February 28

 It may be cloudy today. Today should be drier and less windy. Last night was so windy I could hear it whistling through the trees and feel the house shake. (Update: it is warmer--about 45F. And nice bright sun.)

Reading today:

This piece on Responsible Statecraft. I thought, at the time, that Afghanistan was understandable though a bit of an over reaction. It was like hitting a gnat with a sledgehammer. We didn't hit the gnat--bin Laden survived until the Obama Administration. It cost more than 3X the number who died in the 9/11 attack and a couple of trillion dollars. And, as the article said, accomplished none of our nebulous goals. We blundered in without the least knowledge of the history, sociology, religion(s) or any other significant information about the country and the region. Oh, I forgot, we did know there was oil there. And, when it came to Iraq--we were lied into it. There were no "weapons of mass destruction."

I have one more disquieting thought about nebulous goals. It seems to be happening again. When the Russia started their "special military operation" (war by any other name), the support for Ukraine was somewhat muted because no one expected Ukraine to hold out against the Russians. The miraculously the Russians proved unbelievably inept and the Ukrainians proved to be the opposite managing to push the Russians back to nearly where they started. Then the goals started changing. Now Ukraine wants not only the Donbas but Crimea as well. Nebulous goals that keep getting bigger. 

February 27l,

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We have had rain, sometimes heavy, and just got the tornado warning on the TV. It isn't here yet or the sirens would be sounding. The news has been focused on that Murdaugh trial and I don't give a damn about that. I have been avoiding it. The news from Ukraine are also very repetitive. As is the insanity in Washington. And the speculation about who is going to run for what in 2024. Instead I have actually made some progress on a couple of crochet projects that had been languishing for a while. And I have cleared a couple of books I have been reading and lined up a couple of more.

Just read this post on Tomdispatch.com this morning. The basic story of the abuse of power by militarized police unites didn't really add anything to what I have already learned. However, a couple of phrases mentioned in the article are interesting: neighborhood life-cycle theory, planned abandonment, and community-based development. I have a note to look up more info. The few indications I have found so far remind me all to much of the Indian Removal Act (and Trail of Tears) and multiple examples of Russian/Soviet large scale forced removal of suspect populations followed by replacement by more reliable peoples (usually ethnic Russians.)

Robert Reich posted this morning on the new AI tech like Chatbot. We have already removed so much of human labor out of the economy. We were promised that everyone would benefit as machines took over the boring, repetitive processes because those displaced could then work in more "creative" jobs. Unfortunately, there were fewer "creative" jobs available. Issac Asimov wrote a short story that might be relevant now. As an antiquated, outmoded robot walks by an inebriated human, the man swears at it and throws the nearly empty bottle which smashes on the robot. The automaton turns and sadly tells the man "at least you can get drunk" before walking on. The robot replaced man and was replaced in turn by a newer model of robot. The cycle continues. Another question: is a universal basic income really the solution to the problem.

Another continuing thread in the news has been the situation in Israel which seems to be going from bad to worse to worst yet. I keep wondering what will it finally take to change the U.S. stance on Israel which seems to be unwavering, almost uncritical support. Whatever the hopes we might have had in Israel's beginning have evaporated in the heat of the current political situation. The current Israeli Jews are not the Holocaust survivors or even the children of the survivors. They aren't the survivors of pogroms and other oppressive, deadly societies throughout Europe (mainly). They are the grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and perhaps even the great-great-grandchildren of the founding immigrants. They are now the oppressors. And their values no longer mesh with ours.

Interesting. 

February 23

Well, it is morning. I don't know how good it will be because I haven't had my first cup of coffee. It is on the table beside me cooling off to drinking temperature. We had a good steady rain yesterday which was good for the garden pots on the patio.

So on to my reading:

I saw a small story on this item early yesterday (I think)--within the last couple of days anyway. The link is to the story DW (a German site in English) which provides a bit more detail. I also found this item by way of MSN. It would seem that the mysterious spate of suicides and lethal "accidents" among top level Russians has migrated to Belarus. Between the two stories it is evident that Putin's plans to reconstitute the once-Soviet, now Russian, Empire came into being very early after the 1991 fracturing of the Soviet Union. I wonder if Putin isn't becoming impatient because Ukrainians didn't fall into line as he expected them to.

At least we haven't had this kind of shortage. And the increase in energy prices is only part of the problem. But I noticed that one of the proposed solutions is for Britons, especially, to grow as much as they can wherever they can. The UK has imported a large part of their food for more than a century.

This morning the news had a snippet that reported Lake Powell reached another low water record. It is expected to go lower yet before, they hope, the spring thaw brings snow melt into the reservoirs. However, we shouldn't forget that we aren't the only areas suffering with the whiplash between flood and drought. And then there is this bit of very rare weather.

