Public Comment

Seeking Leaf-Relief

My nomination for one of the world's worst inventions? The leaf-blower.

A few days ago, I saw an all-too-familiar sight: A stocky fellow lugging a loudly sputtering, gas-driven, smoke-spewing leaf-blower down a sidewalk strewn with leaves—in the middle of a windy day.

The leaves didn't disappear, of course, they just relocated to another patch of sidewalk. It looked like an arboreal game of Whack-a-mole. 

What bothers me is that these bellowing blowers (unlike the brooms and rakes they are supposed to replace) are not just noisy and polluting, they are also ineffective (especially on windy days). 

Hasn't it dawned on the makers and users of leaf-blowers that these infernal autumnal air-hoses should be replaced by a sensible alternative to rakes, brooms and leaf-buckets. How about replacing leaf-blowers with Leaf Suckers—i.e., rechargeable, battery-powered, leaf-capturing, vacuum gleaners. 

Fashion Plates 

Personalized license plates seen about town: 

Grey BMW: SHUPNET ("Shup" is British slang for "shut up" but maybe the driver is Brian Shupnet, a local fellow known for running the Bay-to-Breakers footrace disguised as Barack Obama.) 

Black Audi: MR Q N A (Mister Q&A has all the answers). 

On a Volkswagon "bug": O UBUGME. 

Dark grey Tesla: THX ELON (You're welcome, Mr. Bezos). 

Bumper Snickers 

"Honk if parts fall off" 

"I brake for interesting cloud formations" 

"Having weird parents builds character" 

"You are unique. Just like everyone else" 

Celebrating the Respect for Marriage Act—with Caveats 

The new Respect for Marriage Act legalizes marriage between "two individuals." Race and gender are no longer admitted as a roadblock to married bliss. But perhaps the RMA should have read "two consenting human adults." (I don't think we are ready for a marriage law that allows nuptials for teens and tots.) 

This latest law still discriminates because it is not extended to three or more individuals who might wish to commit to a polygamous marriage. 

And, as Dorian Rhea Debussy, a Lecturer of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, at Ohio State points out: "The act also provides an exemption for religious nonprofits. And finally, it does not fix a long-lasting problem that penalizes the marriages of people with disabilities—regardless of their sexuality." 

"I Now Pronounce You Man and Donkey" 

Also left out of the RMA: unions between humans and animals. Yes, that's still a thing—especially in two of our 48 US states. According to a Care2 Petitions Action Alert: "bestiality … is still legal in New Mexico and West Virginia." (Bestiality was still legal in Montana as of 2014.) 

According to the alert, "dogs, cats, and all other creatures are capable of feeling pain and fear, and their voicelessness makes them easy targets for cruelty. It's time to change that by raising our voices for them. Sign the petition to demand New Mexico and West Virginia finally ban bestiality! 

But maybe it's not bestiality if it's a marriage? Human-animal consummations have a long history in mythology and ancient literature. Remember "Leda and the Swan" (aka Zeus)? Chinese folklore includes tales of a King who married a horse and a Goddess who has a fling with a Silkworm. 

In India, human-animal marriage rites are "held in many communities to honor the rain deity. This rite is largely observed in communities in Meghalaya, Assam, and Karnataka, where marriages of dogs, donkeys, and toads are held." (There may be more to the story of "The Princess and the Frog" than we realized.) 

In 2014, what has been called the "first-ever state recognized human-animal marriage" was celebrated at San Francisco's Chapel of Our Lady when 35-year-old SF resident Paul Horner promised to love, honor and obey his faithful female dog Mac (36-years-old in dog years). The presiding priest, Father McHale, told the press: "This is the definition of true love, my friends. There is nothing more sacred than the bond between a man and his faithful dog." 

But wait a minute! How do we know this was a union between two consenting adults? How did the groom and bride "exchange vows"? Did Father McHale accept "bow wows"? 

If you're up for it, there's an 11-minute online video that lists "12 unbelievable people who married animals" but let's end this with this loopy video about the Seattle bride who married a 107-year-old building. 

