Had a great time checking out the Vallejo Maritime Historical Museum for the first time. That building used to be Vallejo City Hall. It was also good to contribute to a good cause like this. Tom Bilbo organized “Seven Seamen and a Little Lady” for our trivia team. We had Greek food and lots of laughs.
I was made aware by a friend that there was a movement to do something, so I wrote Vallejo City Council on this as well:
Dear Mayor and City Council –
I’m a resident of Vallejo who, like many, is enamored with how diverse our community is.
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that a qualified sign language interpreter be available to deaf individuals upon request. I want to add to the chorus of hearing allies that all Vallejo City Council meetings be ASL-interpreted going forward. Deaf citizens of Vallejo shouldn’t have to ask every two weeks for their rights to be respected. They are part of our community, and we all benefit by their being included. Zoom captions alone are insufficient, particularly as we return to in-person meetings. Having accommodations for other languages is helpful, but the distinction is that languages can be learned; a deaf person cannot learn to hear. I hope we can prevent our fellow deaf community members from being excluded in our city’s gatherings going forward.
Thank you.
The Santa photo days were a big success at the Vallejo Farmer’s Market. This was a fundraiser for the Humane Society of the North Bay. Many of you know I’m on the Board of Directors. I share the mission to improve the lives of our area’s homeless cats and dogs. Interested in volunteering, adopting, donating, or fostering? Make sure to check out our site at HSNB.org!
Shando was recruited to volunteer at the Humane Society of North Bay‘s presence at this first annual Benicia Dog Festival for the benefit of animals that are displaced by natural disasters. Joe is on the HSNB board. Please consider donating to help homeless cats and dogs in the area!
My new neighbor edited my article in the current Glen Cove Community Association newsletter. Funnily enough, he was introduced to me by friends in common at my birthday party earlier this month who realized we hadn’t met. We figured out soon after that he was the same guy who had been the president of GCCA and was still editing the newsletter, including my own article. However all the while with the article passing between us we did not know we had friends in common and that we were also both gay and would be meeting within days of finalizing the article!
This is a link to the issue with my article starting on page 6. I’m very proud to still be fighting Big Tobacco more than three decades after my father died at the very young age of fifty from smoking. His mother had died from smoking and drinking at the same age twenty years before him. I’ve now outlived them both.
Please check out LGBTQ Minus Tobacco‘s site as well. I recently learned about this organization through local political organizations. It was wonderful to find a local advocacy group that is fighting for a cause I’ve believed in for decades, especially since I specifically knew Big Tobacco targeted queer people long before I even came out to myself.
Yes, smoking in California is down to 9% of the overall population. With Covid, more people saw how important respiratory issues, including second-hand smoke, were all exacerbated by coronaviruses which can kill people in days.
While attending Solano Pride meetings I heard about LGBTQ Minus Tobacco, which is fighting for smoke-free areas and enforcement of tobacco licenses being taken away from retailers who sell to minors. We also know that Big Tobacco is trying to suggest that vaping is safe, even though they are specifically targeting a new generation of nicotine addicts by flavoring the nicotine. It is far from safe to become nicotine addicts at this time.
One of the opportunities I had to stand up for the rights of those who are a victim of passive smoke was to speak at the recent special session of Vallejo’s City Council where the City Council set an agenda of priorities. I spoke during the public comment section as a resident of Vallejo that multi-unit housing should have an ordinance that they become smoke-free, lest minors and others in adjoining units suffer from the smoke of their neighbors with whom they share walls and who are downstream from patios and such. Many cities in the Bay Area already have such ordinances.
It appears that Mayor O’Donnell seemed to take this seriously and we hope that this is adopted, as it is to protect people, especially those who are more likely to live in poverty with less medical coverage and less opportunity to get out of these multi unit dwellings where they might be exposed. I’m very proud to be able to contribute in ways like this.
Bob Dole has Stage 4 lung cancer it was just reported. During his presidential campaign against Bill Clinton, Dole was underwritten by a flailing tobacco industry and he actually said there was NO PROOF that cigarette smoking caused cancer. Now he’s being touted as someone who was an ADVOCATE for health care reform!?!?” WTF? Is that because he got paid to endorse erection medication?
I bet Rush Limbaugh, who just died a few days ago from the same thing at age seventy, also didn’t fall for the “fake news” they would describe the science about tobacco as being. It’s beyond the pale that he made a whole career out of generating it for his evil purposes. Rush Limbaugh just had a high school diploma and held himself out to be some kind of “intellectual” for his extreme racism-based causes. I don’t think most people realize he had no credentials or formal education on what he spoke about.
My father and his mother both died from smoking when each of them was around the age of 50, twenty years apart. They were not spoiled rich kids or heirs to the Dole fortune. Medical technology might currently enable some to live longer with the pain of treatment they cause themselves with choosing to start to smoke (although most start in childhood). As I’ve always said in my activism in this arena: I don’t blame smokers for succumbing to addiction, but the tobacco industry that convinced high-profile politicians and pundits into spreading their lies is beyond contempt.
