March 30

 We actually had snow yesterday. Not for long, not much and the temperature was too high for it to stick around. There is some frost on the roofs but the high today should be in the mid 50s. April is only a day and the gardening itch is getting stronger.

Well, Robert Reich is finally saying out loud what I saw and said during The Former Guy's first unfortunate year as President. TFG conflated himself to the government and to the country. They were, in his tiny mind, one and the same. His is a very long winded translation of what Louis XIV said: L'etat se moi. That worked for Louis' life but fell apart in 1789 under his grandson. TFG hasn't been able to convince enough Americans that his vision is valid.

News Flash: The New York Grand Jury has voted indictments for The Former Guy. I wonder how many lawyers he will go through during the process of a trial.

March 29

 Good Morning. Cloudy today with the temperature now (9:15am) at about 50F. Yesterday it got up to nearly 70. April is only a couple of days away. Damn--how fast the time is going by.

Ugo Bardi has an interesting examination of bell curve models on his Seneca Effect site. I was somewhat skeptical of the "flattening of the curve" message our experts put out but for a couple of other reasons. I wasn't all that convinced of the wisdom of prolonging the epidemic which is exactly what the flattening argument meant. As it turns out we didn't have one peak but several. I also wasn't all that convinced of the wisdom of trying to almost totally shut down an economy but we followed Italy in this strategy as did most other European countries. All models are based on assumptions and if the assumptions are wrong the model is useless. As the old saying goes "assume makes an ass our of u and me."

March 28

 Well, we started off this week with another school shooting--the 129th mass shooting this year which is less than 90days old. Three 9-year-olds and three school employees at a Christian school. I saw a snippet from a debate in the Tennessee legislature where the speaker told the rest of the members that no one wanted to take away anyone's hand gun, shotgun, or hunting rifle; that they didn't need more assault rifles endangering the police, the children or anyone else. He also told them to not tell him they were "pro-life" if they couldn't get up the courage to ban assault rifles. The speaker of the house called him out of order and insisted he had to continue under their "welcoming and honoring" standard of the body. I wonder what the hell that means. And why voting to restrict dangerous weapons requires "courage."

In his post this morning Robert Reich suggests that we "follow the money." He lays out why I suspected but hadn't yet researched: it isn't the NRA, which is merely a ghost of its former self, but the gun makers who have been busily selling military weapons to a civilian citizenry. They did so especially in the post 9/11 period and used extensive pictures of our "warriors" in Iraq and Afghanistan fully fitted out in body armor with those sexy guns.

An interesting point was made this morning that guns result in more children's deaths than car crashes and the drop in auto related deaths can be directly attributed to increased auto safety. The implication is that all we have to do is insist on laws to mandate gun safety. Well, I am not convinced. When auto safety was under debate it was mainly the Federal government against auto makers who feared a loss of revenue as customers wouldn't pay for the safety measures. But customers did pay. However, what change in individual behavior was really required? Absolutely none. Drunks still drive. People still speed. Drivers still cut each other off. They still roll through stop signs and run red lights. All the measures for gun safety require responsibility from gun owners: trigger locks, gun safes, sometimes classes to learn how to handle guns safely and maintain them. The problem is there is no way to make the guns themselves safe. You can't protect from stupid or egotistical or irresponsible.

I found this piece interesting. I hadn't considered that the Russian Federation might break up over the Ukraine war. But that is always a possibility in any complex society. Most such societies soon or later do break up because of the tensions inherent in such complexity. Some time last year after the first Russian assault failed and Putin wanted to mobilize a few hundred thousand more sort of soldiers he had a bit of difficulty with one of the ethnic peoples who felt they had already contributed more to the effort than they liked. I don't remember which group but they stopped sending "recruiters" into that area. And there are, as the article says, almost 200 such groups and many have little love for ethnic Russians. Take a look through history and see how often empires break apart. And regime change has been a very old tactic and one the U.S. has used frequently in the past with sometimes very adverse results.

Often, more often of late, the stupidity I hear and see makes me think I ought to add a bit of whiskey to my morning coffee as a bit of an anesthetic. One of the Tennessee state legislators said that we can't do anything about gun violence because criminals will commit crimes and often with guns. We, according to him, can't cure all of our problems with laws. You can't solve all problems with laws buy you can solve some of them and maybe make it a bit more difficult for malicious people to act out their malevolence. Just a bit more difficult. And when asked about how he feels about the safety of his own children in school he smugly notes that they are homeschooled.

This year is likely continue what came last year with much of Europe in drought and with reservoirs and rivers going dry and with glaciers melting.

March 26, 27

 Partly cloudy but warmer--up near 60 today. And a bit of rain.

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So far cloudy. We had a real downpour yesterday evening--with thunder and lightning as well. It has dried up a bit overnight. The temperature at the fence reads about 50F.

William Hartung posted a depressing piece on Tomdispatch.com yesterday.  The Pentagon budget is already almost $900billion, and the House and Senate keep pushing the bill further into the fiscal stratosphere. Hartung covers most of the problems: expensive weapons "systems" which underperform, and a military which has an underperforming record since the last great victory (WWII) over 75 years ago. I would add another: we use the military instead of diplomacy. The threat of military action always underlies any "negotiation" which treats the "partners" in the negotiations as though they were errant children. Daddy is there with the paddle so you better do what you are told.

