I’m not going to make judgments now, I just think that it depends upon how we treat one another between now and the time we have a nominee. Joe Biden, six days before the Iowa caucuses, when asked if he would support Bernie Sanders.

I think Trump is beatable. A lot of why Trump won is because he ran against the establishment – both the Democratic and Republican Establishment as well as the mainstream, mostly Democratic, media – but he also won due to the terrible campaign run by Clinton. Unfortunately for us Democrats, Trump also ran a brilliant, transformative, campaign relying on Social Media (ironically because he didn’t have as much money as Clinton and couldn’t afford much television time). Beatable, that is If the Democrats run a good – probably modern is a better way to say it – campaign. Because the Democratic Media and Political Establishments wanted Joe Biden, who seems the best bet for creating the least amount of change, they convinced themselves that the nominee was going to be him. But they were concerned about losing the Bernie crowd, so they tried to make it very clear; the goal – the only goal, really – is beating Donald J. Trump. They wanted us to know that beating Trump is more important than any interparty squabble. During the last six, seven, months, I’ve been asked, probably close to twenty times, if I would commit to voting for the Democratic candidate no matter who, even if he is a moderate like Joe Biden. I always – very reluctantly – say “Yes”.

But Bernie Sanders got the most votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, is leading the nomination Nationwide according to several polls, and it is now looking like Sanders could actually get the nomination. I’m beginning to understand how those questioners felt, what if the “moderates” who like Joe Biden only think that beating Trump is more important if the moderates win the primary? Looking at the Biden statement at the top is sort of frightening, Biden is actually saying he will not commit to backing Sanders (right now).

A reasonable case can be made that the Democratic Party, the Nancy Pelosi party, the Biden party would rather Trump win than Bernie. I know that is heresy and I hope I’m being hysterical but, while a Trump presidency is worse for the world, it is better for the Corporate Democratic Establishment. They are in office because of the support Fossel Fuel Industry and the Pharmicidical Industry. The Green New Deal – which Pelosi has consistently denigrated and has refused to even have a hearing on – would gut the Fossel Fuel Industry and cut off a major cash cow, the same for Medicare for All and the Pharmicidical Industry. It scares me.

We went to Los Angeles a couple of weekends ago. The last time we went to LA, we were coming from Albuquerque via silver City and Tuscon and we both felt like we were coming home. This time, coming from Silicon Valley where it is 20° colder, LA seemed like a different world. I’m using Los Angeles in its generic form, we actually stayed in Glendale, which is a little north of LA, kinda because it is convenient to both Pomona and LA proper, but also because, across the street from our hotel, is one of the best Dim Sum restaurants we’ve ever been to, Din Tai Fung.

As an aside, Din Tai Fung is a huge Taiwan restaurant chain with two Michelin star restaurants in Hong Kong and restaurants all over Asia – Japan, South Korea, Singapore, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand – as well as Australia, Europe, and here (obviously on the here part). Din Tai Fung just shouldn’t be that good, it is a big, impersonal, chain after all, but it is great (even the LA Times says it is the best Dim Sum around). The restaurant boasts that it is the second-best chain for world travelers according to CNN Travel. BTW, 7-Eleven is the first best chain with – as a surprising fact – 20,700 7-Elevens in Japan (as opposed to 8,500 in the US). End aside.

The excuss for the trip was the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona but it was really a getaway weekend, the kind of weekend that, a couple of years ago, we would have used to go to the desert. The Grand National Roadster Show – I love the pomposity of that name – is completely different than I expected. If it’s not obvious, the show is for hotrods and their allies and I sort of thought that hotrods were a dying breed along with all the old white guys that have been the center of the hotrod world since World War II. Yes, the old white guys are dying out but they are being replaced by younger white guys who are collecting the old cars as if they were old Ferrari’s. Those previous sentences are a huge simplification, largely because the allies have become as big as the classical hotrods themselves and new people are building new old-hotrods. The allies include what we used to call lead sleds and lowriders, as well as restored old race cars, and the new hotrods are exquisitely built and very expensive (expensive as in sometimes millions). I didn’t expect this Grand National Roadster Show, I didn’t expect it to be so alive and vital. In many ways, The Grand National Roadster Show is like a three day Pebble Beach Concours in a parallel universe.

