lummi island wine tasting Sep 5-6 ’25
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
mountain ash in summer bloom
This week’s wine tasting
Decoy Sauv Blanc ’23 California $16
Fresh, with aromas of citrus, white nectarine, yellow apple and orange blossom; flavors of tangerine, apple, white peach, grapefruit and white pepper with a crisp finish.
Paul Buisse Cab Franc ’23 France $16
Alluring nose of red cherry, black plum, raspberry and pomegranate; notes of pear and lilac on the palate, crisp, stony finish.
Torbreck Woodcutters Shiraz ’21 Australia $26
Succulent, rich aromas of dark berries and black plum with notes of sandalwood, rosemary and thyme;
soft tannins and structured, voluptuous mouthfeel adds the poise and piquancy expected from this winery.
see more on Torbreck:
Economics of the Heart: Vets Mobilize Against Unlawful Orders
Vets serving the People and the Constitution
Last week we argued that it was illegal for the Tweetster to call up National Guard units or other active duty military personnel in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. It was enacted to prohibit Federal military forces from being misused as domestic police forces to enforce Jim Crow laws in former and proposed “slave states.” Written specifically to maintain local civilian control over the military and protect personal liberties, it reflects the Constitutional commitment to maintain civilian control over the military at all times.
So it was with a great sense of hope and possibility that last night we stumbled upon this broadcast, in which “About Face: Veterans Against the War,” a national group of dedicated v
offers considerable support to both currently active military and vets, including this:
“If you are a National Guardsperson or active duty member of the military looking for a way to report concerning incidents and conditions or for peer/legal support regarding your options in response to moral, ethical, and legal implications of your situation, fill out the encrypted form below.”
And this:
“Veterans won’t stand idly by while Trump slashes our benefits and uses the National Guard and Active Duty military to act out his dictator fantasies at our expense by violently crushing protests and kidnapping our neighbors. From DC, to LA, to the Southern Border and Gaza – vets are coming together to condemn the militarization of our communities that is killing us at home and abroad!”
lummi island wine tasting Aug 29-30 ’25
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
This week’s wine tasting
Decoy Chardonnay ’23 California $16
Blended from several CA central coast vineyards; aromas of sweet mandarin orange and white peach; juicy and vibrant palate of tropical fruit flavors with a hint of oak from its time in barrel.
Tenuta Sant’Antonio Monti Garbi Valpolicella Ripasso Superiore ’21 Italy $21
Spicy and intense, with hints of crushed ash and smoky black cherries; silky texture and pure, with notes of sour wild berries and salty minerality; long, energetic, spicy finish of blackcurrant & mocha,
Idilico Tempranillo ’21 Washington $19
Aromas of leather, forest floor, and balsamic notes wrapped around a core of red fruit, notes of fresh dried herbs, sweet spice and red currant; medium bodied with juicy mouthfeel, soft tannin, and a lingering finish.
Ripasso Explained
Valpolicella, the dominant red table wine of the Veneto region, is a blend of Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara grapes. The thick-skinned corvina varietal is also central to the apassamiento process by which the elegant table/dessert wine amarone is made, beginning with 100 days of drying (raisining!) the best grapes before pressing them. After pressing, the dried grape skins remain in contact with the juice-that-becomes-amarone through fermentation.
However, because the sugars are so concentrated in the raisined grapes, the skins still contain plenty of sugar and flavor, and can be used several more times. The amarone is left to age in barrels for several years before bottling, and the residual must is used several more times to make ripasso (“passed through again”), a delicious wine somewhere between valpolicella and amarone in its weight, complexity, and nuance. Under the rules of the region, wineries may only make up to twice as much ripasso as they do amarone in a given harvest.
Economics of the Heart: The Looming Question of Lawful Orders
Everyone serving in a branch of the United States military is legally subject to the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice), which defines legal rights and responsibilities of service members under various circumstances. While most of it is quite straightforward, the current political circumstances of our country is creating a growing and possibly existential dilemma.
A central tenet of the UCMJ is that everyone must follow all “lawful orders,” and must NOT follow (or give) “unlawful orders.” The first priority in such a rule is that commanders take that responsibility seriously.