I heard an amusing bit of Morning Joe just now which summed up a problem with the religious right, the Evangelist Mujahideen. They have an "idolatry" problem. I can agree. They don't have a golden calf. The hair is no longer gold. The tan is not any more convincing than it was back in 2016. Their idol is pure fools gold.

Another segment on Morning Joe amused me but for a different reason: the fact that our political leaders have no historical knowledge. They showed a part of an interview where the Republican politician insisted that the New York investigation should actually be conducted by the Department of Justice even though the case concerns the possible violation of STATE laws. The summation is beautiful: Republicans say no one could  indict The Former Guy when he was President and no one should indict him as a former President and no one should indict him because he is running again to be President. That's a Catch 22 squared.  So why do I say that the politicians don't have any good knowledge of American history? Because the State-Federal divide existed from the beginning. The tension between the two has only grown as the country grew both in territory and population, and has been exacerbated by technology. Almost nothing occurs without crossing state lines and therefore has a national component. If Company A dumps toxic wastes into a nearby stream it will eventually have an impact in another state down stream. So which jurisdiction prevails. Right now people are "States' Rights" supporters until they aren't and it depends on how much they want to control the lives of people who don't live in their state.

March 25, 26

 Wet and cloudy today but at least we don't have the weather that has hit Mississippi with tornadoes (knock on wood). I remarked (for the hundredth time over the last few years ) that we don't have a tornado season any more. Nor do we have a fire season. And the winters aren't really winter any more. I don't think we have had more than two or three days with enough to shovel and I only shoveled the patio path to the gate once. Otherwise I let the divine intervention theory take care of it--God(s) put it there, they could make it go away. In a couple of days they did.

Odd thoughts that came to me as I read various stories over the week:

1) In one of the article the author claimed that banking is "the most subsidized industry" in the economy. Since the 1930s the banks pay into the FDIC which ensures deposits below the (now) $250K per individual account. The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s the federal government stepped in to soften the blow for depositors in those institutions many of which were not covered by the FDIC. I worked with a woman who had her money in a savings and loan, and she was in a constant state of anxiety trying to make rent, utilities and other basic expenses until she did get some of her money back as the industry was reorganized. She is the kind of person I think of when the experts start talking about bailouts and other banking supports. Some industries are and should be regulated as public utilities but most are hybrids with the government backstopping them against fiscal mismanagement. After the savings and loan debacle I decided that I would only use banks that were insured by FDIC. Over the last 20 years events world wide (the meltdown of banks on Crete, the collapse of Lehman and that bailout of other at risk banks) has made me realize that the FDIC might not be enough to really protect the little guys from the "mistakes" of the people who run our financial system. A lot of retirees and small depositors were crippled when the banks on Crete melted down but the Russian oligarchs and the wealthy managed to get most of their holdings out before the crisis system shut down. But then you have to ask: what in our society and economy isn't subsidized? A recent study claimed that far more government largess goes to the upper tiers of the economy than to the lower levels. I would guess that if the subsidies ever stop the economy will stop.

2) Another series of pieces covered the nauseous ad the Michigan Republican Party put out comparing the gun safety laws the legislature voted in were simply a prelude to (and equivalent to) the Holocaust. Lovely bit of advertising that. But that is a trend over the last 150 years or so. The perennial ads that used to be ubiquitous every Christmas but haven't appeared as much for the last few urging us to "put Christ back into Xmas" used to make me laugh. The argument was lost when Christmas became a commercial holiday. Social historians writing about the counter culture of the late 1960s and 1970s claimed that once the movement was commercialized and you could buy love beads and Nehru jackets in every store the movement died. Christmas was severed from its roots; the counter culture was also neutered as a criticism of the larger society. The process of erasing the historical meaning of "Holocaust" is progressing. Now it has become a trope which can be dusted off and applied to any thing someone or some group wants to vilify whether there is any real parallel or not. 

3) There was a lot of "pearl clutching" over the possibility (I would say certainty) that China is mining TikTok for information on Americans. I am not on TikTok (or on Snapchat or most other social media). I am on Facebook but only because it is the easiest way to keep up with some friends and family. Even so I get all kinds of adds for things I have looked up on Google. If I buy an e-book from Barnes&Noble or Amazon, I suddenly find my Facebook feed inundated or my e-mail loaded with ads for more books. I don't mind those so much as some of the other ads for items (often of a sexual nature) that clog my in box. I am quite sure China (and Russia, Iran, India, England, and....) are mining our internet for information but so is every company/service provider world wide.

4) A couple of shows featured a new book tracing how the John Birch Society ideology, which I remember from the 1950s, has infiltrated the modern Republican Party. I am not going to buy or read it. My first thought was "what was old is new again." I have read enough history to realize that each generation puts new lipstick on old ideological pigs.

