Mitch's Blog

Pope Francis is in critical condition after a respiratory crisis

Measles outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico sickened nearly 100 people, with the number of cases is expected to rise. Only five of the victims are known to be vaccinated.

A Democratic trustee at Chula Vista Elementary School District in San Diego ran for a different seat on the school board in order to unseat another Democrat, who the first trustee and a board ally opposed. This set off events that led to a Republican being appointed to the board, changing a 4-1 Democratic majority on the board to 3-2. The county Democratic Party is not happy. This whole thing is more complicated than a season of “Slow Horses.”

A self-described American Christian missionary, Daniel Martindale, went undercover in Ukraine to spy for Moscow. He’s part of a growing ultraconservative American embrace of Russia and rejection of the US.

Six things E.R. doctors wish you’d avoid: Don’t wear crocs in ice and snow. “Don’t trust trampolines.” “Don’t ignore sudden symptoms … If you experience something like severe chest pain or paralysis of a body part, come to the E.R. immediately….” “Don’t pet strange dogs.” Fuck that last one; I am absolutely petting every dog I can.

In 2011, Ray Richmond, his brother and sister discreetly deposited their mother’s ashes (her “cremains”) in Clifton’s, a Los Angeles cafeteria. This short essay has one surprise after another.

The perfect girl next door: How do you live your mediocre life in the shadow of a hipster goddess?

Man, it was so great to be horrible, back when I was young and pretty! In fact, I want to urge every young and youngish woman out there to take advantage of their hotness for as long as possible, because it’s fun and it’s good for you and everyone should literally be punished by how amazing you look. You need to grind their faces into the shag carpet of what an unbearable smoke show you are. Because so many complete dolts are going to make you pay for so many stupid reasons moving forward — for being interesting, for having a brain in your skull, for being bored by them because they are objectively boring, for growing into a mature adult with firm boundaries and clear expectations. So smear your raw hotness all over their dumb-dog faces for as long as you possibly can.

I did not note the byline so I had to read the whole thing to get to the tagline at the end, which told me the writer is the talented Heather Havrilesky.

More from Heather on the perfect girl next door:

Being stubborn about trivial things is sometimes a way of protecting yourself from acknowledging far more important things that you want but can’t admit to wanting. If I had more compassion for myself, I would’ve figured out that what I wanted very badly was to be understood, to be seen clearly, to be recognized as a loving person in spite of my resting bitch face. But I didn’t respect my own core needs – I was raised to ignore and ridicule my core needs, quite honestly; that’s just how my people do it – so I couldn’t stop inflating the importance of absolutely trivial irritations and superficial obstacles.

Additional source: The New York Times Today’s Headlines

Trump dismissed four-star Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the joint chiefs of staff, a fighter pilot, and replaced him with a retired white three-star general loyal to Trump, passing over the usual chain of command. The chief of staff traditionally spans administrations. The change included a purge of six Pentagon officials, including a woman, and furthers the Republican white supremacist, anti-women, sexist, authoritarian agenda.

Protesters confronted California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, of Santee, Calif., who is pandering to white supremacy and xenophobia by restricting California’s so-called “sanctuary city” law.

School shooter Brenda Spencer, 62, was denied parole for the sixth time. She opened fire on a San Diego elementary school in 1979, killing two and injuring nine others, and later explained her reason: “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” The shooting became the inspiration for a song, “I Don’t Like Mondays," by the Boomtown Rats, an Irish band, written by Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers. It is a lovely piano ballad. The video is a perfect capsule of cheap, cheesy 1979 music videos. Geldof later said he regretted writing the song because it made Spencer famous.

Also:

An 87-year-old widower went viral for hand-delivering party invitations door to door that read “4 pm unitl the cops arrive.”

A 94-year-old woman reunited with a toddler she saved from drowing 64 years ago. He’s now 66 years old.

Authorities seized 303 cocaine-filled ceramic bananas.

9.3% of US adults identified as LGBTQ+ last year, up from 7.6% in 20230. This is the kind of thing that means TRUMP-DOGEism will have a short shelf-life. Trump came into office with the slimmest of margins; only about a third of eligible voters supported him. Those LGBTQ+ people make up a big part of the population, and they have plenty of friends, families and allies in the cisgender-heterosexual community (like me). Trump-DOGEism will continue to lose popularity as their stupid and dangerous policies harm more and more people.

