Public Comment

The Debt Ceiling: Sealing the Deal
I'm all for cutting the Federal budget and putting an end to the country's endless, growing debt. Since the days of Richard Nixon, the US dollar is no longer backed by gold or anything else of physical value. Dollars are generated like newspapers and bubble-gum wrappers—on a printing press. They have no intrinsic value except as debt—debt that is "serviced" by loans from banks, investment houses, and other countries. 

The US' $16 trillion in outstanding debt is mostly held by a few powerful US banks—Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank, Bank of America. And the major foreign investor in Washington's Teetering House of Debt is … wait for it—the Peoples' Republic of China. Yup, Beijing is currently collecting interest payments on 7.5% of Washington's ever-expanding debt. 

So, yeah, cut Federal spending. But don't cut healthcare, social security and Medicare. Let's make those cuts where it really matters. Nearly half of the billions to be doled out in Joe Biden's $1.6 trillion FY 2023 budget request is destined to flow—directly and indirectly—to the Pentagon and America's corporate Arms Complex, for weapons, foreign bases, military housing, medical care, Veterans Affairs, "modernizing" the nuclear arsenal, and paying down the debt on past wars. This is where the big money goes—into a Pentagon that has routinely failed every federal audit ever attempted (and has lost every major conflict in the Global War on Terror). If our elected leaders were to focus on Pentagon misspending—the federal budget's fiscal motherload—we could easily balance the budget by spending taxpayers' money on welfare not warfare. 

Adam's Eve
Adam Hochschild has just published his 11^th book—"American Nightmare: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis"—and, on May 6 (as part of the two-day Chronicle-sponsored Bay Area Book Festival), he shared some of the content with an appreciative overflow crowd at Berkeley's Brower Center. 

The book exposes a lot of troubling history that has been left out of standard-issue American history books. Exactly the kind of eclipsed history that the GOPers want hidden as part of their Cancel-Culture assault on Critical History Theory. 

Hochschild recounted how, after the US became involved in WWI, the government declared a second front—a homefront battle waging war on the working class. While racist lynchings and murders plagued the South, President Woodrow Wilson's government was busy dispatching federal militias to gun down union protesters and passing laws to jail radicals and "socialists" for giving speeches that "interfered with the war effort." 

In response to a question from the audience about the Spanish Flu, Hochschild revealed that—unlike the media fixation that surrounded the COVID threat—government officials and media outlets in 1918 did their best to cover up the existence of the deadly disease—despite the desperation of hospital workers, the increasing body count, and the growing number of infected citizens falling dead in the streets of America. 

Again, the reason for the federal response—or, rather, the lack thereof—was based on concerns that the news would "interfere with the war effort." In the "freedom-loving democracy" of America," progressives who dared to speak out against fighting a war in Europe while ignoring demands for more justice and equity at home, were vilified by the government as subversives and even arrested and jailed for inciting crowds with anti-war speeches. Most famously, Emma Goodman was arrested after advocating for women's rights and Eugene V. Debs was imprisoned for "sedition" after calling for an end to the war. Debs actually ran a presidential campaign from the confines of a prison cell—winning nearly a million votes. 

"That was the first time anyone had run for the presidency from inside a jail," Hochschild noted. He then added: "But it may not be the last time." There was a brief pause and the Trump-weary audience in the Goldman Theater broke into laughter and loud applause. 

Ranting for Ratings: Daily Kos' Daily Castigation
Speaking of the Ocher Ogre, CNN appears to be so desperate for viewers that it hosted a Trump "town hall" broadcast on May 10. In response, The Daily Kos posted a summary of the events that have made Trump such a tasty morsel of newsbait—"a twice-impeached leader of a seditionist conspiracy who is currently being investigated for a multitude of crimes, including rape, defamation, financial and tax fraud, hush money payments, hoarding classified materials, election interference, and plotting a violent coup." A felonious fellow who has "been found guilty of 17 criminal felonies for falsifying business records, and was recently indicted for 34 felony charges related to his affair with porn star, Stormy Daniels. Previously his 'charity' was found to be a scam and shut down, and his 'university' was closed and ordered to pay $25 million in restitution to its students/victims." 

And yet, Kos marvels, "In light of that rap sheet, CNN thinks it's a good idea to give Trump an hour of valuable air time for him to lie, obfuscate, evade, and ramble incoherently." 