5) Evidently England is having difficulty getting the "salad vegetables" (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers etc.) which they normally import at this time of the year from Southern Spain and Morocco. Spain suffered devastating hail storms and Morocco had an early heat wave. And Southern California cropland is so inundated by the repeated atmospheric rivers that they don't expect to be able to put in crops til the fall and guess where a large percentage of our vegetables are grown? One of the major stories on the news right now is another cycle of tornadoes that have devastated parts of Mississippi. Looking at the pictures I remembered pictures I saw of the aftermath of the 1908 Tunguska event or of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I remarked that the old notions of "seasons" (fire seasons, thunderstorm season, tornado season, hurricane season) is no longer meaningful.

March 23

Overcast, cool, and wet today. I noticed that the leaf buds are rapidly getting bigger on more trees ad bushes.

I turned off the news sooner than usual this morning. After getting my fill of the "Indictment Watch," and the rest of the smidge of news with a large dose of speculation I tried to watch BBC but left it when it started covering the Congressional hearings on TikTok. I 'm very skeptical about the demands that the Chinese company that owns a significant part of TikTok or be banned. I think the concern on Chinese spying is reaching hysterical levels and even if they can't go in with TikTok they will do so in another way. Also it is likely to cost us more than it will China. But beyond that I am totally skeptical of any attempt to ban or even control a technology. In all the history I have read, technologies are discarded in only two ways: it is superseded by another (whale oil by kerosene by electricity) or because social/political/economic changes makes the technology too expensive (in money, manpower, or resources) to maintain. We aren't anywhere near such a condition with respect to social media.

March 22

 Cloudy and wet but the temperature is supposed to reach 50F or thereabouts. The rain should help thaw out the lower levels of the pots. It is still too cold and the soil isn't defrosted enough to plant.

Well, I wondered when something like this would happen. I remember when the libraries took out physical card catalogs and put in computerized systems. If I had the room my library would still be physical books but I have switched to digital. But I wonder if completely getting rid of physical books is as cost effective as they think. They have the expense of scanning the books which can't be cheap and then the waste of discarding the bound volumes. I wonder how long lasting thee digital volumes might be. I have read books in a rare books section of two university libraries that were over 100 years old. Digital books have only been around for about 30 years.

Mom was reading about a nasty rise in eye infections from contaminated eye drops. The bacterium is antibiotic resistant; the FDA has issued a warning and the India based company has issued a recall. I wondered if the problem was contaminated solution or if people had accidentally contaminated their eye drops so I Googled the story. We were concerned because we use eyedrops because our eyes get so dry. Thankfully our drops aren't either of the brands cited and aren't made by the named company.

March 21

 Too early to see the current weather outside. It's supposed to be warmer today and over the next several days.

On the news/talk shows this morning they featured a new book on the John Birch Society and how it continues to influence politics. My first thought was "what's old is new again." Ideas keep coming back dressed a little differently. Nativism and anti-immigrant popped up in the 1830s and again in a more genteel form in the debates of the 1890s. Anti-government sentiments popped up from the colonial period on especially when the offending government was far removed from the people governed whether England's monarchy or Washington's Federals. Everything old is new again with the pig wearing a different shade of lipstick.

I saw a headline I didn't pursue that Israel says the Palestinians aren't "a real people." I didn't follow up because it is an old play--erase the opponent. Putin has tried to do the same by claiming that Ukrainians don't really exist--they are simply deluded Russians. I am sure the English thought the same way about the rebellious colonials. Look up the controversy over impressment of American sailors after the Revolution ended.

William Astore writes about the costs of maintaining the military we have built. His accounting also demonstrates what we lose by making the choices we have made in terms of housing for the homeless, power for those houses, schools in which to educate our young, and other infrastructure that would benefit us as a society and as individuals. And I question whether it has made us or the world safer.

March 20

 Happy Equinox. A pretty day for it. The sun is now at an angle which will gradually increase the light and warmth that reaches my containers. I am still looking for new growth in a couple of pots. But it still isn't warm enough for the soil to have thawed completely even with the rains we had over the last couple of weeks.

I am trying to stay off the speculative (s)news. It isn't enough to present facts but they have to go on and give us all the dire possibilities that might or might not come of them.

Robert Reich has a good piece which starts with "The Underserving Rich" and takes it from the recent banking troubles to a more general critique of our economic/social arrangements.

0h, goodness, it is 20 years since the Iraq war ended. One of the best summations I have heard from anyone was on the whole misguided mess was that our big military/political brains pushed us into a situation without understanding the history, the social fractions, the religion or the language. Then a couple of years after did the same thing again in Afghanistan. I think the key phrase was "imperial overreach."

March 19

 Sunny today and warmer temperatures. The temperatures over the next week are supposed to return to a "spring" like level. I put that in quotes because the seasons are really not anything like "normal." I do see that the trees are beginning to develop leaf buds. Oh, how I am looking forward to more green outside.

Finally the Senate moved the measure to rescind the Authorization of Military Force that has allowed four presidents to by pass the legislative branch to wage war by other names in various foreign countries. The Senate voted cloture by 68-27 and now it goes to the floor.

