Well, we finally decided to do all our errands yesterday. It took longer than usual because part of it was an "exploratory" shopping trip to a store we haven't shopped at for several years. We have become increasingly become dissatisfied with the closer stores. So we did get everything on our list and several other items we haven seen elsewhere for a good long time. We are thinking of changing our shopping pattern so we reduce the trips.
I did notice that what ever rain we have gotten lately hasn't done much for the gardens so I plan to water them and maybe cut some of the plants back a bit. This is always the time of the year when the patio becomes a bit of a jungle. I have controlled it better this year and it still looks nice but a bit of maintenance is needed.
David Kaiser posted a very good article this morning about our current political divide. He raises a lot of interesting points on how we got here.
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We got thunderstorms yesterday but I don't think a lot of rain came through. I watered all the plants on the patio well so they are good. The forecast for today predicts more rain today. We'll see. We have to go out to renew Mom's driver's license and car registration.
Found this from Charlie Sykes this morning which pretty much sums up The Former Guy's career. If he had the same batting average as his wins/loss ration in court the would have been fired.
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It has been a very low energy week. We decided not to take care of the driver's license and registration. We have a month before either becomes critical. We did go out to get a couple of things for dinner that we didn't have. And then to pay our cable bill. Mom has been trying to get the people/companies she deals with to send paper bills but as with the cable company it works for a couple of months and then they suddenly revert to electronic/e-mail messaging.
Listening the postmortem on the Republican (non-)debate I am so glad I didn't lose the 2 or so hours of my life watching it. Just watching the clips gives me a headache. I truly believe the people on that stage are abysmally dumb and they think the electorate is dumber. Brian Rosenwald has the best summation which is worth quoting in full:
If you — like most Americans — didn’t watch the second GOP presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. on Wednesday, you missed absolutely nothing. In fact, your life is much better for it.
I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed a worse political debate. No candidate stood out in a good way. Too many answers were canned, and pre-scripted lines came off awkwardly. The policy prescriptions sounded like something out of the 1980s or 1990s — the death penalty as the solution to mass shootings, end the revolving door at prisons, tort reform to cut healthcare costs, fight the war on drugs, more oil drilling and coal, etc. Even the best answers, like Nikki Haley’s one on healthcare costs — lacked any real meat or hint of how the worthy goals she articulated would be achieved.
I have often thought that we should already have had a good crop of younger politicians with same new ideas. The oldest among them was Pence. The rest are Millennials. But they do sound like 1980s or 90s retreads. Or perhaps channeling ghosts from the 1930s.
And The Former Guy's visit to Detroit to talk to "union" workers and try to drum up support. But as a couple of news accounts noted he visited a non-union shop to do that. I wondered how many of the people holding the "Union Workers For Trump" signs were really union workers. Heather Cox Richardson provides more information on his excursion:
The 2024 election was also on former president Trump’s mind today. He was in Michigan tonight to try to draw attention away from the Republican primary debate that he refused to attend. But while President Biden yesterday visited the United Auto Workers picket line, Trump visited a non-union shop and talked about a future “fueled by American energy” and “built by highly skilled American hands and high-wage American labor.” As Craig Mauger of the Detroit News noted, however, “his address was short on specifics for how he would accomplish the goals.”
Trump told the crowd to get the UAW to support him, but the UAW doesn’t represent the workforce where he was speaking. Mauger noted that one woman holding a “union members for Trump” sign acknowledged she wasn’t a union member, while a man with a sign that said “auto workers for Trump” said he wasn’t an autoworker. The plant where Trump was speaking employs about 150 people, but 400–500 Trump supporters were there for his speech.
Yesterday, UAW president Shawn Fain said, “I find it odd he’s going to go to a non-union business to talk to union workers. I don’t think he gets it.” (my emphasis)
I thought that was another bit worthy of an extended clip.
Another stray thought: I am somewhat amused by the kerfuffle in Canada as Trudeau, during Zelenskyy's visit, honored an elderly Ukrainian Nazi who fought the Soviets in WWII. The critics are somewhat illiterate in history. I suggest they cure their ignorance by reading up on the Holodomor. I wouldn't doubt that many Ukrainians saw the Germans (Nazis) as liberators and joined the fight against the Soviets and even espoused the political philosophy of those they hoped would kick the Soviets out. Also we should remember that "Nazi" is a political term while Ukrainian is a cultural/national identification. The two can overlap.
I will be reading more of Joyce Vance's Civil Discourse substack. I checked out a couple of the cases on the Supreme Court docket and wished someone with legal experience would cover them. Evidently, Vance has decided to do that.
Caitlin Johnstone has some very good points on journalism as it is practiced. Mom and I had a sarcastic ritual watching the local (Chicago) broadcast news noting how we could predict the daily dramatic shooting (the more and younger the victims the better), the daily dramatic auto crash (the more cars involved and more serious the injuries the better), the daily drama in city politics (the more vitriolic the better), and what ever drama is commanding attention in national or foreign affairs. It didn't matter what channel we watched, it was the same. That is one reason I take a look at what is on Al Jazeera, DW, BBC, Le Monde. I don't doubt that they have their own "filtering system" but it is different from our filtering system.
Stray thought: the tradition of campaign debates are dead and what we have are the ghosts of the old tradition. We get shouts, invective, and one-liners NOT policy. One of the comments I saw insisted that Republican voters aren't interested in policy. How can you know when none of the candidates seriously puts out policy?
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