Like the Pebble Beach Concours, the Grand National has dozens of arcane classes – subclasses might be a better descriptor – so that there are lots of winners. A typical class at Pebble is Class P-1: Zagato Centennial Prewar. It was won by Lawrence Auriana a Portfolio co-Manager of Federated Kaufmann Fund and a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts. Auriana won the class with a 1932 Maserati Spider V4 – for some unknown reason, the Maserati Brothers called it a V4 although it had a V16 engine – which had been a racecar but was re-bodied by Ugo Zagato in 1934. At the Grand National, a similar class is Class 122: Early Street Coupe pre‐1935. At the Grand National this year, this was won by Jim Bridgewater, from Kankakee, IL with a 1934 Ford 5 Window Coupe built by Royboy Productions. Bridgewater owns Midwest Transit Equipment Inc. a bus rebuilder and refurbisher, whose website says is the #1 Bus Dealer in the USA.

One area where Pebble Beach and the Grand National are wildly different is the placement, kind, and number of vendors. At Pebble, the vendors – usually car care products or model car booths -are kept well away from the show cars but at the Grand National, the cars are sort of mixed in with the vendors, and many of the vendors are craftsmen who design and build entire cars, often to order, for a price well north of a million dollars. We stopped to admire a sort of Bugattiesque custom-built chassis.

and we ended up talking to another admirer and racecar builder about this strange new, to us, world and, eventually, Trump (he started the Trump part, really). The fellow admirer was for Trump – duh! – and suggested, maybe more than suggested, that the car people who were here were Trump voters because they, like Trump, are the kind of people who make things. They were the kind of people who did honest work. The Democrat he seemed to most dislike was Joe Biden who he thought was a typical Washington crook although I had the feeling that Bernie was so far out of the question that he wasn’t even worth talking about. Michele and I walked away thinking that there was no way this guy, or most of the people in the hall, would be voting for a Democrat no matter how moderate.

The show’s raison d’etre is to find America’s Most Beautiful Roadster (past winners are not eligible, so, like TIME‘s Person of the Year, don’t expect a repeat) At the center of this show are ten wildly different roadsters duking it out for the title. A roadster used to be a bare minimum kind of open car but, over the years, in the hotrod world, it has morphed into several broad but – seemingly – pretty formal design categories. These can range from subtle to flamboyant but the design is often based on, very roughly, an existing car that has been modified. One such car is the classic 1932 Ford – called a deuce for the two in 1932.

The winning car, shown above sporting a spectacular flame job, is a deuce, sort of. I doubt that it has any Ford parts and certainly it doesn’t have any parts made in 1932. This car started life, not in 1932, but in the late 1990s as one of a series of ten steel-bodied cars built in the style, called Murdoc Highboys, of a classic 1932 Ford hotrod. They were built in San Bernardino, California, by Angie’s Auto. The cars were designed by Chip Foose and Jerry Kugel, both hot-rodding icons and they were powered – overpowered is probably way more accurate – by a 5.7L Corvette engine built by Street and Performance of Mena, Arkansas. This car was bought by Monty Belsham, a large General Contractor from Canada, and completely taken apart and restored by Doug Jerger of Squeeg’s Kustoms in Chandler, Arizona where it was given an outstanding flame paint job. This car was treated with all the love and respect of a vintage Ferrari racecar except that it was designed and built in the United States rather than Modena, Italy. BTW, the black car at the top of the post, with the voluminous fenders, is another version of that series.

The more traditional deuce, below, is not a 1932 Ford either. It based on a steel body built by Brookville Roadsters in Brookville, Ohio, but it does have a Ford engine at least (and I love the wheels with the tire sidewalls scrubbed of all identifying info.  

 

Another popular template is the Model T Ford or Model A Ford that we used to call a T-bucket and are often ridiculously flamboyant like this 1915 Model T Ford – actually built in 1970-71 by Danny Eishstedt on a body built by Tex Collins at Cal Automotive. It has been restored and is now owned by Walter Sigsbey. My favorite car at the show, however, was subtle in the extream, a 1927 Ford roadster with a track nose that was built by Mike Abssy at Schrader’s Speed and Style in Azusa, California and actually seems to have been built out of Ford parts, including an old Ford flathead engine (well, a copy of an old Ford engine).