Free Speech Movement Memories On-air in Australia 

Robby Cohen, professor of Social Studies at New York University and author of Freedom's Orator (a profile of Free Speech Movement activist Mario Savio) recently conducted a half-hour radio interview on the Free Speech Movement with the host of Australia's Nightlife show. 

The publicity for the interview included a photo of Jackie Goldberg standing atop a police car that had been sent to the UC campus to arrest a campus activist—but wound up being nonviolently captured by a swarm of protesting students. The photo of Goldberg speaking from atop the cop-car-turned-lectern was an appropriate choice given the interviewer's focus on the role of women in the FSM. 

Prof. Cohen has shared the interview with Berkeley's Free Speech Movement Archives, which now shares it with the Planet at this link: https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/nightlife/twih-fsm/101738668 

The Art of Strategic Deletions 

On December 3, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke at the roll-out of the B-21 Raider, a nuclear-capable bomber set to become the Pentagon's newest Doomsday weapon. In most of the posted online versions of this Associated Press article, Austin’s comments were incomplete. Here are two paragraphs from the end of the article that did not appear in most posted versions of the story: 

• The Defense Department has the largest discretionary budget of all the federal agencies, and it may receive up to $847 billion in the 2023 budget if Congress passes the current funding bill before this legislative session ends.  

• Six Raiders are in production by Northrop Grumman Corp. The Air Force plans to build 100 that can deploy either nuclear weapons or conventional bombs and can be used with or without a human crew. 

Those closing words require repeating: "with or without a human crew." 

Barbara Lee vs. the Pentagon! 

Across the US, families are struggling with high prices and low wages while the Pentagon's budget continues to swell with bounties worth billions. 

The good news: Berkeley Rep. Barbara Lee has joined her Defense Spending Reduction Caucus Co-Chair, Rep. Mark Pocan, to introduced the People Over Pentagon Act of 2022. If POPA passes, it would chop $100 billion from the Pentagon’s budget and repurpose the windfall to help meet civilian needs in communities across the US. 

"We've prioritized excessive military spending and waged endless wars for far too long," Lee's office states. But it's going to take some work to pass the POPA. The first step (and the easiest) is to sign Rep. Lee's pro-POPA petition by clicking this link. 

"Making progress on the issues that matter most to American families will not be resolved by increasing military spending," Lee's staff writes. "We hope … to hold the Pentagon accountable and end unlimited spending." 

Here's a thought: According to the Congressional Budget Office, about 25% of the Pentagon budget is spent on the military's "personnel costs such as salaries, health care and retirement accounts." What if one-forth of the non-defense portion of the Federal Budget was directed to the civilian sector of tax-paying Americans and dedicated to addressing civilian "salaries, health care and retirement accounts"? 

Putting Ourselves in Perspective 

The following stunning fact comes courtesy of the indefatigable Jim Hightower. Prepare to be humbled. 

"Here’s an interesting fact: Dinosaurs dominated Earth for 165 million years—and they assumed they always would.
"Which brings us to… well, us. We bipedal, far-ranging, Homo sapien primates have certainly established our dominance over modern-day Mother Earth. And even though our reign has only lasted about 200,000 years, we 21st Century humans grandly assume that we’re ordained by the gods to rule ad infinitum over our planet (and beyond)….
"But—oops!—unfortunately we’ve based our preeminence on the unsustainable consumption of our domain, rather than on stewardship for the ages. Under the global misguidance of corporate, political, religious, academic, and other Powers That Be, our large-brained species has ended up making an awful mess of the nest we inherited. Elite plunderers and profiteers have imposed an ethic of greed, inequality, and even inhumanity that is devouring everything from Earth’s climate to our basic human values of fairness and justice." 

A Message for Biden: Amen for Yemen; Shake the Saudis 

A coalition of peace groups is encouraging one-and-all to pressure the Senate to demand an end to US support for the devastating Saudi war in Yemen. Specifically by urging our senators to support S.J.Res.56, the Yemen War Powers Resolution introduced by Senators Leahy, Sanders, and Warren. 

