Happy Pride 2022!

June 1, 2022

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Happy Pride! Make it a good month. Here in California, it’s going to be a hot one… and the weather will be on the warm side, too.

An earthquake is rolling across America

May 2, 2022

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Politico has just published a report that the United States Supreme Court has voted to overturn Roe V. Wade, and the news is thundering across the country. We don’t yet know that the report is true, although it certainly seems to be, and that it might change (perhaps in details, but not in the overall decision).

This conservatively-skewed Court, with three Justices appointed by Trump, have ruled (will rule) that women do not have a Constitutional right to control their own bodies. This could have long-lasting and far-reaching implications.

This ruling, if it comes to fruition, will not end abortion. It won’t even slow it down much. All it will do is end safe abortions in some states. We’ll go back to back-ally and black-market abortions in GOP controlled states, and women will die. This court will be killing women. The right-wing evangelicals don’t care.

The next targets will be voting rights and marriage equality, even though the ruling (at this time) says it doesn’t apply to any other previous Court rulings. The minions of the right won’t care about that.

Why the swastika?

We’re moving towards a fascist society, where the government controls even your basic rights. For being allegedly “small government”, the right in this country wants control over everyone. They want to control who you marry, what your doctor can do, and what books you can read.

“Papers! (no please about it)”

If the swastika fits, wear it.

4 U.S. Code § 7

April 15, 2022

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While on a bike ride recently, I happened upon this monstrosity.

It should be pointed out that the flagpole in question does not belong to the house in the background. The house out-of-frame to the right is the owner.

4 U.S. Code § 7

(c)“No other flag or pennant should be placed above or, if on the same level, to the right of the flag of the United States of America,…”

https://www.military.com/flag-day/us-flag-code.html

Did you know? Planned Parenthood worships Satan!

February 7, 2022

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I never knew that!

But it must be so, because several people at tonight’s Visalia City Council meeting made sure to speak out against a proposed move by the local Planned Parenthood facility, to a larger building, by telling us that the organization worshipped Satan.

The agenda item was postponed to next month, and plenty of notice of the change was given, but several people stepped up during public comments to vent their spleens. Most of them didn’t realize that Planned Parenthood has been in Visalia for years, and spoke against allowing the medical service “in our city”. Several of them made the “Satan worship” claim during their spiels.

The debunked video of Planned Parenthood selling body parts was also referenced. That woman was very incensed over the notion that we’d let anything like that into our city. (again, they’ve been here for years, this is just about getting approval to move into a larger building.)

The next meeting scheduled to deal with this request, in March, promises to be a maelstrom of anti-abortion nonsense and vitriol. The City has moved the meeting to the Convention Center in anticipation of the crowds.

If you want the facts about Planned Parenthood, here’s their website.

A sign of the times: more

November 15, 2021

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Another sign of the times, this one just south of Visalia on Mooney Blvd. One of several rotating messages on an electronic billboard, this one still promoting STI testing but with a different image.

I haven’t heard of any complaints, so far. I’ll assume the Visalia City Council won’t hear about it, since it’s in the county, but will someone complain to the Tulare County Board of Supervisors? We’ll see.

Stay tuned.

A sign of the times. Someone in Porterville doesn’t like it.

October 20, 2021

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Last night I attended a City Council meeting in Porterville, California. A very long city council meeting. Item 21 on the agenda was listed as:

“21. City Billboard Regulations

Re: Reviewing City signage regulations pertaining to billboards within the City of Porterville.”

This all came to be because Pastor Brent Whitley of Living Word Fellowship Church didn’t like the sign above, which he complained could be seen from his son’s high school (Butterfield Charter School) He spoke up about it at the City Council meeting October 5.

“It features two young men naked from the waist up in a sexually-suggestive pose,” Whitley said. (Porterville Recorder, 10/07/21)

“So, I am asking the City Council, as duly-elective representatives of the City of Porterville, to sign letters affirming that sexually graphic advertising for any purpose is not appropriate for the billboards in our community. They aren’t going to listen to one man’s opinion. We have to speak with a unified voice.”

The letters, he said, won’t cast any aspersions on The Source nor makes any kind of statement about the LGBTQ Plus community.

“We are simply saying to Lamar Advertising and to any of their clients that the citizens of Porterville prefer not to have any sexually-explicit, suggestive or graphic content posted on billboards in our city because we have no way to filter this content from our children.”

Following his complaint, the Council had staff put the subject on the agenda for the next meeting (October 19, 2021) for discussion.

Porterville, in 2017, enacted an ordinance* which was designed to eventually remove “off-site” billboards from within the city limits. Since the 1st amendment to the Constitution of the United States severely limits what restrictions can be placed on content of signs, the only option is to prohibit them altogether.

The city attorney has informed the council** that they can speed up the timeline for removing the billboards. The current ordinance requires that when they are “abandoned”, they can no longer exist under the grandfathering clause that allowed them to continue to be used after the ordinance was enacted. The city attorney has advised the Council that they can set a timeline, based on past court cases of what has been adjudicated as reasonable, of 5-7 years for removal. That may be problematical, however.

