The good news is that Donald Trump is the first president in history to be impeached twice.
The bad news is that he won’t be tried before his term ends, if at all.
The good news is that House Republicans voted to impeach this time.
The bad news is that only 10 of >200 House Republicans voted to impeach.
The good news is that Trump has only a week remaining in his term.
The bad news is that Trump has a week remaining in his term.
The good news is that there are Senate Republicans who have spoken in favor of impeachment.
The bad news is that ⅓ of all Senate Republicans would have to vote for conviction to succeed.
The bad news is that Trump likely will be the first president ever to be acquitted twice.
The good news is that Trump won’t be the president for the next 4 years.
The bad news is that he could be the president again in 4 years. (It has happened before.)
The good news is that Upton Sinclair warned us about this 85 years ago in “It Can’t Happen Here”.
The bad news is that we seem to have forgotten that.
Month: January 2021
Welcome 2021!
Normally we see in the new year with a Lou and Peter Berryman concert. Last year they announced their retirement, so the pandemic did not require a cancellation.
Normally we have a potluck with friends, which includes a listing of everyone’s favorite books, movies, and TV shows for the year. This year was virtual, and we skipped it.
We did welcome the year with home made squash ravioli and closed out 2020 with a 2010 wine that we’d been saving. We’re not wine cellar types, but we do have a root cellar which works equally well for wine and we did lay this bottle down a few years ago with a plan to drink it this year.
Hoarfrost (fog when the temperature is below freezing) came for a visit. (Sorry, but all of the pictures appear darker in WordPress than they did before uploading. I have edited them a second time and re-uploaded them so I hope they look OK this time.)
We live in possibly the weirdest time ever. How many times have you asked yourself if this is really happening? How many times have you thought that this couldn’t be the plot of a novel because it’s too far-fetched to be believable? Here are some excerpts from the transcript of the call from our soon-to-be ex-president and the Georgia Secretary of State (Should we mention that it took 18 tries before they put him through? Maybe somebody knew this was going to go off the rails quickly):
Raffensperger: Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, they — people can say anything.
Trump: Oh this isn’t social media. This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s really not; it’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less. Social media is Big Tech. Big Tech is on your side, you know. I don’t even know why you have a side because you should want to have an accurate election. And you’re a Republican.
At first I was just going to pull those first two sentences: “This isn’t social media. This is Trump media.” I thought that was crazy enough. But it just kept getting loonier.
Germany: We’ve been going through each of those as well, and those numbers that we got, that Ms. Mitchell was just saying, they’re not accurate. Every one we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately. And in many cases —
Trump: How may people do that? They moved out, and then they said, “Ah, to hell with it, I’ll move back.” You know, it doesn’t sound like a very normal . . . you mean, they moved out, and what, they missed it so much that they wanted to move back in? It’s crazy.
Germany: They moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.
I moved out of Wisconsin in the 1980s. I moved back in the 1990s. I voted in Wisconsin in the 2020 election. Does that mean the soon-to-be ex-president thinks I committed fraud, too? Or just that I’m crazy? We’d better hope he never moves back to New York. (Actually, I do kinda hope he moves back there – to serve a prison term.)
He even disagrees with the lawyer he brought in on the call with him. “Disagree” is the polite way of saying that he is just plain wrong (which is a nice way of saying he is either lying or misinformed):
Germany: We chose Cobb County because that was the only county where there’s been any evidence submitted that the signature verification was not properly done.
Trump: No, but I told you. We’re not, we’re not saying that.
Mitchell: We did say that.
Then there’s the flat-out request for fraud to be committed:
Trump: …So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.
Bike Maintenance
I’m in my fourth winter with a belt-drive bike (bought in spring of 2016). So far it has been a godsend. I replaced the belt once and I have a spare on hand. I would have been through a few chains by now and would probably be looking at other parts. The drivetrain has been getting noisy so I just replaced the chainring (or “front pulley” in belt drive parlance). “They don’t make ’em like they used to” does not always mean things are worse. The original pulley was “carbon-reinforced composite”, AKA plastic. The new one is aluminum. The following pictures should show you why I hope aluminum is the better choice. The rear pulley (“cog” in chain drive parlance) was always aluminum.
I’m hoping for more than four winters from the new pulley.
Coup d’etat
Since the last post there has been an attempted armed coup. As you are all well aware, our deposed leader attempted to stay in office by overthrowing the legislative branch to prevent them from certifying the election result. How is that called a “protest” or “demonstration”? As videos show, they had the assistance of some of the Capitol Police, as well as the tacit assistance of the administration as evidenced by the paltry police presence and complete absence of National Guard presence compared with the presence during Black Lives Matter protests. (By the way, while media reports have referred to deaths from “medical emergencies” during the coup attempt, at least one of said emergencies has been documented as a trampling by the mob. The police officer killed was reported as dying from injuries while “physically engaging with protestors”. The Chicago Tribune reports he was murdered by being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.)
