We are going to the mountains for a weekend without computers and I know we will miss at least five major stories that nobody will remember by Wednesday. Watching Cohen’s appearance at the House Oversight Committee has left me in a good mood and so has a major article in Rolling Stone which I highly recommend.

It is a fascinating article (for that matter, you could spend an hour just looking at the body language in the picture above). The article layout is a little strange – for me, at least – in that, there is a main interview with Nancy Pelosi and separate, but connected, interviews with each of the other women that didn’t have links that I found. All the interviews are worth ready, this is a group of amazing people who are shaping the future as the article points out. Below are some sample quotes but, really, click through to the article if only to see the short promo video if nothing else. Here are a couple of samples, from AOC, AOC, Ilhan, and Nancy Pelosi.

In your ability to galvanize your supporters through social media, you have been compared to Donald Trump.
Well, I think that there’s this rush to make that comparison, but any time media fundamentally changes, the first movers to recognize that change — and to learn it and to adapt to it — tend to have that first-move advantage. So this is less about personality, less about Trump, and more about who has had the first-mover advantage. But there are similarities. People who succeed in social media follow similar tenets. In order to resonate with people, you have to tell them what you mean, you have to be willing to make mistakes, you have to be willing to be vulnerable and learn as you go.

How much of what you’re talking about is trying to move the Overton window [the range of ideas accepted in public discourse] so that Democrats can compete with the way Republicans have moved it?
A huge part of my agenda is to move the Overton window, because it’s a strategic position. I’m a first-term freshman in an institution that works by seniority. Procedurally, it is kind of like high school. You’re the new kid on the block. So, as a freshman, you have to look at the tools available to you, and in my first term, if we have the opportunity to frame the debate, then that is one of the ways to have the most power. If I’m here for four days, then the most powerful thing I can do is to create a national debate on marginal tax rates on the rich.

In a tweeted apology, you wrote you were grateful to ‘Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating [you] on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes.’ What do you think you still have to learn about the Jewish faith or Jewish culture to avoid repeating such mistakes?

I know what intolerance looks like and one thing that has been painful about this whole process is knowing that I used language that caused hurt to others. My hope is that as much as I hold others accountable and help them learn, that people will also hold me accountable. I work every day to make sure we are living in a more tolerant world. And I hope people understand how deeply I care about creating that world. That’s why one of the first things I did as a member-elect was to speak about the rise of anti-Semitism — and one of the first bills I cosponsored as a new member was legislation to elevate the position of a Special Envoy to combat anti-Semitism. I’m an organizer at heart. I’ve given an earful to others who traffic in bigotry, so I need to listen and learn. Listening and working with communities directly impacted is what will make me a better public servant. Speaker Pelosi has been a mentor throughout this whole process and I look forward to working with her in furthering the people’s agenda.

Beatles, Stones, Dylan? Where are you on the three greats of the Sixties and the Seventies?
I probably know the words to more Beatles songs, if that means anything. I love Dylan, and I love the Stones. I’ve been to many of their concerts. I was at one concert in Argentina. I was down there for a security visit. On the street, they had the banners: the Rolling Stones with Bob Dylan. Oh, my God! We had to go, right? So we had to rearrange everything. And we go, and there is Bob Dylan singing “Like a Rolling Stone”! It was just incredible. And at that concert — this is having nothing to do with anything — [Rep.] Nita Lowey, who’s [Appropriations] chair now, she’d never been to a concert. I said, “Look, Nita. We’re concertgoers. You may smell things you don’t recognize, but we are concertgoers. If you go, you have to stay.”

From Donald J. Trump…Crazy Bernie

From BernieSanders…Trump is TERRIFIED

For a political junkie like me, this election is already fascinating, which makes me feel a little guilty because it isn’t a game for me to enjoy but a life and death struggle between the Democratic Establishment and the upstart Progressives for the soul of the Party. And, let’s face it, the future of the world as we know it. My issue, increasingly my only issue, is Climate Change. Real, big, Climate Change is coming towards us with all the realness and finality of World War II. How we react to that, the amount of urgency and energy we put into dealing with what is quickly becoming an emergency will make a difference to the future of our planet.

There are an astounding number of Democrats running. Somebody, I don’t remember who, said that the field could be broken into two groups, those who are running on the issues like Warren and Sanders, and those who are running on who they are like Booker and Harris. That rings true to me. I think that almost everybody has signed on to the Green New Deal but I don’t really know what that means, when I go to Kamala Harris’ website, it says TOUGH. PRINCIPLED. FEARLESS. and that is pretty much the depth of the information I’m going to get. After reading a very complimentary article in the Washington Post on South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, I went to his website and all it said is It’s time for a generation of American Leadership. That’s it. I have no idea where he stands on the political spectrum, which is too bad since he is the kind of young person I would like to see emerge as a contender.

