The countdown on my phone says "16." That means four more days, then two days home, then four more days, then two days off, then four more days, then I get to sleep in my own bed with my own wife under my own roof for more than two days in a row for the first time in three months and more than five days in a row for the first time since May. I decided to be the change. Now giving monthly to the ACLU, donated to 350.org and have signed up to volunteer with 350 and my local Democratic precinct. The Kerry Campaign did a really good job of turning me into a jaded mutherfucker but I'm thinking there's a chance to tear a bitch down. Not that my peeps did us wrong. Need a car. The Stealth is demonstrating its desire to move on to a higher plane of existence. Sunroof leaks, which is no big in LA but a real problem in Seattle. Put it under a cover last month and the last time I came home the passenger seat had literally grown fur. Turn signal relay is shuddering, which is cheap, but the SRS light won't go out, which is a fuckn nightmare to chase down. And it's got a sticky lifter which really sucks as it had new heads not fuckin' 30k ago. But there's nothing out there that interests me and having been without a car payment for a number of years I'm not eager to go back. Still an'all going to the LA Auto Show not this weekend but next weekend so I can see all the mediocre rigs I can't afford. Honestly? I should probably spend the $600 or so it'll take to return the Dodge to driveability but you reach the point where throwing good money after bad starts to suck. I'm fortunate to be in a position where this is an academic problem rather than "oh shit I can't get to work unless this POS keeps running." By the time the season is over I will have biked 3,000 miles. I don't, like, know the community of river rats that I ride past every day? But I know them. The ones that shit in the river, the ones that ride mopeds on the bike path, the ones that sweep the shallows with a push broom. The ones that hung this up the day after the election. I wonder if I knew Alesando. He died last week sometime.
I already donated to the ACLU in the wake of their open letter to Trump. I told my wife that I intend to look into volunteering for a House campaign in the run-up to midterm elections in two years as well. I intend to give both money and labor to oppose Trump, nearly everything he stands for, and his Republican lap dog enablers.
Sandy Levin is our congressman at the moment. He's a great guy, but 85 years old, making him 87 at the next midterms (obviously). Have to imagine he's going to retire. If we didn't have so much going on business-wise, I might try to run myself. Dems need some fresh blood.
How do you vet the orgs you decide to donate to? ACLU is obviously an organization with a very long track record, but what about 350? The only orgs I give to with any regularity are a local park and Heifer International, the former of which I can observe with my two eyes, and the latter I take on faith as being worth my dollars; they seem like good people spending dollars wisely.
Just want to shout out Southern Poverty Law Center as another organization with a long established history of Actually Helping With Your Money. In 1979 it began to fight the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups with an innovative litigating strategy involving filing civil suits for monetary damages on behalf of the victims of hate group harassment, threats, and violence. Given the decline in such groups over the years, the SPLC has become involved in other civil rights causes, including cases concerned with institutional racial segregation and discrimination, discrimination based on sexual orientation...
I've read two of Bill McKibben's books and I agree with his message. They could be spending it all on hookers'n'blow for all I know but what they've published I agree with. McKibben's criticisms of nuclear power are largely economical and relate to externalities and subsidies; I've read criticisms of his arguments but they get really technical really fast and I don't find them compelling. Not to say they don't have merit, but to say that as a slightly-educated layman with a technical background the math isn't decisively one way or the other.