Well, Half Past February--Damn!!

We have had more than 20 inches of snow over the last about 3 days. A lot of shoveling. I take it a bit at a time even though I don't have a very long stretch to do--theoretically. However, the landscapers aren't coming around as quickly as the old landscapers did and they don't do as good a job. Luckily we don't absolutely have to go out before next Tuesday. I can take time to dig out the car and after Sunday we will get some help from Mother Nature with temperatures predicted to stay in the 30s. And the train of big snow storms seems to have broken. I certainly hope so.

Found this to put a smile on my face today. I have to admit that when it comes to #45 I wish him all the troubles fate can deliver.

At least we still have electricity. All too many in Texas woke up  a frigid house without heat or light for the second day.  And we haven't had tornadoes like Florida and N. Carolina. I hope that doesn't indicate what we can expect in tornado alley.

18 February

We spent a couple of hours yesterday digging our car out of the snow. We finally succeeded thanks to the help of a neighbor who then used his truck to pack down the piles. He also noted that the snow removal service our landlord uses has not done a good job. One of our neighbors had to parallel park behind her room mate's car and blocking our in car  because the plows had piled snow in her spot. Somebody finally came in with a front loader and moved the snow out. We still have mountains of snow at the corner and along the east side of our building.

I found this Zero Hour post that is an interesting account of one person's attempt to get his COVID vaccination. I wonder whether the Maryland situation has been replicated elsewhere. We have become reliant on private corporate entities to carry out public policy. The powers that be call the process "public-private partnerships" that usually provide the private partners the opportunity to milk the public partners for meager results.

For some time now, a decade or a bit more, I have been depressed by the inability of the U.S. to deal effectively with almost anything. Evidently David Nather and Scott Rosenbberg at Axios have also noticed that trend. Their article is the lead today.

A CBS news article gives the actuarial consequences of COVID (so far): we have lost a full year on life expectancy on average. Blacks lost 3 years and Hispanics lost 2 years. I am not at all surprised. Elderly populations, especially those in care facilities, comprised the largest group of early deaths. If you cut off the oldest part of the population you will bring down the average life expectancy. But I remember reading articles from before the pandemic which indicated a slow lessening of life expectancy associated with other trends in society: the opioid "epidemic" and the growing numbers of people who can't afford timely health care.

To go along with the paragraph above on the Axios article have a look at the latest from Tom Engelhardt: The U.S.S. Enterprise has become the U.S.S. Roach. Who would have thought it when the USSR imploded in 1991?

Recent bits of absurdity: the impeachment, Sen. Ron Johnson, and the local Pennsylvania Republican official who opined on Sen. Toomey's vote to convict #45. The impeachment was never going to get the 17 Republicans in the Senate to convict the #45. The final vote which included seven Republican votes did set a historical record since the only other time members of the president under impeachment got any votes at all from his own party was #45's last impeachment--all 1 of them. Then there was Sen. Johnson's remarks that he didn't think the insurrection was really all that dangerous because the idiots weren't really "armed." He wondered where the guns were if the rioters were "armed." How could you have an "armed" riot if there weren't any firearms. Well, the police busted plenty of people with various firearms as well as a crossbow, knives (one person was stabbed), hockey sticks, flag poles, and bear spray. Guns aren't the only kinds of "arms" out there.  And then the county Republican official who insisted that they were planning to censure Toomey because they didn't send him to Washington to "do the right thing" or vote his conscience. I guess they think elected representatives should be rubber stamps for whatever group controls the local party.