David Kaiser posted this morning on the divided news industry which reflects the social/political divide in the country. I hadn't heard about Biden's questionable quip about not being Irish because he was "sober and none of his relatives were in prison." As the old saying goes "insert foot and chew vigorously." Nor had I heard about the boos that greeted the Vice President at a basketball game. I had the same reaction I had to the various kinds of rudeness dumped on members of The Former Guy's administration just trying to enjoy a dinner out. Although some were definitely reprehensible, you can't attribute the behavior of their detractors to having been raised in a barn--farm animals definitely have to behave themselves with each other. We have normalized bad and worse behavior. I will add that this isn't a both-sidesism. I am NOT excusing one side or absolving the other. And I recognize that physical violence by which ever side is never justified.

I am trying to ignore the noise speculating on when or if TFG will be indicted. Everyone assumed that because the New York DA is (supposedly--another bit of speculation) close to terminating his grand jury investigation it will result in an indictment. There is no evidence that such a result is inevitable. What I don't see is the former Party of Law and Order lining up on the side of "let the process run its course." They don't even say that when it is a Democrat in the crosshairs. Then it become a "lock'em up" if not a "hang'em high." The very notion of Law or Justice seems to have been twisted out of all recognition.

March 18

 Cold this morning--much below normal. Continues what we had coming in yesterday. The wind made what would have been mild temperatures very cold indeed.

Oh, my--The Former Guy just posted on his (Un-)Truth (Un-)Social that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday in New York and urges his supporters to (protest). Are we looking at the second iteration of January 6? However, the news reporters noted that this might be a figment in what passes for TFG's mind. His lawyers say they haven't been informed by the New York DA's office. We have turned off the news because this speculation is dominating the time.

Interesting post on The Grey Mirror this morning in light of the last week of banking mini(?) crises. The article describes the banking system as an unstable arrangement whereby the banks "borrow short" and "loan long." That system is basically losing money and needs continuous infusions of cash to prevent a crash. It is a long article and goes into some esoteric (for a non-economist like me) but it raised an observation in my mind: the system of borrowing short and loaning long would only be feasible in a period of economic growth when one might reasonably expect expanded resources to fund a money losing scheme. Recessionary periods are, by definition, marked by declining growth which would dry up the resources with which to continue an unstable situation.

Some years ago I had a Chieftains album which featured a song about the "San Patricios." I was intrigued enough to look up some of the story on line. Patheos posted this article on the Batallón de San Patricio. The lyrics for John Riley (featured on the Chieftains Album Santiago) condenses some of the complaints of the Catholic Irish (and Catholic Germans) against the U.S. and the U.S. Army which led to their desertion and reforming as a battalion to fight for Mexico in the War of North American Invasion, as the Mexican-American War is known in Mexico. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

So, according to Medium, the Boom Generation is hated by those coming after, i.e., Millennials, Gen Z etc. There are parts of the criticism I can agree with and I am an early Boomer (born before 1950). My own history is somewhat mixed as to whether I benefited by being a part of that generation. I did get affordable college paid for part in part by GI Bill benefits (but as a Vietnam era vet my benefits were considerably less generous than for the "Greatest Generation") supplemented by part time summer jobs. At least until my last period in college when most of the student aid had shifted from scholarships and non-repayable grants to loans and the costs for books, fees, and tuition started climbing into the stratosphere. I never really got the kind of career that had been promised. Much of the criticism of Boomers fail to realize that the policies attributed to Boomer financial and political leaders were continuations of policies established by the previous generation. It takes a long time to change the direction of and philosophy governing a society. Another thought: the focus on the intergenerational antipathy fails to consider the problem of "unintended consequences." Doing A may accomplish desired B but undesired C or D. For a good treatise on that take a look at After the Ivory Tower Falls by Will Bunch. 

March 17

 Ah, St. Patrick's Day and we are half past March. We had rain from late yesterday evening through now. At times it was heavy enough to produce little rivers flowing down the street. Better than the heavy snows other areas are getting. I am still waiting for the patio to dry out a bit so that I can clean up the leaves and the seed hulls the birds have scattered.

CNN put up this article this morning about the difficulty some parents are experiencing in getting their seriously sick children into a pediatric hospital or pediatric ward. Last fall the rapidly rising numbers of children with the RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus, I hope that is the right spelling since the spell check insists on it) overwhelmed the hospital system. The author notes that the stress of that surge of hospitalizations following so quickly after the COVID pandemic (which, though not at epidemic levels any more, still kills around 500 people per day) on the people who have to deliver the care has led to a massive exodus from the medical professions. This is a complicated article which covers many different trends feeding the shortage of medical facilities and personnel for pediatric care. As I read the article I wondered if there is a parallel problem with adult care that is now off the new radar.

A story on the early morning news featured an Axios survey in which about 20% of the respondents agreed with the notion of a "national divorce." That isn't surprising given the divisions in the country today. The link goes beyond the headline and drills into what groups actually favor a national divorce.

March 16

 We don't have any errands or appointments today so we can relax at home. The appointment with the eye doctor went well. I do need new glasses and they are on order. But, in a sign of the times, they won't arrive for about 18 days. I remember when we expected a 7 to 10 day lag. 