In recent weeks the Tweetster’s so-called “administration,” under the direction of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 war plan, tested a declaration of martial law and moving in National Guard troops first to LA, and now to DC, going so far as to push DC authorities aside completely under transparently illegal circumstances and creating chaos.
There are more violations of the UCMJ in these behaviors than can be counted. So logically that means that: 1) few if any of the people getting those orders are too threatened to refuse them; 2) a lot of people who know the orders are illegal are giving them anyway; and 3) the new Civil War has officially begun and we “have to fight like hell or we won’t have a country any more.”
So we fight!
lummi island wine tasting Aug 22-23 ’25
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
…Saturday afternoon ladies catching up…
This week’s wine tasting
Robert Hall Sauv Blanc ’22 CA $15
Refreshingly dry and light-bodied with aromas of green apple, citrus, and lemongrass, with bright,crisp, lively acidity.
Chiarlo Barbera d’Asti ’21 Italy $18
Ruby red with violet hue; elegant nose of rich plum and berry with notes of flowers and bark; palate of red cherry and red currants with a savory finish.
Rocks of Bawn Cab Sauv ’20 WA $20
Blend from several WA vineyards delivers bright fruit flavors, silky tannins, nice balance and intensity.
Economics of the Heart: The Republican Party: A Narrative of Good and Evil
Looking for inspiration for this week’s post, I first found that Texas Republicans have gone ahead with their plan to gerrymander Texas House districts yet again to take five more seats away from Democrats. If California voters authorize the highly publicized counter-gerrymander put on the upcoming special election proposed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, it would certainly help to level the patently unfair playing field. If you click through the different red and blue states in this graphic, it looks as if there are very few other States that are both large enough and “gerrymandable” enough to make any difference.
More browsing suggested that the reason we are in this pickle in the first place is a Supreme Court decision six years ago (RUCHO ET AL . v. COMMON CAUSE) in which the Republican wing of the Roberts court “declared that federal judges could not review extreme partisan gerrymanders to determine if they violated constitutional rights.” Everybody who has been paying attention has known for many years now that the Roberts Court is the best Court that Big Money has been able to buy through the efforts of Leonard Leo’s billionaire-funded Federalist Society and their buddies at Heritage Foundation.
As we mentioned last week, these highly visible recent efforts by California Gov. Newsom have been evoking participation of voters across the country to fight for truth, fairness, and adherence to our laws and our country’s heritage. We can all feel it and get behind it.
More significantly and unexpectedly, today’s browsing came across a particularly interesting and somewhat obscure piece of scholarship on the history of the Republican Party. Published in 2020. and titled “The Republican Party: A Narrative of Good and Evil” it is a Master’s thesis by a student named Lawrence Cranor that explored the history of the Republican Party from Lincoln to the present. It serves as a great road map for how we got here.
Mr. Cranor explores in detail the party’s transformation since 1980 to a politics of self-righteous anger incessantly casting “blamable others” as the enemies of “ordinary” (white, Christian, male, working-class) people. Sound familiar? This has been The Schtick of right-wing radio and TV hosts since the 80’s, constantly stoking fear, anger, and violence, and now bringing us to the brink of full-on destruction of our democracy. The changes he noted just a few years ago detail the deliberate steps taken to bring us to our current existential crisis from the more traditional Republican policies of the Cold War before abandoning centrism in the 70’s and 80’s.
We have all lived through that transition, beginning with constant angry screeds from Gingrich in the early 90’s, putting the Republican Party on full-time attack mode for the first steal of the White House in 2000, and it has been getting worse ever since. Right here in Whatcom County one particularly inept Republican state representative took the State House floor in the late 90’s to rail against a proposal to teach some classes in Spanish in schools with heavy Hispanic enrollment, saying (I am not making this up!) “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!”
Seriously, spend some time with the above article.
So…we keep fighting!
lummi island wine tasting aug 15-16 ’25
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
…Good grief!…what are these bozos doing now…??
This week’s wine tasting
Domaine de l’Amauve La Daurèle, Côtes du Rhône Villages Séguret ’23 France $21
Grenache blanc, clairette, viognier, & ugni blanc; expressive nose of white fruits, mirabelle plum, and acacia honey; soft on the palate with lively citrus flavors…yummy and very Food Versatile!
