Columns
SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces
Getting to Know God's Bisexual Critters
One wonders how a Bible-thumping, Hetero-Christian evangelist would react to this news: Scientists have discovered that the Creator has created a thriving community of animals that are bilateral gynandromorphs. Or, in layman's terms: bisexual!
From Texas to Pennsylvania, birdwatchers have been bewitched by sightings of Northern Cardinals whose feathered forms are, as LiveScience describes them, "divided down the middle like a winged black-and-white-cookie"—but, in this case, a manly scarlet on one side and a lady-like taupe on the other.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology researchers assured the National Geographic that these "half-siders" are not just a cardinal rule: they exist in many species of birds, crustaceans and butterflies. (Yes, there are bisexual crabs in Chesapeake Bay.)
Gynandromophism is not just a superficial divide. As Virginia Institute of Marine Science geneticist Kimberly Reese explained to the New York Times, the bird's brain would also be "half male" and "half female." These birds have been seen to court but, with only a half-brain, the birds lack the male's ability to sing. On the other hand, the bisexual budgies could still produce an egg, as long as the bird's "left ovary" remains functional.
More Weird Bird News
The previous item came my way courtesy of NPR's Bird Note broadcasts. Here are two more.
Pigeons: Pigeons live in a different time zone! Evolution has helped pigeons avoid predators and spot tasty insects by endowing them with brains that move several times faster than a mammal's brain. As a Bird Note broadcast explains: a Big Screen car chase that would leave a human audience overwhelmed, would bore a bird. To a pigeon, the famous chase scene from Bullitt would look "more like a slideshow or a PowerPoint."
If you think standing in line outside Trader Joe's tries your patience, be thankful you're not a pigeon. For you, it's a ten-minute wait. For a pigeon, it could seem like an hour.
Seagulls: Seagulls slake their thirst with seawater and excrete the salt through their eyes! Like other oceanic birdlife, seagulls don't enjoy the luxury of fresh lake water, so their skulls have evolved to include "a pair of grooves" that channel their highly salinated blood to "salt glands" located above their eyes. The glands cleanse the blood and the concentrated salt is then excreted through the nostrils and runs back down the bird's beak.
The next time you see a seagull, watch when it shakes its beak and look for the droplets of saltwater being flung back into the ocean.
Contretemps at the Checkout Counter
An exchange overheard at the Walgreens in North Berkeley. A customer who had picked up a bottle of White-out was disputing the $2.99 price that was appeared on the cash register.
"The sign said '50% off'!" he protested. "I was expecting to pay $1.50."
"No," said the clerk. "Fifty percent off means if you buy two you get one free!"
"You mean, if I go back and pick up a second bottle, I get the second bottle free? That would be 50% off!"
"No,' said the clerk. "If you pay for two bottles, you get a third one free!"
"But that would only be 33% off!" the customer objected.
"Well, I don't set the prices," the clerk shrugged.
"Look, this is a seven-ounce bottle! That's 43 cents an ounce!" the customer bristled. "This is white-out, not cologne!"
"That will be $3.37 with tax," said the clerk.
Why Do Pandemic-Emptied Streets Lead to More High-Speed Crashes?
Police have been reporting increasing numbers of road accidents caused by speeding. Why so? Here's a two-part theory. (1) With fewer cars on the road, the remaining vehicles simply move faster (2) the mere sight of an open road expanding up ahead with no cars in sight incites a subconscious desire to hit the gas.
And what is the source for this seemingly irresistible desire?
Theory 3: subliminal reinforcement caused by watching endless car ads on TV. Have you noticed? These all involve scenes of a single automobile racing at high speeds down a traffic-free desert highway or curling around a mountain road with nary another vehicle in sight.
A good way to discover a nation's shortcomings is to see what imagery crops up in its mass-advertising campaigns. Cars used to be marketed using sexual messaging appealing mainly to men. Today, the subliminal message is: "cars grant freedom and independence." And that explains why we have a vehicle known as the Ford Escape.
Department of Lame Spam Mail
"You're account is unpaid. Your service is about to be shut off." That's the universal template for a common spam attack. Usually these spans are easy to spot. Sometimes, it's just too easy.
Case in point: I recently noticed an email message from "Warning
The flawed flim-flam proceeded to make various threats of dire consequences if I failed to pay "Our Last And Final Notice." That was the second tip-off in this failed fleece: Every word in the seven-paragraph letter was uppercased—not just the nouns and verbs but every conjunction and participle as well. In the world of spaming, that counts as a capital offense.