Additional source: 1440

Mitch McConnell is retiring. We’re losing a moderating force on right-wing extremism — and that’s a statement on the dire condition the US is in.

Trump is dismantling the government fight against foreign influence operations. Makes sense; foreign influence helped get him elected.

Trump cut protections for Haitians, putting them on track for deportation.

Hamas turned four hostages over to Israel in a display a senior UN official called “abhorrent and cruel.” Israel later said only three bodies belonged to captives.

The SS United States, a historic 990-foot ocean liner and the largest passenger ship built in America, is steaming from Philadelphia to its final fate as the world’s largest artificial reef. It will finish about 180 feet underwater and 20 miles off the coast of Okalosa County, off the Florida Gulf Coast. The ship carried four US presidents, Marylin Monroe, Marlon Brando and Grace Kely, set transatlatic speed records and completed about 800 crossings until it retired in 1969.

Amazon passed Walmart revenue for the first time. I would have thought Amazon did that years ago.

New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, decided against removing NYC Mayor Eric Adams from office.

Wild fish can tell humans apart when we dress differently.

Cheetohs launched the Flamin' Hot Dill Pickle flavor.

On this day: The Communist Manifesto was published (1848), NASCAR was founded (1948) — a friend told me recently that NASCAR was based on evasion techniques invented by bootletters; he said his family were bootleggers 100 years ago, which is way more interesting than my family history — Malcolm X was assassinated (1965), Billy Graham died (2018).

Sources: 1440, The New York Times: Today’s Headlines

Trump wants to abolish the IRS and fund government through tariffs. (How about you try your hair-brained experiments on someone else’s country?)

He called Zelensky a “dictator.”

The French prime minister, François Bayrou, said on Thursday that “the risk of war has never been so high since 1945”. Denmark said it would rapidly increase defense spending.

Trump called himself a king and the White House shared an image of him wearing a crown.

Archeologists found the first pharoah’s tomb in more than a century — that of Thutmose II (I read a lot of Egyptology in the 1990s and I actually remember that name, though I couldn’t tell you what he was kown for).

Germany’s far right AfD party doubled its support since 2021.

Brazilian authorities charged former President Jair Bolsonaro and 33 others yesterday with orchestrating a coup after the 2022 presidential election, among other crimes. (Brazil knows how to handle an autogolpe. Nobody should be surprised that Trump is seeking retribution against the people he perceives as enemies. If you aim to take out powerful people, you had best not miss.)

Former Vice President Kamala Harris signs with talent firm Creative Artists Agency; CAA signed former President Joe Biden to a similar deal two weeks ago. (That’s all good; it’s not like the US is facing a crisis for which we require Democratic Party leadership. You just keep bringing in the money, guys; it’s what you’re good at.)

A judge ordered a Mississippi newsletter to remove an editorial criticizing city officials.

Kennedy issued guidance recognizing only two sexes, citing “biological truth.” (Bullshit.)

Doctors love the Noah Wylie TV series “The Pitt.”” (We do too.)

Sources: The Guardian: First Thing, The New York Times: Today’s Headlines, 1440

I’m a board member-at-large of the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club. I wrote this up for the club newsletter:

The City of La Mesa and the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District are protecting immigrants. At our general meeting on February 5, we heard details from City Council Member Lauren Cazares and school trustee Brianna Coston.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has launched raids in San Diego County since the inauguration, including one in Escondido, Cazares said. ICE had not come to La Mesa at the time of our meeting — not yet — although there have been many rumors of ICE sightings. I checked in with Cazares over the weekend, and she said ICE still hasn’t put in an appearance in La Mesa, to her knowledge.

The City of La Mesa has not adopted a sanctuary city policy but follows California Senate Bill 54 protecting immigrants. The city adopted instructions for the La Mesa Police Department in 2017. Those instructions, amended in 2018, are still current, Cazares said.

Cazares read a section of the instructions on prohibited activity and asked that if any police officer is seen violating those policies, they should be reported to the La Mesa Police Department — although she noted there had been no violations to date that she was aware of. “There is a way for you to ensure that it is taken care of and nipped in the bud immediately,” she said.

She added, “Our chief takes the safety of La Mesans, regardless of immigration status, extremely seriously.”

The city has a police oversight board that makes an independent audit of complaints to determine if wrongdoing was done.

Ensuring adherence to the policy protecting immigrants is “on all of us in La Mesa, not just on the City Council, to ensure that it’s taken care of,” Cazares said.

