February 6

We are still waiting for the results of the Iowa caucuses. Though we don't know who the "real" winner is we do know who lost: Joe Biden. When he announced his run he was one of four candidates I wished hadn't or hoped wouldn't entered the race. The others are Sanders, Steyer, and Bloomberg. I really wanted a new person to rise up in politics and I don't think "businessman" is a qualification for political office.

I think John Feffer had an interesting summation of this past week at Foreign Policy In Focus:

I can't even imagine how people around the world view the United States these days. 

This week, the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump of the two charges of impeachment after failing to call any additional witnesses, including those that could clearly corroborate some of the disputed issues. 

The president delivered a State of the Union address that, in its brazen factlessness, would not have been out of place in Moscow circa 1975 or Cairo circa 2019. The president failed to shake the hand of the speaker of the House, and she in return tore up his speech at the conclusion of his remarks.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party didn't need Russia to hack the Iowa caucus vote because it was fully capable of screwing up the vote by itself. 

To err is human -- to screw up on this scale is American.

That last is my emphasis. As far as the Repthuglicans, except Mitt Romney who may merit the title of Republican, I think of a line from The Vampire Lestat where Akasha tells Lestat that the people she killed "believe in nothing. Now they are nothing." They obviously don't believe, along with their Dear Leader, that an oath that ends "so help me God." means anything. I hope their future includes political non-existence.

John Michael Greer is back after taking January off and, as usual, has an interesting take on where we are and where we are going. His comments on the "death of expertise" hits a few chords. A long time ago we stopped listening to dietary advice after noting who supported the studies on which the advice was based. Exercise? Well, we tried that and a) we didn't much like doing the exercise and b) wound up with several muscle and joint strains that made things very painful and difficult. Most of the time the advice simply doesn't fit into lives we aren't willing to change to suit the advice. We have also stopped listening to advertising. Most ads fall into what we call the "cute but..." category. Cute but we don't want the item. Cute but we have tried similar "new" things that haven't worked as promised. And we remember too many products that were heavily advertised and turned out to be harmful. And as far as the "elites" go--they seem just too far removed from my lived reality. Experts want to tell us, for our own good of course (sarcasm), how we should live. We want to make decisions for ourselves.