Conned by Condescension?
Another email annoyance: uninvited political solicitations that rely on overblown "lures" and "hooks" in subject lines. Examples: "URGENT," "SHOCKING," "HORRIBLE NEWS," and "We need you to sign this."
And increasingly, desperate online solicitors appear to be resorting to personal shaming to gain attention. A group called Stop Republicans, recently fired off a message from "LISTEN TO PRESIDENT OBAMA" with this finger-pointing, judgmental Subject Line: "Barack Obama is so disappointed in you, Gar."
What had I done to distress Barack? I'd failed to sign Stop Republican's petition in support of mail-in ballots for the November election.
At least Stop Republicans had some good talking points: "Three states (Oregon, Washington, and Colorado) conduct EVERY election by mail!" and "Voting by mail brings an END to long lines, crowded polling places, and chaotic election-day issues. Republican voter suppression can’t affect the mail!"
If you'd like to sign a Vote-by-Mail petition that doesn't require that you make a financial donation, here's a link to an Action Network petition that asks state governments to authorize vote-by-mail ballots for the November election.
A Unifying, All-American Campaign: Don't Let Trump Destroy the Post Office
With Elizabeth Warren out of the presidential race and Bernie Sanders endorsing Joe Biden—but gamely soldiering on in hopes of winning at least 25% of the primary votes and thereby improving his leverage on "greening" the Democrats 2020 campaign platform—it's time to look for new avenues to secure popular support. Clearly, the pandemic has exposed the failure of America's employer-based, privatized healthcare system (prompting loud cries of "Medicare For All!") but there's another campaign that could really rally and galvanize both the progressive electorate and conservative voters alike. The slogan for this new boundary-breaching campaign is simple: Save The Post Office!
There is only one institution in this nation that enjoys levels of affection and loyalty that's on par with the military and that's the US Post Office. Actually, given the growing calls to end "forever wars" and curtail wasteful, unaudited, and constantly increasing Pentagon spending, it could be argued that the Post Office outranks the Military as America's most beloved governmental institution. Not everyone likes the Military Industrial Complex but everybody loves the Post Office.
And yet, Donald Trump is determined to destroy it.
Republicans have worked for years to cripple the USPS—in hopes of privatizing the Constitutionally enshrined services of America's postal carriers. Unlike any other government service, the USPS has been required to "pre-pay" its employees retirement funds decades into the future. And now, the Covid-19 pandemic has cut further into USPS revenues.
But the biggest threat is Trump. Resident Trump (not a typo) has ordered cuts in the USPS budget. He opposed granting additional support to the USPS in the multi-trillion-dollar Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.
It's no mystery why Trump wants to kill the USPS. With the Democrats calling for national voting-by-mail, Trump has openly confessed (on Fox News, no less) that allowing more people to vote in November's presidential election would virtually assure that "You'd never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
So, Joe? Let's make this a keynote campaign issue: "Save the Post Office! Vote by Mail! Protect Democracy!"
But we've got no time to lose. If the Dems fail to get funding for the USPS into the next bailout bill—or, if Trump and his GOP enablers block it in the Senate—many are predicting that this cherished 228-year-old institution could run out of money by this June. If this happens, even if every state in the Union approved Vote-by-Mail legislation, there wouldn't be an army of "trusted couriers" to deliver the ballots.
And that would suit Trump just fine.
There are many organizations with Pro-PO petitions to sign and actions you can take. Here are a few: MoveOn.org, VoteVets.org, Daily Kos, Save the Post Office.
Do it for Ben Franklin; Do it for John Prine, "The Singing Mailman"; Do it for Mr. McFeely.
Did You Hear This One?
While Democratic congressmembers were busy trying to include an "independent oversight" provision in the massive pandemic relief bill, a last-minute addition to the 880-page bill was mysteriously inserted to ensure what the Daily Kos called "another end-run around oversight and accountability." The stealth amendment applied to the Federal Reserve's $450 corporate bailout bill and allowed the Fed to craft it's billion-dollar bailouts in secret, exempting the Fed from "its long-standing rule that it has to give at least one day's notice before it meets to decide who's getting billions in taxpayer dollars and from having to keep records about these decisions."