February 22

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I think it is wet outside from the light glistening off the pavements that generally don't shine in the light. I checked out the pots to see if anything is waking up. I did see a couple of hopeful signs but it isn't yet even early spring. Although, I was contemplating changing out the winter wreath for a spring themed wreath. Looking at the longer range (10 day) forecast and I saw only one day which might have a high temp below 32F.

CNN had a longer article on the arguments before the Supreme Court concerning Section 230. After three hours of argument, the justices seemed thoroughly confused about what can or should be done, at least by the court. As Justice Elena Kagan mentioned the nine justices aren't "the greatest experts on the internet."

Charles Hugh Smith has a good post that mirrors thoughts that have been brewing in my mind over the last few years. I once described myself as a "news junkie." I don't any more for several reasons. First, the news presented in the media is very repetitive. Each day only a few, often only one or two stories are featured over and over (and over and over). Second, the media thrives on drama and contention. A word that has been coined over the last few years describes it very well: infotainment, with an emphasis on a the "-tainment" half. We have the TV on mostly as background noise because Mom has tinnitis and the background noise makes it bearable. Sometimes it is annoying and by myself I would turn it off most of the time. Third, there isn't a damned thing I can do about any of it. Some of it might have an impact on my life and those stories I pay attention to mainly so I can figure out what might happen and how to minimize any adverse effects. More and more I ignore it all.

February 21

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A relevant poem for today by John Donne:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

As I read David Kaiser's article yesterday I realized that a major difference between 1943 and today, as reflected in the respective newspapers, is that we are far more self-centered and narcissistic. The social attitude today goes beyond isolationism. We had isolationists then as well and I hope it doesn't take an attack on U.S. soil to bring our modern day isolationists around. Whether we like it or not we live in a globalized world, far more globalized than the Elizabethan world John Donne lived in. We no longer have any secure borders against unfriendly powers. We haven't yet realized that we have no secure borders against desperate masses fleeing violence and climate disasters.

I went to this article because of the title: An Act of Literary Vandalism. You have to skim down the page (unless you are interested in yet another take on Biden's trip to Kyiv). I had seen a couple of of extremely short pieces on this item. I have seen these kind of stories several times always very unsettled feelings. I remember an attempt to make Shakespeare "relevant" by updating the language. It left me cold. Updating the language neutered the art. At another time people banned Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer because Twain included the "n-word." It might hurt some readers feelings. But how much do we all lose when our classics are butchered to soothe tender feelings? Or to ensure corporate profits?

February 20

 Bright sun today. Cool yet but not cold. We had a busy morning with shopping. We figured today would be the best day to do that. We had four stops and that means we are now resting. Dairy, grocery, pay rent and drugstore all make a very tiring itinerary.

Finally got to my reading and found another of David Kaiser's comparison of one of today's newspapers with one from decades in the past. He compares both the format, number of front-page stories and topics covered. The papers were Saturday's Washington Post and one from nearly the same date in 1943. The times were definitely very different and our focus is also very different. During WWII we had a broader vision that encompassed the entire world. Today we seem to be more narrowly focused on matters closer to home. I don't think that is a good thing.

Today is one of those days when I wonder just how useful the internet, specifically e-mail, really is. I had over 150 e-mails. So far almost all of the messages have gone in the trash. It isn't just the vast tsunami of ads. It is the multiples--as many of six or more of the very same ad for something I have no interest in or need for. Often those same ads appear, in multiples, further on in the list. Wading through this shit is a royal pain in the ass.

As the old saying goes "sometimes you can't win for losing." The area of the Turkiye and Syrian border that had the big earthquakes two weeks had another today--a 6.4.

February 19

 We should have temps around 50F with some sun after early morning rain. It is still pre-dawn here so I can't see anything outside.

The Supreme Court is considering a case concerning Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It seems nobody likes the law but for different reasons. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) thinks that a clean cancellation of is possible but everyone wants the law repealed but they want something to replace it and can't agree on the replacement. The basic problem is the big internet is we haven't decided what exactly what it is. It doesn't have the legal liabilities a print publisher has for defamation and slander and it is't held to account for the truth of what is posted as a clearly news site would. They sit in the middle denying any responsibility for content others create. However, a publisher can be sued for publishing a book or article which is deemed defamatory or slanderous and a news site can be sued, under certain conditions, for the same especially if the "news" is false and causes significant harm. The authors can also be sued. So someone has to define exactly what they are and write law which makes them accountable.

Found some fantastic "before and after" pictures of some of California's lakes and rivers. The do show a dramatic improvement but, and it is a big but, the improvement doesn't take the lake and river levels back to a pre-drought level. They aren't really even half way back. I checked out the Drought Monitor and all of California is still dryer than what was normal. In spite of the deluge of atmospheric rivers and the massive snow storms the meteorologists say February, normally a wet month, is, so far, very dry.

