More on My Local Racist Police
I have been engaged in an email exchange with the Chief of Police of a local municipality whose police officers’ association used the same boilerplate racist fundraising appeal I diaried about last...
View ArticleYou're Still a Young Man
News on all the musical community wires today that Mic Gillette, an original member of Tower of Power and the signature sound on a classic hit, "You're Still a Young Man," had died of a massive heart...
View ArticleBurner Phones
I just picked up a “burner phone.” $15, cash purchase. Another $20, also cash, for the minutes.Of course I have a regular cellphone, but there are times when I don’t care to give out any personal...
View ArticleOrwell is Laughing
My tagline here, when there were such things, was , “Orwell was an optimist.”In 1948 George Orwell correctly predicted that video technology would make it possible for government agents, and a lot of...
View Article"Wear Red to Support Veterans"
I am a US Army veteran (E5, Honorable). Yesterday in a supermarket I saw this sign. I would not have even noticed what color clothing the employees were wearing if I hadn’t seen the sign. I asked...
View ArticleWhy Destroy Planned Parenthood?
I am represented by a liberal Democrat, so I have to go elsewhere to troll congressional staffers. I have identified a gentleman by the same name as mine who lives in Darrell Issa’s district, so I...
View ArticleMy LTE in today's paper
Here is the link.Here is the text:When did the US stop being home of the brave?Americans kill 30,000 of each other every year with the Second Amendment or drunk behind the wheel.Foreign terrorists kill...
View ArticleDoctors DEMAND 28-hour shifts
You have to admire the headline writer: “Rookie Doctors Will Soon Be Allowed To Work Up To 28 Hours Straight.” The passive-aggressive use of “be allowed” suggests that doctors have been demanding that...
View ArticleDraw, podnuh! Or not...
The irony of today’s gun culture is that it is mostly based on an image of the Old West that never existed.The iconic western image cultivated by TV and film includes one ubiquitous element. The large...
View Article40 Years of Mountain Biking
On October 21, 1976 I met a few friends on a dirt road at the top of a long, steep hill. We had modified old Schwinns, and the plan was to hold the championship of the universe in Fat Tire Downhill...
View ArticleMy LTE on health care is published
I wrote a letter to the editor that would have passed for an ordinary post here. It was published today.Here is the text:Republican leaders blew their chanceThe Republican Party had seven years to...
View ArticleMy Letter to Ronn Owens
Ronn Owens is one of the most popular call-in talk show hosts in the Bay Area. He has been on the biggest radio station in the area for decades. I have called his show many times, generally get cut...
View ArticleIf you don't love Grace VanderWaal you are not human
There is a reason something gets 60,000,000 views on Youtube.(Don't click the link before reading the rest of this.)Like most people my age (71), I don’t pay much attention to modern pop music, which...
View ArticlePardon me, be careful what you wish for
This evening on Lawrence O”Donnell, one-time Watergate attorney Jill Wine-Banks explained some interesting facts surrounding the potential pardon now being considered for Sheriff Joe. It turns out...
View ArticleOJ Did It
As OJ Simpson breathes free air after nine years, we will inevitably have to revisit the Trial of the Century. Once again I will have to read about how he didn’t do it, he was framed, Mark Furman...
View ArticleFranklin Graham in 2012 and now. A study in flexible morality.
I ran across this Alex Witt interview with Franklin Graham, in which he has no problem with the morality of the current president, because of course everyone is a sinner, even the president, and then...
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Rachel Maddow composes a Crossword!
Rachel just admitted on the air that she composed tomorrow’s NYT crossword.I am a crossword junkie, and a Rachel Maddow junkie.The NYT Friday and Saturday x-words are the hardest in the US papers, and...
View ArticleMy LTE re: Parkland is published
My mother, who is 97, and I seem to be competing to have the most letters to the editor published. Today it was my turn, a couple of days ago it was hers.My letter in the San Rafael Independent...
View ArticleKobach confronts reality. Reality wins.
I don’t live in Kansas so my interest here is academic. Like so many of the reality based lunatic fringe, I am continually frustrated by the inability of media interviewers to nail them down on...
View ArticleI'm an expert
No, really.On a few narrow subjects I know more than virtually anyone else on the planet.But that’s not why I’m an expert. I’m an “expert” because many years ago I talked about some stuff and I was...
View ArticleJust another teenage movie
It’s beyond cliche, because it is the plot of just about every “teenage movie.”The one where the kids find out that the cliche villain is planning to destroy their (park, school, pond, ski area, beach,...
View ArticleMy LTE in today's paper
I specialize in two or three sentence letters. If you can make a point that briefly, your odds of seeing it printed go up. I see about 80% of mine in print.Today in the San Rafael Independent Journal...
View ArticleIt was the burner phone
I had speculated that Robert Mueller had tracked Michael Cohen’s European movements through his cell phone. But everybody knows your phone tracks your movements.Then I remembered that among the items...
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UK Mountain Bike Lecture Tour 2017
UK 2017After years of online communication with UK bike blogs, and after hosting several visitations by UK mountain bikers I met on those blogs, I wanted to go there and ride on their turf. The excuse...
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Any Bay Area Bicycle Junkies Looking for a New Hobby?
