Sunday Mixed Casserole

I want to pay my respects to the late Diane Feinstein. I think she was a brilliant Senator, just, even, centrist, pragmatic and fair. Did she hang on too long? Perhaps, but against the vast scale of her career, I will give her that, she was a giant and will be sorely missed in a Congress that has so few people of her stature, intellect and mettle.

I was touched by Mitch McConnell's warm and kind words about his late friend and colleague, there is way too little of that type of comity in today's Senate. Thirty years ago, people like Orrin Hatch, Ted Kennedy, Warren Rudman, Diane Feinstein, George Mitchell, William Cohen and John McCain worked together, irrespective of party.

We have way too little of that in today's polarized world. Haven't seen a bipartisan Congress since the Clinton years.

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Another giant recently lost was the Orioles magnificent third baseman Brooks Robinson. A perennial all star, 18 appearances, he set the standard for defensive third basemen.

We tip our caps to you Brooks. You and teammate Paul Blair defined your positions. And you could hit, too.

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Another person that has exited the stage was the Association's Terry Kirkman. The Association was derided in their time as being soft, much like The Carpenters and the Bee Gees but were in fact great musicians. 

I still get a kick out of their Smothers Brothers version of Along Comes Mary, which they were attacked for by none other than John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. 

I find it witty and inventive. And the Mamas and Papas shouldn't be calling anybody soft.

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Speaking of music, I hate the state of car stereo today. Ten years ago I could push a you connect button on the dashboard of my caravan, say "Beatles" and it would play Beatles music.

Or I could throw in a CD. I have about two thousand hours of Grateful Dead music on CD. No more cd's. Now I have to go through Apple Car Play or Android Auto.

These systems require a phone being plugged in, then a lapsed time while everything loads and it is pretty much a continual distraction. Couple that with its propensity for playing loud over a phone call and it can be hell.

I can't stand it.

In the hierarchy of tangible listening media I would say 8-tracks sounded the worst, cassettes were the biggest pain in the ass (who doesn't remember having to spool them with pens and wind them back) but cd's were ironclad and stable.

But it's a new world. An old guy was in front of me at FCB bank the other day and they said they could not access his account at the counter, he would have to go through the app on his phone. He told them that he had neither phone or computer and they said he was s.o.l. 

Something similar at the noodle restaurant, you want a menu you scan through your phone or you don't eat I guess. Kind of sucks.

Bring back CD's. On our computers too.

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I have been listening to BIN - the Black information Network on terrestrial radio. Excellent news source with a different perspective.

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You have to love this very capable good samaritan in Pecos, N.M. who stopped to help a pregnant cop getting violently attacked. Thank god he was there. Speaking of New Mexico how about the MAGA supporter in Española who shot another man in the chest for advocating for removal of the Onate statue.  

The 23 year old shooter is named Ryan Martinez. It is scary, from the Proud Boys down, how many young latinos seem to be going over to the dark side.

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On a happier note, Mary Perhacs sent me this the other day. 

Her late husband, the great artist and friend Les Perhacs, spent a lot of his career as an industrial and toy designer. 

I posted the picture of David McCallum the other day with the rifle, here is the "Thrush gun" Les designed as a young man at the Reuben Klamer Toylab.

That is a young Les in the picture.

I really miss him, I would photograph all his artwork for him.

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I love this YouTube video, tribal pakistanis eating cheesecake for the first time.

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I was reading the other day about a rapper who got ten years in the slam for shooting another rapper. Torey Lanez is going to do a long stretch for killing Megan thee Stallion. It seems like we hear more and more of these stories. List is long.

Now, call me an old fogey but we never had this problem when I was a kid. Aerosmith may have hated Kiss but they never shot bullets at them, well as far as I know.  Quicksilver Messenger Service may have grated on the Jefferson Airplane but there was never any throwdown.

I miss the old days.