February 18

 Sunny today with projected temperatures in the 40s. The snow we had over the last couple of days won't be around long with the temperatures forecast over the next week and the rain.

The first story I saw this morning on the local news aggregator I use described an event at a local church that few knew anything about in a time that seems so remote. In the 1920s the KKK had a powerful presence in the country and in Indiana. The pastor of a local church called a board meeting to consider the request of the KKK to hold a public at the church. The board rejected the request. The author notes that almost nothing about the episode was known. No one wanted to talk about it. The pastor and his family left the area after crosses were burned twice in front of their house. What interests me is how this story was trimmed over time. If history is a story we tell about ourselves that story has been edited continuously with certain events erased and others edited, with the tale of how the events affected people afterward trimmed, glossed, massaged to fit the desired narrative. Think about how many people have been diminished or even erased in the stories we tell, the history we preserve.

If you think the stories we tell ourselves isn't really that important think about Vladimir Putin in Russia and de Santis in Florida. Putin's was in Ukraine is an attempt to restore the story of Russia (USSR) he grew up with when Ukraine was a part of the empire; when there was no country named Ukraine and no people who could be called anything but Russian. He is drawing on a very old playbook in Russian history. The Russian Czars and the leaders of the USSR frequently transported whole populations (those who weren't killed) to distant locations and forbade the speaking of languages that tied a subject population to any other story or identity. Ron de Santis is doing something similar here without the military force. If you think not, ask yourself why only the African American History AP course was challenged as "woke" and "without educational value?" Why not French Language and Culture? Why not German Language and Culture? Why not Japanese Language and Culture? Could it be because the history he wants to erase is any which says racial minorities, religious minorities and women played only a secondary role in the history of the U.S.

Best argument against relaxing child labor laws. The fines were not nearly enough.

Best argument against privatizing any part of Social Security. What goes up often comes down and sometimes disastrously. And to argue that over an extended time the market goes up doesn't negate the possibility that any downturn will affect people who won't have the time to recoup. Just ask the 40 and 50 year-old workers  who watched their retirement accounts evaporate during the 2008-9 downturn.

February 16

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It looks like a gray and wet day. We had some rain over the last couple of days but the temperatures are still springlike. It is the kind of winter weather that makes wonder when the hammer will fall with a stretch of heavy snow and sub-freezing temps.

Naked Capitalism posted links this morning to two stories which should ratchet up the concern over the transportation of hazardous materials, by rail or otherwise, after the disaster at East Palestine. The first is this one to Grist which says that at least five tankers carrying vinyl chloride were labeled "non-hazardous." How can any town or city or state through which those trains travel prepare reasonably for possible problems if they don't know what they are dealing with? It also underscores the problem with our modern Corporate Capitalism: lives don't have any meaning beyond net profits. If the penalties you have to pay for killing people or destroying property belonging to others don't exceed the profits, you hove no incentive for changing. I am so in favor of a corporate death penalty.

This link to Kanekoa substack follows a long history of the company Norfolk Southern hired to do environmental testing in East Palestine. To be a bit fair, this company is an agent for the Norfolk Southern and serves its interests not the interests of the victims, the residents of East Palestine. On of the news anchors comments on this underlined the resistance of victims who refused to sign the waivers they were presented and accept the "compensation:" by doing so they would forfeit their rights to pursue their cases in court. I can believe this article having experienced, with out the dire consequences, similar situations. In one case, a relative bought a house relying on a report on the soundness of the house and its electrical and plumbing systems only to find the plumbing was so fragile it started to break up almost as soon as they moved in. The company doing the examination was hired by the sellers. He made sure to have his own inspector for the next house he bought. 

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The cold moved in last night and we now have a couple of inches of snow on top of the rain, freezing rain/drizzle, and sleet we had to start. I told Mom we are going to hibernate for the next five days. By then, with the return of warmer temperatures forecast for early next week.

We went out yesterday to check out a new drugstore that just opened. We had a list of what we are low on but didn't buy anything because they didn't carry anything on our list. The store is a pharmacy with a sideline health food store with a limited variety of goods. Most we can get from our other sources. Nice to know that it is there but I doubt we will be doing business there.

We also decided to have lunch/dinner at what used to be one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. Our first visit just after everything opened up again and we were very disappointed. It wasn't just the increase in prices but the changes in the menu. Our favorites were gone and the replacements weren't very satisfying. Yesterday only reinforced our discontent. The rice and beans were tasteless. The canned refried beans we buy are far more palatable. They piled the steak/onion/cheese taco mixture on the tortillas which made them very messy and difficult to eat. We prefer to do the piling on ourselves. Oh well, we are on the hunt for a good (by our standards) Mexican restaurant.

