we need term limits for all political offices

 Earlier today,  Dianne Feinstein (US Senator from California) died at the age of 90. She was still in the US Senate even though it was obvious to everyone around her that her mental abilities had declined drastically. She refused to retire, and those who wanted her to retire were accused of "ageism" and "ableism".  

Ableism? If you're in a position to make decisions that affect the lives of 300+ million people, and you're zoned out all the time because your mental abilities have declined, then you're no longer qualified for the job. 

FDR was president while he was in a wheelchair. His mind was sharp. He may not be able to walk, but he was mentally able enough to make decisions in one of the most stressful times in US history. 

Deion Sanders had multiple surgeries recently and had a few toes amputated. It isn't "ableist" to say he can no longer play in the NFL. But he is still mentally able to coach college football at Colorado.

As for ageism, well, if we had term limits for members of Congress, Dianne Feinstein would've been gone from Congress a long time ago. She was first elected to Congress in 1992. That was 31 years ago. If we had a term limit of 2 or even 3 terms, Feinstein would've been gone from Congress a decade ago. She would've been able to spend her last years in retirement receiving the best possible care without the pressure of making decisions that affect the lives of us all.  

The U.S. Supreme Court should also have term limits. Currently, Supreme Court justices can stay there for life.  Democrats were in panic mode when Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) died in office in 2020. She was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993.  If Supreme Court justice had 10-year or even 20-year term limits, RBG would've been retired before 2020.

But because RBG had a lifetime appointment, people begged her to retire before the 2016 election so that Barack Obama had a chance to appoint her replacement. RBG refused to leave, Trump won in 2016, RBG died in 2020, and Trump appointed ACB (Amy Coney Barrett) as the replacement. 

In my opinion, Supreme Court justices should have 10-year terms. That way, the current president would be gone by the time that justice finishes the full term. And nobody can say for sure (though many of us, including me, make all kinds of predictions) what the exact political trends will be in 10 years.  The Supreme Court justice, once appointed, can just focus on fulfilling the duties in those 10 years. No need for people to beg old Supreme Court justices to retire before the next election.  No need for old justices to stay in office and hope to still be alive before their favored political party regains power. 

Who knows, I might still be alive at age 90. There's a chance my mental ability might decline by then. But my grandma lived to age 91, and when I talked with her a few months before she died, she was able to engage in conversations just fine.

Either way, I definitely plan to retire long before age 90. At that point in my life, I just want to relax in my final years before I move on to the after-life. 

Tourism in Hawaii

 In Hawaii, there's this tiny but loud FRINGE that don't want any tourists coming to Hawaii. 

Yes, Hawaii's economy is too over-dependent on tourism. Yes, some tourists act in problematic ways.

But the reality is that people need income NOW, and waiting for another industry to over-shadow tourism will take too long for people who need income NOW to survive NOW! The anti-tourism fanatics are putting lives at risk by depriving employees of an income. 

Understandably, after the big wildfires, Lahaina was closed off to non-essential travel. After all, it was a disaster zone that needs time and resources to recover.

For a while, tourist were warned to not visit Maui.  But there's a lot more to Maui than just Lahaina. The wildfires didn't damage all of Maui, just Lahaina and (to a lesser extent) Kula. 

Lahaina is in West Maui, which is the smaller part of Maui.  Damage there doesn't mean damage elsewhere in the island

Let's put it this way, if a disaster hit San Diego, that wouldn't mean San Francisco is now closed for business. 

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Kaniela Ing (former state legislator, now a progressive activist) thinks that tourism to Maui should be halted, and that  all of Maui to be should be dependent on a government-subsidized stimulus money, similar to the early months of the coronavirus crisis. 

I agree that we need a stronger safety net system, but I think that any disaster relief funds (which I wish is unlimited, but in the real world is limited) should be targeted for those in Lahaina (and to a lesser extent, Kula) who lost their homes & jobs. 

Those who live & work in other parts of Maui who are able-bodied & able-minded should be allowed to have employment-income again which would be easier to get if tourists are coming to Maui again.

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Also Twitter (or X, or whatever Elon Musk wants to call it these days) tend to attract extremists from various sides of the political divides. There is a xenophobic FRINGE in Hawaii who rant on Twitter  that "tourists should never come to Hawaii". Those who don't know any better will assume that's how "all" Native Hawaiians feel. No, that's how the extreme FRINGE feel.

I grew up in Hawaii, been around Native Hawaiians all my life. Very few are in the anti-tourism fringe. Most are cool with tourists, though they wish some of the tourists were more respectful to their land & culture. In other words, they have a more nuanced view towards tourism than the extreme anti-tourism FRINGE that rant on Twitter. 