And CNN has an article which might be another sign of the times: U.K. supermarkets are setting limits on how much customers can buy of fresh vegetables, essentially rationing the supplies. This time of the year, Britain gets those warm weather veggies from Spain and Morocco. But those areas have had very hot weather followed by a freeze. The Spanish tomato crops were down 20% from last year. Another area that normally supplies a large part of the U.K. market is suffering from high fuel costs which have forced farmers who used to grow those veggies under greenhouses to close most of them. The cost of the fuel to heat the greenhouses exceeds the price they can get for the crops. And the fuel costs/shortages also limits the availability of fertilizers because natural gas is the major component in producing commercial fertilizers.

I saw a snippet on the morning news/commentary shows where a right wing writer (who I hadn't heard of before) who utterly failed to define "woke". It wasn't any surprise to me that she couldn't come up with a definition because I thought for some time that it has become a short hand way to express their opposition to anything so-called conservatives don't like. Don't like Disney opposing some silly measure the governor wants to enact?--they are a woke company and they will be punished. Don't like drag shows?--enact laws prohibiting them labeling your opposition as woke and supporting groomers. Don't like the Federal government guaranteeing the deposits of a bank the Feds took over?--well simply dismiss the bank as a woke institution that should have failed no matter the collateral damage. What every you don't like is simply woke and you don't need to explain why you don't like it. And you don't have to respect the people on the other side of the issue. Actually the interviewee did say something that was relevant: the notion that "woke" means holding the idea that society needs to be "reimagined and reordered to create new hierarchies of oppression." She seems to assume that society doesn't need to be reimagined or even questioned and that the reordering would establish new "hierarchies of oppression" which would somehow be worse that the "hierarchies of oppression" that exist now. Obviously she does think there are such hierarchies since otherwise we wouldn't be establishing new ones.

March 13, 14

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We had, and still have, light flurries. I don't think we will get much. I plan on a lazy day because I am still recovering from the time change. That gets worse every year.

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More light flurries over night. I guess winter is still here. Most of what we got yesterday melted quickly. Still a bit sluggish from the time change and we have some grocery shopping to do so we will see what I find interesting enough to spend my limited energy on comments.

The Silicon Valley Bank situation seems to be contained--for now. I had one observation that has not been mentioned except in passing by the media: The entire system is very dependent on TRUST--the trust of depositors and of shareholders that the money they have put into the banks are safe and will be available when needed (or wanted.) Big depositors and shareholders panicked when the bank announced they would be selling some of their bond holdings at a loss and demanded their money back. The scene the commentators keep playing from It's A Wonderful Life is right on point.

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Sunny but cold to start today. I have an appointment with an optometrist today--time, I think, for new glasses. It has been four years so I can't really complain. I used to go in every year but for a while now I schedule an appointment when I think one is needed. I do the same for medical appointments. If I have a problem that I need help with, I get an appointment.

Talking medicine, The NY Times had this article this morning. They are finding bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics more frequently. And the antibiotics are the most frequently used. That shouldn't be a surprise. We have been warned since the 1950s, when the first penicillin resistant bacteria appeared, that that would happen. With some bacterial infections doctors now have to rely on "last resort", more toxic antibiotics.

Spam has become a major irritation here, especially what comes in on our cell phones. Since Mom signed up for Medicare Advantage, she has received repeated calls from the "licensed insurance agents" trying to convince her to up her coverage. They don't know the meaning of "No." I am used to getting alerts in my e-mail telling me "your package has been shipped" and demanding I call or visit a website to confirm all my customer information. I am not a customer. I didn't order anything and therefore am not expecting a delivery. Yesterday I got the first such communication by phone. I hung up on the computer voice.

Ron De Santis came out with a totally idiotic statement. He thinks we shouldn't be involved in a "territorial dispute" way over there. I thought he was once a history teacher but that, given the area where the "dispute" is happening, indicates a total lack of historical awareness. About 90 years ago a similar "territorial dispute" a little ways west of Ukraine. One country wanted a portion of a neighboring country in which a large number of people spoke the same language. Amid the bluster and saber rattling a the prime minister of a third country negotiated an agreement which allowed the transfer of that territory. It wasn't very long before the troops of that first country marched in and took over the rest of the second country. In case you are as historically illiterate as De Santis seems to be the earlier cases involved Germany (under Hitler) demanding the transfer of the Sudetenland (with its German speakers) from Czechoslovakia to Germany. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (of the U.K.) negotiated thee agreement he hailed as securing "peace in our time." The peace didn't last very long. A more intelligent argument asks if we should be involved but even that is somewhat myopic politically. We live in a global political and economic world. We can't withdraw behind the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and feel secure. Too many countries have ballistic missiles (whether nuclear or not) which can reach our mainland within a very short time. And our economy can't function without international trade.

March 12

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We had snow over night. I don't think it will stick around long because the high today should be in the low 40s. Happy to have the snow considering what is going on in California.

A morning news/commentary show had an interesting piece on the drones Russia is using in Ukraine. They cost $30-40K each which is a fraction of the missiles Ukraine is using to shoot them down. I remember a report a couple of weeks or so ago which claimed that Russia and Iran had reached an agreement to allow Russia to manufacture the Iranian drones in Russia. A while back I read a novel in which one character told the representative of a different country that his country didn't have to win battles against an enemy to win a war--they simply had to bankrupt the enemy. Sounds that is a strategy Russia is going for in Ukraine. I think Ukraine's backers need to find lower cost technologies to counter the drones.