I don't much like so-called Christians who parade their so-called Christianity in either an outright aggressive manner or in a passive-aggressive manner. Mike Pence is in the latter category who conveniently forgets to read the "red words" in the Bible. However, Pence irritates me in another way a way as well. He practices a kind of situational ethics. He blew off the January 6 Committee with the notions that 1) it wasn't properly constituted because there weren't any Republicans on it (ignoring the fact that McCarthy selected disruptive idiots who wanted to subvert it) and 2) as the Vice President he was an executive branch officer he was immune from subpoenas from the legislative branch. Now he is blowing off the Justice Department on the grounds that 1) it is the "Biden Justice Department" and 2) as Vice President he was the President of the Senate on January 6 and so is immune from executive branch subpoenas. I hope the courts slap down both arguments. It seems that he only has to tell the truth when he wants to. Not a very Christian sentiment.

Crooks & Liars posted this today. Yep, Karma does strike.

Another Crooks&Liars post which makes me hope Bernie Sanders is somehow immortal. The pharmaceutical companies got huge amounts of money to develop the COVID vaccines. Then they got huge orders from governments to scale up the production. They should provide them for free forever.

February 15

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 Half past February. Hope you all had a nice Valentine's Day. Ours was nice and quiet.

Robert Reich has another interesting post on his substance: Fake Brand Competition, Monopoly Power, and Inflation. He makes an interesting case that the more powerful driver of inflation is the power of monopolies (or near monopolies) to increase prices but the usual focus on for blame, by the media and government, is labor costs. He asks why and I can think of a couple of reasons. Concentration in various industries are often hidden. Reich mentions Molson Cours, Unileaver, and Pepsico by name. Cours owns over 100 brands. Back when I did drink beer regularly I stopped drinking a couple of the brands listed because I was aware of Coors had bought them. Needless to say, I don't like Coors as a company. But what do you do when only four companies control meat packing control 54% of chicken processing, 66% of pork packing, and 85% of beef? Consumers have few choices and there is little pressure to keep prices low. But another reason is labor costs are more visible than corporate profits derived from a multitude of brands. Also, the money the industries pour into lobbying and political campaigns far outweighs the contributions of both consumers and workers. Follow the money!!

I found this article on Aeon by way of Naked Capitalism that has been fermenting in my mind along with the articles I mentioned yesterday about proposals to roll back child labor laws. We often make the mistake of considering the social/economic situation we have now as if it were what always existed. However, it has developed over the last three centuries. Before that time we had a "household economy" where most necessities were produced in the home. If you ate something, you probably grew all the ingredients (not many used exotic spices). If you wore something, you probably harvested the fiber, spun the thread, wove the fabric, cut and sewed the garment. If you were ill and took a medicine, you many have made it yourself or consulted a local herbalist. In this kind of economy, children contributed from an early age. A four old could carry a basket to the hen house and collect eggs. A five year old could herd the geese or start learning to spin and a six year old could tend sheep with an adult. Almost all production has moved into the money economy. We can call a number of companies to deliver complete dinners to our door. We can go to Walmart if we need a shirt. At the same time we have become segregated both by age and gender. Children went to school. Men went to work. Women joined them in the workforce later unless they never married or were widowed. Old folks moved into nursing homes or assisted living homes. Maybe we should step back and question our social and economic arrangements. But that will only happen when and where the current system breaks down. 

February 14

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I woke up this morning to a news story which hit a bit too close. About 25 years ago I spent a month during two successive summers on the Michigan State University doing research at the library. It was a bit disconcerting to hear that another mass shooting (the 67th so far this year) has taken the lives of three more people and left five more with life threatening wounds. If we had a sane, responsible, compassionate society and political leadership we would have done something a long time ago. One of the commentators this morning recounted an encounter with a Republican leader after an earlier mass shooting who was asked what they were planning to do. Answer: nothing, because, he said, if they take any meaningful action "the country would become something no one would recognize." Well, I thought, whether you do something or do nothing, the country will become something we would not recognize any more. Interestingly, the moderator said the same thing barely thirty seconds later.

Robert Reich has a post this morning which is related to that theme. There was a time when a witness before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee could end a previous political bully's career (Joseph McCarthy) by asking "Have you no shame?" But looking at all too many of the politicians, especially Republicans, I don't think that would work. They have no shame and their shameless antics are what their voters want. Those voters mistakenly equate that behavior with "fighting for me," or "telling it like it is," or "owning the libs," when it isn't any such thing. It is performance empty of meaning.

