March 27

 Gray right now but hoping the clouds move out giving us sun. It is dry right now but we'll see if it stays that way. We have a couple of errands but should be done with them by mid-morning. 

The news continues to cover the bridge collapse in Baltimore. I noticed last night that a couple of the Republican knuckle-draggers were trying to tie the accident to Biden's "immigration policy." I guess they heard that the workmen who are now presumed dead were immigrants from central or South America. Despicable-but somehow not surprising. 

In the same category of despicable but not surprising is Trump's hawking of a "God Bless America" Bible that includes, as the news said, our "founding documents." For a mere $59.95+shipping you can have your own MAGA Bible.  He promises the proceeds WON'T  go toward his campaign. He doesn't say what they will go towards. I have nothing to say about Lee Greenwood partnering in this venture.

Another unsurprising development: Hamas rejected the latest Israeli offer of 800 Palestinian prisoners for 40 Israeli hostages. Israel continues to refuse their demand to leave Gaza. The talking heads noted that over the last few days Israeli troops went back into the Al Shifa hospital in northern Gaza they cleared a couple of months ago. The experts noted that actually getting rid of Hamas totally is a pipe dream. But Israel continues to smoke that pipe.

Errands completed. Didn't take long but we only had 3 stops. Getting some sun but it is cold and a bit windy.

Surprised to see gas prices locally at about $3.69/gal. Highest prices for some time. Then I looked up when we have to switch to the summer blend and that shift starts in April. So it isn't that much of a surprise since we are in the last week of March.

March 26

We had (and still have) high winds. Also heavy rain overnight. The rain predicted finally arrived. I hope the system leaves and gives us dry and sunny weather for our errands tomorrow. Spent the morning finishing the embroidery on one pillowcase of a pair. The second is already on the hoop. We had a bit of sun for a brief moment before it disappeared.

Major stories this morning are the Supreme Court arguments over Mifepristone and the bridge collapse in Baltimore. Listening to the Justices' responses to the lawyers gives me some hope that this case will either be bounced because of lack of standing or because the "remedy" demanded in the suit goes far beyond any reasonable cure for the alleged hypothetical harms to the plaintiffs. As to the bridge collapse--that area is going to be disrupted for a good long while. I looked up a map of the area and the remains of the bridge is clogging the only passage to the port. And for the residents of the city, they will have many miles and much time added to their travel.

Update: heavy rain and wind now!! Mom had wondered, in the interlude between squalls, if we should have done our errands today.  Nope!

Matt Taibbi posted this article about censorship--specifically of Naked Capitalism. I have read posts often in the last few years about that site (and others) that I often read and I have always been perplexed as to why. I may or may not agree with what I read on any site but that is my choice. I have said before I like different sources of information and argument. Usually when I link to a piece I agree or think it presents ideas I want to think about. Writing something on it helps me organize my own thoughts and helps me pick it apart. Those who want to censor them deprive me of that and, frankly, that pisses me off. I have been an adult for a hell of a long time and am fairly well educated. I don't need minders.

March 24, 25

 Sunny this morning, and now afternoon. The temperature is cool but the weather reports say it will rise over the next few days. They expect rain Monday and Tuesday. We have to pay rent this week and we saw a couple of nice days for errands.

This story is one reason I try to find different voices and different sources of information. I read accounts of Hezbollah and the services it provided in its areas which the central government couldn't. Now Lebanon is very nearly a failed state. I wondered before why the Palestinians would tolerate them unless they provided desperately needed services which the Palestinian Authority either couldn't or wouldn't (or which Israel blocked). We have a habit of painting enemies as devils but that blinds us to everything that might make people support them. Our government officials and their allied politicians have lied often enough that I take what they say with a grain of salt.

25***********************************************************************

Cloudy with infrequent sun. No rain yet but it is expected later today and into tomorrow. It has been a lazy morning but unless we have errands or appointments they are all lazy. I spent the morning weaving a few more spares and finishing Jeffrey Deaver's latest Lincoln Rhyme mystery: The Watchman's Hand. As usual it is complex and convoluted. You may figure out part but then you find the main mystery has related mysteries spinning off of it.

Bill Astore said it all in the title to his latest post on his substack site: The Pentagon Ate Our Government. The Pentagon's share of the latest budget just passed increased by $27Billion.