Fashion Plates
Personalized license plates spotted about town. 

CAP CO2: On a carbon-capping Toyota hybrid
Red BMW sport convertible: 6E: (Would that be "Sexy" as in "Sixy"?)
CHAMUCA: A devilish little girl or someone with a fondness for samosas
LVISX: Elvie Is Six? Love Is Sex?
QAZITS: Questions and answers for treating acne?
BRABUS: The owner is a boob? 

Bumper Snickers
No War/Nowhere/No Way
Conquest Is Not Sustainable
Stop Wars: The Empire Strikes Out
We Fight Wars for Oil / So We Can Fight Wars for Oil
Hegemony, No, Harmony, Yes
In One Hour, a F-35 Fighter Jet / Burns as much Fuel as / 16,000 Automobiles 

On a single Mini Cooper:
I Break for Butterflies; I Identify As A Jalapeno Popper; Life Is Better with Pot & Shrooms; I Brake for Interesting Cloud Formations; Honk If You're Boring 

Special Mention: A creepy note scrawled across a rear window: "Stay Sexy; Don't Get Murdered." Ironically, this was posted on a Ford Escape. 

Wavy Gravy Turns 87; Returns to the Party Circuit
Wavy Gravy (aka Hugh Romney) celebrated his 87^th birthday on May 7 in his usual fashion—with a benefit party raising fun and funds for his nonprofit Seva Foundation and Camp Winnarainbow. On past birthdays, I've invited the City Council to consider adding another plaque above the current "Berryman Street" sign on the block that's home to Groovy Gravy's Berkeley domicile. 

The new signage could read "Wavy Gravy Lane" or "Wavy Gravy Way." 

Wargaming: "Let's Play Bucks for Bombs"
In early May, a Washington think-tank called the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) invited members of the House Select Committee on China to spend nearly three hours (behind closed doors) playing a war-game titled "Invasion of Taiwan." 

Worth noting: CNAS was co-founded by a board member of Booze Allen Hamilton and most of its funding comes from the coffers of the Pentagon's leading arms contractors. 

The gaming exercise apparently had the desired effect. Instead of encouraging diplomacy, the Congressional gamesters were inspired to call for additional $19 billion in Pentagon play-dough to buy more weapons and training to elevate “our military posture throughout the region.” 

This off-the-record exercise prompted Win Without War to ask: "Is it really a surprise that the key takeaway from a war-game run by a think tank funded by weapons contractors was more money for the Pentagon?" 

"The thing about war-games," WWW observed, "is that they turn war into a game—pushing participants to think of conflict as something to be won, rather than a harm to be averted." 

If you want to protest the fiction that launching wars is all "funds and games," WWW has a petition for that. Tell Congress: Cut the Pentagon budget and invest in diplomacy and development to build real security. 

Australian Press Gives Biden a Down-Under Roasting
James Morrow, Rita Panahi and the crew at Sky News Australia have been getting a laugh (several, actually) at the expense of our octogenarian leader. The Sky News team regularly airs collections of Biden's flubs and brain-fog incoherence. Truly not Joe Biden's most coherent or cogent mutterings, these video clips capture a string of "senior moments" in which the Commander-in-Chief sounds more like a Commander-in-Cheese. While these clips are not widely aired by the US media, they are certainly being archived by the GOP for the 2024 presidential election. For a full menu of Biden's unforgettable forgettable moments, just do a Google search for "Sky News Joe Biden Gaffes." 

Joe Biden's AI-conjured Presidential Address
Beset by despair and depression I went online, looking for something cheery and distractive. Instead, I came across the following video—a daunting example of the insidious threat of manufactured reality. 

The video would be hysterically funny were it not so horrifically bleak. It has been viewed 225,000 times since it was posted on Feb 8, 2023 under the hashtag #funny #joebiden. 

Joe Biden's AI voice was conjured using ElevenLabs software to show Biden blundering through a State of the Union speech address in stream-of-conscious mode. On second thought, make that creek-of-conscious mode. In a frightening demonstration of how AI can skew—and screw with—history, this media-stunt shows us Marjorie Taylor Greene shouting compliments at the president who responds by inviting her out on a date! 

In a surrealistic note, this "satirical" creation, meant to embarrass Biden, is now preceded by a paid political ad for Biden's real-life presidential reelection campaign.