I found this by way of Naked Capitalism. I probably wouldn't have seen this book and author and I probably wouldn't have thought to read it. The subject is tangentially related to my own interests: history. However, I have adopted a policy of reading books that are banned, one way or another, by both the right (1619 Project and Between the World and Me) or, as in this case, the left. The arguments over books, or statues commemorating people, the naming of military bases or college buildings, etc., tends to provide a lot of heat but no cogent arguments. We need to get back to politely debating these things.

Tomdispatch.com has another post dealing with the debacle around the failed littoral combat ships program which the Navy wanted to curtail by mothballing five of the nine ships and cancelling any more. As read this story again, since other authors have also written on it, a memory intruded. Back in the 1980, I think, a big controversy arose over plans to reduce the number of bases within the U.S. After a lot of wrangling, a blue ribbon committee was appointed with the authority to make the decision. None of the politicians could come to a consensus when assailed by the interests within their states demanding their installations be spared the ax. A similar pattern appears in this controversy. Once the decision was made, other interests started howling; a business that got a multibillion dollar contract to repair the defective ships, workers whose jobs were on the line, companies deeply involved in the production of the weapons systems, and the states those companies call home. Perhaps we need a commission to vet new weapons systems for cost and effectiveness. 

Several years ago I read about a legislator in Missouri who proposed a roll back on child labor laws. It didn't go anywhere. I wasn't too impressed with his arguments which centered on the supposed benefit children would get by holding down a job. As I thought then: maybe---maybe not. The devil is definitely in the details here. I wasn't surprised to see this post on Crooks & Liars. I have complained for a long time about the waste of time in schools. It seemed that a lot of material learned in the previous year was repeated in the next. Perhaps apprenticeships during the last two years? Or paid internships?

February 12

 The weather people predict another dry and mild day today but over next week they expect a return to more wintery conditions for a day going back to almost springlike weather.

This was the first article I saw this morning. It doesn't really surprise me that COVID is still hitting elderly people harder than other age groups. We still see masks everyone and then--usually on older people or younger ones who have some medical condition that makes them susceptible. COVID seems to be settlinig into a pattern similar to other respiratory diseases and affecting the elderly most. I just looked up the mortality rate by age for flu and pneumonia and they show the same pattern. If Medicare continues to cover the vaccine we will continue to get the updated boosters when we get the yearly flu shots.

Johns Hopkins is shutting down its COVID Tracker site. The virus is settling into a "new normal" and normal doesn't need to be tracked. I remember going to the site often during the height of the pandemic out of curiosity more than anything else. I made our own masks (double and then triple layer of tight woven cotton) early on. We got the initial sequence and the boosters since then. Since we don't rally like crowds we chose the time when we went out before COVID and continued the pattern after.

I wondered, while listening to the commentary covering the second unknown arial object and its downing, if these are new phenomena or if we simply hadn't noticed them before. A couple of the commenters asked the question but had no answers. Another cited an expert source (forgot who or if the source was named) that most of our detection systems are designed for fast objects like jet airplanes and missiles and so might have missed slow moving objects of any kind.

Naked Capitalism posted a piece on ChatGPT (and my extension its imitators and possible competitors). I have heard it mentioned on a couple of news discussions. That show focused on the concerns of educators who have to deal with students using the program to write their assignments. The story brought back memories of a year I spent teaching Western Civ at a community college. I gave a take home final which included an essay. As I graded one of the essays I had a moment of deja vu. I quickly found another essay I had read only a few minutes before and which had large identical segments. It didn't take me long on line to find the article the two used (and plagiarized) for their essay. I highlighted the passages on their essays and on copies of the original I attached when I returned the tests and gave them an F for the final. Luckily for them they had done well enough over the semester to pass the course though the head of the department suggested that I might not want to be that hard on them because I hadn't included anything on plagiarism in my syllabus. I hadn't thought that was necessary since this was college not grade school. The article I linked above covers other concerns: the use of intellectual property without the permission of the owner and without attribution, the inability of authors to protect their work, and the violation of privacy. The politicians world wide have been interested in reigning in and to varying extents controlling Big Tech.

UPDATE: the death tally in the Turkiye - Syria earthquake now stands a 32K. Closing in on the most lethal quake in recent history--1939. OOPS  34K now of which 28K are in Turkiye.

NBC News posted this story on our own "climate refugees." I will let you read most of the statistics. Just think--we had about 18 weather events that caused $1billion or more (sometimes much more). Total costs $165.5 billion or about .6% of the U.S. GDP. Also 3+ million displaced --12% for 6 months and 16% who didn't return to their former homes.

February 10, 11

 ***********************************10*********************************We are still in a warm unseasonable warm spell. I think we touched 50F yesterday during a brief time when the sun came out. Otherwise it was a rainy mid 40s. That is still well above the normal for the first full week of February. I find myself hoping for a bit colder weather to keep my perennial plants dormant. If they leaf out now they might be killed by a freeze.

