A Great American Victory

 

USA election 2024 was a great American victory ... for sexism, racism, misogyny, hate, and greed.

Portland, OR

November 7, 2024

Joe's Last Genius Political Move: The Rope-a-Dope!

 In 1974, Muhammed Ali had one of his most epic and well-known bouts (at least to those of us who are old enough to remember) known as The Rumble in the Jungle. In it, Ali defied all convention and boxing gospel by executing a completely novel and totally unexpected strategy. George Forman, a devastating "power puncher" was a 4-1 favorite, and boxing experts posited that Ali's only chance was to leverage his superior speed and reach, and very early in the fight. Ali came out throwing nothing but right-hand punches, without the standard left-hand lead, immediately throwing Foreman off his game. Then in Round 2, Ali shocked the boxing world with a totally new tactic: he backed up and leaned against the ropes, protecting his face with his gloves and his ribs with his forearms and elbows, and taunted Foreman to hit him with body blows. Foreman obliged, and for several rounds he ineffectually pounded away at Ali, who was passive 90% of the time. What Foreman did not know was that for months Ali had been strengthening his abs until they were like concrete, and sparring for hundreds of rounds letting his sparring partners pound his exposed middle. Then, in the eigth round, with Foreman moving slowly and punching weakly, completely worn out from the heavy punching, Ali sprang from the ropes and loosed a barrage of lightnig-quick blows, culminating in a five-punch combination that ended with a devastating left hook that put Foreman on the mat and ended the fight.

The point of all this is that a successful combatant must know the difference between strategy and tactics, whether the contest is in sports, politics, or even the negotiation of purchase prices, as in my career. Ali's strategy was to let Foreman burn himself out so he would not be so dangerous when Ali made his move. His tactics were to come out with unconventional sequences, followed by the passive tactic he dubbed the "Rope-a-Dope".

Joe Biden expertly executed the modern political version. Within ten days after his disastrous debate performance, it was clear to him and his inner circle that his bid for reelection was over. The dilemma was: How to gracefully exit the campaign while simultaneously weakening the Republican position, not strengthening it? With the Republican National Convention imminent, his strategy was to make sure that the Republicans would focus soley on Biden and his damaged status in his party. Trump and the Republican party took this bait immediately, just like Foreman in 1974. Joe's tactic was simple: shout to the rooftops that "I'm not going anywhere". He received an added boost from the sheep-like news pundits, who breathlessly reported both Biden's intransigence and his party being in "panic mode" 24/7. 

The results at the RNC were better than the Democrats could possibly have hoped. What was billed as the "unity convention", turned out to be, as the honest and insightful David Axelrod dubbed it, the "surrender convention." The embarrasingly fawning speaches of Trump's former harshest critics (Nikki Haley, Ron DiSantis, Ted Cruz, etc.), the WWF/UFC final night, and the arrogant and hubris-inspired absurdly awful pick of J.D. Vance for VP were a democrat's dream. (In Vance's case, he offers absolutely no Geographic or demographic aid to the campaign, and is highly likely to cost Trump tens of thousands (if not millions) of women and independent voters.)

The best evidence of this success is the reaction of Trump himself following Biden's exit from the race. Not only did he complain, but he floated the crazy notion that the Republicans were owed a "refund" for all the cash they burned slamming Biden, since the Dems "knew all along" that Biden would exit. The consummate con man knew that he had been conned.

Joe, Ali would be proud.

Dresden, Saxony, Germany

July 27, 2024

Welcome to Bizzaro World!

There have been more mass shootings than days so far in this crazy year; gunmen are threatening our current and second to last presidents; a catastrophic hurricane season is predicted; the west is baking, the east has been under water, and there's a war going on in Europe, the biggest since WWII, which amazingly is being fought more like WWI than a war of modern armies. We're talking artillery, mines, and trench warfare. All that's missing is the mustard gas used at Ypres in 1915, and there may be even more hideous weapons to come in Ukraine.

Oh, and Lahaina burned to the ground.