Also this, I don't remember a single politician (not even the ones representing Native-majority districts) who won an election on a "zero tourism" platform. 

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Suggested readings

Audrey Mcavoy and Jennifer  Sinco Kelleher, “Tourists Are Needed on Maui to Stave off Economic Disaster after Devastation,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, September 8, 2023, https://www.staradvertiser.com/2023/09/08/hawaii-news/tourists-are-needed-on-maui-to-stave-off-economic-disaster-after-devastation/.

an excerpt from that article

Clothing designer Gemma Alvior estimates that locals make up almost all the clientele at her Kahului store, Pulelehua Boutique. But that might not shield her in a place where the tourism industry accounts for 75% of private-sector jobs.

“If they don’t have a job, they’re getting laid off, how are they going to buy stuff?” she said. “What do they need to buy clothes for if they’re not working?”

One reason visitor traffic plunged is that Hawaii’s leaders, joined by Hollywood celebrities, told travelers to vacate the island.

The day after the fire, the Hawaii Tourism Authority, a quasi-state agency, said visitors on “non-essential travel are being asked to leave Maui” and that “non- essential travel to Maui is strongly discouraged.”

The agency said the community needed to focus on recovery and helping those who had to evacuate.

Around the world, people saw video and photos of travelers jamming Kahului Airport to board flights out.

That message has since changed.

“Maui’s not closed,” Mayor Richard Bissen said in a recent interview.

People shouldn’t go to Lahaina or the surrounding West Maui area — “It’s not a place to stare,” Bissen said — but the rest of Maui needs tourists. “Respect the West, visit the rest” is the motto some have adopted.

World Champions of What?

 I always thought it was strange for a sports league that has 29 teams in one country, and 1 token team in a neighboring, less populated country, to call its champions "World Champions".

Even more insane for a league like that to call its championship series "The World Series".

I mean, wouldn't you think it would be weird if a sports league with 29 teams in China and 1 team in North Korea called its champions "the world champions"?

Or if a league that has 29 teams in India and 1 team in Nepal would call its champions "the world champions"?

The USA isn't even as populated as China or India. But yet, the National Basketball Association (NBA) calls its champions "the world champions", and Major League Baseball calls its championship series the "World Series".

So  USA track athlete Noah Lyles said it right when he said of the NBA champions "the world champions of what? The United States?"

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W6hHH5PC9fE

Noah Lyles classic question:  "World Champions of What?"

ESPN loudmouth Stephen A. Smith felt Lyles was disrespecting the NBA players. 

No, he was making an accurate but funny statement about how silly it is for the league and the US media to call their own country's league "world champions".

Does the NBA have teams worldwide? No? Then their champions aren't world champions.

Yes, I know many of the top international players play in the NBA and the MLB. But they're not playing in a world league, they're playing in a league that has 29 teams in the US, and 1 token team in Canada. That's not the world.

The European soccer/fútbol leagues have the top players in their sport from around the world.  But their league champions aren't called "world champions". They save that title for the winners of the World Cup. 

Now, when Team USA wins basketball gold (which is the majority of the time), I wouldn't hesitate to call them world champions. Because they earned that title by playing teams from around the world! 

Updates on college sports conference changes

 Last month, I had a blog post titled "Pac-12 and Mountain West should merge"

https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2023/08/pac-12-and-mountain-west-should-merge.html

When the blog post was written, USC and UCLA were already scheduled to join the Big 10, and Colorado had just announced they were officially headed to the Big 12.

At the time of that blog post, there was speculation that the Big 12 wanted to add Utah, Arizona and Arizona State. It is now official.

I also mentioned that there was a possibility that the Big 10 wanted to add Oregon, Washington, Stanford, and  Cal (Berkeley).

It turned out the Big 10 only wanted Oregon and Washington.

That meant a major dilemma for Stanford and  Cal. These were big universities in a major metro area. While their football teams weren't superpowers lately (though Stanford just over-powered my Hawaii Rainbow Warriors the other day), they still had prestigious teams in non-revenue Olympic sports. In fact, many Olympic champions played for Stanford and  Cal during their college years. 

Pat Forde. “Potential Power Five Exclusion of Stanford, Cal Is a Bad Sign for Team USA’s Olympic Prospects.” Sports Illustrated. August 6, 2023. 

 https://www.si.com/.amp/college/2023/08/06/potential-power-five-exclusion-stanford-cal-team-usa-olympics.

Now consider that 32 American Olympians in Tokyo were current or former Stanford students. Sixteen were current or former Cal students. Both schools produced many other Tokyo Olympians who competed for other countries.

