Don’s Random Thoughts

On our way to the Palo Alto Wine And Art Festival, Lou observed a man writing on the wall of the Whole Foods market. “Die Jews”. She decided to report him to the store manager while I kept an eye on him. This was easy, he went shopping in the market. He went directly into the bulk food area. I was a little concerned by that but he just got some cereals. The manager called the police who never came. The man finished his shopping, checked out and left. We watched him leave and the manager was outside looking at the wall, he knew what the man looked like because we had pointed him out. He asked the man about the graffiti and he said, I don’t have a pen. (other than the permanent marker I saw him place in his left shirt pocket).

Anyway, the real point of all this is that the police didn’t show up. The police headquarters is two blocks away. This is the real problem. The quality of the police in Palo Alto has deteriorated over the time we’ve lived here. When we got to the festival, three blocks away, there was no shortage of officers standing around. At least eight. Seems like one of them could have walked a few blocks, maybe even drive one of their illegally parked cars over?

This isn’t the only indicator. They also don’t write speeding tickets any more either. It used to be if you went over 30 mph you were assured of a ticket her, there are only three streets with speed limits over 25 mph in the city. Now 60 mph in the residential areas is the norm. Seems we’ve received too many lazy officers from San Jose.

They spend more time trying to be a big city department than being policemen. A few years ago, I attended an interdepartmental organizational meeting for the World Cup Soccer event here. I came away from that meeting worried about the capability of the Palo Alto Police. I have less respect for them today.

A few years ago, a local independent TV station (KTVU), which had the best news in the San Francisco bay area at that time, became a FOX affiliate, part of the (un)fair and (un)balanced network. I couldn’t trust their news any longer, even though up until then , they were fair and balanced, because they were now affiliated with the conservative propaganda network. For a while the contrast between their local news and the Fox news was about 180 degrees. Of course, they had to start using Fox content in their own news cast and Fox doesn’t produce news, only Republican propaganda. This is sad.

Three or four years ago, the local NBC affiliate (KRON) lost the affiliation because NBC wanted to own their station here. NBC bought the local San Jose ABC affiliate and converted it to NBC. KRON has tried to produce local programs to replace the network loss. They did a pretty good job, having the best newscasts in the area. There really isn’t anything on the networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Especially Fox, that’s worth watching, with the possible exception of CSI, so local production was refreshing.

With the big combination of the UPN and WB networks into the CW network, and with Fox trying to fill the leftovers with the new MyTv network, KRON has become the local MyTv affiliate. Bye, Bye, KRON.

What’s left. I’ve appreciated CBS as the only real “news” on the network TV. They have journalists who do seem to present impartial news. I am very worried that Katie Curic has become the news anchor there. Seems too much like it might become entertainment news rather than journalistic news. We’ll see. I do miss Dan Rather.

I really worry that the people of this country no longer recognize what news is. Anyone who watches Fox News and considers it news is lost. Fair and impartial is easy to recognize, provided you don’t just reset your analysis when the newscaster says “we’re fair and impartial.” Listen at what they say and what support they have for what they say to make that evaluation. Any true look reveals it for what it is, slanted, one sided propaganda.

True Americans, people who deserve the rights provided by this country, aren’t fooled by these fools.

Combine ownership of the “news” machines with ownership of the voting machines and I fear we are in for a very bad future not much different from the former USSR or current China.

I was watching the California Supreme Court in action. I think the process they use for appeals could be put to good use in criminal and civil trials. One of the things that makes me dislike our legal system is that jurors receive a sentence in excess of the defendants if convicted. The long trials and potential of sequestering for extended periods is an undue impact on jurors. Why can’t the presentation of facts and arguments to a jury be presented in the same fashion as to an appeals court. Have the prosecution and defense prepare their presentation to the jury with all the time consuming other court activity, or inactivity, that the jurors are supposed to “disregard” anyway, handled at the leisure of the court but not the jurors. Let the jurors just consider the facts. Then serving on a jury wouldn’t be such an impact to the lives of average people.

I think that, as relates to law, people should be able to marry whomever they want to. Unfortunately, the bigoted religious sort do not. The real problem here is again the convoluted nature of combining religion and law.
The solution is simple. Separate all legal rights from marriage. Let the religious folk copyright the use of the word “marriage”. Let gay folk copyright another word like “union”. Each only describes a form of couples joining into a common life together.
As to legal rights. each gets identical rights that they must enter into separately like any other legal partnership.
To be nice and simplify the conversion, grandfather all marriages into legal partnerships as well.
Why should anyone object to this as a solution, unless they are just bigots.

Here we go again. NASA hasn’t launched the shuttle for quite a while because the foam comes off the fuel tanks and breaks the tiles. And of course, yesterday, the foam was ready to fall off before launch and did come off in flight. So why the delay if they weren’t going to fix anything?
The solution is so simple. Duct Tape. For about $20 you could wrap the whole tank with duct tape and the problem would be solved. Just Ask Red Green or the American Duck Tape Council of Prairie Home Companion fame.