Politico noted that it was unclear who was behind the last-minute change that exempted the Fed from oversight but suggested the culprits might have been "sympathetic senators" working to advance Trump's agenda. The Daily Kos went a bit further, suggesting that the interlopers were most likely the same "McConnell Republicans who tried to railroad through $500 billion in giveaways to corporations while tossing $1,200 in one-time cash payments to the plebes."
AOC Is AOK!
Mess with Miss Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at your own risk. That's a lesson Fox News henchwoman and commentator Laura Ingraham was offered after she attacked AOC for linking disproportionate COVID-19 deaths of low-income Americans to racial injustice and social inequality. Ingraham, brandishing a weapon from Trump's toolbox, tossed an insult at the Democrat Congressmember, dismissing the former working-class bartender as "The Doctor of Mixology."
Instead of responding with a slur, AOC responded with historical fact, tweeting:
"Didn't you just put a doctor on your show who faked their employment at Lenox Hill hospital and touted a COVID 'treatment' that you tweeted & Twitter had to remove because a many may have died trying to self-administer it?
I'm sorry, why are you on TV again?"
Save the Appalachian Trail
Ever since the 2,200 mile-long Appalachian Trail was completed in the 1930s, it has become a landmark, a national treasure, and a bucket-list item for American hikers. But now the pro-oil/pollution-for-profit Trump administration wants to bisect the trail with an oil pipeline. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline would constitute a monumental environmental insult and the Democratic Conservation Alliance is one of the groups trying to stop it. Here's a link to the DCA's petition.
Bowled Over by Bold Assertions
On April 15, a political committee called Bold Democrats sent out an alarming message that stated: "House Republicans just tried to CONDEMN House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff. All because Schiff led the fight to impeach Trump! They’re terrified of him! But if Democrats ABANDON Adam, Trump could force him to resign! So we need 3O,OOO strong Democrats to sign on by tomorrow to stand with Adam Schiff! If you’re a good Democrat, you’ll sign now."
If you're a good Democrat, you might want to do a little research. Fact: A president cannot "force" a member of Congress to resign. In addition, I could find no evidence that Schiff is in any imminent danger. Trump has called for the Schiff to resign for "lying to Congress," but that was way back in September 2019 when the California Democrat was chairing the House hearings that lead to Trump's impeachment. As a good Democrat might put it, Bold Democrats are guilty of spreading a Bold-faced fib.
Press Tiring of Trump's Not-so-brief Briefings
The Daily Kos and more than a dozen activist organizations have endorsed a petition calling on America's news networks to stop live broadcasts of Donald Trump’s so-called "coronavirus press briefings." Several network television hosts (including MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and CNN’s Don Lemon) have joined the call to cease live-streaming of Trump’s self-promotional grandstanding.
In addition to his bluster and boasting, Trump often contradicts himself in the course of the event and, even worse, proffers misinformation that is not only wrong but potentially life-threatening. Trump’s dangerous falsehoods include claims that chloroquine—a drug used to treat malaria—had been approved by the FDA to treat COVID-19 (which was untrue and reportedly resulted in several deaths. Trump also suggested that shortages of protective gear was the result of hospital employees stealing medical supplies. And he continues to deny there were any advance warnings about the rising dangers of a spreading pandemic.
Trump Battles Reporters, Not the Pandemic
The release of a series of "Red Dawn" emails that circulated in the White House, reveal how determined Trump was to ignore the warning signs of imminent disaster.
CNN's Jake Tapper delivered an editorial in which he noted: "Trump is taking questions from reporters nearly every day, but that does not mean he's answering them."
Trump Now Attacking Fox News?
Fox & Friends has been Trump’s go-to place for ego-stroking since before the beginning. If he’s lost them, he’s really lost it. Well, guess what . . . .
Trump recently took offense at some criticism from Fox New's Chris Wallace, calling the son of famed TV newsman Mike Wallace, a "Mike Wallace wannabe" who was "even worse than Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Meet the Press . . . or the people over at Deface the Nation."
This prompted Jedediah Bila, weekend host of Fox & Friends to reply: "Enough with the 3rd grade name-calling. . . . Seriously. Enough."
As Daily Kos commentator Dan K put it: "When Fox starts admitting what everyone has always known, the bovine byproduct is definitely on a fanward trajectory."
Midnight in Washington
This short but powerful video from Eleven Films is close to scoring 10 million views.