Although I’m not particularly interested in hotrods, they are not usually my esthetic, I admire the workmanship and I’ve been to a lot of hot rod shows over the years. Often alone because I don’t know any hotrodders any more. Usually, I spend a couple of hours wandering around and will only find a car or two that grabs me, but the Grand National really is grand. It is chockablock with beautifully designed and built cars even if most of them are not my style. We sent about six hours there and left because we were burned out not because we had run out of cars. I don’t want to burn you out so I’m going to end it here.

If you still want to stick around, here are a couple of pictures of cars and details that interested or amused me. In order, they are another 1932 Ford Roadster, this one finished by friends of Ken Katashio of Ebnina, Japan after he died;

still another version of a ’32 Roadster was raced in Michigan in the mid-60s – in the AA Gas Street Roadster class – and lovingly restored over a period of 16 years Rich Conklin (sending out messages to fellow hotrodders like Hi there guys, We are in the process of restoring the Dorman/Koopman 32 roadster…This is a long shot but anyone happen to have any other pictures of this car? We are setting up the steering and any pictures would really help us out!);

The brute below is the great Shirley Muldowney’s NHRA Top Fuel Dragster. Shirley is the first person to win three world championships, man or woman. The quickest she has gone in this car is 1,000 feet in 4.64 seconds (with a top speed of 320.20 miles per hour). I especially like the Simpson parachute safety strap which says stopping your ass since ’59 on one side and remove before flight on the other side.

A 1930 Ford Model A sedan built by Dana and Lorne Hinkle from Romona, California. The paint job allegedly took over although 3,000 hours although I’m not sure they were hours well spent.

A famous car designed by the legendary Norm Grabowski in the early 50s and featured in 77 Sunset Strip. It is now owned by Ross and Beth Myers of Boyertown, Pennsylvania. Myers is the CEO of American Infrastructure Inc. which says it is a Construction and Materials Powerhouse.

After rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs during their comeback against Houston and then rooting for them in their comeback against the Titans, I changed my allegiance and rooted for the sort-of-hometown Niners. Still, all that earlier rooting had re-energized my long-dormant fanship for Kansas City that had started when, while living in Oakland as a Raider fan, I would always root for the AFL, and later the AFC, in the Superbowl. So, while I was disappointed the Niners lost, I’m OK with the Chiefs winning and, for most of it, it was a pretty good game.

What I want to talk about, is that I started to watch the Superbowl a little late because, among other things, I read that Trump was being interviewed by Sean Hannity just before the game. I figured it would really be a free ad for Trump2020 and I wanted to be sure to miss it. The Fox owners can give Trump a forum to say anything he or they want because they own the Network. They are the ones holding the mic and, in reality, that gives them the only voice in the room. It got me thinking that getting rid of Citizens-United is a fool’s errand. Anybody who owns a TV Network or a Newspaper could back anyone they wanted before the Supreme Court ruled that political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment – according to the SCOTUS Blog – and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections.

Before Citizens-United, Fox News could still shill for President Donald Trump and Chris Mattews could still say that Bernie Sanders was unfit to be President, but General Motors couldn’t because that was not their business. Sheldon Adelson’s main business is conning money from gamblers so one would think, before Citizens-United, he couldn’t engage in direct political speech but Adelson owns two daily newspapers, Israel Hayom and the Las Vegas Review-Journal so he can print anything he wants. So can Jeff Bezos with The Washington Post and so can Jim Hightower with The Hightower Lowdown.

We pretend that the rich and powerful were enabled by Citizens-United but I don’t think that was really the case and passing a new law re-outlawing corporate spending will not really change anything.

…it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. Bobby Kennedy in a speech to a large group of African-Americans on April 4th, 1968, breaking the news that Martin Luther King had been assassinated by a white man.