I would think that anyone running for President would have spent some time reflecting on what issues they find important but, if’s that that’s the case, they don’t want to tell us. Maybe they know what they want but are afraid to say it out loud or, maybe, and this is my fear, they do not want to offend big donors. I’ve read that the two people Wall Street hates are Elisabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and they are the two whom we know the most about their policies. It seems to me that a lot of money is going to go to candidates who aren’t Warren or Sanders.

As an aside, I’m not sure how to, shorthand, refer to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Bernie seems right but Elizabeth doesn’t, Elizabeth does not seem to connote her seriousness as well as Warren, but Bernie and Warren seems not quite right either. End aside.

The divide in the Democratic Party worries me. I’m afraid my side, the Progressive side, will lose because the other side knows how to play the game. But, maybe, it is a new game. When Dianne Feinstein, not at her best, went viral and she couldn’t even understand how it happened and then, two days later, I see this picture of AOC, Ayanne Pressly, and Rashida Tlaib and I think; This is a new game. 

Michele and I have both had winter colds that just want to hang on. Outside, it’s been cold and rainy, inside it’s warm and dry, so we have only gone out for necessary chores. Returning, coughing and wheezing. Today it was almost 60 and dry so I wandered out on the deck – earbuds in, listening to Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 1 – to just sit and soak in the early spring. Near me, was a small pile of birdseed left over from our birdfeeder’s spring cleaning and I watched the birds trying to eat it. They would dash in, get close, and then dash out empty handed, getting closer each time. The bravest were the Chickadees followed by Juncos; all of them afraid but hungry. To me, it was adorable, for them it was a lot more serious. Finally, one Chickadee got some seed, then another, and the world seemed a little brighter.

In the face of 37 indictments, the President’s continued actions to undermine the Special Counsel investigation raise the questions: what does Putin have on the President, politically, personally or financially?  part of a statement released by Speaker Pelosi’s office on Saturday.

I’ve had a lousy winter cold and the last two weeks have faded into a grey haze of not much but sleep, blowing my nose, watching TV, and reading tweets so I feel out of it. Before my cold, I read that Nancy Pelosi was going to run for Speaker again, and I was disappointed. She is, after all, 78 years old and definitely old school at a time when I think new blood and new ideas are needed. But, between naps, as I watched the shutdown drone on, I began to think that she is the perfect foil for Trump. When Trump blinked and ended the shutdown with what seemed like no resolution, I was sure she was the right person. I’ve read that Pelosi won this round (but I think it is more accurate to say that everybody lost and that Trump lost the most). That’s not surprising to me. For a woman to rise to the office of Speaker of the House, she has to be better than any man around (after all, the default position is always White Male).

Right after the shutdown, which seems a long time ago now, I was thrilled to read the line at the top of the page, which I saw on a retweet from Ilhan Omar @IlhanMN, then I was incredulous, and finally, a little scared. Oh my God! The Speaker of the House or, Nancy, as Trump says he calls her, is going after the President and that is scary because Trump, himself, is scary crazy. He is usually the craziest guy in the room and he could do anything if pushed into a corner. I’ve calmed down now by thinking that if I had to make a bet between Speaker Pelosi and President Trump, I would take Pelosi, every time.

I guess that bet is a no-brainer though, women have to be better to make the team, let alone be the captain of the team, just like anybody of color. The average woman in Congress is much smarter and more capable than the average guy, she has to be. The amount of work that it took Trump to get where he is not even in the same ballpark as the amount of work it took Pelosi. As a woman in what has been a man’s game for most of her life, she has overcome more pain and rejection than any imagined by Trump. Pelosi’s rise to power has made her thick-skinned, while Trump’s waltz has, paradoxically, left him even more thin-skinned and isolated.

The Problem With Trying to Do Good from Inside the Bubble

It is pretty easy to see that poor neighborhoods are underserved by the government just like poor people are underserved; just drive through a poor neighborhood. What to do about it, however, is harder to see. I default to One thing that is nice in a neighborhood is a park, a place to have lunch or take the kids on Saturday. The problem with that, I just read in an interesting article in Bay Nature, is that when we put parks in poor neighborhoods, it gentrifies the area. This is where I get a little confused; if gentrifying the area is bad, and it certainly seems to me that it is bad for the residents that get gentrified out, what is good? I keep reading that poor areas are food deserts, so maybe what a poor area needs is a good market and maybe, rather than a park, the funds should be spent subsidizing that market. Maybe a market that gives classes on healthy eating. We have community gardens that are subsidized, why not markets. And, I want to add that I’m in the bubble of white, middle-class, entitlement so, rather than listening to me, the real people who should be listened to are the existing residents.     

In the well, of course, department, but still….

Former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is now vice president of global affairs and communications at Facebook, and recently purchased a home in Atherton for $9 million.

In the how dumb can somebody be department.

“Pelosi is playing checkers. Trump is playing chess. Trump’s intuitive mind is a super-computer. … He is a strategic savant. Instead of wasting energy on things like tact, his brain focuses on strategy.” A Tweet by Bill Mitchell.