Tag Archives: sucks

The California Governor Trap

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Here in California, we have a pretty fucked-up primary system when it comes to selecting a new Governor. The current primary system was shoved through during the last days of the Schwarzenegger administration — our last Republican Governor — theoretically to protect the little guy. It was really an exploitation of the easily-predicted situation we now face.

In this system, the top two vote-getters in the primary, regardless of party, face off in the election.

This time around, there are two truly horrible Republican candidates, and maybe seven Democrats of varying levels of viability. Roughly 40% of voters will give the horrible people roughly 20% each, with the fucking Fox News guy ahead of the fucking murderous county sheriff.

It is critical that a non-Republican gets more primary votes than the murderous cop. It would seem in a state like this that it has to happen. But if you divide the remaining 60% of votes evenly, no one comes close.

So do I vote for my favorite, or do I rally around someone who is already popular to make sure the election is not between two Republicans?

The rally-around candidates are a guy who worked for Biden, and an (apparently) reformed billionaire. Both are wealthy men with skeletons. The insider was not so good at his insider job and the billionaire did not get rich without costing others. I could vote for one of them, hoping to avoid the worst outcome. Either would be better than the Republican offerings.

Or I could vote for the person who would be the best governor of California. There is one woman still in the race, who has been criticized for her temperament. In a male candidate, the same behavior would be described as “assertive”. Her biggest problem with the one-time billionaire tax on the ballot is that it is only one-time, and bypasses the people who are only worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s a good start for me, but I have to study more before I decide.

But if I vote for my fave (whoever that turns out to be), will I help to install a Republican in Sacramento?

The Democratic Party is apparently composed of idiots. The whole reason you HAVE a party is to prevent this sort of thing. And while I think the Democrats are being absolute fucking idiots by ignoring their progressive roots (this is why we have the president we do), a party should AT LEAST be able to avoid this nonsense.

The Democratic Party is stupid and badly run; their only saving grace is “Hey, at least we are not actively evil… most of the time. You know, except for…” They are absolutely evil less than the Republicans, but “less evil” is not what I want to be voting for. This is exactly why people stayed home in the last presidential election and we have that motherfucker as president.

To pull my own ramblings back around to this election, I feel I need to circle up and make sure Fox News doesn’t score another major political office. But that kills me, because it just feeds the “less evil” narrative, which has been the downfall of the resistance. I want to vote for “good”!

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Dad, 1937 – 2026

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Philip Anthony Seeger — scientist, showman, musician, astronomer, and traveler — took his last breath this morning. That’s the way with Parkinson’s. But he retained his dignity, his humor, and his heart to the very end. He went down singing.

Dad was clever, kind, and eternally curious. He could cock his eyebrow when he was telling a joke in a way I did not inherit, and that eyebrow was cocked as he was telling jokes long past the time he could form a sentence. Immobile, in bed, he still had sauce.

Dad loved music, loved song. When there was nothing left, no way out, no way even to move his unresponding limbs, there was still song. I don’t know what he was singing, and I have no proof that the songs I sang to him were any comfort, but I like to imagine they were.

Parkinson’s had stolen everything else. As a kid he was the Texas state champion of mental arithmetic. He could make the digits dance. When Parkinson’s took the numbers away, it broke my heart. It was, for him, like hearing someone speak in a language you have always known, but somehow now the words are cryptic.

The stories are cluttered now, from how our house was built so he could put an observatory on the roof of the garage, to the observatory he built in the back yard (a much better choice), to how he cut a patient in half playing Walter Mitty at Don Juan Playhouse. “We’re going through!”

There are too many stories, so I will stop trying now. It was humbling and a little scary measuring myself against an intellect like his, and a level of craft like his, and a wit like his, but he never measured me that way. He gave me science fiction and hope for the world. He gave me the questions, but not the answers.

I owe him everything.

Goodbye, Dad.

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Thanks!

Mom (1936-2025)

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Mom died a couple of weeks ago. I thought I had more time, to be honest. When I left Los Alamos after the new year, all signs were positive. I am fortunate, I suppose, that my last moments with mom were when she was peaking for the last time. She sat next to me as I surveyed the Risk board on the folding table in front of me. The table is probably older than I am, and my no-good nephews allied to eliminate me. It was like we were playing Diplomacy.

But Mom was there, at my left elbow, and happy. Dad was to her left.

For mom, hospitality was unconscious and automatic. There was always room at the dinner table for one more. One of my friends, one of fuego’s friends, or some random Russian scientist with nowhere to go on thanksgiving.

Ask Alexi (the Russian previously mentioned) what Makes America Great, and he will tell you. He will speak of turkey and stuffing, but he will also speak of the welcome of strangers. He will tell you that people like Mom make America great. And he’s right.

I took it for granted when I was a kid that I could drop a friend in around the table. This welcoming attitude cannot be undersold today.

There are many, many other things that made Mom awesome, and I didn’t even know some of them until helping to compose her obituary. She was valedictorian at her high school, and went to Rice University on scholarship. While there, she met my dad on a blind date. They were married for 65 years.

There is a photo of Mom, taken by Dad on the rocks above El Paso, TX. It’s a slide in a box somewhere, I hope. I only saw it once, Mom in blue jeans turned up at the cuff, the wind blowing her hair, the sun in her eyes. Seeing that picture showed me a version of Mom before me; a photo that could have been in a fashion magazine.

I didn’t really understand it then, but a photo like that is a partnership between subject and photographer. Between Mom and Dad.

I’m drifting here. Not sure which stories to tell. But if you knew her, you have your own. She was fierce, and gentle. She was kind. So kind, she was baffled by the unkindness let loose in our country recently. She was tireless helping others, particularly others with special challenges.

Perhaps that started when her family took in a “problem child”. He was seven and didn’t even have the alphabet. Mom took Uncle Dupes under her wing and with infinite patience taught him his letters, and then his words, and Dupes’ life was rescued.

She never stopped doing that.

I think I’ll end with that. Not enough people make the world better; few have the impact she did. But for all I’m proud of that, that was Barbara Seeger, awesome person. But for me she was Mom.

Mom, whom I puked on God knows how many times, who watched God knows how many terrible student plays (You’re a good man, Charlie Brown adapted for the bicentennial an obvious exception), who somehow sensed a critical moment to send me an articulate pep talk from a thousand miles away, is gone now, and I will miss her.

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Thanks!