Michele and I saw the Kronos Quartet last Wednesday, April 4th. It was a tribute to Martin Luther King with arrangements by a variety of contemporary Chamber Music – for lack of a better descriptor – composers. It started with the Star-Spangled Banner, their version, inspired by Jimi Hendricks, but it was their version of Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit that most moved me. It was a funeral dirge that was both intimate and universal. It seemed to be for our poor country as much as MLK, the sad music sort of reached out and encompassed all of us. Sitting in Bing Concert Hall, about 24 hours after the Debate, listening and feeling the sadness engulf me was…well, sad. I felt deeply sad and trying to write about the Debate, I still do.

By Debate, I mean the January Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate. The subtext of which is really a fight over our country’s soul, who we want to be as a country. I know what I want us to be and I think I know what most of my friends want but it seems to me that what we want is not universal. It was not universal even on that stage with the most liberal group of candidates we’ve seen in the last forty years. The debaters came in two flavors, just like most of us listeners, those that think that Trump is the problem and, with a little fine-tuning, everything will be fine, and those that believe that Trump is the result symptom of the problem. To be clear, I think Trump is the result of a political class, on both sides of the aisle, that has not walked its talk. I am aware that belief colors my view of the different candidates, I am also aware that the Democratic Establishment falls into the everything is basically fine group – although they frame it as “what we have is the best we can get” – and that conviction colors their view of the different candidates.

Joe Biden is probably the most extreme Trump is the problem candidate and his campaign has a sort of restoration of virtue vibe about it. To my ear, that sounds like “Let’s go back to business as usual” and although I don’t see Biden getting the nomination, he has a lot of money and, seemingly, a big part of the Democratic Party Establishment backing him. I say that because the questions at the debate had a distinctly pro-Biden, anti-Sanders cast as the screenshot at the top illustrates. The question was to Biden BTW and it stayed on the screen after Biden, smiling, agreed that Bernie did owe us an explanation. However, Trump is most surely running on the economy and, although Biden was instrumental in the economy Trump ran against, Biden seems to think he can beat him there. Ironically, Biden is taking the same tactic that Trump used when he ran against the Obama Economy, “Don’t believe the numbers. That’s Wall Street BS; how are you doing? Believe your own eyes”. I like that tactic but not Biden. He doesn’t speak about the oncoming Climate Disaster with much conviction and I hate his take on international relations, supposedly his big area of expertise. He is a big Kissinger fan, which says it all, Biden says, “Kissinger doesn’t have a rival for the depth of his knowledge & strategic thinking. He’s always been my reality check. I’ve sought his counsel and he’s a friend.” Lastly, he is really too old, really really and his age is showing; watching Biden stumble around mid-sentence on some semi-memorized bit, it’s hard not to laugh, he gets so befuddled.

Pete Buttigieg is almost the polar opposite and he is running on change. But, like Obama who also ran on change, Buttigieg is the change rather than new policies being the change. He is the best looking and most charming candidate on the stage and, I suspect, he is the most intelligent also, but he did nothing to enlist me, partially because Climate Change seems to be so low on his agenda. On his website, Rising to the Climate Challenge is eighteenth on his list of Latest Plans, below the fold, and behind Indian Country: Achieving Autonomy for Tribal Nations & Enhancing Opportunities for Native People to Thrive. Clicking through to Rising to the Climate Challenge brings us to a series of moderate proposals that don’t mention fossil fuels.

Amy Klobuchar, on the other hand, has Climate Change as her third issue on her website, behind Healthcare For All and Shared Prosperity and Economic Justice. Klobuchar’s basic pitch is “I’m from the sensible Midwest.” It’s not my shtick but I would much rather have her than either Biden or Buttigieg. And, apparently, so does the NYT. I think it is becoming obvious to people who like the status quo, the rich, the powerful, the influential, that Biden is not going to be able to carry the flag and Klobuchar is a conservative down-to-earth midwesterner with enough of a populist streak to maybe satisfy the proles.

