Happy Valentine's Day to all from this grumpy old broad. Supposed to be warmer today. I hope so. I want some of that white stuff outside to melt. I get tired of even mild winters very quickly.

We have been in major house cleaning/decluttering mode since Sunday with Monday off for shopping. I have often said that we clean when the spirit moves us and, thankfully, it doesn't move often. Actually that has been the case only since our last cats died of very old age between 2011 and 2013. The political situation has been a bit depressing as well. The new cats have changed that and given our lives a very needed shaking up. Things we had been thinking of doing in a rather lackadaisical way are now getting done. In the process we are getting rid of a bunch of stuff and rearranging where everything else is put to make it more accessible when we need it. Right now I am stiff and tired.

       Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By has a post on the Ivanka/Rubio proposal to allow people to access Social Security funds for family leaves to care for a new born or sick family member and then delay retirement by a commensurate time (six weeks delayed Social Security in retirement for six weeks of family leave now). Rather than providing what every other advanced nation on earth provides our Repthuglican politicians would rather shovel more money to a military already vastly over funded. They are grasping for any wedge to destroy a program their ilk have wanted to destroy for the last 80 years and from which so many have benefitted.
        But another thought came into my mind as I read this and other articles on the proposal. It reminds me of the "Cash For Clunkers" program in the early days of the Great Recession when the automakers were crying poverty, laying off workers, and wanting a bail out from Washington in the face of fierce opposition. The government funded hefty rebates for customers who traded in their older model car ( I think the car had to be pre-1996 or thereabouts) for a new car. It was sold in part as an environmental and fuel saving measure: the new cars were cleaner burning and got better gas mileage--or so the story went. A lot of the new cars consumers bought were SUVs that were only more fuel efficient by comparison to older SUV models not the sedans or smaller vehicles many people were driving.
      A (usually) unstated goal was to move consumption from two or three years down the road (when they hoped the economy would be recovering) to the present (when it was in a deepening recession). Well, the economy didn't improve so after a bit of an upswing the auto industry continued its slide. And the used car market took a big hit because all those trade-ins had to be rendered inoperable while people who couldn't buy a new car even with the rebates and other incentives couldn't buy a used car either as scarcity drove up prices.
      We have been involved in a desperate attempt (individually as well as collectively) to claw future income/revenue/assets into the present to fuel consumption now and the Ivanka/Rubio plan just goes after even more distant (potential resources). I say "potential" because the same people proposing this cockamamie scheme keep telling us that Social Security is going broke a lot sooner than when the 30 and 40 somethings who would be accessing the funds will be looking to retire.

This puts our 9 straight days of measurable snow amounting to 18-20 inches with mountains of plowed snow in some perspective.