Public Comment

Breaking News in Urinal Journalism
Among its many eco-amenities, the wonderful David Brower Center offers energy efficient, gender-neutral restrooms. You will find them on the ground floor. Two doors, side-by-side, prominently identified with identical gender-neutral signs.

On a recent visit, I chose the door on the left and entered a large space filled with private booths. No one else was using the facility (as far as I could tell, given the privacy provided by the booths). On my second visit (during a break in a presentation at the nearby Goldman Auditorium), I found the hallway approach jammed with men and women lining up to use the loos. This time, I chose the door to the right. Inside, I once again found private booths but also—to my surprise—a set of wall-mounted urinals in an open area across from the line-up of private booths. Half-a-dozen gents were lined up waiting a turn at the basins.

There were no ladies to be seen. Just men.

On departing the privy, I took notice of a crowd of ladies waiting to enter the all-booth lavatory. It was clear that, despite the signs, the women were all using one bathroom and the men were all patronizing the other.

The Solution to Pollution Is Not More Pollution
Food and Water Watch is steamed over the EPA's plans for “regulating" greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. "Rather than regulating greenhouse gasses," FWW fumes, "the rules actually incentivize costly, ineffective, and polluting carbon capture at power plants." 

Carbon capture proponents claim they can sequester climate-warming carbon dioxide at the source—maybe even remove it from the atmosphere. The problem that's overlooked: you need to burn more climate-cooking fuel to power carbon-capture equipment. 

Carbon capture is not only carbon-dependent, it is a pricey option that has racked up a track record of failures.  

"Carbon capture is a delusion not a solution," say the experts at FWW. "We can no longer afford to lose time in the race to confront climate change. Thanks to our lack of determined action, catastrophic tornados and hurricanes are now becoming as commonplace as mass shootings." 

Here's a suggestion: How about declaring an "Energy Sabbath" each Sunday when businesses and households will be asked to turn off all pollution-powered household equipment? If this one-day-a-week strategy were 100% effective, if could immediately reduce energy-related pollution by 14%. 

Fashion Plates
ENTLING: A towering mythical creature, half-human, half-tree—no tires. 

SWEDIE2: Sweetie Number Two? Es We Die Too? 

White Subaru: BLYYMEY (A pirate's curse?) 

Black Subaru: FOG TWN (A resident of fog town San Francisco) 

Black Honda: GOTLOVE: (I blew a kiss to the lady behind the wheel and she returned the gesture) 

Black Ford: FIAT SLG ("Let there be slugs?" UC Santa Barbara's mascot if the Banana Slug) 

Black Lexus: GO LONG (Quite possibly a 49er fan) 

Grey Mercedes: 34MERSO (Merso is a California-based cannabis lab located in Lompoc) 

Bumper Snickers
Tax My Carbon 

Boldly Going Nowhere 

Sorry for Driving So Close in Front of You 

The Best Thing About Small Towns: You Get to Be in the Band 

Spend Your Life Doing Strange Things with Weird People 

If You're Happy and You Know It It's Your Meds 

Has the Ukraine-Russia-NATO War Gone Nuclear?
On May 15, Yevgeny Kuklychev, Newsweek's Russian-born Senior Fact Check Editor, reported on a "viral video of a huge explosion near the city of Khmelnytskyi in Western Ukraine." The terrifying clip appears to show that "a 'depleted uranium' storage facility was hit and reports that radiation levels were 'rising' in the aftermath of the strike." 

Four Russian drones reportedly struck an ammunition depot that had recently received a controversial shipment of British "depleted uranium" weapons—including tank-piercing bullets. Observers feared that the depleted uranium (DU) weapons had been turned into dust and churned upwards by two massive blasts that left an ominous mushroom cloud hovering over the city. 

Health concerns were raised when radiation detectors were reported to have shown large spikes in gamma radiation at the blast site and also downwind—in the direction of Poland and other Western European nations. 

In most cases, such extraordinary video footage would have been widely broadcast but, in this case, Western media appears to have chosen to ignore the story. 

Amidst growing European concerns over the health impacts of radioactive fallout, Sputnik, a Russian news outlet, asked nuclear weapons inspector Dr. Chris Busby for an assessment. 

"After Chernobyl, the European Union set up a Europe-wide gamma radiation detector system that used to give gamma readings in real time," Dr. Busby replied. "I went to look. But astonishingly, all the data was blocked. The web- based system, administered from Germany, (EURDEP) would not provide the detector maps that are normally available." The radiation graphs remained offline until May 18 when the maps were suddenly reposted. However, Dr. Busby noted, "The map type had been changed and everything we saw in the downloads had disappeared or had been smudged out" in an apparent case of "panic and cover-up." 

