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Stand By While We Adjust our Government

David Swanson, the executive director of World BEYOND War and author of several books (including "War Is a Lie"), has just shared a new PowerPoint presentation on "The Need to Abolish War."

The first slide begins with the following, timely alert:

"Global Technical Difficulties

Due to travel restrictions, the United States will now be staging coups only in its own capital. Worldwide services will resume shortly."

Karmic Strips

The December 25 edition of the Chronicle ran its usual 22 comic strips. Thirteen of them celebrated Christmas, mostly with depictions of Xmas gifts. Dan Piraro and Wayne Honath's Bizarro panel was a Donner downer: It depicted two desolate-looking reindeer at a coffee bar with one sadly complaining: "It's been years since I've shouted out with glee." 

But the least festive holiday reference appeared in Mark Tatulli's Lio strip. It depicted Lio, the twisted tot of the title, pressing a button and detonating a huge nuclear explosion over some distant target. Displayed nearby is an open gift box labeled "Junior Atomic Doctor. Made in China" and bearing a tag reading "Love, Dad." 

There is no warning to young readers that you can't blow up a city with an A-bomb and handle the resulting dead and injured with a box-full of pills and lotions. 

One other addition to Tatulli's toweringly inappropriate holiday offering: There was a message written across the top of the radioactive mushroom cloud. Written in Chinese, it translated as: "Merry Christmas!" 

A New GOP Ballot Cheat  

The bag of political dirty tricks has just gotten a bit heavier. The news arrived in the December 27 Sunday edition of Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip when a rightwing Republican political conniver known as "James Crow" tries to hire Zipper Harris to run as a candidate in order to drain votes from a Democrat with a similar sounding name. 

It turns out, Trudeau's strip was based on a real bucket of GOP trickery that was dragged from the swamp of a Florida race for a state Senate seat. Senator Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Democrat concerned about climate-change impacts, lost his reelection bid to Republican challenger (and Trump alumnus) Ileana Garcia by a scant 34-vote margin. And here's why: According to the Orlando Sentinel, Florida's GOP operatives invested some "shadowy dark money" to hire a "non-partisan" candidate named Alex Rodriquez to place his name on the ballot. The GOP's "straw candidate" siphoned more than 6,000 votes from the campaign of the real Rodriquez, securing a win for the GOP's pro-Trump candidate. 

A MAGA Maggot's Delight 

Just in time for the holidays, a gift for the Grifter. 

In magazine ads published across the nation, the American Mint proudly announced the arrival of its "MAGA Movement Commemorative Coin Set" featuring thirteen 24-K gold-layered coins bearing images of the 45th President of the United States. Each coin sported a color image of the Demagogue-in-chief in some of his most iconic poses—waving at the crowds, shaking his clenched fist, autographing an Executive Order, giving the thumbs-up sign, posing in a faux-military cap, holding a rifle, applauding himself, looking perturbed. 

The whole kaboodle was priced at $449 but—in recognition of the fact that many of Trump's most devoted supporters are cash-strapped and struggling—the Mint was generously offering to part with these gems for "just $99" payable in five monthly installments of $19.80 (plus shipping and handling). 

And why hand over a hard-earned Benjamin for a boxed set of Trumpomobilia? As the Mint put it: what better way to commemorate Trump's "visionary economic initiatives" and his "strong and decisive actions to protect our nation against harm." 

Break the Banks 

In 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 857 into law, calling for the creation of non-profit community banks. Last November, the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation gave the go-ahead and the State Senate followed by holding a hearing with the title: "A State Bank? There Is Interest, But Does It Make Cents?" 

Currently there are only two public banks in the US—the legendary Public Bank of North Dakota (founded by local farmers in 1919) and the newly approved American Samoa Bank. The National Law Review pooh-poohed the concept, noting that there seems to be little interest outside "San Francisco, Los Angeles and the East Bay." 

Apparently, the Law Review hasn't gone online to check out the Bank for Good website, a one-stop resource for finding a "financial institution that doesn't fund fossil fuels and backs the planet and its people." As Bank for Good notes, while the Climate Crisis hurts everyone, "people of color are suffering first and worst from fossil fuel pollution." Meanwhile "the four largest banks in the United States poured more than $210 billion into fossil fuel projects in 2019 alone." 

So, while waiting for the first Public Bank to open its doors in the Golden State, you might want to check out Beneficial State Bank, an Oakland-based, nonprofit B-corporation that's a member of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values. There's also the Self-Help Federal Credit Union (with offices in San Francisco, Oakland and Vallejo) and, of course, Berkeley's own Cooperative Federal Credit Union. 

Note: You wouldn't know it from the CFCU's website, but the Coop's long-established Ashby location is set to close within the week and is scheduled to reopen in the Higby Apartment Building at the southeast corner of San Pablo and Ashby in West Berkeley. Warning: CFCU customers familiar with the Coop's current expansive parking lot (with free slots for 30-plus cars) may have a harder time finding parking in the new building's limited, indoor parking stalls. 

Weeding Out the News 

Half the weight of a recent edition of the East Bay Express was due to an insert in the form of a glossy, 28-page magazine called the Cannabis Chronicle. (A generous act on the part of the EBX, given that it relies largely of the same pot of pot-gold advertizing dollars as this new monthly magazine.) 

Like the Express, half the pages in the CanChron are devoted to articles while the other half are dominated by weed ads. There's an ad for the Tree-House, a cannabis Drive-Thru in Soquel and another for Kind Peoples, a Santa-Cruz-based shop that stocks Fuzzies and cannabis cookies ("Cookies that treat you right"). One advertiser, Farmer and the Felon, promises to "preserve the countercultural history of the prohibition era while advocating for social justice for the cannabis prisoners in the here-and-now." 

But my fave ad was the spread from Santa Cruz Naturals featuring an interactive challenge. The layout contained a fill-in-the-blanks motivational statement beginning with "I want to—[Action?]—in—[Location?]—so I can—[Destination?]" 

Below the words was a full-page photo of a solitary bearded fellow relaxing in a stone hot-tub outdoors in a vast landscape topped with snow-capped mountains. His battered hippy van could be seen parked nearby. And his written response read: "I want to hit the road in my RV in the Mammoth Lake area so that I can relax and unplug to recharge and be a more present dad." 

The image is the furthest thing you could imagine for being "a more present dad" but at least he's got the "relax and unplug" thing going. 

The Chronicle's Year in Photos 

The Chronicle's crack team of photojournalists managed to snap more than 100,000 photos in 2020: here's a link to the stories behind the pictures that most moved them. 

The Year in Videos 

The Chronicle’s visual artists also created dozens of videos over the past year. These are the one judged the "10 best." 

Caught on Tape: "All I Want Is 11,78O Votes" 

The Founders' Sing