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Getting serious, I was talking to some people in the Oakland Hills the other day about the rampant crime problem in the East Bay. It is not just in the hood anymore, it is the Hills, Rockridge, Piedmont, all over the place. I had to be very careful when I was parked up there during my last show. Carjackings, shootings, stabbings, robbery, things are totally out of control.

Restaurants are closing, long time businesses are pulling up stakes. People are sick of it. 

In a February survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, 76% of respondents said violence and street crime is a big or at least somewhat of a problem where they live. And for good reason: violent crime increased by 13.5% from 2019 to 2022 statewide.

In Oakland, violent crimes jumped by 18% from 2019 to 2022, according to police department figures provided to the state. The department reports that robbery is up 33% this year compared to last year, and commercial burglary is up 9%.

And if you want to blame somebody, look no farther than worthless Alameda County D.A. Pamela Price. She is fighting the mayors, wants to play soft with the criminals and would rather charge the police that are trying to protect the community. Read this story on her and other progressive district attorney's; California keeps electing progressive DAs — then pushing to recall them.

OAKLAND, Calif. — The top prosecutor for a San Francisco Bay Area county was playing defense as she absorbed criticism from furious residents of its largest city — a tense meeting that felt like a proxy for a mounting recall fight.

People packed a church in an affluent Oakland neighborhood in late July to demand progressive Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price answer for disturbingly pervasive carjackings and assaults, often shouting questions over her answers.

“I voted for you, but I don’t feel safe here,” said a woman who described being pulled out of her car, at gunpoint, on a recent morning.

But Price had some backup, supporters — some summoned by a social media post urging them to “show up in force” and challenge “opponents of criminal justice reform” — were at the church to insist that Price was being unjustly maligned for enduring problems.

Of course, Price's policies and decisions are not just hurting white people, they are hurting black, brown, asian, pretty much everybody. People no longer feel safe in their communities with their soft on crime attitudes.

Price said in an interview Monday that she was honoring voters’ mandate to dismantle an abusive and discriminatory system built on “racial and gender and economic disparities.” She pointed to disproportionate rates of incarceration and punishment among Black people — often driven by excessive penalties — to argue they had for decades been “stiffed by the justice system.”

Price argued that the recall push was “consistent with the history of fighting against racial oppression in this country. Racism is real, and it does not evaporate just because we won the election.”

Price’s supporters say the longtime civil rights litigator has done precisely what she campaigned on. She has sharply curtailed the use of sentencing enhancements that add time for factors like gang membership, sought to avoid condemning people to life without parole, revived probes of police shootings and jail deaths, reviewed old convictions and expanded oversight of a troubled county jail.

Sort of a like a northern version of Los Angeles D.A. George Gascon. "Lets see why the poor darlings are smashing people the head with crowbars?" Sorry, that won't cut it. Fine unless you have to live there.

Read about Jasper Wu, a toddler who was riding in the backseat of a car with his family on I-880 in Oakland when he was shot and killed by a stray bullet in November 2021.:

OAKLAND, Calif. - The two men accused of killing toddler Jasper Wu in a shootout on a Bay Area freeway no longer face the possibility of life without parole or a death sentence after prosecutors reduced the charges against them.

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price removed the special circumstances charge for defendants, Ivory Bivens, 24, and Trevor Green, 22, KTVU learned Wednesday.

Both men appeared in court on Thursday but their arraignments were pushed back until July 25. Neither have entered a plea.

District Attorneys like Price are one of the reasons people hate liberals, of which I am one. This sort of soft on crime mentality terrifies people, and rightly so. One of the men in the other car was a prior felon with a gun, he got a get out of jail free card from the D.A..

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I never agree with Trump on anything but the other day he advocated for shooting people that robbed stores. I told my wife this morning "Hey I agree, you rip me off or the jewelry store down the street, I have a right to put a cap in you." Especially if you are armed. I don't care if you are disadvantaged. Mine. Yours. Get it?

She said, "Maybe just shoot them in the leg."