March 23

Cloudy today but the temps should go to near normal--about 40F. We got light snow showers but nothing that accumulated. Northwest of us got much more. I spent most of this morning finishing two hot pads. I haven't yet finished getting the What-not room reorganized and put back together. I will get back to it tomorrow. I pulled out a stack of our DVDs because the news is focused on that attack in Russia, Trump, and whether another Speaker of the house will face a discharge petition while another member of that caucus decided not only to retire but to retire immediately. Evidently he also waited until his governor can't appoint an interim representative. The Republican majority is now only 1. Usually we would have gone to soccer or rugby games but the English Premier League had a break and the Six Nations Tournament finished last weekend--Ireland won. Soccer will start up again next weekend.

Stray thought: a lot of pixels have been scattered over the moral outrage over Israel's actions in Gaza but no one has any leverage over the Netanyahu government. Not even the U.S. government evidently.  However, I remembered a story I read somewhere about a British governor in Indiana who faced a deputation of outraged Indians over his edict to end suttee (the burning of widows on their deceased husband's funeral pyre). The Indians insisted the governor couldn't stop them following their traditions. The governor thought for a moment and then told them that the British also had a tradition. If men burned women, the British hanged them. The Indians were free to follow their traditions but the British would build a gallows next to the pyre and then follow their tradition. The tradition of suttee stopped. If the U.S. told Netanyahu (and his government) that they are indeed independent sovereigns and make their own decisions but so are we and we do not agree to support (financially, politically, or militarily) actions we find morally abhorrent. The weak U.N. resolution our government put forward is a tepid response that I hope will be followed by MUCH stronger actions.

This sounds way too Trumpian. Netanyahu seems to think that Israel's problem isn't that its actions in Gaza aren't really justifiable but that Israel's government doesn't have people who can's "string two words together in English." In other words, their spokespeople are having trouble explaining the inexplainable (or unjustifiable.) Hasbara is an interesting word and I am surprised it hasn't migrated into English.

Ben Krauss has an interesting proposal to break the deadlock in Congress: an anonymous Congress. As Krauss noted the idea could work under both Republican and Democratic presidents and, under certain conditions, might not work. But everyone is getting very tired of people WE elect and pay six figure salaries doing nothing to address real problems. I remember a character in a novel I like commenting on discontent with the Federal government: people want government to do two things--win wars and solve problems. But our government hasn't done either for a long time. The reaction to that is already noted in the conflict between Texas and the Federal government over the southern border and that isn't the only point of contentious friction.

March 21, 22

 Cloudy this morning and very chilly. They promised us sun but evidently Nature had other ideas.

22********************************************************************

Clouds and snow this morning--where the hell did spring go?  As you can see I didn't have much to say yesterday. We did our shopping which is what we do every 10 days to two weeks. That is how long it takes for us to have a list of items that we need, including some we can't really do without. Can you imagine what would happen if we ran out of cat food? Not good. As usual nowadays we brought everything home, put it away, and ...collapsed. On the way I noticed the price of gas was between $3.50 and $3.70. The price of oil is now sitting around $80/barrel. That is one 

I found this article on CNN this morning. On first impression it looks good for Trump but on a deeper read you find it leaves him in the same place: cash poor and asset rich. (Rather like a conditions I, in my much lower economic status, am familiar with but we called it "house rich/cash poor.") So much of Trump's "empire" it is highly illiquid.

Ted Gioia posted this State of the Culture post on The Honest Broker. So much in today's world seems to be simply distraction. And is so boring. We haven't been to the movie theater in 20 years and five years before that we stopped buying snacks. We find most movies totally uninteresting and the cost of the ticket is costs more than the pleasure we get from the experience. We usually buy DVDs but fewer than we did 20 years ago. The last one I bought was the new Dune 1 and the next will be Dune 2. So far nothing else is interesting. Note: I don't use TikTok, instagram, X (formerly Twitter) or any of those social media on any regular or prolonged basis.

Found another Gioia post on the importance of ritual in combating the addictive effect of our distraction culture. I read a number of pagan/polytheist blogs and many of them stress the importance of ritual in their religious practice and psychic health.

I started following this theme at Jeremiah Johnson's Infinite Scroll site.