Of everyone on the debate stage, Bernie Sanders’s answers most match mine. He’s too old and yells too much – like he doesn’t quite trust that the mike is hot which I’m beginning to think might be a sensible attitude – and I can come up with a dozen more reasons not to vote for him but his what he wants for the country match my hopes almost perfectly. I liked Governor Inslee and gave him money because I loved that his priority was the Climate Crisis and I thought he had a chance to get nominated because he’s white and male and not too radical; then he dropped out, after going nowhere. I liked Yang – still like him, partially because of his age and his out of the box thinking but he didn’t qualify for this debate and, I suspect, that will hurt, if not end, his slim chances at getting the nomination. I don’t think Bernie will get the nomination either, the Democratic Establishment is almost entirely against him and they are doing everything they can to ensure the Democratic ticket remains Sanders-free. I say remains because what is happening seems to be following the patterns set in 2016. However, I’m coming to the conclusion that I should follow my own advice and vote and contribute to Bernie Sanders, whom I agree with, rather than somebody who I think, obviously wrongly, has a good chance at the nomination.

Speaking of chances, I’m not even sure how Tom Steyer met the requirements to get on stage, but he did. Steyer says Climate is his biggest issue and I’m starting to believe him and so does CNN, he was shut down when he tried to weave Climate Change into an answer. We were told “We’ll get to that later” and they did, for less time than they spent trying to gin up controversy over Bernie supposedly saying a woman can’t win the presidency. I’m starting to warm to Steyer which, given my track record, might mean he is going to drop out.

I’ve been an Elizabeth Warren fan and I especially like her core issue, corruption in government – huh? I like the issue, not the corruption – but her revelation attack on Bernie has soured me. I don’t understand it and trying to understand the unanswered quote that Time featured this week, I thought a woman could win. He disagreed, just makes me mad. According to both Warren and Sanders, Bernie deferred his running for president to Warren’s possible running in 2016. I find that hard to believe that three years after deferring to Warren, he told her that a woman couldn’t win. The meeting, reportedly to form a nonaggression pact, took place in December 2018, and, now, thirteen months later, Warren’s interpretation that Bernie said a woman couldn’t win has become the official storyline. On the debate stage, Bernie wasn’t asked what he said, he was accused: “Senator Warren confirmed in a statement that in 2018, you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?” Why? not did you? According to CNN, the description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people which seems to give the Warren interpretation authority, but that makes it sound like four people were there and they all agree independently but the four people part just isn’t true. Again, according to CNN, two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting. That’s actually one person, Elizabeth Warren. Maybe the whole thing is just a misunderstanding but I find that, also, hard to believe.

For the first time this election cycle, listening to the candidates debate has left me more discouraged rather than encouraged.

For Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a strong response is essential.  Susan E. Rice, National Security Adviser under President Obama, shortly before Khamenei’s conciliatory response.

“Well, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.” Harry Callahan in Dead Pool.

I hate being in a position of defending Trump, I dislike the man – not that I have actually met him, but I dislike the image I’m constantly fed – I dislike his casual nastiness and his constant thin-skinned self-promotion. He is a kiss-up, punch down kind of guy. But he is not always wrong and taking out Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was the right thing to do despite the knee jerk condemnation of experts from other regimes.

OK, to back up, it was a bad idea to walk out on the nuclear treaty with Iran partially because it shows we can’t be trusted to keep an agreement and partially because we also walked out on the other signers; the UK, France, Germany, and the European Union as well as Russia and China. It makes us seem feckless and weakens us on the global stage. But given that we are there – and it seems all these experts think we should be there – what is our plan? If it is to win whatever we want to call it – war seems too grand, maybe struggle would fit – and they attacked us, which they did on Dec. 27 when they fired several rockets into a base in Northeast Iraq that killed an American mercenary and wounded four U.S. military people then wouldn’t attacking their command and control structure – in this case, their top general – be a good idea? That’s what we tried to do when both Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger attacked Iraq.

People talk about a measured response, why? That just prolongs the conflict (I like conflict). It seems to me that Trump did two things with this targetted assassination: he said: “Don’t mess with me; I’m not going to play the usual games, if you slap at me, I’ll beat the shit out of you.” and “We know where you are, we are watching.” I think it will be a lot longer before Iran hits back directly because of Trump’s killing their top terrorist rather than the measured response of killing a couple of Privates and a Sargeant guarding a supply dump. It is almost as if the Political Establishment – especially the Corporate Democrats – doesn’t want to end these conflicts. I guess they are good for business.