But if all this doesn't sound that crazy, you need look no further than the current state of the Republican party, which was once affectionately known as the Grand Old Party. No more. Take a quick look at the morons and clowns that the "GOP" has elected to our nation's congress. You know them: Jim Jordan, Rand Paul, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, and on and on. That's without even mentioning the two mental giants Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos, who together make Sarah Palin look like Albert Einstein. Meanwhile, Fox News anchors seem contractually obligated to refer to something called the "Biden Crime Family" at least once every eleven minutes, portraying our current president in one minute as a doddering old fool who literally doesn't know where he is, and labeling him a criminal mastermind in the next. (Pro tip: He can't be both.)

Still not convinced? Well, yes, welcome to Bizzaro World!

Republican voters are hurtling towards nominating for president a twice impeached, four times indicted convicted sexual predator to run for our nation's highest office. Far more skilled pundits than I will detail his countless sins, high crimes and misdemeaners, and malignant narcicism and sociopathy, so I won't even try. What I will try to do, and the purpose of this post, is to alert you to the publicly stated blueprint for a second Trump presidency. 

It's called Agenda 47, and, as usual, Trump says the quiet part out loud.

What is included in this plan? Chauncey Devega at Salon.com has said it best in an excellent article called "Be Very Afraid: Trump's Agenda 47 Is No Joke."

"Agenda 47 would consist of an end to birthright citizenship, further criminalizing transgender people and the LGBTQI community more broadly, expanding the thought crime and other censorship laws to end the teaching of "critical race theory" and to defeat "Woke" and "Black Lives Matter", attacking academic freedom and replacing it with "patriot education", implementing a national stop and frisk law, pardoning the Jan. 6 terrorists, putting homeless people in camps or some other designated area under threat of arrest, building high tech "freedom cities", ending the professional civil service and replacing it with right-wing political appointees and other such partisan agents, gutting the Department of Justice and other parts of the government that opposed Trump's attacks on democracy and the rule of law, executing drug dealers, starting a trade war with China, and making "peace" with Vladimir Putin by withdrawing support for the Ukrainian people and their freedom struggle. In many ways, Agenda 47 is a continuation of the fascist and other authoritarian policies Trump put in place during his first regime but now made even more extreme and cruel." 

And if any or all of this appeals to you as the right direction for our country, then you and I are done. No more whatabout-ism, both-sides-ism, or any other false equivalencies, period. It is often said that we should always be voting for something rather than against something, but that doesn't apply here. Even if you love Trump and hate everything the democrats say and do, you must vote against this cruel and evil plan to dismantle the diverse democratic Republic that we have worked so hard to slowly build.

Portland, OR

August 26, 2023 

A Dispatch From Dresden

 

First off, I’d like to apologize for the long, long lag time since my last posts. The last eight or nine months have been quite challenging for me in a number of ways, but I’m back with A Dispatch From Dresden!

 

As many of you know, for six out of the last seven years I have traveled to Germany for a month of German language and culture classes at the Goethe Institue in Munich (Europe was closed in fall 2020). When I learned last year that the Munich branch had closed its Gasthaus, the only reasonably-priced option for a month’s stay, and also discontinued the four-week intensive course, I started looking for alternatives. I learned that not only did the Dresden school still have the four-week option, but they had also opened a brand new Gasthaus in 2021.

 

So here I am, exactly halfway through my month-long visit to the beautiful city of Dresden.

 

Several things have come together over these last two weeks that are pretty darn incredible. Before I left for Germany, I picked up the newly-released, highly-rated 800+ page biography of Vladimir Putin, penned by the acclaimed biographer Philip Short. It is unique in that it not only traces Putin’s life from birth, but also stretches all the way to the present, including the Ukraine invasion and war. Early last week I got to the part where Putin, a veteran KGB officer by that point, is sent to Dresden to be second in command to the KGB station chief, who traveled frequently, leaving Putin in charge most of the time. The descriptions of his life in Dresden with his young family and his KGB and East German Stasi colleagues was made all the more interesting by my actually being here in Dresden. Short even lists some of the addresses, including that of the KGB headquarters at Angelikastraße 4, in an upscale residential neighborhood near the river Elbe called Waldschlosschen (“Little Castle in the Woods”). It was an historic mansion “leased” – free of charge – to the Soviet government from the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or communist East Germany). I Google Mapped the address and discovered that it was about 20 minutes by bus from my Gasthaus, so on a very rainy Tuesday after class I went to have a look. It is pictured below.

