Monday--

So the Rick Snyder's Attorney General in Michigan is arguing literacy is not a "right."

Perhaps, this is the best expression of Black Friday and the whole damned "holiday" season.

Is blatant narcissism and self-promotion an "ideology?"We are all looking for the "goat entrails" on which we can prognosticate what our Bully-elect will do (or not do). All of the signs and portends are confusing and contradictory. The only constancy he has shown is to himself.

Tuesday--

Andrew Bacevich has another good article at Tomdispatch. We have heard a lot of talk about the "swamp" in Washington which the Bully-elect has pledged to drain (though how he will do that when he has brought in the most rapacious gators to drain the environment that created them. But, as Bacevich points out, there is another swamp feeding into Washington: the swamp of war. They both have to be drained.

The Daily Kos has a post "should we be concerned by signs that democracy itself is in danger?" I have wondered throughout the election season as our Bully-elect claimed that the system was rigged or that fraud was somehow involved, and as stories came out that Russia was hacking the voting systems, or that various actors were implanting fake news to drive the vote which ever way they wanted. This system works only so long as we trust it. When enough of us don't trust it any more it will fail. I wonder how close we are to that situation.

Wednesday--

Since we have so over-used antibiotics that we have increasing numbers of bacterial strains showing not just resistance to a single antibiotic but often multiple antibiotics, scientists are reaching back in time to old remedies.

Thursday--

Welcome to December--almost at the end of a depressing year.

A suggestion for how to handle "toddler" Bully-elect.

Friday--

Infidel753 sums up the dilemma of our present election: minority rule. With Clinton having gained almost 2% more actual votes than the Bully-elect, his supporters are clutching at straws to shore up the legitimacy of his Electoral Collage win. For most of our 200+ years under the Constitution the process has worked fairly well. The Electoral College has differed from the popular vote only four times in the all that time. Unfortunately two of those times occurred since 2000. And, from a map I saw earlier showing county by county results, may reflect a growing divergence between lightly populated interior states and heavily populated states with large cities. Balancing out such interests has always been a problem which is why states are awarded Representatives on the basis of population while all states, regardless of population, have two Senators each. That system came under pressure when more northern states without slavery came into the Union than Southern states with slavery. For years the Senate could block any attempt by Northern interests to outlaw slavery through legislation from the House by defeating it is the Senate. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 kept the balance of power until 1854 by mandating that every free state be admitted with a slave state. I wonder what kind of compromise can paper over the disparity in today's world. We have always had to avoid both the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of the minority.