CODEPINK notes: "When the Pentagon responded to questions about continued US involvement in the war in Yemen last summer, the answers were shocking. Given President Biden’s announcement in February 2021 that the US would halt all offensive support for the Saudi coalition, we were upset to hear from the Pentagon that the US is still very much involved." 

The bitter fact is that US contractors are continuing to provide spare parts and maintenance support to the Saudi Royal Air Force. According to the US Constitution, only Congress can authorize war. Biden's continued Saudi support constitutes an act of war and Congress has the right to end this support. 

I've signed on to the campaign. I'm tired of seeing the US start wars (Vietnam, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq), join wars (Syria) and support wars (Ukraine). It's time the US started stopping wars." 

In the meantime, it's just another reason I've given our MIC-mastered, war-addicted president a new nickname: Joe "Bomb Beijing for Boeing" Biden. 

A Timely Note from Tarak Kauff and Veterans for Peace. 

"These people (the Atlantic Council and others) belong in an insane asylum. I mean that literally. I have been asserting for years that the essence of the problem we face is insanity. Unfortunately, very few people understand that. I will state it again, people in positions of wealth and power are literally mad. The quest for and acquisition of money and power, the addiction, like a powerful drug drives people crazy.
"The addiction always increases. There is never enough. When we are faced with the possible ending of life on the planet…, only lunatics promote nuclear weapons, war, all of that…. Insane people do not in general respond to reason. We in the left, (for the most part) believe in reason and think that presenting it to the powers-that-be will save the day, that somehow they will wake up, will get it, will realize where we are heading and what they are doing.
"We might as well be pleading with a stone wall. The only solution is the wall must fall, all walls.  

Re-tax the Corporate Robber Barons 

An alert from Public Citizen warns: "Corporate lobbyists are in DC right now trying to convince Congress to lock in three Trump-era corporate tax giveaways that could cost America $600 billion. 

• "In 2017, Trump signed a tax scam into law that gave corporations a 40% federal income tax cut that added nearly $2 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years.
• "In 2021, corporations recorded annual profits of $2.8 trillion, up 25% from the year before.
• "In 2022, they’re enjoying their highest profit margin in over 70 years. 

"And now, Congress is considering doubling down on Trump’s tax scam by expanding major tax loopholes that benefit big business." 

If corporations and megamillionaires prevail, they’ll evade hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes—money that could fund healthcare, build housing, and reduce child poverty. 

Tell Congress:
Corporations are enjoying record profits from inflated prices. And they are paying record low tax rates while price-gouging consumers. We don’t need more tax breaks that enrich wealthy shareholders while starving public services of critically needed funds. Do not extend Trump’s tax scam scheme by cutting corporate taxes—again. 

The Web Is all a-Twitter: What Is that Musky Aroma? 

There's a campaign calling on major corporations to stop doing business with Elon's Musk's revival of Twitter as an arena of vile bile and Tweet-heated hate. 

In response, Color of Change is asking folks to petition Coca-Cola—one of Twitter's largest fiscal sponsors—to stop funding fearmongering and falsehoods. My tweet reads: "The return of hate talk to Twitter makes me choke on my Coke." And a related tweet to Proctor and Gamble (another major Twitter-backer) reads: "You don't need a lawyer to Proctor you not to take a Gamble on Musk." 

The Dodo World 

Has the daily din of appalling news got you feeling dreadful? Here's a possible antidote. "The Dodo" offers an online collection of video encounters that raise the question: "If animals—even presumed enemies—can form friendships, why can't humans?" 

Here are a few for starters. (Viewer discretion: Once you've started watching these cross-critter alliances, it can be hard to stop.) 

Turkey and Dog Best Friends are Inseparable 

Rescued Sloth Becomes Best Friends With a Beagle 

Dog Sees Tiny Lamb Crying And Decides To Adopt Her 

Cat and Baby Rhino are Best Friends