I found this almost first thing this morning. We haven't deployed our military under a declaration of war since World War II. In spite of that, we have had various examples of troops in shooting actions that have cost a lot of lives and a lot of money on the basis of the two Authorization of Military Force acts and the expanded uses of them over administrations of both parties. It is time to cancel them.

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Nice sunny morning. At least here. In Turkiye (a.k.a., Turkey) the death toll has exceeded the mortality of the 1999 quake and moved into second place on the list of most lethal earthquakes. I expect that the tally will finally exceed the number one earthquake disaster of 32+K which happened in 1939.

Yesterday the U.S. shot down an unspecified floating object over northern Alaska and today Canada followed that up with the shoot down of yet another. Teams have been sent to recover the wreckage. No other information yet available.

Robert Reich has a good post on the scam wealthy sports team owners perpetrate on the rest of us in the building and operation of their stadiums. Tax payers pay the lion's share of the building and operations costs while they reap the lion's share of the profits.

February 8, 9

 Well, the State of the Union is done. It went pretty much as I expected. Over enthusiastic applause from Democrats but at (mostly) appropriate places: all of the (narrowly) bi-partisan bills passed, at Biden's calls to "finish the job," etc. The childish behavior of the "usual suspects" though, according to reports, the Republican leaders asked for decorum and respect. We haven't had much of that for the last almost 20 years.

I found the "man on the street" interviews conducted in various states prior to the speech interesting. Most reinforced the impression I have had that many people at my level of the economy (working class, or retired, or fixed income) simply aren't seeing much or any improvement in the economy. Some of that is because some of the legislation either hasn't been in place long enough, or hasn't gone into effect yet, or had a limited effect (like the cap on insulin for medicare recipients but not for diabetics who have private insurance). Unfortunately, our only real choices are to vote for a Democrat or a Republican or risk throwing our votes to a third party with little or no chance of winning. The high levels of inflation have shredded what ever income increases some have gained. But even that ballyhooed $15/hour target for an income floor won't cover basic expenses in most areas. Think about this: my mother and I each get about $1100/month from Social Security and our rent is $700/month. If we were new renters here it would be $1300/month. Either way neither of us could afford to live here by ourselves. Since 2019, rents here have doubled. At the same time food, electricity, and utilities have also risen significantly. I can sympathize with those who feel their conditions haven't improved and may have declined. But then I remember how little the Republicans under The Former Guy did for us and how much they did for the top 1%. To reformulate an old saying "From those who have little much is required; to those who have much, more will be given"

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Robert Reich takes on the often heard phrase: everything will work out in the end. As he notes, the sentiment  has various forms but they all promise that if we patiently wait good things will come. He points out the flaw in the sentiment: it can easily slide into a passive fatalism. It takes human choice and activism out of the equation.

I am doing my best to ignore the "investigative" hearings the House of (Un)Representatives are putting on. I have heard quite enough quite enough of Hunter Biden's laptop and have no desire to see his "dick pics." I have had enough of the Republican Pity Party and frankly wish Marjorie Whatever Her Name Is Now and Lauren Bobert would get a long term case of laryngitis. I really, really resent the money that will be spent on meaningless performances of their "rage." Someone called this the "Seinfeld Congress." I think that is much too generous. Seinfeld was the show "about nothing" and didn't pretend to be anything else. The Repthuglicans are pretending to be about something important that is undefined as well as insignificant. Insignificant except for the price tag.

A couple of stories are covering Seymour Hirsch's story on his substack which puts out a theory of how and who the Nordstream pipeline was destroyed. (I'll let anyone interested in pursuing the story do their own Google search.) I am not all that interested in the who and the how. The results to date underline a thought I have had for some time: countries should source their essential commodities from nearby, preferably from within their own borders and learn to live within their means. We have gotten too used to having essential goods shipped from distant places. However, that only works when we have a stable global order that allows a relatively seamless transfer of those goods and the payments for them. Right now that isn't working so seamlessly and isn't all that stable.

February 7

 Well, our news is dominated by the State of The Union Speech due tonight and speculations about what Biden will say. And speculating on what the Republicans will answer. We will probably watch the first but not the other. They haven't had anything meaningful to say since The Former Guy announced for reelection. Matt Taibbi, I think, labels the strategy well: government by panic. I only get the first couple of paragraph (the rest requires a paid subscription) but the reaction of Republicans over the last two years supports that description. Frankly, I was sick of it 2 minutes into TFG's inaugural speech.

The tragedy of the earthquake in Turkiye and Syria continues. They say the death toll, so far, is about 5k and likely to be among the three or four worst in recent history. This morning one of the news commentators recalled the  1999 quake which racked up between 15k and 18k dead. The Turkish President Erdogan was quoted calling up the image of the 1939 quake during which 32+k died.

