For this week: Optimist;  notable dates; churches no longer; new Democratic blood; Mexico's new president; hemp; federal and state monies; juvenile sex trafficking; gerrymandering; Paris unrest; climate change; a (female) war correspondent's remembrances.

Optimist. Link for Sunday's 2 December. George H.W. Bush, our longest lived president passed away. In our harried, troubled world, all may not be lost; there are still kind, caring people out there. Stephen Hillenburg, an ALS victim, used his "Sponge Bob" cartoon, to provoke laughter help to save the world's oceans.

Notable Dates.  29 November 1864. Sand Creek, CO. The Colorado militia killed 150 peaceful Cheyenne men, women, and children.
     2 December 1823. President Monroe announced his doctrine, seeking to eliminate European forays into the western hemisphere.
     3 December 1833. Oberlin, America's truly first coed college, began holding classes.
     4 December 1978: San Francisco, that west coast bastion of liberalism, installed its first female mayor, Diane Feinstein, to replace the assassinated George Moscone. 


Missing: your church? This Atlantic article notes the re-purposing of many American local church buildings. Interestingly, the long standing (often debated) tax exempt status of church property and structures has not saved many from bankruptcies. Declining membership, smaller offerings, and the so-called mega churches taken their toll.

New Democrats. Once upon a time there was FDR's New Deal. What the Democratic party desperately needs now are New Democrats. With all three of the party's House leaders pushing 80, the younger party members remain reluctant to do more than talk a good fight about replacements. More than a few have been dissuaded by the political plums offered by Speaker-apparent, Nancy Pelosi.
     A recent Toles political cartoon in the Denver Post featured an early, morning-after encounter with a hungry soul confronting brightly lighted 'frig packed, not with left-over turkey, but a crumpled Nancy Pelosi! This Mother Jones article discusses Beto O'Rourke and his very unconventional, nearly successful campaign to unseat Senator Ted Cruiz (R, TX). The presidential election of 2020 is providing yet another reason for the "Pelosi Crew" to hang on" and not even announce their retirement.

Mexico. There's a new president in Mexico City, a leftist, the first in more than 70 years. He is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his relationship with President Trump may be very interesting. His inauguration was marred by the killing of one newspaper reporter and an attack on police station.

Industrial Hemp. This non-drug relative of marijuana may be legal once again. This story is datelined, Albuquerque, NM, but Senator Mitch McConnell (R, KS) is "leading the charge" to include legalization in the pending farm bill. Hemp has not always been out of favor. During WW II it was heavily cultivated for all manner of defense-related purposes. In 1942, a black and white movie, "Hemp for Victory," touted its use.

Federal and state finances. With a government shut down a possibility, some states are wondering if they will once again be forced to spend state revenue to maintain needed services. AZ, CO, NY, and UT have had to use state funds to keep their national monuments and parks open.

Juvenile sex trafficking. Columnist Leonard Pitts notes the series by the Miami Hearld's Julie Brown on young girls trafficked for sex and how some high level officals are involved with this sordid story. The Washington Post story talks of billionaire and Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein's 2008 guilty plea.

Gerrymandering. Add Missouri to the list of states that moved this past November to try and end the partisan gerrymander. Theirs will be a mathematical "fairness" approach.

Paris mayhem. Columnist Anne Applebaum thinks the "democratic world" would do well to note what happened last weekend in Paris -- and why. "With their origins firmly in cyberspace, the gilets jaunes [for their reflective yellow safety vests] aren’t connected to any existing political parties, although several [far left and far right] are already trying to claim them." Mundane, bread-and-butter issues like "green taxes" that have raised gasoline prices and highway speed limits are among the complaints. In a country whose elders remember the Paris riots of 1968, the advent of easily spread social media-based anger is not welcomed. The young, of course, have no recollections of their city violent not too distant past.

Climate change. It is hard to imagine a more improbable site for the UN's annual climate summit than Katowice, Poland. This city, in Poland's Silesia district, is synonymous with the coal industry. For obvious reasons, Silesia was a target in WW II of both Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. Its abundant coal continued to supply the USSR throughout the Cold War. 
     This statement by Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, was an upfront truth. “We are trying to save the world from annihilation, but we must do this in a way that those who live with us today in the world have the best possible living conditions...Otherwise they will say, ‘We don’t want such policy.’” Of course, that's if there is a changing climate in President Trump's world!

Uyghar, heartland. The "disappeared" may be usually thought of in connection with Argentina's rightist juntas' efforts to rid themselves of their nation's leftists (i.e. communists). But, as this CSM article notes, the ethnically Han Chinese Communist Party very much wants to divest China's Uyghars of their ethnic identity. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, are in "training prisons" (i.e. "re-education centers") scattered throughout Xinjiang province (far western China). Probably not a topic broached between Presidents Trump and Xi.

War from the female point of view. The Face of War, Martha Gellhorn. Of course, Ernie Pyle and his colleagues had access, but for the distaff side it was a different story. Ms. Gellhorn leapt into the fray in the Spanish Civil War, which, if it is remembered at all by the general public, is by way of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. As she proceeds through the world's succeeding conflicts there are subtle hints of what feminism was only occasionally an asset. She remembers that after the horrors of seeing Dachau and the A-bombs she nearly gave up, "left war altogether."

Thank you for reading. I hope your December has begun well.