I am an agnostic, meaning, I do not know if there is a god.
I don’t understand how anyone can be either an atheist nor religious because either could only be absolute if they were omnipotent and they would therefore be a god themselves and contradict their belief.
It is my belief that the world would be better off without religion because most wars seem to be fought in the name of god.
I do believe in the root objective of Christianity, its golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That seems like a good rule and of benefit to all, and about the only rule needed.
I especially do not understand Islam. It is a religion developed 600 years after Christ and appears to be nothing more than a (very large) cult with little difference from any other religious sect like revival baptists or the religious right. Any religion that demands obedience to their one and only set of rules is a bad religion, and one that misses the meaning of the golden rule.
If there is a heaven and hell, there most definitely will be an awful lot of religious people in hell and not very many, at all, in heaven.
I’ll keep considering this.

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mohandas Gandhi 

I read other Blogs and one of my favorite is one done by Maria Langer. I stimbled across it and find the articles very interesting. She is a professional writer, mostly computer how to books for Apple computer software. I’m not too interested in that content since I’m a PC user. I find the web publishing information interesting, the fact she is a professional helicopter pilot interesting, and mostly I find myself in agreement with many of her politic views.
She recently posted a link to an article in Rolling Stone written by Robert F Kennedy Jr about the fraud in the presidential election of 2004, “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?”. It is a very well written article with good associated documentation. I find it amazing that this isn’t reported in the news, but, as Kennedy points out, the press actually contributed to the fraud.
It’s nice to have a blog where they do a good collection of topics of interest.

I was proud of the Dixie Chicks a few years ago when they had the courage to say “Just so you know, we’re ashamed President Bush is from Texas” or something like that. Any way, for some silly reason they said they were sorry for having made the statement?
Well, recently, Natalie, lead Dixie Chick, clarified her statement saying her statement was correct even though she apologized. Evidently their career was affected because of the statement. Isn’t that un-constitutional? When someone expresses their opinion about what their government should be doing, that’s a good thing. More people should, express their opinion, not propaganda recited from some right wing idiot who happens to have a radio or TV show. That is democracy at work. Haven’t seen too much of that recently.
So thanks Dixie Chicks!

A few years ago, I started watching CBS news because I was disgusted with the other “news” services. This was around the time of the inquisition of US Representative Gary Condit, accused of the murder of one of his interns by most of the rest of the news services. All except CBS evening news. It seems Dan Rather took the high road and wanted to see some reason to accuse him or not include it in the news. He was the only true journalist of the time that I saw and for that reason, I switched to CBS news. Needless to say, I was disappointed when, due the shenaigans of the Republicans in providing falsified but creditable documents to CBS news about Bush’s lack of military service, Rather ended up “retiring”. It was nice to see Bob Schieffer move in as interim anchor. Another good news man but only interim? Now Katie Couric will be anchor. Are they kidding? Not the same caliber. Hopefully she does continue the standard of reliable journalistic news, not entertainment news.
I visited Texas for a while recently and I confirmed that not all Texans are Bush like. Too many but not all. Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer are from Texas as well as the Dixie Chicks. Maybe there is hope.
When you watch or listen to “news”. Think about whether they are being true journalists or is the report being sensational and incomplete. Without reliable journalism, there isn’t much hope for exposing the truth about anything. Only the business interests will be served. Only profit, profit, profit. No truth, truth, truth.
I think the root cause of the disintegration of reliable news is the consolidation of many independent services into large corporate services. They provide the corporate messages not news.

We finally started the process to get our Passports. I hated to have to finally get one. I really haven’t wanted to go anywhere except Canada for our travels and now if we go there, we need the passport to get back in the US. Too bad things are always getting more complicated.
Unfortunately, once we have the passport, there will be less reason not to use it.
I still wonder why it is trusted more than a drivers license. Doesn’t seem even as sophisticated. Seems quite obsolete considering the advent of the computer. Should be just a credit card like thing that could be scanned with immediate connection to a nice database to confirm things like wants and warrants, confirm biometric information like finger print of iris scan. Also, why can’t it also be used as the driver license, credit card, etc, etc, all in one. I hate the bulge in the wallet. This would seem to also be of benefit in bring a complete stop to identity theft.
With all the money wasted on “homeland Security” since 9/11, there’s no reason why something like this couldn’t have been done and only a very small fraction of some of the ridiculous things the money has actually been spent on.
I don’t fly anymore. I thought the whole idea of flying was to save time. Now, that doesn’t seem to be at all true. Any trip of less than 500 miles can probably be made faster by surface modes of transportation. It seems like a good ID card and a little connectivity would be a lot of help there.
I wonder if we will ever do anything right?
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