Improve The News, which covers several stories providing alternative and contrasting narratives, has a bit on The Balloon controversy. I really like the "cynical" take on it:

Cynical narrative: This whole story is an overreaction by the media. Whether you believe the balloon was a spying tool for China or it was just an off-course weather balloon, it certainly didn’t deserve the attention it received. Either the networks decided they needed to gin up ratings with scare tactics, and/or government representatives on both sides were feeding the frenzy to quash a US-China détente on purpose. But this balloon was nothing to freak out about

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February 6

 Sunny today. If the forecast temperatures will be as predicted over this week we won't have any snow by Friday.

Who would have thought a damn balloon floating at 60k feet would have caused such a spate of stupidity among elected Republicans. Have you seen the photos of some of them holding various guns pointed in the sky? Somebody should tell those boys (and they were boys) that projectiles from this guns won't reach that high. The Republicans are grasping at any slender semblance of a thought to criticize Biden. He should have told everyone when we first sighted the balloon. Why? What could the great American population have done about it? He should have shot it down immediately. Really? Over international waters in the Pacific?? We don't have any right to do that over international waters. Over Alaska, Canada, Idaho, or Montana or any of the other states it flew over? And what if it fell on someones house?? Do they think the Canadians would have enjoyed having debris as large as a couple of busses falling on them? Biden gave the order and the military brass suggested they wait until they were over the Atlantic in shallow waters where they could close the area to civilian traffic, not threaten any structures or people, and have a chance of retrieving debris that might give valuable information. And that is what they did. I don't see anything to criticize. 

The news this morning started off with the massive earthquakes in Southern Turkiye and Northern Syria (7.8 and 7.5 with large aftershocks). We have the BBC news on now covering the story as it is developing. But as I am listening to that I am also reading a post on Tomdispatch.com written by Barbara Gordon describing her experience after she moved from rainy Portland to San Francisco where her first winter was dominated by an atmospheric river pattern before that term became familiar to all of us. (Englehardt's intro is also interesting). But that reference to atmospheric rivers reminded me of the recent repeated such rivers deluging and flooding most of the west coast and that led me to look up the Drought Monitor to see what that had done to the continuing drought there. Guess what? It didn't do much to alleviate the situation. And we have experienced a multi year La Niña which is expected to flip to an El Niño later this year. We can expect dryer and hotter conditions which will probably continue the pattern of more record hot years. Gordon added a bit to my Spanish vocabulary with the phrase her Mexican-American friend used: el pinche Niño. By the way, Turkiye is the preferred spelling per the government though my spell checker doesn't like it much.

February 3, 5

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Cold, windy, and snowy today. We got our grocery shopping done early before the snow picked up. The wind howled last night almost like a big truck engine straining at top power. I wonder what it was blowing through to cause that much sound. We are hibernating today and hoping tomorrow will be clear and warmer.

The egg shortage has come to our little local dairy. They have limited customers to 4 dozen at a time. No increase in price--yet. The shortage was a topic of discussion among the customers who all seem to have read the same stories I have. We also came in at an opportune time because the cashier was checking in their new order of lard and it goes quickly. We just opened the last we had on hand so we got a new tub for back up. That is another way we have gone backwards. We do have some olive oil and grape seed oil for making salad dressings but for most other cooking we prefer lard.

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I spaced out yesterday. The temperatures are on the upslope of the roller coaster. It might feel like early or mid March instead of early February.

We shifted from our usual U.S. news channel early and put BBC  on for most of the day until the story of the Chinese surveillance balloon came to dominate the news. Otherwise nothing much came up worth writing something on about.

David Kaiser made some interesting, but not surprising, comments. He notes the shift in electoral patterns which resulted in at least one house of congress or the White House changing hands in eight of the last nine elections. That was a sharp break from the pre-1990 pattern. He attributes the pattern to the frustration of a "critical, swing portion of the electorate" who are frustrated and want a change of regime. I would go a bit further: the pattern indicates that neither party really satisfies them. The second pattern he saw was in Presidents whose party loses control of the House of Representatives after completing only half of their first term: Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower before 1990 and Clinton, Obama and Biden since. Kaiser doesn't mention what is driving the frustration he mentions. I think looking at the two sets of three presidents who lost control of the House gives a clue: they both involved periods of economic upheaval. The first period (Hoover through Eisenhower) involved the Great Depression, WWII, and the post-war readjustments. The second period (Clinton, Obama, and Biden) also involves economic stresses as the economic position of the middle class whose income has stagnated and whose middle class consumption patterns was sustained only with increasing levels of debt.