There is a legendary story, likely much exaggerated according to Short, of Putin and an armed Soviet soldier walking out to the front courtyard and confronting East German protesters who had just received the news of the fall of the Berlin wall. According to the tale, Putin calmly told them that Angelikastraße 4 was Soviet military territory and that the Soviet occupants had nothing to do with the politics of the DDR. The first part was true, but the second was a preposterous lie, one worthy of his pal The Donald many years later. To stand in these historic locales has been an experience I will not soon forget, and it has added incredible depth to my understanding of the biography.

 

Along the same lines, all of the above took place at the same time Mikhail Gorbachev was initiating Glasnost (Openness) and Perestroika (Restructuring), which led to Gorbachev’s ouster and the eventual collapse of the Soviet system. Over a hundred pages of the biography are dedicated to this period, with great insights into Putin’s mixed and sometimes contradictory feelings about those strange times for Russia. Again, to be here while reading all of this is pretty mind-blowing, not to mention that the Gorbachev story is all over the press due to his very recent death.

 

But the most fascinating part of my week was at its end.

 

Last Friday night I was celebrating the completion of my first week of classes at Augustiner am Frauenkirche with a few Vollbier Hell’s and ein halbes Bauernhendl (half a free-range chicken). The common outdoor tables filled up quickly, and I was at a table for 10, with two couples at one end and yours truly on the far corner. A German gent approached and asked if the seat across from me was free. Of course I welcomed him, and he ordered a beer.

 

After a few minutes, I figured I’d try to start a conversation in German, as I typically do. He seemed around my age. To break the ice, I asked him if he lived in Dresden. He said yes, he lived in an apartment just a few blocks away in the Altstadt. What happened next was one of the most incredible conversations I have ever had, and it was so relevant to everything you have already read in this post as to be almost scary.

 

We went through all the normal stuff: where I was from; why I was speaking German, etc. Then he very earnestly apologized for speaking only a few words of English, when pretty much everyone younger learned English starting in grade school. We spoke for well over an hour, which was fairly challenging for me as it was all in German, but we shared our life stories, his much more than mine. Walter was born within six months of me in 1952, in a small town called Cottbus, between Berlin and Dresden and close to the Polish border, deep in the former East Germany. He told me that when he was in school, English was a forbidden language; they were taught Russian. The look of pain in his eyes when he recounted his youth and teen years, the citizens’ debilitating fear of and hatred for the Stasi, the incentives to rat out your neighbors and even family members for non-communist statements and thoughts. At this point I wasn’t sure I had understood correctly; I said, “Did you say non-communist thoughts?” He said yes, exactly.

 

He worked as a senior technician on the electrical power grid in East Germany, and after the German reunification in 1990 he worked to upgrade the grid to Western standards until his retirement five years ago. He was actually working on a project in East Berlin on November 9, 1989, when the Berlin wall fell.

 

It was a very emotional conversation. Towards the end I told him I felt guilty for the life I have led in the west, understanding until now only in an intellectual sense what the Iron Curtain, the Cold War, and the Soviet Empire actually forced regular folks of my age to endure. He responded without hesitation. He said he would not be sitting in the beautiful square looking at the rebuilt and restored Frauenkirche if it were not for the United States. I told him that I had read a great deal about Dresden’s history, including the amazing story of the Frauenkirche, the international fundraising for which was instigated by former RAF and USAF flyers, most in their late eighties or nineties, who had bombed German cities. He continued: “As a people, we were defeated, we were tired, and we were starving. Any other victor would have occupied Germany, or at least left it to perish, but the USA rebuilt not only Germany, but all of Europe, with their own money, and Europe would otherwise be completely different today.” We concluded our conversation on this high note, and parted with smiles and mutual best wishes.