The bane of my existence is that I still have every document I ever had. Because of the places life has taken me, that includes the most comprehensive library on mountain biking before 1990.I have...
View ArticleMy LTE is published
Last week my 98 year old mother had her letter published in the local paper, this week it was my turn. (My first LTE was published in 1972 a week after the Watergate break-in, in which I pointed out...
View ArticleMy "Perjury trap" LTE
This LTE will run in tomorrow’s local paper.President Trump’s attorneys do not want him to talk to Robert Mueller because they believe he would be “walking into a perjury trap.”A few years ago...
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Crested Butte to Aspen 40 years On
In 1978 I joined my Marin County friends Joe Breeze, Gary Fisher, Mike Castelli and Wende Cragg on an expedition to Colorado for the ride from Crested Butte to Aspen. We thought we would find riders...
View ArticleIf you can read this...
I have been posting one sentence observations on my FB page, all starting with, “If you can read this...” Feel free to suggest new ones.Examples:If you can read this, you are old enough to remember...
View ArticleMy LTE hits print
I have a very high success rate for getting my LTEs published. This ran in our local paper.It's easy to build a metaphorical wall. After all, nothing is cheaper than empty talk.A real wall, like any...
View ArticleThink of the Burden
Despite all the bleating from the right about no collusion has been shown, or innocent until proven guilty, or fake news , or whatever the exoneration, we here on DK and most of the world understand...
View ArticleOrwell didn't see this coming
Back when there were taglines here, mine was, “Orwell was an optimist.”No, this diary is not another tired comparison of the current government with the Big Brother dictatorship described in 1984. It...
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It was 40 years ago today...
It was just 40 years ago, late summer of 1979. For a couple of months Gary Fisher had been riding a custom balloon tire bike he had built on a frame made by Tom Ritchey. I had a bike built by Joe...
View ArticleMy LTE was published today
This ran today in our local San Francisco Bay Area newspaper.Every day more we learn more about the willful promotion of addictive drugs by the pharmaceutical industry. After all, addicts make very...
View ArticleThe Lesson of Watergate
When I was a small child in 1952, the political slogan was, “I like Ike.” I asked my mother whether she liked Ike. She told me that Eisenhower was okay, but that vice presidential nominee Nixon was a...
View ArticleMy LTE published today
The editor of my local paper told me he can only use my contributions to the letters column about every other week. Still I had two published four days apart recently.Here is today’s effort (scroll...
View ArticleMilitary Medicine is the Model
My Army service was in a medical capacity. My experience belies any claim that the United States government cannot supply quality medical care. United States military medical treatment is the equal of...
View ArticlePassive voter fraud
I didn’t write this for DK, because this stuff is obvious here. It’s for publication elsewhere, but since I wrote it, here it is.We have heard a lot from the president and his GOP associates about the...
View ArticleThe United States Army is no longer capable of a ground based military response.
Until the 20th Century, more wartime combatants were killed by disease than by enemy forces. During my Army service in the ‘60s there was an epidemic of meningitis taking place among the trainees at...
View ArticleA Crisis of Faith
I am an atheist. Like an anthropologist in the midst of a primitive tribe, I study the subspecies of humanity known as devout Christian. I listen to Christian radio when I drive (and right wing radio,...
View ArticleMy LTE published today
I wish the Washington DC police had defended the Capitol on January 6 with the same amount of zeal, heavy weaponry and manpower that police used to defend a Walmart or a Best Buy last summer.
View ArticleMy LTE in today's paper
This five sentence LTE is actually one of my longer ones. Average is three sentences.Approach to incidents shows inconsistencyA Republican-led Congress spent five years conducting nine investigations...
View ArticleTime for a blogger ethics panel
In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Journalism Professor Edward Wasserman decries what the Internet has done to his noble calling.My DK User ID # is 207, because I signed up in 2003 on the first day...
View ArticleMy LTE gets published
My "letter to the editor" appeared in the July 14 Marin Independent Journal . Here is the link, but I will spare you from clicking it. Here's the letter:Editor,As the January 6 cases unfold against the...
View Article45 Years Ago
45 years ago yesterday, I went up on top of a steep hill with two clocks and six friends. Our object was to determine for all time which of us was the fastest down a long steep hill on our 40 year old...
View ArticleMy LTE published
This letter to the editor ran in yesterday’s San Rafael Independent Journal.COVID-19 is currently the leading cause of death among active police officers. With this in mind, I called the Central Marin...
View Article"Take Your Hands Out of Your Pockets!"
I have heard that directive several times.One of those times was when I walked over to a police car idling in a parking lot to tell the driver to move so I could back out of a designated space.When did...
View ArticleBad LTE Editing
I am a writer, with hundreds of magazine articles and two books. I have held editorial positions at several national magazines.I often contribute letters to the editor, and most of them get printed....
View ArticleThe Student Paper gets the SBF Story the Media Missed
The student newspaper The Stanford Daily exposed the rot at the heart of the seat of higher learning that hosts the right-wing Hoover Institution.After being arrested for his crypto Ponzi scheme FTX,...
View ArticleThe best scam bait since... Ever
This was the third time I got a scam call with the "grandson in jail" script. I bungled the first two, but I finally took one scammer to the limit. There must be a thousand possible scripts to explain...
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