March 20

 Sunny morning--still cool.

Stray thought: Trump told Nigel Farage that NATO is more important to Europe than to the U.S. because we have a "big beautiful ocean" between us and them. Really? How well did that work in the lead up to WWI when Germany engaged in unrestricted submarine warfare? Or in 1941, when Japan traversed a larger ocean to attack Pearl Harbor? We still have submarines many of which can launch nuclear missiles. And each side has intercontinental ballistic missiles which can cross the distances between us and them in minutes. How stupid can Trump be?

Another stray thought: California has issued a warning to the patrons of a restaurant over--measles. That is a concern for those who, like me, have either had measles or the full course of vaccination. (I had measles and therefore have immunity and got the vaccination in boot camp as well.) The epidemiologists don't expect any of the recent outbreaks to become widespread because a sufficient number of people are immunized. I often wonder when (not if) a disease to which we don't have vaccines will come in. Our communal (non or counterproductive)response to COVID doesn't give me much comfort.

Evidently the retail giant Sainsbury in the U.K. had a problem: its cashless system crashed and they were only able to accept cash. The company had to cancel all home deliveries for one day. They attribute the outage to a software glitch because of an overnight download. Naked Capitalism has more complete coverage here. About a month ago we had a similar situation when we went to fill up the gas tank. The credit card system was down but the could take cash. Software, and other, glitches seem to be happening more frequently nowadays. The more complicated things become the more likely they will fail. See yesterday's link the the Charles Huge Smith post.

Bill Astore makes a good point: framing can make a big difference in how we perceive a story. In all the coverage I have seen about the growing famine in Gaza almost none mention that there are truck loads of aid waiting outside checkpoints on Gaza's border but they have been blocked by Israel. I choose to call the spade a spade--what is happening there is a human caused famine. Israel can, and does, block any aid they consider military or "dual use." Tell me--what can't be designated dual use. A tent can house a refugee family or a Hamas fighter. A sack of flour can feed refugees or Hamas fighters. Tell me--how do you tell the difference.

March 19

 Welcome to astronomical spring and Happy Equinox. Though the temperature is reminiscent of winter. It is sunny which is nice. I am still searching and sorting in the What-not Room. I still haven't found the unfinished pieces and patterns I have been looking for. Over the last 65 years I have done quilting, cross-stitch, embroidery, needlepoint, and crochet. I have also poked around with weaving and spinning. That means I have a lot of "stuff" and that is after paring the stash down for some time. There is an interesting acronym among needleworkers: SABLE. Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. Mine is definitely in that category. 

Stray thought: Supposedly Trump wants to debate Biden. William Kristol at The Bulwark says no. And I agree. The news this morning had file clips of Trump from just before and during his first campaign for the White house juxtaposed with some more recent clips. He definitely hasn't aged well. For all the right wing talk about Biden's "cognitive" abilities (not favorably) he is definitely several steps up from Trump. Also, I don't really need to see two old codgers taking verbal digs at each other.

Charles Hugh Smith has a really good post on the "crapification" by design of our goods and services. 

March 16, 17, 18

 Sunny today but only slightly above normal temperatures. I didn't do anything outside today and, if the rain the weather people predict will come in tomorrow, I won't do anything outside tomorrow. However, I got some stitching done on the pillow case I have on the hoop. I also cleaned out a notebook and transferred the list of possible books to acquire and read. As I am reading or listening I write down citations or references for later. Sometimes I simply decide that I won't pursue the item. Other things are more interesting. In the process I also tidied up my table caddy so I can easily find things again. It is also a baking day: cornbread to go with the beans and sugar cookies for a late snack. All done now and I am back to reading and cleaning out my e-mail.

First up: Charles Eisenstein's essay on his substack: Machines Will Not Replace Us. I can sympathize with his sentiments. I realized long ago that one of the reasons I like crochet is because it is the only kind of needlework which hasn't made the shift to machine work. There is something about thee pattern of looping threads and pulling thread through the loops that isn't easily mimicked by machines. Also hand stitched pieces have a substance to them that machine made pieces don't have. They are simply flimsy. But I have noticed the same decline in quality of many of the new books coming out. A couple of days ago David Kaiser, who has written a new book on Presidential State of the Union addresses, noted that those addresses we're once designed to propose a program and persuade the audience to support that program. Biden's State of the Union did some of that but it was also constructed around "sound bites" designed for our 24/7 news media which doesn't do depth very well (or at all).

