Columnists

Although I take large dosages of antipsychotics and have done this since the mid nineteen eighties, I continue to have some level of "breakthrough symptoms." Despite treatment I can get delusional thoughts, and it is not safe to assume that medication will solve this. I cannot raise dosages of meds every time I get symptoms, because I am already on exceedingly high amounts, and raising the dosages could make things worse, not better. -more-

How to Handle a Deranged Tenant

It's not an uncommon event: a tenant, facing eviction, refuses to vacate the premises and, in a parting gesture of defiance, trashes the property, leaving the landlord to deal with the wreckage.

You guessed it: I'm thinking about Donald Trump.

TV host Jimmy Kimmel recently coined a term for Trump's refusal to accept the fact that his first term in office has been electorally terminated. Kimmel's word for Trump's Oval Office recalcitrance: "Squattergate."

Faced with the spectacle of Trump doing everything he can to make the new tenant's arrival difficult, unpleasant, and challenging, Kimmel wondered aloud why we provide loosing leaders in contentious elections the ripe opportunity to hang around for two months, mucking up the governing process until Inauguration Day rolls around.

In response, Kimmel has proposed a Constitutional solution. He called it the Airbnb Rule: "Lose an election and the next day you're out at 11 AM."

Trumplandia: Martial Law and Public Executions?

In Tenant Trump's case, he's not just writing dirty words on the White House walls, he's threatening to burn down the whole neighborhood—from sea to shining sea.

While Trump may have lost the unquestioned fealty of his Chief Toady—the frog-like Attorney General William Barr, who recently proclaimed the 2020 election legit—Trump can still count on a mob of lesser firebrands who have been turning up the heat with a chorus of horrific harangues. -more-

So much seems to change in a week when it comes to the pandemic, and yet it is just what we’ve been told for months. Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist from the University of Minnesota( https://www.cidrap.umn.edu) said in his podcast last August, about public health measures to slow the pandemic, “we can pay now or we can pay later.”

So here we are in the “pay later” after weeks of lulling ourselves into thinking we could manage with halfway measures, “bubbles” and taking off facial coverings in restaurants and other gatherings as if eating in groups didn’t count. Though this has already been months, and despite vaccines on the horizon, we need to prepare ourselves for a longer haul before it’s over. There is still a lot to be learned, including how long the first vaccine shots last before another one is needed.

As for the week we just finished, it is hard to believe that the last day of November was Monday. The Monday afternoon Council Agenda and Rules Committee turned out to be more interesting than expected. The Use of Force Policy is back on the proposed December 15 Council agenda. As I have said previously, the Police Review Commission (PRC) is very deliberative in their actions and policy review. Through their process they determined to remove the words “strive to” from the Use of Force Policy #300. The PRC voted with near unanimity (one abstained) that the inclusion of “strive to” would make use of force accountability impossible. -more-