Gizmodo has a nice summary of the time change dilemma. It is entertaining to think about how man seems to think he can improve on nature. From the reports I have seen energy isn't saved and people suffer adjustment problems and sometimes cardiovascular problems. 

March 11

 **********************************11*************************************Oh, my, it's half past March already--or rather almost. And tomorrow morning we will have to reset our clocks in that bi-yearly ritual of "fall back; spring forward." I have said before how I really wish the powers that be would end the nonsense. It is easy to reset the mechanical/electrical clock; it is not at all easy to reset the furry clocks who insist on getting us up and persuade us to feed them on their own timetables.

March 10

 Snow this morning--light but fairly steady. We aren't going anywhere till sometime next week so we can sit and enjoy the view out the windows. 

This article on CNBC says that American families are reaching a "breaking point" as the credit card balances increased by a bit more than 18% from 2021  to the end of 2022--something over $600billion. As what has become normal over the last couple or so decades 60% of us are living paycheck to paycheck and many are using credit cards to pay for necessities like rent and food. My own assessment: if people are so strapped they have to use their credit cards to pay for food they are already at a breaking point and just don't know it yet.

I like this Montreal judge. I don't think the case should have been prosecuted at all, even if the middle finger had been accompanied by a finger across the throat gesture. The judge didn't buy it and the prosecutor asked for a not-guilty verdict of the case they were prosecuting.

Norfolk Southern has had another derailment--in Alabama this time. Short train in a wooded area so no injuries or property damage. That make, I think, 5 in the last month. The CEO testified yesterday before a Senate committee giving some innocuous and totally meaningless answers to questions about company responsibility and plans for compensating the residents of East Palestine and how they plan to address the safety issues the crash (and others) raise. I have other thoughts as well. It seems to me that our infrastructure (rail, air, roads, electric, and others)simply hasn't been maintained to withstand what used to be normal and isn't designed to deal with the extreme weather we have experienced over the last couple of decades. Michigan is getting more snow than we are and they have already had electrical outages affecting more than 100K.

On the testimony offered by the executives of Norfolk Southern Erin Brockovich has a good assessment. I'll boil it down: apologies and vague promises of help for the community, both of which are worth their weight in gold, and no promise to support a bi-partisan bill to regulate the industry.

Just saw a Washington Post headline on Naked Capitalism which proclaimed that our efforts to arm Ukraine is revealing cracks in our "manufacturing might." I won't link because I can't get the article because the Washington Post is paywalled. However I liked the comment on the teaser: There is no manufacturing might. We cannot make complete systems of anything without global components.

March 9

 Looks like we might get some intermittent sun today. The temps are still above normal for mid March. I really want things to dry out on the patio so I can simply sweep the dead leaves out and not have to handle heavy wet decaying leaves. I don't expect to see much that would interest me in the garden centers. That usually starts in mid April.

Interesting brief comment on the Weather Channel weather news: in California, authorities are urging residents to keep 2 weeks worth of supplies on hand. It's interesting because the standard advice from FEMA had been a minimum of three days supplies. The weather has become so extreme and the effects last so much longer that people should prepare for longer periods cut off from supplies. Yesterday I saw a news piece on the "rebuilding" in the areas of Florida hit by the hurricane last year. The news wasn't really good. The reporter said he had been asked why he would go there because surely they were well along on rebuilding. His short answer: NO. He featured one man whose house was totally demolished. By his own effort he got his lot cleared but the insurance only cleared his mortgage and he hadn't been able to get a new one to rebuild. And even getting insurance would be a problem if he had found a mortgage lender. Worse, because of the zoning restrictions he can't pitch a tent on his own property so he has to try to find a rental (hard given the number of people wanting such accommodation) which would simply eat his resources which can't then use to fund rebuilding. 

March 8

 After a nice sunny day yesterday it is cloudy today. But the temperatures have been about 10-15F above normal. I noticed the beginnings of growth in the pot with asiatic lilies. I saw something starting in a second pot. If that grows I plan to consolidate the bulbs into one container after they finish blooming. I need to start sweeping up the dead leaves and the seed hulls the birds have scattered over the winter. It is also time to start my yearly reorganization of the patio pots.

Politico has a good article: We're not prepared for the next public health crisis. The main problems the author says are lack of workers and lack of trust. People are leaving and the exodus involves both older people who can retire and younger workers who are fed up with working conditions. Given the cost of getting the basic education and then keeping up the credentials, I don't wonder that new workers aren't coming in. Trust, or lack of trust, goes well beyond the COVID pandemic. Forty years ago the number of people who didn't trust vaccines started going up. I think that skepticism has spread to other medical procedures as well. I know we here take in the advice we get and consider it very carefully before making any decisions. I had a thought as the author labeled this as a crisis of our public health system: do we really have a "public" health system? Mostly we have a private health industry that is focused on profits above all.