Our soon-to-be ex-president has been banned from Twitter after Twitter found credible evidence of a planned second coup attempt, spurred on by his posts. Attacks on Washington and state capitols are planned for next weekend and Inauguration Day. I am hoping for a much more robust response from police and troops. While Twitter is finally taking some responsibility, there are multiple other online fora actively promoting the coup.
COVID-19 and health
I just had the second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. While several of my co-workers suffered miserably from side effects, I feel fine. Even my arm ache is less than the first go-round. My hope is that we will be back to public events in 2022 and I can go on a big ride with others again (Cycle America, here we come!). Death Ride 2021 is off the table for me, though it is still scheduled as of this writing.
It has been a year since my surgery (chronicled here) and 20 months since the original injury. Post-op pain has made me question the value of the surgery (pre-op it only hurt to walk; post-op it hurt to ride a bike and sometimes just to sit) and whether, if I had to do it over again, I would have lived with a hernia instead of having it “fixed”. After several rounds of acupuncture which helped for a while, I opted for a nerve block and corticosteroid injection (a mixture of an anesthetic for short-term relief and an anti-inflammatory for longer-term relief). The anesthetic worked great for a day. For the next two days it was like I’d never had the injection, then the following day the pain was reduced (not gone). So far, the injection seems like a winner. We’ll see how long it lasts. The way it works is a 3.5″ long needle is guided via ultrasound through the abdominal wall and to the nerves that are the source of the pain (two nerves, in this case). The injection surrounds the nerve with one medication (bupivacaine – trade name Marcaine) to block transmission of pain signals and a second medication (Kenalog, generic name triamcinolone acetonide) to reduce inflammation around the nerve. The plan is to calm the area down to reduce irritation to the nerve. With luck, this is curative. With less luck, it lasts a few months and then I face the question of more steroids or putting up with pain for the rest of my life. Not to mention the question of whether it is worth it to continue working, since that seems to exacerbate the pain. Since this is (allegedly) an on-the-job injury for which the job accepts no responsibility, retirement may be the best option if the injection doesn’t work long-term. I’d rather not retire until the pandemic is over, so I can have a party.
Don’t let the door hit you…
We bid a not-so-fond farewell to 2020. Links are to previous mentions in these pages.
Losses include:
Political innocence (if we had any). When else has a losing president refused to accept the results of an election? If that wasn’t bad enough, most of his party supported him. There was apparently a vast conspiracy which included Google, YouTube, Facebook, the Democratic party, election officials in all states and municipalities, polling organizations, and local pollworkers throughout the country; yet they were too incompetent to oust Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, or a bunch of state officeholders that should be gone…or they were so sophisticated they managed to falsify only a single line on all of those ballots to fool us.
Green Bay Packers Willie Wood, Willie Davis, Herb Adderly, and Paul Hornung. Chicago Bear Gale Sayers. Harlem Globetrotter Curly Neal.
Musicians John Prine, Toots Hibbert, Jerry Jeff Walker, Johnny Nash, Little Richard, Ennio Morricone (composer), Spencer Davis, McCoy Tyner, Buddy Cage (pedal steel guitarist who replaced Jerry Garcia in The New Riders of the Purple Sage), Joseph Shabalala (Ladysmith Black Mambazo), Ellis Marsalis (jazz pianist and father of Branford and Wynton), Peter Green, Charley Pride, Tony Rice.
Poet, priest, revolutionary (and personal hero) Ernesto Cardenal (former Nicaraguan Minister of Culture).
Actors Diana Rigg (The Avengers), Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther, 42), Carl Reiner (also writer, director), Ken Osmond (Eddie Haskell from “Leave it to Beaver”), Jerry Stiller (half of Stiller and Meara). Max von Sydow (many Ingmar Bergman films), Kirk Douglas, Terry Jones (of Monty Python’s Flying Circus), Buck Henry (also screenwriter). Writer-Director Stuart Gordon.
Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Shirley Abrahamson (WI Supreme Court), Congressman John Lewis
Engineers Takuo Aoyagi (inventor of the pulse oximeter), Larry Tesler (a key developer of the Graphical User Interface – if you’ve used the commands cut/copy/paste, thank him), Bill English (inventor of the mouse), computer scientist Deborah Washington Brown (a pioneer in speech recognition), who left the New England Conservatory of Music and earned a doctorate in Computer Science at Harvard.
Journalist Jim Lehrer
345,000 (CDC) dead from COVID-19 in the US, 1,816,000 worldwide (Johns Hopkins)(rounded to nearest 1000 for ease of reading); 19% of deaths are in the US, which has 4% of the world’s population; for portion of population dead, US is 4th worst. Figures as of 12/31/2020
Aaron Danielson (killed during “Trump Cruise” rally)
Ahmaud Arbery (killed for jogging while Black)
Anthony Huber (killed during rally after Jacob Blake shooting)
Breonna Taylor (killed by police for sleeping in her bed)
Garrett Foster (killed during rally to protest George Floyd killing)
George Floyd (killed by police while lying on the pavement)
James Scurlock (killed during rally to protest George Floyd killing)
Joesph Rosenbaum (killed during rally after Jacob Blake shooting)
Michael Forest Reinoehl (killed by Federal agents; an extra-judicial execution that Donald Trump praised as “retribution”.)