We have shifted from the news to soccer (for football for any Europeans out there) and hearing the fans singing wasn't sure I was hearing what I was hearing. I thought I Heard "When the Saints Go Marching In" and decided to do a quick Google search. Lo and behold that song is quite popular for various sports including both Manchester City and Tottenham which are the teams playing today. I do love Google.

The "combat littoral ships" have been a boondoggle from the beginning. Most have never completed a voyage without serious problems. But when the Navy decides to cut the losses and cancel the project while retiring most of the fleet, the "defense" industry lobby got busy and got congress to add an amendment to the latest authorization bill which prohibited that action. Even when the military tries to be fiscally responsible the politicos side with the "defense" hogs at the trough.

February 2

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 It is sunny and a bit warmer today--only 40F in the shade on the patio. But that is warm enough to melt much of the snow and ice on the south side of the house. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow so it looks like six more weeks of winter. It wouldn't have been much less it he hadn't seen his shadow. I hope the spring is much more "normal" if we even know what is normal any more.

The morning news/talk show had a short segment on employment trends that covered the "quiet quitting" (doing only what your job description mandates and refusing to work extra hours etc.) and a new ottne I hadn't heard about "quiet hiring" (basically expanding the portfolios of current employees, or moving them into new roles often with new responsibility but no new compensation). On that last, one of the commenters remarked that managers should be careful of that last because new responsibility and duties without new compensation can leave angry employees who feel exploited. Soon after seeing this story I found this one. I can relate to the laid off employee whose former boss suggest she do a job she would have done as an employee but as a contractor which would not have paid her much and for which she would have lost her unemployment. Once a long time ago, after a severe monthlong illness, I gave my boss a month notice that put my leaving date after the Christmas and New Year crush. A week before that date he asked me to stay on until he found a replacement. I said no. He had had a month to hire someone else. 

Another story on labor this morning noted that there are more than 11 million jobs open--more than enough for every person currently unemployed. However, I noticed that two of the three categories of employment that had significant job openings were hospitality/food service and retail--the lowest paid sectors of the economy. Having worked both over my lifetime, I don't wonder those jobs are going begging. Those employees work far too hard for much too little.

William Astore has a good piece on his Bracing Views site. George Santos is hardly unique as a serial liar. Astore didn't mention the one who lately occupied the White House. He was interested in another bunch of serial liars: the U.S. Military. He focuses on the last twenty years, particularly the Iraq and Afghanistan "Wars." However, I am old enough to remember the serial liars from the Vietnam period. I have Craig McNamara's memoir, Because Our Fathers Lied, on my to be read pile. His surname should be familiar.

By the way, Astore, asks an interesting question: how can democracy survive without honor, integrity, honesty? I would ask even more: how can we judge someone's honor, integrity, or honesty it no one agrees on what is fact?

January 30, 31

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Cloudy this morning though the weather people promise some hints of sun later. The temperatures are cold which is about normal for late January going into February. 

I found this David Kaiser piece that is a good account of our highly concentrated economy. I have been struck myself by the strong resemblances between our own "aristocracy" and those of 17th century France. Spoiler alert for those who haven't read much history: it didn't go well for the French aristocrats. Madame la Guillotine spilled a lot of blue blood.

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An interesting piece by Richard Reich which casts some doubt on the old argument that comes up every time someone in government suggests that the wealthy should be paying more: there aren't enough wealthy people to do all that much good. Once upon a time they paid much more and yet that was a booming time for the economy. However, I am a bit cautious because the differences between now and then are glaring. We were a manufacturing powerhouse then, not so much now. We were the only undamaged industrial power coming out of WWII but now we are one of many and some of that many are eating our lunch. Also the wealthy aren't the only group holding large government debt. The Social Security Trust Fund is one of the largest holders of government treasury bonds (a.k.a., debt).

The news this morning reports that George Santos (or what ever his name might rightly be) has assured his House colleagues that he will recuse himself from his assigned committees until his legal (and other troubles) are resolved. Nice but he still draws a six figure salary for doing nothing.

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Welcome to the second month of 2023.

Le Monde put up this article covering a think tank's report that the EU, as a unit  last year, generated more electricity by way of wind and solar power than using either coal or gas. Pundits had thought that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would push European countries back to coal generation but that hasn't necessarily happened. I thought I would look up the numbers for individual countries because I suspected that the countries leading the move to solar and wind would be the richer and northern countries. For the most part that was the pattern though a couple did surprise me. Countries in eastern and southern Europe are poorer and have often had a decade of fiscal crises to contend with. By the way, my Google search confirmed the numbers the think tank put out.

The two stolen Emperor Tamarinds in Dallas have been found and returned. According to the stories I have seen (I'll let you Google the story) someone phoned in a tip which led police to an abandoned house where they were found in a closet. However, a Louisiana zoo has also suffered a theft of monkeys.