 

This conversation has awakened me to the human costs of war and tyranny. I will never forget looking into Walter’s eyes as he related the realities of life in the former DDR.

 

 

Dresden, Saxony, Germany

September 11, 2022

 

 

 

Three Takeaways From Three Weeks In Germany

Those who know me are keenly aware of my admiration for Germany’s society and culture. I have spent a month in Germany studying the language and culture at the Goethe Institute in Munich for six of the past seven years. You will read a lot of high praise in the following post, but I am not intending to present modern-day Germany as some kind of utopia; it most certainly is not. The country is deeply divided over Germany’s role in the EU, immigration, and other issues, and like most modern democracies is experiencing a troubling rise in radical far-right political movements. So much for the negatives …

 

1. Germany is controlling Covid 19, including the Delta variant. 

 

Upon my arrival in Munich in mid-September, the first thing I noticed was that 100% of the people in the airport and on the S-Bahn train into the city were wearing masks. In Germany, cloth masks don’t count; everyone had either a surgical mask or the EU equivalent of a KN-95. When I checked in to my hotel, the first request after my passport was for proof of full vaccination. I had the CDC card ready, so I had no issue, but I did ask what they did if a customer checking in did not have this proof. The response was that they had a testing facility on site with complimentary rapid testing.

 

My traditional first stop after check-in and a shower is always Zum Augustiner, an old traditional Bierstube on the pedestrian street between Carlsplatz and Marienplatz. There I enjoy my first glass of Augustiner Vollbier Hell, the most popular beer in Munich, which is not exported outside of Bavaria and is easily the best beer I have ever tasted. Arriving at the front door, I instantly realized that things were different. First, proof of full vaccination was required to get in the door. Then you were given a contact tracing card, upon which you entered your table number, arrival time, phone number, and address in Germany. Over the following weeks I came to learn that this was the policy everywhere in Munich, with no exceptions, encompassing restaurants, beer halls, outdoor beer gardens, clubs, museums, and hotels. You literally could not dine in at McDonalds without proof of vaccination.

 

I was surprised to learn that around 18% of adult Germans say they will never get the vaccination. However, in exercising that freedom of choice, they accept that they can not participate in virtually any public activity. With that laser focus on mediation measures, you would think that Covid was rampant in Munich. Not so. Last week in the USA, the area with the highest Covid positivity rate was Alaska, with 87 positives per 100,000 residents per day. In greater Munich, population 1.6M, the positivity rate per 100,000 residents was 2 per week. Pop-up rapid testing sites were everywhere, including all department stores, and all were free of charge. As a country of 83 million people, Germany has roughly the same number of daily new Covid infections and death as my home state of Oregon, population 4.6 million.

 

2. Germany is serious about battling climate change through conservation. 

 

Germany has long had one of the most far-reaching and successful recycling programs, in addition to near universal power-conservation technologies. Virtually every apartment bulding and hotel has motion-activated hallway lighting. Escalators almost never run continuously; they too are motion-activated except in the busiest locations. Germany has by far the most privately generated solar power of any EU country, with the power companies required to purchase surplus privately-generated electricity at market rates.

 

In the last few years, the country has made a real commitment to a cultural change focused on conservation, rather than the lip service that many industrialized countries pass off as environmental awareness. Germany has a program called Re: Imagine, in which recycling is the last element rather than the first. The signage is all over the public spaces like train stations, and reads: Re: Imagine: Re: Think, Re: Duce, Re: Use, Re: Cycle. The goal is nothing short of changing the way the German society looks at consumption and conservation of any and all resources. 