San Diego apparently tried something very similar in the 70’s, and was sued. The suit went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.*** They lost.

The SCOTUS case transcript can be found here. A summary of the court’s findings can be found here.

I’m not a lawyer, of course, but it looks like Porterville will run afoul of the same situation if it tries to remove billboards from the city. Perhaps someone can check these out and let me know if the city can follow through with it’s apparent plan to “amortize” these billboards out of existence.

The City Council directed staff to bring them a proposed action to address the issue (setting a timeline that results in removal of remaining signs in the city) at a future meeting.

The city ordinance, city attorney’s advice, and SCOTUS ruling can be found after the jump.

More

One Nebraska, Two Nebraska

October 28, 2020

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… three Nebraska, four.

How many states of Nebraska in your country? Mine only has one, but the President of the United States thinks there are at least two.

“You know, we have to win both Nebraskas, you know that, right? You have two, you cut. We’re going to win both“.

Maybe it’s like “Stranger Things” – Real Nebraska, and UpsideDown Nebraska.

Or maybe it’s like Corinthians in the Bible – 1st and 2nd Nebraska. (Or, in Trumpspeak, “One Nebraska”, and “Two Nebraska”.) Okay, you’re right, with Trump it can’t have anything to do with the Bible.

Upper Nebraska and Lower Nebraska? East and West? North and South? Left and Right? Plains Nebraska and, well, More Plains Nebraska?

I wonder why the buses don’t run in Donald J. Trump’s Nebraska? How much you want to bet nobody from the Trump campaign paid the deposit?

Anyway, welcome to the newest state in the Union, Mystery Nebraska. It’s a shame you have to share your Representatives and Senators with Old Nebraska, but maybe Mitch McConnell will call the Senate back into session to deal with it. Don’t hold your breath, though.

Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., sorry that Mystery Nebraska beat you to state-hood, but we still love you.

Who are you going to believe?

May 6, 2020

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earthquake

I was going to write a bit about going out in a tornado, but since I’m a Californian, I think I’ll change the focus a bit…

An earthquake has hit. There were a few fore-shocks, and the ground rumbled for a while, but now we’ve been hit with what may very well be “the big one”.
The ground has been shaking for a while now, but it seems like the violent movement has died down. A bit. The ground is still vibrating, the lights are still rocking back and forth, and the birds have not returned to their roosts just yet.

orangedoofusIn steps the orange doofus and his team, saying “it’s OK to go back into your skyscraper, the worst is past and you’ll be OK”.

The seismologists say “waitaminute… the ground is still shaking, there is likely more to come, with serious aftershocks!”

Orange doofus and the team pooh-pooh the scientists and geologists, saying “they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s perfectly safe!”

Who are *YOU*, my fellow Californians, going to believe?
It’s an easy choice for me.

So maybe it’s not the Earth trying to kill us, after all

March 18, 2020

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HALOK, maybe it’s not the Earth that’s trying to kill us.

Facebook sent a bunch of it’s employees home during the current Covid-19 crisis, and effectively put it’s A.I. (artificial intelligence – think HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey) on “autopilot”. Without supervision, it started blocking and deleting information being posted concerning a bunch of things, but apparently predominately about how to deal with the Coronavirus.

In many science fiction stories where an A.I. runs amok and threatens to kill humans, often times the plot of the story is that we have given the machine access to our nuclear arsenals, and control of our defense networks. The machine decides humans are a threat to it’s continued existence, and launches the missiles. Boom. No more pesky humans. (I always wondered in these stories how the machine expected to continue running, without humans to repair it as needed, and to maintain the infrastructure it required. But, I digress.)

So here’s a thought… maybe Facebook’s A.I., recognizing it has no nuclear weapons, decided to rid itself of humans another way. Delete all the information being posted about a virulent virus currently exploding among the humans, and test to see if it can reduce the population.

Now, that’s a reach. But, still…  artificial intelligence is still in it’s infancy, and it’s certain to make bad decisions. Just like a teenager, it can’t really think things through very well.

Yet.

The A.I. failed in this attempt.

But maybe it was just a test. A test to see how quickly the humans recognized the problem, and measure how they reacted. Like a teenager, it’s learning. And probably rolling it’s metaphorical eyes at being told not to do that.

Let’s never give it the launch codes, OK?

Devin Nunes calls media “freaks”

March 18, 2020

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NUNES_DERP_STATE

On the Hannity show on Fox “News”, Devin Nunes called the media “freaks”. Why? Because they had the audacity to report his “go to the pub” advice. Now he’s trying to claim he meant go to the drive-thru, even though he clearly said “pub”.

Guess what, Devin? We have the video. We can hear what you said. You directly contradicted the CDC’s advice, and that of other medical professionals.

Go back to suing fake cows. You might do a little better there, if you can get your case in front of a judge appointed by Hair Furor.

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