14 January

Evidently our governor has decreed that anyone over 70 years of age can sign up for a COVID vaccination. Mom and I both qualify but we are going to wait for a while--not because of any hesitancy over the safety or efficacy of the shots but because getting an appointment is worse than visiting the dentist. This post from a gardener somewhat south of us in our state described her difficulties getting appointments for her mother and herself. We live in a far more populous area of the state. We will get out vaccinations when our local Walgreens have them available and the rush is over.

So the Grifter-in-chief emits oral defecations which his rabid followers take as orders to take over the Capital and his middle son bleats about "cancel" culture when businesses which don't want to be seen as supporting insurrection bail on economic arrangements. The city of New York has ended arrangements supporting the Bedminster Golf Club and the family company's contract to run the ice rink. Deutchebank has cut ties along with a smaller New York bank. I hope their entire financial house of cards crashes and that is a soap opera I will gleefully watch.

It is, perhaps, to be expected but I can't get used to the sights of fully armed reservists and the new barriers in Washington. Just like the siege on the 6th it isn't surprising but it is shocking. I am not sure I like much the times it seems to signal.

15 January

Here we are half-past the first month of a new year that looks much like the old year. There are bright spots though--like reports of moving vans outside the White House packing up #45's belongings. They should have someone making sure the Grifter-in-Chief doesn't "accidentally on purpose" pack up something that belongs to the nation and not to him. I hope he achieves another first to go along with his second impeachment (in his first term and in his last year no less): the first impeachment conviction.

I found this early on this morning that pretty much sums up the current state of things: a whole hell of a lot of grift, amazing amount of self-interested cruelty, a bit of sardonic amusement (George Takei), and a bright example of reciprocated generosity (the Irish donation to the Hopi/Navajo nations in the midst of COVID devastation).

John Feffer has a good post on Foreign Policy In Focus that makes a point I had thought but in a much more undeveloped way for some time now: the mobs like the one that attached the Capital are "American as motherhood and apple pie." Throughout our history we have had a story that described what the country was and who we are, and what our relationship to each other is and to the world at large should be. The City on the Hill. Manifest Destiny. The harbinger and vanguard of democracy to the world. The consumerist Good Life. Right now we don't have a story that holds the allegiance of a majority of the people. Biden's majority in the 2020 election was 51.3% or 81+million votes. Number 45 won 48.7% or 71+million votes. What #45 and his followers argue is that large numbers of people, black or brown primarily, should not have voted. Those people shouldn't have any right to make as monumental decisions as who will be President. But there is a slightly larger group that doesn't believe that the election was rigged simply because Those people voted. Right now we have now we have no story that knits us together and are fighting to construct another one. I have no idea how that conflict will be resolved. Feffer gives some interesting possibilities.

I listened to Biden's speech last night as saw the breakdown of his $1+trillion COVID relief and economic stimulus plan. I didn't pay much attention since his saying it doesn't make it so unless the houses of our legislature vote it in. I have no faith that they will do so. I have no expectation that they won't. Right now the whole thing is in limbo.

Question: when is speech protected and when is it not? I think it was Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who said that we don't have a right to "falsely yell fire in a crowded fire." Yelling, falsely, that the election was rigged, stolen, etc., is the equivalent. The mob that invaded the Capital believed #45 yelling the political equivalent--that the election was stolen.