Those participation numbers are a continuation of historic trends. A 2017 study by the painstaking researchers at OlympStats.com says Stanford had produced more American Olympians than any other university to that time with 289—a distinction that almost assuredly holds true through Tokyo and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. UCLA was second with 277, USC third with 251 and Cal fourth with 212.

Some of the Cal and Stanford Olympians are obscure. And some of them are named Alex Morgan, Collin Morikawa, Holly McPeak, Helen Wills, Ryan Murphy, Nathan Adrian, Matt Biondi, Natalie Coughlin, Missy Franklin, Anthony Ervin and Mary T. Meagher (Cal). Some are named Katie Ledecky, Bob Mathias, Julie Foudy, Jennifer Azzi, Simone Manuel, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Maggie Steffens, Jessica Mendoza, Summer Sanders, Jenny Thompson, Janet Evans and Pablo Morales (Stanford).

To keep the Olympic-bound athletes coming to Stanford and  Cal , going down to the Mountain West (or any mid-major conference) just wasn't a feasible option!

But at the same time, neither the Big 10 nor the Big 12 wanted Stanford and  Cal. The SEC definitely wasn't interested either. 

The only other major conference that was left was the ACC. Yes, the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The 2 universities located on the Pacific coast would have to join the Atlantic Coast Conference if they wanted to still be a part of a major conference.

The ACC does have similar institutions. ACC has prestigious universities like Pittsburgh, Virginia, Wake Forest, Syracuse, and Boston College. 

And just like  Cal vs Stanford, the ACC has a public vs private rivalry between North Carolina and Duke. 

The ACC already has non-Atlantic coast schools like Louisville and Notre Dame (this one for non-football sports).

The ACC will also add another no-coast school Southern Methodist University (SMU) (located in Dallas, Texas).

The ACC will most likely lose Clemson and Florida State, both of whom are perfect cultural fits for the SEC.  Nobody would be surprised if Miami joins them too.  

There is the issue of student-athletes having to travel so far from Stanford/Cal to the Atlantic coast.

But what do you think the University of Hawaii sports teams have been dealing with all these decades? Their nearest opponents are thousands of miles away. No matter what conference the UH teams are in, their student-athletes must constantly deal with jet lag, missed class time & more. It's all business as usual to them.

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Meanwhile, Oregon State and Washington State are on their own. The best option for them is to join the Mountain West. University of Hawaii would love to play them on an almost-annual basis. 

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Yahoo's sportswriter Dan Wetzel has the idea of "Football-only conferences", where teams can join non-regional conferences for the football money, but stay in regional conferences for easier travel for non-revenue sports 

Dan Wetzel, “Here’s an Idea: Set up Football-Only College Conferences,” Yahoo! Sports, August 7, 2023,                                                                                      https://sports.yahoo.com/heres-an-idea-set-up-football-only-college-conferences-214244420.html

What would make sense, at least a little, is if college athletics made a simple move that would benefit both the bottom line and the welfare of the non-football playing student athletes.

Set up conferences that exist for football only. Or basketball only. Or any sport only. Chase your money in football. Chase sanity in everything else.

USC playing football in the predominantly Midwest and East Coast-based Big Ten may be good for revenue and exposure. Other sports, though, should be more local or regional. Put the softball team on a bus to San Diego State, not a plane and then a bus to Michigan State.

It’s not only sensible, but economical. Cutting travel costs for all these other teams actually increases the value of what football is bringing in.

This isn’t groundbreaking, by the way. It’s common for schools to belong to multiple athletic conferences.

Notre Dame is in the ACC for most sports but the Big Ten for ice hockey and independent for football. Missouri is in the SEC for all sports except wrestling, which remained in its old league, the Big 12.

Utah plays lacrosse in the Atlantic Sun. ECAC Hockey features six Ivy League schools. Johns Hopkins, which is D3 in most sports, competes in the Big Ten for lacrosse.

Out west there is already the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation which serves as a catch-all for numerous sports with limited participation such as gymnastics, track and field and fencing. It counts traditional members of the Pac-12, Mountain West and Big West, as well as D-II and D-III schools. That includes USC, UCLA, Stanford and others who are in it for men’s volleyball and water polo.

My comment: What's described in that article is sort of like how the University of Hawaii is in the Mountain West for football, and in the Big West for other sports!

Will that continue for UH?

Stay tuned!

Children & covid

 There has been this strange idea out there that claims that "children aren't endangered by the coronavirus".

Yes, the elderly are more likely to die and more likely to need intensive care due to the coronavirus.