Is Trump too dense to know that his staff basically sends him on fools’ errands so they don’t have to deal with him as much to do rallies across the country his entire term? Does he think this is normal?
Does Moscow Mitch not realize that we can see that he has a conflict of interest with his wife in the Cabinet when he’s supposed to be overseeing her boss? Does he also not think we can tell that he was manipulated by the Russian oligarchs to stop some sanctions against them for invading another country so that they would fund a PET PROJECT in his state?
Are Repugs (my term in response to the use of “Democrat” as an adjective) so dense that they don’t understand that the “lack of evidence” they are complaining about in the impeachment of Trump is caused by Trump contemptuously refusing to allow the enforcement of Congressional subpoenas for more fact witnesses and document discovery to present his “alternative” facts?
Is Bill Barr too dense to understand that we see through his IG report fiasco?
Do Repugs defending Trump with non-substantive arguments realize that he repeatedly and deliberately said to the world that he wanted two foreign countries to interfere in 2020, regardless of what happened on the fucking July 2019 phone call? No one is denying this, people?
Is Roger Stone too dense to know that we love that he’s been gagged? Is he still saying “lock HER up” with Manafort when he’s locked up?
This experiment in hiring a reality star to represent a country with no political experience is insanity. He’s completely influenced by greed, most often of which comes from foreign entities since no one in the USA would risk working with him. Reagan was no prize, but at least he was truly involved with politics and had executive experience before the former actor delved into national politics.
Thankfully I have real media and opinions to keep me from joining this cult.
Wolf just let fascist Dump apologist Marc Scott get away with repeatedly saying “Democrat” as an adjective and then Marc had the audacity to talk about the current VP’s son serving overseas while criticizing Joe Biden’s son during his VP service. Hunter should NOT have taken board memberships, but why did Wolf forget to ask Marc why he forgot to draw the comparison to the three oldest Trump kids and their completely unencumbered corruption, cozying up with Mr. Bone Saw, etc.? For shame! How Fox of you. Journalism at risk? It will indeed not survive if we don’t stand up to misleading soundbites and misdirection and be constantly wary of the tactics of alternative fact cronies.
Like many people in the majority who voted for another candidate, I strongly considered invoking my dual European citizenship and moving out of the USA after the 2016 election. That was by far the worst year of my life, having lost my mother very quickly to ovarian cancer in addition to the backward results of the onerous election season. Due to her death, my siblings and I inherited a home in Italy near our extended family. A respite from the ensuing chaos that we are now in the throes of here in the USA sounded appealing, but I do not blame one orange man. In the end, I’m glad I stayed to fight, in my own ways.
Dump45 is a symptom of ignorance and an inadequate educational system extolling mendacity, hatred of various kinds, and greed over logic and truth. I could write tomes about why Dumpist supporters should abandon their cultish admiration, but there would just be another blowhard to replace him until we collectively wake up and put through legislation and fortified means to combat minority candidates getting the White House role. White people in rural America do NOT deserve 1.5 votes. Effectively that is what the electoral college system has yielded for the USA.
Unfortunately I see no traction on an effort to replace that legacy of slavery, nor the suggestion that we increase the number of judges on SCOTUS to combat the generational damage that has already been done with stolen seats from sheer hypocrisy of the Repugs. When I say collectively wake up, I don’t mean the general “woke” movement, which I support, but more of the great swaths of our ignorant voting populace getting fed propaganda that should make a trained journalist cringe on a network and other media that purport to be actual news agencies, rather than cudgels against rationality.
Cheeto45 is at least twenty years older than me and admits to a far worse diet than I would ever sanction. I don’t know how genetically superior he thinks he is (an Aryan argument, no doubt), but when he looks himself in the mirror I know he doesn’t see Stallone of forty years ago that he tweeted his head photoshopped onto. I can only imagine what his insides look like if he really eats the way he claims to.
I actually would be fine with cutting our prosecutorial losses for the sake of the office of the presidency, letting this buffoon leave the White House without any further charges against him, whether he leaves by impeachment, quitting, or being voted out legitimately. I don’t want the backlash from his supporters if he is eviscerated legally, as he deserves, not that he is capable of exhibiting any shame. Hopefully he doesn’t have that much left of his natural life left to live anyway.
I agree with Bill Maher on about 90% of things, but despite Maher’s warnings, I have zero concern about Dump not vacating the presidency that he never seriously wanted in the first place. No matter where Dump is physically (and he’s not been known to curtail much travel when coined by taxpayers), his time will be over and he would not be transported by us anymore. At some point, whoever is sworn in as President after him, will be recognized regardless of her residence or location.
Just like Larry Kramer wrote about Reagan’s death after Larry outlived his nemesis, I will take great satisfaction in living in a world without this man. Besides the plethora of other good reasons for me to live a long, healthy life, I hope that I’m around to dance on the grave of this bitter liar and blameworthy useful idiot to the imperialist Soviet legacy and the root cause of countless avoidable deaths and injury (caged children and Kurds included). Time is on my side.