the time Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 there were fighter jets scrambled to take it down rather than let it continue its course to crash in DC now that we knew that day what those planes were doing.

And a week before that anniversary Trump’s plane threw away the rules and invited that kind of response. Why? Just, unfathomably, why? What message were they sending?

Springfield, Ohio is being destroyed because Haitian immigrants are pouring in and they’re, like, they’re eating everybody’s cats and dogs. They’re eating them! He had to say it twice because repetition makes the lie true.

It does, right?

And then in his closing statement he claimed our military is destroyed because Harris had given all our weaponry to Afghanistan.

What the what now?

He seemed to think she was already President. At other times, he had to be reminded that Biden was not the candidate.

Twice, the moderator asked him point-blank if he had any regrets about January 6. Twice, he turned it into a snarl of self-pity and self-justification–and he claimed nobody had died.

And then blamed “their side” for the death of the “beautiful woman” repeatedly warned and then shot while climbing through the window towards the terrified Congresspeople in the chamber caught on the other side with a mob trying to beat the doors in.

Meantime, Harris had the perfect “Please continue” face. Re Jan. 6th, she reminded him that she. was. there.

She didn’t have to say any more than that.

She told what she was offering the American people in terms of policies and plans, to expand the caps on drug prices to more meds–the concession Biden had had to make on Medicare negotiating drug prices having been that they would start off with only so many being regulated in the first year and the second and the third, etc. Child tax credits. First-timer housing support. (Let me raise my hand here and say thank you USA for the FHA loan on our first that got us in.) Small business support. The return of manufacturing these past three+ years, and the jobs that came with. A tax plan that builds the middle class back up again (and one quite a bit less liberal re soaking the richest than Biden’s.) And, always, the right of a woman to make her own medical decisions, while citing cases of women miscarrying and bleeding in hospital parking lots after being refused care for fear of jail time on the part of providers.

And that’s not left-wing talking points–that has happened. Including sepsis from that lack of care.

Mean, angry, self-centered, chaotic, and, frankly, nuts, vs calm, knowledgeable, competent and caring about others and the future we offer our children with our votes.

It’s just really not a hard choice. Let’s do this.

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.