Rayshard Brooks (killed by police for falling asleep in a drive-through lane)
1066 people have been killed by police in 2020 (as of 12/15/2020). According to the Guardian, 25 people were killed during protests or other incidents linked to political unrest (as of 10/31/2020). I have not located all of the names.
This is an entirely subjective list of losses for the year. Your list may vary.
I met Ernesto Cardenal during the US tour to promote his newly-released epic poem “Cántico Cósmico” (“Cosmic Canticle”), a poem that begins:
“In the beginning, there was nothing
no space
no time.
The entire universe concentrated
in the space of the nucleus of a single atom,
and before even less,
much less than a proton,
and before still less, an infinitely dense mathematical point.
And there was the Big Bang.”
(translation by Half-fast Cycling Club)
The history of the universe in 581 pages of verse – but think for a moment – this is a poem by a Roman Catholic priest, who does not say that in the beginning, god created the universe in 6 days.
Before he entered the priesthood he wrote a book of epigrams (one of my favorites is at this link), mostly love poems. After he became a priest he wrote a book of psalms, many of them political. In Psalm 18, – Las galaxias cantan la gloria de Dios – (“The galaxies sing the glory of God”), he puts us in context – an ordinary planet circling an average sort of star which orbits through the constellation Sagitarius. A universe in whose vast, empty spaces “hay campos magnéticos que cantan en nuestros radio-telescopios” (“magnetic fields sing to our radio telescopes”). Galaxies speak in a language without words, but not inaudibly, in a universe containing billions of galaxies spinning like carousels or musical spinning tops.
In psalm 21 ¿Por qué me has abandonado? (“Why have you abandoned me?”) he sings of people being tortured, straitjacketed, gassed naked (with their clothes given away), tattooed with numbers, abandoned in nursing homes and hospital contagious disease wings, drowning in oxygen tents, crying in police stations; but he ends with “the poor will have a banquet/our people will have a grand celebration/for the birth of a new people”.
Added to the lexicon:
*contactless
*contact tracing
*coronavirus
*COVID-19
*face covering
*PAPR
*PPE
*social distancing
The good news: With snow in the forecast, I put the studded tires on my bike over the weekend. On the ride home from work Tuesday I saw a young bald eagle. It landed in a tree near me. I stopped to take a picture but it was camera shy and flew off into the woods. On Wednesday, with 8 inches of new snow, I rode in on empty streets, arriving at work at 5:35 AM. I had to be in early to cover for someone who couldn’t make it in because of the snow and to prepare for a long day covering for the other folks who wouldn’t be able to drive in because of the snow. I rode only on bus routes since they were already plowed (and the bike paths and side streets weren’t). I had the streets to myself. I allowed extra time to get in but it actually took only about five minutes longer than usual. On the way home I saw a flock of tundra swans swimming near shore.
New Year, New Ride
I started the year out with a morning ride around the lake, via the scenic route so it ended up about 1 mile per degree (F) of temperature; or about 20 miles. I rode past the house where I was born, past the house whose front yard I once had to crawl up after delivering their newspaper (due to ice), past the state capitol. The lake house (second picture) used to have a house in front of it, so the house you see in this picture was not visible from the street. By the time I took the first sip from the water bottle, it was nearly frozen. I’ve been home for 20 minutes and still waiting for it to thaw.
I had a difference of opinion with the rehab hospital to which we used to send a lot of patients. I found out another local hospital gave $500 bonuses to all of their employees; $700 to those who care for COVID-19 patients. Needless to say, we did not get said bonuses. Then a patient ruined my day by saying, “It’s obvious to me that you love your work.” Yeah, I had to admit that I love what I do during the time that I am face-to-face with patients. So far, that has sustained me. But, as I left work on the last day of the year, I told my co-workers, “Maybe I’ll see you Tuesday” after playing this for our management.
They didn’t hear it, as they are working from home.
“We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy June 11, 1962
“The objective fact is I believe Trump probably did actually carry Georgia. …” Newt Gingrich December 7, 2020
(Just to clarify: While it may be an objective fact that he believes something, his belief is not an objective fact. But really, even that he believes it is not an objective fact. It is at best empirical [“depending on experience or observation alone, without using scientific method or theory”] and certainly not objective [“intent upon or dealing with things external to the mind rather than with thoughts or feelings”]. We only know he believes it because he tells us he does, or because we observe him to act as though he does.
“Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1746, I declare and verify under plenty of perjury that the facts contained in the foregoing Verified Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief are true and correct.” (emphasis added.) L. Lin Wood, December 18, 2020 (From a court filing seeking to declare Georgia’s Senate runoff election unconstitutional and seeking changes in procedures. Wood used the same arguments to attempt to throw out Georgia’s presidential election results. He claimed further that Donald Trump won 70% of the US votes.)
And speaking of not letting the door hit you…
www.facebook.com/johnrandallanthony.taraborrelli/videos/4143894078958832
Half-fast Cycling Club 