Ives Smith posted this article asking "how stupid do they think we are?" When the story of the sabotage of the NordStream pipelines first came out, I easily thought of at least three state actors that would have liked to take it out if they could do that with deniability: U.S., Ukraine, Russia. Disrupting the energy supply going to Europe would reinforce European dependence on Russian oil which would benefit Russia and perhaps soften European (and NATO's) support of Ukraine. The U.S. has for a long time now harped on the dependence of Europe on Russian oil and the interruption, which looks like it will be long term, reinforces that. It also opened up the markets in Europe to U.S. oil and gas. Ukraine would also like to drive home the message that Russia is an unreliable partner they should wean themselves away from and once the bully on the block takes out Ukraine he will go on to another victim. My thought hadn't gone to the idea of private actors (supported or not by government(s)) might be responsible. At the moment, the situation remains the same: not enough hard evidence and a lot of fuzzy speculation.

March 6

 Good Monday morning to you all. Can't see much outside right now. It is only 4:30am and still dark.

Can you believe it?? ANOTHER train derailed in Ohio. The news says it is the fifth in the last five months. The third in Ohio THIS month. The fourth in THIS month (one was outside Ohio). I am sure the NTSB will give us the immediate cause--in the East Palestine crash an overheated bearing is suspected but isn't yet the official cause. I think we need to look at a bigger picture. These crashes seem to me to indicate a company which has skimped on maintenance and on labor for a long time. Those are the two areas where companies cut costs to either give the appearance of or maintain stockholder dividends. I wonder what this says about the rail industry generally.

Too much of The Former Guy this morning. I still wonder what grievances are driving his supporters. Who feels they need retribution??? For what perceived wrongs?? We have become, or too many of us, have become snowflakes.

Bill Astore has an interesting critique of the JROTC (Junior ROTC) which is in some high schools. It is one way to provide at least a small stream of kids signing up either after high school or going further into the regular ROTC in college. That without instituting a draft. Remember an article I linked to yesterday, 50% of the world population will be obese by 2035 and the U.S. is already well above that and the recruiters already have to reject a large proportion of applicants because they aren't physically fit. Astore concentrates on the economics driving the militarization of our society as more and more of our institutions depend on a supplement of Pentagon money to defray expenses.

March 5

Nice and sunny today. I don't think the temperatures dropped far below 40F last night so the snow is rapidly disappearing even from the shaded north sides of buildings.

I have seen a good bit of incredulous anger on the news over the latest revelations of children and young people employed illegally in dangerous jobs. I mean "illegally" in both the sense of being against the law for Americans below specified ages and in the sense that the youngsters are illegal aliens who were supposed to be under the care and supervision of the immigration authorities. I don't understand the incredulous attitude. After all there are politicians arguing for a massive loosening, if not a complete rescinding, of child labor laws. Commentators often talk about the current political civil war where half of the combatants (largely Republicans) are trying to take us back to the 1950s (not a time I remember fondly) but I think they are actually trying to take us back to the 1930s or earlier when the everyone was on their own and any assistance was minimal and grudging.

The Turkish-Syrian earthquake has receded from the new cycle. The final death toll won't be known for a long time but is already over 50K. That definitely beats the 1939 earthquake. Every now and then a story comes out about political dissatisfaction and unrest in Turkiye. And the northern area of Syria has been a contested place in a civil war that hasn't concluded.

David Kaiser has a post today which centers on the words in Washington's Farewell Address we have forgotten (or which were never taught us in our history classes.)We are frequently reminded (especially by America First's and other isolationists) of Washington's cautions against foreign entanglements. However, other warnings are as relevant today. That to exist as a nation we need both unity and freedom, and that factions (parties) are a threat to the nation. Right now we have partisans who are more loyal to their party than they are to a nation united in freedom. They evidently are all freedom for them but not for others.

Someone at the New York Times asked a question often overlooked in the debate over the origin of COVID. Does it really matter if it came from a lab accident, or an unexpected transfer of a virus from animals to humans? For most of us I don't think it does matter. What does concern us is how we deal with and, to date, I don't think we have dealt with it very well.

March 3,4

**********************************************3*************************** The winter weather predicted for today hasn't come in--yet. Just looked up the Weather Channel and found the time period has shifted. Now we expect it to come in at noon and last til 10pm tonight. Also they expect less snow to accumulate. We don't have to go out so we won't.

Found this rather long article on Naked Capitalism on the drought in Northern Mexico--exactly where the massive new Tesla plant is going (maybe) to be built. The area is already home to water bottlers, beer brewers, and two Coca Cola bottler they can ing plants--all massive water users. Last year's drought was the worst for the last 30 years and this year doesn't look any better. Those water users kept pumping during the drought to the detriment of individual users who are limited in how much water they can use. Needless to say residents are demonstrating--while the Mexican President and the state governor are encouraging more industry.

******************************************4*****************************

Nice and sunny today. We did get somewhere between 4 and 8 inches of very heavy, wet snow yesterday. But a lot of it has already melted and we expect well above freezing temperatures for the coming week.