17**********************************************************************

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Partly cloudy today and a bit below normal temperature--only in the 30s.

18*********************************************************************

It is cold again and we have flurries with it. There was also a pulse of snow yesterday. I don't expect any of it to stick around.

The "government shutdown watch" has recommenced on the news. I haven't seen much change in the attitudes of either side. We pretty much ignore the news. The "new" news, same as the "old" news. And the "analysis" is the same so why bother.

Caitlin Johnstone posted this depressing piece. It is depressing because it is very accurate.

David Kaiser provides a good overview of the Israel/Palestinian situation with a dollop of history as well. He says something I have thought and our politicians don't want to think: what we think doesn't matter much with the Israeli government. Advice, such as what our government has been giving, is worth its weight in gold. Our government has a problem. It has supported Israel for the last 75 years but now Israel is embarked on a course U.S. policymakers don't agree with. Part of the problem is political because we have a large and vocal population of Palestinian-Americans who still have relatives in Gaza and the West Bank under increasingly difficult (to put it mildly) circumstances. And part of the problem is moral--our politicians expel a lot of hot air on notions of equality, democracy, justice but their actions in both foreign and domestic affairs goes against those high flown sentiments. The U.S. has one lever of influence but our politicians have refused to pull it: the gargantuan amounts of aid we send to Israel. 

March 15

 The weather channel predicts a cool day with clouds in the morning changing to sun in the afternoon. I am still reorganizing the What-not room. That will be a prolonged program. In the mean time I am making progress on the two blankets on the hooks and the four embroidery projects on hoops. I totally sympathize with craft workers who have multiple projects but usually start new ones before all of the WIPs (works in progress) are done. I am trying to bust my stashes by incorporating as much on hand materials into any new project.

I found this post on Medium and was intrigued to see what the author had to say about "saving the planet from your kitchen." As you might guess the topic is "how to reduce food waste." Although we don't have much food waste here, I like seeing what others do. A lot of what the author lists we already do however, I found a few points I disagree with or that we do slightly differently. I have never been good at meal planning beyond two or three days and even then it isn't unusual that a different mean is inserted to the list and the planned meals shifted to a day or two later. Also most of my cooking involves meals that will go multiple days. A couple of days ago we finished off a tuna casserole which lasted three days. Today we are going to finish the taco fixings we had yesterday. Tomorrow we will start on a pot of beans that will go two days with the remaining being frozen in one or two quart jars. The advice to avoid buying flavorings for one dish is good but I would go another step and look at what might substitute for the ingredients I don't have. She suggests that you don't "buy in bulk" and I would suggest that you selectively buy in bulk but limit it to what space you have on hand and how quickly you use the items. We also have (over time) developed a system where when we use the next to last or last item we stock up again. We also resist sales unless we know we are low on something. Having said that most of what is in the article is good advice and my changes wouldn't fit everyone.

Caitlin Johnstone has a good point on Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's response to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's comments on the Senate floor concerning Israel's conduct of the Gaza war. Israel may think of itself as an "independent" nation and a democracy but if so then perhaps they should refuse any future aid of any kind from the U.S. Then they can do what they damned well please. The U.S. should recognize that once the aid is given it is up to the recipient what is done with it and the only real choice we have is to continue the gravy train recognizing we don't have control or stop the aid. I don't support Israel unconditionally and I don't condemn Hamas unconditionally. Neither side is clean.

The House of Representatives passed their bill requiring Byte Dance to sell TikTok or be banned in the U.S. Now it is awaiting action by the Senate. The proponents of the bill cite safety concerns which at the moment are more hypothetical than real--at least as far as the articles I have read. Most of the opponents were concerned with freedom of speech issues and the potential harm for business. I don't use TikTok so I don't have a dog in the fight but I wondered how much harm and how much benefit might come from banning the app. From this article on CNN about the experience of India after they banned it back in 2020 after a border skirmish with Chinese troops I would guess not as much as either side hopes or fears. The ban didn't affect safety either way. And U.S. tech giants stepped in along with local start ups to provide the same services TikTok provided. However, on the negative, the big tech companies quickly ran over the locals. And TikTok customers quickly found new options.

