Some people are taken aback at how I use the word treason in a political context. So let me explain. Here's the first definition of treason that one finds in the American Heritage Dictionary:

Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.

Note that the betrayal is of the country or of the sovereign, not of the state. As to the sovereign, in a republic, supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them; in a liberal republic, a fair amount of that supreme power is individualistic (rather than collectivist) in nature.

I'm just speaking goddamn'd English when I refer to violations of individual rights by state officials as treason.

With that in mind, I note some treason to which the Woman of Interest draws my attention:

I always assumed that my conversations with my ex-girlfriend while she was in Iraq were recorded. I wasn't particularly disturbed by that thought; one end of that conversation was in a fr_ggin' war zone. And I didn't have anything to say to her that would be of prurient interest anyway, unless the listener were quite oddly perverse.

But none of these personal conversations should have been circulated for purposes of entertainment, even in cases where the discourse weren't potentially embarassing.

And, when the next President fails to bring these analysts up on charges of treason, that failure will itself be treason.

Years ago, I was dealing with a verbal thug in an Internet politics forum, and I called him a thug. At which point one of his allies jumped-in and claimed that my calling him this was an act of anti-Semitism, insofar as thug was used by Palestinian militants as as a codeword for Israelis, and I knew the fellow to be an Israeli.

One immediate problem was that I didn't know or believe that the fellow was an Israeli (I'd formed no opinion about his nationality); and, indeed, it developed that I couldn't have known such a thing, because the fellow simply wasn't an Israeli.

I'd also never heard or read of the word thug being used by Palestinian militants for any purpose (albeït that it wouldn't surprise me if they'd exhausted the lexicon of insults when it came to Israel). I'd called the fellow a thug for the simple reason that he was a goddamn'd thug.

The deeper problem was simply the accusation that someone was using codewords, where there isn't any need to produce a codebook, or demonstrate that a pattern has been meaningfully fit. It's a perfectly craven line of attack.

I mention this now in response to this story:

It bothers me that some of my friends have become so obsessed with the inadequacy of one of the two major party Presidential candidates that they seem to have quite lost sight of just how inadequate a President the other man can be expected to be.

There is no good choice on the ballot, and I expect greater national despair by the next mid-term elections. (We'll see whether, at the time of the next Presidential election, the other party, whichever it may be, offers a better candidate then, or decides that, in the context of their rivals' failure, they can push the envelope of opportunism, of lunacy, or of both.)

You know that childhood dread that, lurking behind things and in cracks, are big, black spiders? Some people outgrow that fear; such outgrowth is dementia. Those big, black spiders are really there.

In the course of a renovation, a local business placed a planter in front of their site; to-day, they pulled it away exposing one of those big, black spiders

In the wake of a ruling by the Supreme Court of the State of California that required the state to recognize and effect same-sex marriage, there is a measure, Proposition 8, on the ballot to amend the state constitution to halt recognition of further same-sex marriages. I oppose this measure, though (as I have stated various places) what I really want is for the state to get out of the marriage business altogether, and to treat marriages simply as private contracts. (I think that participants should see marriage as far more, but that's not the business of the state.)

This after-noon, I stopped at the San Diego headquarters of Vote No on Prop 8 to buy a couple of bumper-stickers, one to actually slap on a bumper, and one to put on the case of my note-book computer.

The guy who greeted me there was a fool. Instead of just selling me a couple of bumper-stickers, he tried very aggressively to get me to make a substantial donation, starting with the idea that I should give them the equivalent of a dollar an day for a year, by donatiing $365. There isn't a fr__king year left until the election; there's about 40 days. Had he begun by suggesting a $40 donation, well, I might have gone along with that; as it was, he had my back up, and I said no to the other sums that he suggested. I gave them $5 and they gave me the two bumper-stickers that I'd sought. In addition to the bumper-stickers, I left with considerable annoyance.

Another irksome thing, not the fault of Vote No on Prop 8, was that I had to fill-out a d_mn'd form, because I'd made a political contribution, however small. It was a gross violation of my rights as acknowledged by the First and Fourteenth Amendments, but if I didn't fill-out that form, and truthfully, then the money could be confiscated by the state.

After four months, one week, thirteen hours, and thirteen minutes, the Wikipedia arbitration to which I previously linked was finally closed.

One of the seven editors involved — indeed, the editor who petitioned the Arbitration Committee in the first place, specifically targetting another editor — has been stripped of his administrative privileges. He and two other parties to the case are part of a larger cabal who've abused administrative privileges and acted like a pack of hyænæ. Although his petition launched the case, at some point he seems to have ceased to actively participate, and thus made himself the best candidate to be thrown under the bus. The remaining four parties, two of whom are also members ot the cabal, have been admonished. The original target of the petition seems to have been the least scathed party.

In any event, it appears that the cabal has taken enough of a hit to pacify its active opponents, but not so great a hit as to bring about an intervention by Wales on its behalf. But the Arbitration Committee has (somewhat as predicted) lost much respect all-around, albeït perhaps even more for having taken so long to reach a decision than for having failed to act more decisively against the cabal.

I ran across this (fisher) price schedule:

If the business were mine, then I would amend the table thus:

Granted that there might be a few belligerent customers who insisted on buying a count in one of the ranges for which there was no listing; these could be offered the price as per the first schedule. (Or a flat fee of $350 for any number from 1 to 99.)

Although I was told that the baby grand piano of David's Coffee Place would be replaced by an upright piano at Babycakes, the latest that I'd heard is that they'd since determined not to do this. Now, I'm not sure that they've really determined against it; it may be merely that they are postponing installation of the upright piano until after renovation of the south room (in which the baby grand piano used to be).

I don't actually know where the mass of opinion is amongst the present customer base. Chris, the regular pianist, used to do 90-minute medleys, drawing largely upon popular music from the age of Gershwin and Porter. Some people find it hard to connect to such music, and for them it was made harder still because Chris chose other than dance arrangements. Many people are only comfortable with music with the rhythms of dance, even if no one is going to be dancing.

The other thing that has happened, musically, at Babycakes, is that they are drawing on a different sort of music for the sound system, and playing it much louder. I was told that this change was because they now sell beer and wine, as opposed to being just a coffee place. I'm not sure how to interpret this reasoning unless the idea is that, because they sell some of the same product as would a bar, they feel that their music should be more like that of a bar.

On this score, I can tell where the mass of opinion is amongst the present customer base; it's mostly negative. People want to be able to converse without raising their voices, and they're not pleased to have the sins of the '70s and '80s return.

Now, I refer to the present customer base, because the new owners presumably want a larger customer base, and that may mean a very different customer base. None-the-less, I don't think that many people are particularly going to want to shout over Olivia Newton John as they sip merlot or nibble on raspberry tarts.

(Underscore mine.)

Also, it takes increasing amounts of money to buy stuff. And prices are going up.