As we approach the final Christmas of the Obama Presidency--the comparative Golden Age before the Dark Age Ahead--I'll focus on photos of President Obama with babies and young children. (That is, in addition to the ones I've used before, here  and here. There are so many to choose from.) Every one tells a story, at least one. Happy Holidays.

President Obama with siblings of children killed in Sandy Hook shooting

A Story for Our Time? Well, For Mine Anyway

I had this clock on the wall in my bathroom, blue background, black numerals.  I liked it a lot.  Then a few months ago it started slowing down.  I changed the battery.  Pretty soon it slowed down again.  New batteries didn't help, and eventually it was losing hours.

I got another clock for that space in the bathroom, at a local thrift shop.  It had a gray, pebbled pattern surrounding the face, which coincidentally matches the colors and approximately the pattern of the surface around the sink.  (This is the original stuff from the 50s.)

That's pretty nice, but I still liked that blue clock.  So I mounted it in here, above my computer and to the right.  I decided I would treat it as an old-fashioned wind-up clock that you had to reset every day.  But most of the time I forgot, so it had any old time.  When I wanted to know the actual time, I depended on the computer time down there in the right hand corner.

Then about a month ago, the computer clock stopped telling the actual time.  I reset it using the various Internet clocks, like nist.gov.  The first time it worked but the next time I turned the computer on, it was wrong again.  Then it refused to update--just an error message. At the moment, that clock is off by 5 hours and the calendar by 3 days.

I'm told this may have something to do with a battery that's just for the clock.  It's an old computer.  The operating system is so old that Microsoft won't support it anymore.

  But here's the thing.  The blue clock on the wall started keeping perfect time again.  It has for several weeks now.

2016 Bumper Sticker of the Year

Apparently it's been around for a few years, so I should qualify the award as Best Bumper Sticker I Saw for the First Time in 2016.

In California, Resistance is Official

It's not just activists and entrepreneurs, and even not just California Governor Brown.  Elsewhere the Resistance to the coming Nazi Millennium is official, according to the LA Times.

The story notes CA reps to the federal government like Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein and incoming Senator Kamala Harris.  But also various state officials, like incoming state A-G Xavier Becerra, Sec of State Alex Padilla and top members of the state legislatures: Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon.

There's state legislation already in the works "which would stymie construction of a wall along the California-Mexico border and SB 31, which would prohibit the state from sharing information to a federally compiled registry of Muslims in the United States..."

Among non-officials and including non-Californians, talking up resistance are scientists who attended the recent American Geophysical Union convention in San Francisco where they heard Governor Jerry Brown's fiery speech, among others.  The Washington Post reported on their first street demonstration, and the determination of individual scientists and groups to defend science, especially climate science, against the Dark Agers of the Nazi Millennium.

The scientists confess they have no experience at political warfare.  Politicians on the other hand do--the question is will they have the stomach for it, beyond popular post-election bravado.  It's not very risky in California at the moment, but there's always the Bush-Cheney technique of getting us into a war or two and making support for the reich a test of patriotism.

Are they ready? Nobody seemed to remember the 2000 election, so why would they remember Iraqnam in 2003?  All these nifty Internet tools are useless when everything surprises you.