Busby was also alarmed by aftermath photos taken at the clean-up site that showed firefighters using remote-controlled vehicles. "The last times we saw robot vehicles clearing up was in the ruins of Chernobyl and Fukushima," Busby noted. "If I am right, there has been an environmental disaster, and the DU particles will travel across Poland, Germany and Hungary, and will end up in the Baltics, probably later, the whole of Europe including the UK." 

Kucinich Speaks the Truth
A former member of Congress and presidential candidate has publicly accused a sitting president of breaching the Constitution, violating international law, and committing a war crime. In response, the Mainstream Media quietly shrugs and looks the other way. 

During an anti-war speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on February 19, 2023, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich declared that Washington's "greatest talent is to craft misinformation and disinformation to subvert the media, to misuse it as an instrument to incite fear and hatred among our people, exciting partisan divisions at home through crass politics and stirring ancient hatreds abroad through lies, deceit, false flag operations and provocations which profane the very essence of democracy…. 

Kucinich then went on to boldly state: "In blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, this government has deliberately circumvented Article One of the US Constitution, the authority of Congress, to make war; it has violated international criminal law by conspiring to commit acts of sabotage and violence on the high seas…. 

"It has used illegal and unconstitutional means to destroy the energy resources needed to protect millions of people in Europe during winter and then to profit from its illegal actions by selling energy to Europe at a four to six times markup.…. 

"Thanks to a courageous journalist, Seymour Hersh, we know what each of you did at the Nord Stream Pipelines, Mr. President, Mr. Secretary of State, Mr. National Security Advisor and Madame Under Secretary of State. And we will not rest until you are held accountable by Congress, by the International Criminal Court, and by the American people at the next election for your reprehensible conduct which has debased our Constitution, undermined the Rule of Law and, in our name, committed an Act of War that threatened the peace of the world and the stability of our own nation." 

Offering US Jets to Shoot Down Russian Jets? What Could Go Wrong?
Prof. Steven Starr, an Associate of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a former board member and senior scientist with Physicians for Social Responsibility, has a few choice words regarding Joe Biden's G7 agreement to escalate the Pentagon's proxy Ukraine war with Russia by approving the use of US F-16 fighter jets in the skies above Ukraine. As Starr recently noted in an email conversation: 

"F-16s date back to the 1970s, they will be completely at risk to Russian air defense systems and no match for Russian fighters, despite whatever the latest Top Gun movies say.  

"They are unable to fly off runways that are not pristine and Russia will have no trouble finding those airstrips and making them unusable. I have read that F-16s do not have enough range to fly out of Romania. If that is correct, one danger will be if they start flying out of runways in Poland, because Poland is a member of NATO and, if Russia hits Polish runways, it opens up the issue of Chapter V. 

"It appears to me that the US is bent on escalating the conflict. Russia has just taken Bakhmut and is likely to begin larger offensive actions in the near future, as the spring rains stop and the ground dries out, allowing for the movement of armored vehicles.  

"This is not going to be a 'frozen conflict' because the Ukrainian Army is on the point of collapse, and Russia is not likely to accept anything other than an unconditional surrender. 

"Why? Because they have no one trustworthy to negotiate with. The signers of the Minsk Accords have publicly stated that they never intended to honor the agreement, they signed simply to buy time for Ukraine to be rearmed by NATO. The US has abrogated so many agreements that the Russians describe them as 'non-agreement capable.'  

"So, the question is, will the US/NATO choose to send troops into Ukraine if the Ukrainian Army falls apart in the face of a Russian offensive?" 

When It Come to Press Freedom, the US Is Not a Leader
Somehow the Washington Post didn't see anything wrong with hosting a "press freedom" event with Sec. of State Antony Blinken. 

Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index provides an annual assessment about the state of journalism in 180 countries and territories. On May 3, the Post held a live broadcast to promote the release of the WPFI's findings. The clear scent of Western Bias could be sniffed when the Post announced its roster of top journalists would share air-time with Blinken, who would be discoursing in an "exclusive interview … about the state of global press freedom." 

If any legitimate reporter could chose someone to address the poor performance of other countries on press freedom, the last name on the list would be A. Blinken (who likes to be addressed by his nickname: "Abe Lincoln"). 

For the record, the top ten Press Freedom leaders are: Norway, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Portugal, and Timor-Leste. 

The US is listed as number 45, right behind Tonga. 

As one upset observer put it, the WPFI "misspelled 'Free Dumb' for all the brainwashed suckers who buy into the endless propaganda." This suggests a new term to describe the current state of fact-lacking, fib-filled US media/politics—a dumocracy. 

As we've long known—from the risk-taking exploits of Daniel Ellsberg to the jail-time meted out to killer-drone insider Daniel Hale—Washington prefers to incarcerate the whistleblowers it can capture while driving others into exile and/or subjecting them to extradition. 

Press Freedom? Tell it to Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Seymour Hersh. 

Revisiting Jerusalema
Magoso Jerusalema Challenge, Kibera Slum, Nairobi, Kenya