Decoy Red ’21 California $18
60% Cab, 40% Merlot, Zinfandel, Syrah, and Cab; aromas of blackberry, plum, spice and savory herbs; fresh, rich, and savory on the palate with rich, silky tannins and a long, lush finish.
Edi Simcic Duet ’21 Slovenia $27
Merlot, Cab Sauv, Cab Franc; bold and compelling, with notes of chocolate, cherries, cheesecake, and coffee on silky tannins and a lush, ripe, fruit-full body that goes on and on.
Simcic’s vineyards and winery are in Slovenia near the Italian border. Father and son winemakers and their wines are highly regarded for the quality of their fruit and the craftsmanship of the wines. Only a stone’s throw from the Italian border, trade was closed until the collapse of the USSR. Simcic wines are imported by our friends at Small Vineyards in West Seattle, so we are long-time fans. The little video below gives a sense of the alpine locale.
Economics of the Heart: That Old 60’s Feeling…
In just the past few weeks the Project 2025 zeitgeist has been morphing us back to the sixties. We old-timers remember lots of 60’s linkages across society. The military was entrenched in the quagmire of the Vietnam War. Our nation was deeply wounded from the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK. LBJ’s Congress made huge strides in protecting voting rights and promoting desegregation. It was a vibrant, creative, expressive, and thoughtful time.
“Flower children” and protest songs became a fixture in San Francisco and across the country; joints and pipes were passed around in all kinds of settings, and was all done to the sounds and lyrics of the Beatles, Beach Boys, Linda, the Airplane, and more. There was turmoil, engagement, and challenging of social norms. It was a long time ago. And yet this moment feels a lot like Buffalo Springfield’s famous “protest” song, “For What It’s Worth.” lyrics video
For six months now we have watched the unfolding of the very well-publicized and detailed dystopian plan to end Constitutional democracy in the United States and replace it with an authoritarian, totalitarian oligarchy controlled by a handful of bazillionaires. Like hungry ghosts, these guys are cursed with insatiable appetites and throats that can only swallow a grain of rice at a time. The world’s oligarchs, elected Republicans, Project 2025 agents, and right-wing media personalities all fall into this realm. Their vast wealth does not alleviate either their constant need for more or the anger/frustration of never feeling satisfied.
Now, in just the past several weeks, our country teeters precariously around Maga’s wanton breaching of individual rights, “disappearing” of thousands of “illegal” immigrants to secret confinement in unknown locations, using military force against legal protesters in LA and DC, the ever-expanding web of lies about “the Epstein files”, and the increasing incoherence of the Tweetster. And just in the last week several very interesting things have happened that signify a “sea change” in both Maga policies and the kind of resistance they will be experiencing, especially across blue states.
It started with the already-highly-gerrymandered, Republican-controlled Texas House being pushed by slimeball Gov Abbott to even further gerrymander it to create five more Republican seats. In response the entire Democratic caucus of the Texas House left en masse to Indiana to prevent a quorum.
In response California Governor Gavin Newsom gave a long, widely broadcast interview with a merciless, globally circulated nyah-nyah-ing putdown of Maga and the Tweetster. Expressing outrage at the illegality and presumption of Abbott’s action, Newsom promised that if Abbott went through with his plan, Newsom would redistrict California to replace 5 Republican House seats with Democrats before the 2026 election. He urged other blue states to do the same with this widely circulated, Tweetster-imitating post:
“DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS,’ THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!). BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM — YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR — THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR ‘MAGA.’ THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN,”
Newsom’s position underlines the insanity of Democrats having toed the legal legislative limits for years as Republicans have been violating them wildly since ’87. Thus his position, coupled with the Texas Dems, with support from Indiana’s governor is serving as a potent catalyst for Democrats to take off the gloves and beat these bozos at their own game. And t triggered a nationwide mobilization of Blue state legislatures to follow California’s lead if Texas does not back down.
It feels really, really good to dig in and take a stand. Game on!
2072 Granger Way