Cazares provided an expansive list of prohibited police activities, including any official inquiry about a person’s immigration status; using immigration enforcement as a basis to initiate contact, detain or arrest any individual; detaining an individual based on a hold request from an immigration agency, including ICE; collecting information about a person’s immigration status, even on arrest; providing information to immigration authorities regarding a person’s release date, and more.

Republicans spreading confusion

La Mesa Republicans are spreading misinformation on Facebook about the city’s immigration policy, Cazares said. “I’m not talking about elected officials. I’m talking about people who like to tweet and go on Facebook and rant, saying the city of La Mesa is going to get sued by the federal government because of our sanctuary city status,” she said. “The city cannot be sued by the federal government because we do not have a sanctuary city policy.” And since the city’s policy went into effect in 2017, not a single judge has ruled against the city on any level. However, she noted that if California’s SB54 is brought before the current Supreme Court, that could change.

She appealed to white La Mesans to speak out on behalf of Black and brown Americans and immigrants. “It’s important that you’re able to stand up for us,” she said.

The La Mesa-Spring Valley School District is taking similar steps to protect immigrants, Coston, the school trustee, said. Contrary to rumors, ICE has not been on Spring Valley school campuses. “Yet, as Lauren said, I’m sure that will change in the future,” she said.

The district is doing a series of “Immigration: Know Your Rights” webinars in English, Spanish, Haitian-Creole, Arabic, Russian and Dari — find information here.

She added, “All children in the United States have a Constitutional right to equal access to free public education, regardless of their immigration status and regardless of the immigration status of the student’s parents or guardians,” she said. “That’s something that our school district takes very seriously. That’s something that I know a lot of the school districts in our area take very seriously.”

ICE is not supposed to go on school campuses, though President Trump has tried to remove those barriers, Coston said.

On enrollment, students or their families need to prove residency, typically with a utility bill. They need to show where the child is born, most commonly done with a birth certificate, but it can also be done with a parental affidavit. “All of our information is confidential. We do not give that information out to anyone,” Coston said. That information can’t even be given out for a subpoena. The board adopted a policy in 2018 to match state policies protecting immigrants.

ICE needs warrants to access schools

For ICE to access campus, they must show proof of a judicial warrant signed by a judge. The district immediately lets the board know and needs to contact legal counsel to validate the warrant before divulging information. “They are a guest on our campus. They have to sign in at the front office. They have to provide all sorts of information – their badge number and contact information. They will be escorted by people directly to wherever they need to be on campus."

She added, “But this is only if they have a valid judicial warrant. We do not let people onto our campus that should not be on our campus.”

Warrants need to specify who they are looking for and why. They can’t just be for general fishing expeditions on black and brown people, Coston said.

Following a bond measure in 2020, the schools installed security measures to protect against gun violence, and now all schools have a single point of entry and fences surrounding campuses. “ICE could not just accidentally wander onto a campus,” she said. “They have to go through the front door. And it isn’t unlocked. You have to get buzzed into our campus now.”

There are a lot of fake warrants floating around. But people can tap legal resources in the county to see copies of real warrants and fake warrants to learn to tell the difference, Cazares said. “Now is the time to get educated on that for all of us, not just folks who might have potential immigration issues, because often those of us who can read and write are the ones that are going to be helping people,” Cazares said.

She continued,, “My Dad has birthright citizenship. He is completely and totally functionally illiterate in English and Spanish because he graduated high school before they had ESL [English as a Second Language]. He’s very smart. He can speak English and Spanish perfectly fine.”

She continued, “Do you think someone like my Dad would be able to discern the difference between a real [warrant] and a fake one? I guarantee he would not.”

Schools have been training their whole staff, not just teachers, in immigration policies, Coston said.

Cazares also talked about several immigration bills pending in the state legislature. One is Assembly Bill 18, the California Secure Borders Act of 2025. It’s a “crazy bill,” but fortunately, it’s authored by Carl DeMaio, Cazares said. Even Republicans don’t like DeMaio, so the bill is “dead on arrival,” she said. With other Republican support, the bill might have been more viable.

On the other hand, a second bill, Senate Bill 48, would enact protections statewide similar to those in the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Cazares said. And Assembly Bill 15 would limit the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from cooperating with immigration authorities.

Mitch Wagner is a member at large of the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club Board. He lives in La Mesa, a short walk from Lake Murray, with his wife, dog and cats. Contact Mitch at mitch@mitchwagner.com.