I found this story on BBC today. The only surprising part is the projection that by 2035 half of the world's population will be obese. I would have expected a smaller proportion. The American pattern of food consumption is being emulated and has been for a long time: more meat, more processed foods. There isn't an area in the world now (with the exceptions of North Korea and Russia) that doesn't have a McDonalds or a KFC. And the world's people are living more sedentary lives.

March 2

 Every now and then the political circus is actually amusing. At one of the congressional committee meetings that were featured on the news yesterday, Congressman Gaetz got a lesson, promptly forgotten, about checking your sources. He asked the witness, an undersecretary of (I think) defense if the Azov group, a nationalist group famous for the defense of Mariupol in Ukraine and now part of the Ukrainian military, was receiving any of the weapons shipped to Ukraine. The witness told him he had no information and asked if Gaetz had any to share. Gates cited a "Global Times" article and was asked it that was the Global Times of China. It was and the witness told him that they don't take Chinese propaganda as fact without question. Gaetz conceded though he edited the footage to present his voters with a more favorable image of his "toughness." 

In another snippet, the Republican chairman of the committee "investigating" the response to the COVID pandemic cited a response of a witness in a different committee's investigation which noted the "misinformation" spread by the government as a significant contribution to our (abysmal ?) response. One of the Democratic members asked which "misinformation" the respondent referred to: the notion that we could inject light into the body, or the idea of using horse tranquilizers, or drink bleach, or a fish tank disinfectant. All of which The Former Guy espoused from the podium. I guess "misinformation" is in the eye of the viewer, or the ear of the hearer.

Chris Hedges' podcast here is about the frontline workers hailed as essential and "heroes" at the height of the pandemic and then thrown under any available bus at the first opportunity. I remember when grocery chains introduced a pay raise for the cashiers, drivers, and others with great fanfare and then quietly reversed them a couple of months later. If you want to listen you have to get a paid subscription. I can't afford it so all I could do was read the intro.

Robert Reich posted an article that dovetails with Chris Hedges' above. Capitalism has lost any moral grounding it once had when Adam Smith described it few centuries ago. It has only one principle left: profit however obtained. No moral values. No responsibility to the community. And the mere notion that they are "job creators" isn't enough. What jobs, for whom, and under what conditions?

Continuing the job theme take a look at this post. I always look at the government issued stats with a bit of skepticism because I know they are massaged to provide the picture they want people to see. My first stop after seeing the economic data is to look at Shadowstats. They calculate the data from the raw numbers the government uses but they show the results if calculated using the measures the government followed in the past.

Most of what we get here is, of course, favorable to the administration and its actions. That is why getting other points of view is a good thing--it gives other information that you can judge by your own knowledge and experience. Yves Smith has taken a contrary point of view through out the Ukraine-Russia debacle. She continues in this post today. My own position is somewhat in the middle. I don't speak or read Russian. I don't have more than a generalized acquaintance with Russian, or Eastern European history gained from a single class and a seminar. I do know a couple of things. One, Putin is a bully. All strong men are. Two, Putin is trying to recreate a past that has been dead and gone for forty years. Three, he should not be allowed to change the borders or absorb other countries or parts of other countries. If he gets away with it what country from what used to be East Germany to Greece is safe? What stability would the world have? How soon might others we aren't even thinking about emulate him? Might Mexico like to have Texas back? Just a few thoughts. Oh, I also don't think our government is on the side of any angels in this world.

March 1

 Welcome to March. I might change out the winter wreath today. It hasn't been much of a winter so far and the wreath seems a bit out of synch. Meteorological spring starts today while astronomical spring starts around the 20th. Actually, on the 22nd. I just looked it up. The stores are beginning to put out the spring seeds. So far I have just looked at them. We are about a month and a bit away from when the garden centers will have transplants.

The news today featured some coverage of the Supreme Court arguments in the student loan forgiveness cases. I am totally unsympathetic to some of the argument: one that somehow forgiving some loans is detrimental to those who are paying off or have already  paid off the loans or to those who decided not not to get the loans. Why is forgiving some student loans detrimental to those paying off or having paid off loans? Why is forgiving PPP loans for a Marjory Taylor Green but refusing to forgive any loans for students? It reminds me of a congressman or senator for Texas, I think, who objected to aid for New York after Hurricane Sandy. "Why should Texans pay for relief for New York?" he argued. Maybe blue states, which provide the lion's share of federal funds, should protest paying for red states which receive the largest share of those funds. And those objecting to a program they cannot get any value out of remind me of the retirees who objected to increases in their property taxes that supported schools because they had already raised their kids and didn't want to pay for other people's kids. They didn't remember that other people paid tases to educate their kids.

One of the commentators referred to Will Bunch who wrote a piece titled "After the Ivory Tower Falls." The commentator what would happen if people lost faith in the education system. I think we are long past the "what would happen" phase and we have already lost faith in the many institutions. Several stories over the last several years have described the problems colleges and universities have had as enrollments declined. They are cutting majors and departments. Even the community 2-year colleges are having difficulties and a number of companies are deciding to no longer require college degrees for many of the jobs/careers. 

Well, it looks like Biden's use of the "bully pulpit" has had results. According to the New York Times, Eli Lilly plans to cap the price of insulin at $35. Now let's see if other Pharma companies will follow.