But this idea that "children aren't endangered by the coronavirus" is BOGUS!

I think much of that thinking is because, during the first few years of the coronavirus crisis, many parents wanted their children back in the schools. 

To effectively push the narrative of "the children should be back in the schools", many covidiot pundits & influencers kept claiming "coronavirus doesn't really hurt the children that much" to soften the opposition to opening the schools. 

It's one thing to want the children to be back in the schools.

But to dismiss concerns that the children would be vulnerable to the coronavirus in a place where social distancing isn't possible?

Really?

And the covidiots REFUSE to grapple with the fact that 

• schools also employ  adult staff members, many of whom are older adults who have additional vulnerabilities to the coronavirus
• children come from families, and can spread the virus to older relatives who have additional vulnerabilities to the coronavirus

For a long time, the covidiot propaganda didn't have a really strong pushback.

Until now.

MSNBC's Mehdi Hassan has pushed back against the covidiot propaganda with this epic half-hour documentary titled 

"The shocking truth about kids, Covid, and school closures"

You can watch it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h5xyGdVfvo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h5xyGdVfvo

"The shocking truth about kids, Covid, and school closures"

In that classic video, some very powerful points were made

• some kids did die from covid
• some parents or other guardians got infected from the kids who got covid from school
• schools had to lock down because some teachers and other staff either died or got severely infected from covid
• teacher's unions were willing to reopen on the condition that there's adequate public health safety precautions in place
• learning loss did occur, but was very minimal (Los Angeles had less learning loss than Miami, despite LA reopening schools later)
• it wasn't just school closures that affected mental health, it was that many of the students had family members and other loved ones who died from covid
• teen suicide and mental hospitalization ALREADY were on an increasing trend in the years BEFORE the pandemic.

Mehdi Hassan showed restraint by using the term "covid contrarians" when referring to people I call covidiots like Ron DeSantis, Bill Maher, Donald Trump, and other like-minded fools!

But other than that, Hassan was relentless in showing fact after fact, data after data, that showed that there was good reason to be concerned that children (and staff) were in a vulnerable position in an environment where social distancing wasn't usually possible.

All the covidiot snark from Maher, DeSantis, Trump, etc will not erase the very powerful facts presented in Hasan's epic documentary.

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As for the children who got severe infections from the coronavirus, here's an article from Salon about this issue

 Elizabeth Hlavinka, “Long Covid Is Debilitating Children. Doctors Worry There Aren’t Enough Centers to Treat Them,” Salon, August 27, 2023, 

https://www.salon.com/2023/08/27/long-is-debilitating-children-and-doctors-worry-there-arent-enough-centers-to-treat-them/

When 11-year-old Jack Coviello contracted COVID-19 in January 2022, his worst symptom was a sore throat that kept him out of school for a week. A couple of days later, graver symptoms started to appear: gastrointestinal issues, tachycardia, panic attacks, and extreme fatigue that kept him sleeping 20 hours a day. 

It would be a full month of running tests in which doctors continued to say Jack was "fine," until his pediatrician diagnosed him with post-COVID syndrome, also known as long COVID, and referred him to a specialized clinic, said his mother, Kelli Coviello, who is a principal's assistant at an elementary school in Massachusetts.

"It's been a challenge of them not really, truly understanding," Coviello told Salon in a phone interview. "They think it's just school avoidance, and he doesn't want to come in or maybe it's just anxiety, and all this other stuff. … But he's an 11-year-old boy, who is looking at you saying, 'Am I dying? What's happening to me?'"

and this

Long COVID symptoms include severe fatigue, malaise, headaches and other neurological symptoms like brain fog, as well as nausea, decreased appetite, weight loss, joint pain and loss of smell and taste. Symptoms emerge in the three months after infection and last anywhere from a couple of months to years.

"Anything can pop up at any given time, and his symptoms change a lot," Coviello said. "It's like Whac-a-Mole. You'll say, 'Okay, we got rid of that symptom.' Then something new pops up or that old symptom comes back again."

The condition ranges in severity but can be debilitating, with about 80% of patients in Yonts' clinic experiencing extreme fatigue, she said. Long COVID can also impact children's mental health and development, especially after many were already facing academic delays due to virtual learning in the earlier stages of the pandemic.

"We had one young man that was set to go to college on a track and field scholarship — but because of this infection, that totally disappeared," Yonts said. "He had to reevaluate his plan for post-secondary education and what his life is going to look like because the critical timing was when all this happened to him — that all fell apart."

For Jack, long COVID impacted more than his physical health. He was a straight A student who played in the band and the basketball team. Although he's managed to stay at grade level, at one point he struggled to do simple math additions due to his brain fog. 