 

3. Oktoberfest 2021 was canceled. Somebody forgot to tell the Bavarians.

 

Unbeknownst to me, my first Saturday in Munich would have been the first day of Oktoberfest. Since the weather that day was decidedly not typical Munch in September (74F and sunny), I canceled my reservation at a dine-in restaurant and headed to the Augustiner Keller Biergarten, the second biggest beer garden in the world with just under 5,000 seats. As I approached the entrance (with vaccination check and contact tracing card, naturally) I saw the traditional horse-drawn wagon bringing in the wooden barrels of Oktoberfest beer, just like the big parade to d’Wiesn (Theresienwiese, the Oktoberfest grounds.) Inside, the place was completely full; it took me about 15 minutes to find a table with only two occupants, who graciously welcomed me to their table. All of the standard Oktoberfest shenanigans were on full display, including guys (and ladies) standing on their table a chugging an entire Maß (liter mug) of beer in one drink, hundreds of folks singing traditional Bavarian drinking songs at the top of their lungs, and drinking lots of beer. The only thing missing was the tables full of noisy, shit-faced Italians and roving bands of crazy Aussies.

 

Over the next three weeks, this scene was played out in every beer hall and beer garden I frequented. At the traditional Oktoberfest, every “tent” has a band that plays all day and evening every day. These bands were re-purposed to all of the beer brand’s indoor and outdoor halls and gardens, so there was traditional Bavarian music literally everywhere daily.

October 13, 2021

Portland, OR

The Masks of Portland

 

Greeting from the "anarchist jurisdiction" of Portland, OR. Here's a sampling of the 99% of our folks who wear masks, and the creative ways they match their clothing and/or send a message ...

Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles

Kenneth Womack is arguably the premier Beatles scholar on the planet, having written no fewer than nine books on the Fab Four, including an exhaustive two-volume biography of the Beatles’ legendary producer, George Martin. I do not use the word “scholar” lightly. Womack’s books are extensively researched, and are attributed with literally hundreds of detailed footnotes. He also writes for the on line magazine Salon.com, typically on the anniversaries of an album release or other noteworthy event in Beatles history. It was at the end of one of these, an article celebrating the anniversary of the Beatles November 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, that his two latest Beatles books were mentioned. The title of the first intrigued me: Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles.

 

Abbey Road has long been my favorite Beatles album, and I would have likely read it anyway, but it was the “Solid State” that really got my attention. From the book I learned that before Abbey Road, all of the Beatles albums were recorded on a 4-track tape recorder, with the genius George Martin creating the intricate multi-instrumental and vocal stylings of albums like Sgt. Pepper using track bouncing and countless other innovative studio tricks. Abbey Road Studios was seriously behind the times in studio mixing and recording technology, so in the months before the Beatles started working on Abbey Road, they had upgraded to a more modern 8-track recorder. This also necessitated a new mixing console, as the one they had used for years was a custom-built deck that had only four outputs, whereas the new recorder would require eight. In designing the new mixing board, the engineers decided to use all transistors in the board’s electronics, rather than the vacuum tubes (“valves” in Brit-speak) that were in the old board. This gave the recordings a very different sound, with tighter, deeper bass notes and far less distortion, lending the music a more open, clear tonality. The change is starkly apparent from the opening notes of Come Together on side one.

 

When Abbey Road was released, it did not meet with universal praise. Quite the contrary. Many reviewers panned it, not only because they didn’t like the song compositions (they didn’t) but because of the sound of the recording. “There's just something odd about the sound of this record” opined one reviewer, while another put it even more directly: “It just doesn’t sound like the Beatles.” It was the sound of the new fully transistorized (Sold State) mixing console.

 

Womack’s Abbey Road book is a fascinating song-by-song look at the Beatles creative process on this, their final effort. They went to sometimes astonishing lengths to achieve perfection, or as close to it as possible. There are too many examples to list here (read the book!), but they include Paul spending two full weeks getting the vocal to Maxwell’s Silver Hammer to his satisfaction, George re-recording his overdubbed multiple guitar parts on Here Comes the Sun over fifty times, and the literal weeks of rehearsal of the three-part harmonies that grace the famous side-two medley, painstaking taught by George Martin.

 

The over 100 pages devoted to a detailed description of the recording and assembling of that famous medley are, to me, the most interesting of the book. I vowed not to listen to Abbey Road until I had finished reading Solid State, and when I finally put it on the stereo I was simply blown away. I immediately listened to it a second time, through very good headphones, and was doubly impressed.

 

Read this fantastic book, and put on Abbey Road. You’ll never hear it the same way again.

March 18, 2021

Portland, OR