Unfortunately, you won't hear a word of compassion for Jack coming from covidiots like Bill Maher, Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump.

Instead, covidiots will continue to bully those who wear protective masks, and they will yell "la la la, I can't hear you"  whenever there are  reports of increases in covid cases! 

As for me, I will continue to wear a protective mask in public.

I will not surrender to covidiots! 

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BONUS: 

As I was watching video clips from Beyond Scared Straight (a 2011-2015 documentary series showing troubled youth visiting prisons),  I noticed this ..........

.... while the youth were visiting the prison's cafeteria, the inmates who were working in the kitchen had hairnets AND masks to protect the inmate's food from other inmate's germs

"Beyond Scared Straight Teens Visit the Prison Kitchen Season 5, Episode 7 A&E"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPVnR9xHO1k

And this was YEARS BEFORE the coronavirus crisis! 

So even back in those days, they understood that 

• masks prevent a person's germs from spreading
• It's a good idea to wear a mask when preparing food

granted, a lot of the inmates didn't put their masks on properly (they're inmates, they're there because they don't like to follow rules) but there seems to be some level of understanding (at least from those running the prison) that it might be a good idea to put on a mask while serving other people's food! 

If killers, rapists, and other miscreants can have that level of protection (at least in their food supply) then why can't our children have that level (or even greater level) of protection?

As far as I'm concerned, those serving our children should be encouraged to mask (especially when in close proximity, especially when handling food).  

And shame on any school administrator (Margaret Rufo of Star of the Sea, I'm looking at you) who discourages public health precautions in our schools in the name of "moving on". 

I WILL NOT MOVE ON! 

Pee-Wee and Magoo

Within the last few weeks, 2 eccentric entertainers have passed away.

One was Paul Reubens, best known for his character Pee-Wee Herman.

The other was Melvin Barcliff, best known as the rapper Magoo. 

 

Pee-Wee Herman

Being that I was born in 1980, I grew up watching Pee-Wee's PlayHouse on Saturday mornings. It was like a silly show and an educational show all in one. And the most memorable part for me was when Pee-Wee yelled out his "connect the dots" song. 

 

Pee-Wee already had his hit movie Pee-Wee Big Adventures where he gets into all kinds of mischief. 

 

Pee-Wee Herman was basically The Big Star in children's entertainment.

 

However, all of that came to an end in the summer of 1991 when Paul Reubens was arrested for masturbating in an adult theater. Understandably, people became leery about someone like that being involved in children's entertainment.

 

He did appear in the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards to make light of the situation. But his time in children's entertainment was done.

 

Paul Reubens continued to be an actor portraying minor characters in movies and sitcoms.

 

He eventually went back to being Pee-Wee Herman, but this time, it was more of a nostalgia act for adults rather than entertaining the new generation of children. 

 

Paul Reubens died from cancer on July 30, 2023. He was 70 years old. 

 

 

Magoo

Magoo was part of the eccentric rap duo Timbaland  & Magoo. 

 

That duo, along with Missy Elliott, put Virginia on the hip-hop map.

They also brought a new sound to hip-hop with science fiction beats and unique vocals that perfectly match those sounds.  It was like they were from another universe. 

 

Timbaland was the producer who brought some science fiction sounds to hip-hop. 

 

Magoo had a unique voice & memorable lines. 

 

The most memorable one was from their hit record "Luv 2 Luv Ya"

You so absurd I thought you heard

If you don't know, the bird is the word

Yes the bird-bird-bird, the bird is the word

The bird-bird-bird, the bird is the word

 

Just reading those lines won't do it justice, you gotta hear the way he said it! His delivery was off the hook!

 

By the time the early 2000's came around, the duo broke up.

 

Timbaland became a legendary producer who worked with various artists like Aaliyah, Ginuwine,  Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado, One Republic, Bubba Sparxx, Jay-Z, the list goes on.

 

Meanwhile, Magoo faded from the spotlight and never released a solo album, though I think he had the potential to make a hit record on his own. However, he never really enjoyed the business or the fame that came with it.  Needless to say, he was a very private person.

 

Magoo died on August 13, 2023. He was 50 years old. The cause of death wasn't publicized. 

No Thanks to Political Office

 Because I'm so opinionated, people have told me that I should run for political office. I have thought about it for a long time. I have dreamed about making bold speeches and making campaign ads.

But the main reason I say "no" is the high stress that comes with being in charge when there is an emergency situation (the Lahaina fires being the latest example).

Emergency Management is not a responsibility that I'm suited for.