Stray thought: Last night one of the news/comment shows had a piece taking off on the theme of Victor Orban/Donald Trump/strongmen. The reporter asked Republicans at I forget which event about that and several said they were fine with strongman rule and that this country needed such a change. But I notice the reporter never asked a simple question: Why?

Robert Reich asks a question that occurred to me on the TikTok question: who do you trust (or distrust) most China or American Billionaires. I don't trust either. I wondered who would be buying TikTok if Byte Dance had to sell and noticed that one of the possibles shown on one of the news stories (but not named) was Steve Mnuchin who served ignominiously in Trump's cabinet. He is supposed to be trying to put together a consortium of investors. However, how much would TikTok be worth without the algorithms which Byte Dance owns.

Charles Hugh Smith has an amusing but all too accurate post today on "America the Snackable." I said amusing but in a dark way because everything, not just snack foods, has been reduced to empty bites that don't really provide intellectual or physical nutrition.

March 15

Stormy last night--thunder and lightning with heavy rain. Now it is simply rain coming in waves. Glad I got some of the clean up on the patio done yesterday--including moving my tub of soil and half-bag of potting mix into the shed. No--I didn't get the shed cleaned out. That is for the next dry day. Welcome to half-past March.

Today I hope to make some progress in the What-not Room. I got into getting it reorganized because I remember some partly completed pieces and the pattern books to go with them. I didn't find them in the usual places. Nor did I find them in a few unusual places. So I figured it was time  and--hey--it is Spring.

Naked Capitalism has another set of "Oh, Shit" climate graphs. Think about the fact that as the temperatures rise the GDP goes down.

I linked to an article by Martin Kulldorf yesterday, I think, in which he claims Harvard fired him because he questioned the "company line" on COVID: vaccines, lockdowns, and masks. This article takes his arguments on so I thought I would give you another side of the argument. I found the article annoying. Name calling is never conducive to discussion and neither are snarky barbs. So far nothing I have read convinces me that the vaccines were not effective though perhaps not at the level the early propaganda information from the drug companies gave us. But NO vaccine is totally effective. It is a numbers game: with the vaccine X cases/hospitalizations/deaths vs. without Y cases/hospitalizations/deaths. If X is less than Y then you do get some benefit. All other mitigation measures are judged the same way. We are still learning about COVID.

Found this Nature article by way of Naked Capitalism. It asks why so many young people are getting cancer. Good question. No firm answers.

March 12, 11

 Sunny this morning. Chilly but not cold. All I will need for the moment is my sweater. We have an errand later and, since it is so late, we will have our late meal out.

11***********************************************************************

Still dark outside--damn time change. Our high yesterday reached about 65. It is supposed to hit 70+ today. Time to do a bit more outside.

The author of this post on The Honest Sorcerer takes off from the post on Ecosophia John Michael Greer wrote a couple of weeks ago. (I linked to it a couple of days ago after mulling it over for about a week.) As I read it I remembered articles over the last couple of decades, which quickly disappeared without much attention, describing the aging of farmers and ranchers in this country. The average in that occupation group has gone from high 50s to mid 60s in that time. I followed a link in the post linked above to this article which contains and discusses a map of the world with the median ages of populations noted. And then, with a question tickling my mind, I found this article listing the average age of workers in various occupation groups. We are already experiencing disruptions from declining populations.

It looks like several countries are going through a serious "negotiation" over national identities. We have seen Putin turn to Russia's past to create a Russian identity that is opposed to the West and its "decadence." Modi in India is pushing "Hindu" nationalism and a new citizenship law. Here in the U.S. we have a struggle between those who support an "inclusive" society and those who are pushing "Christian Nationalism" (a.k.a., white supremacy. (I put these terms in quotes because they seem elastic depending on who is speaking or writing.) China, according to this article, is also having its troubles defining the soul of China. Like so many in this country they are trying to do so by erasing the not so valorous, not so heroic parts of their past as presented in modern literature. I wonder when they will try to do what some of our zealots are doing and move from restricting what people can read to editing their history. Maybe they already have but our information sources haven't covered it.

Stray thought: listening to Israeli politicians, especially Netanyahu, insisting on continuing the operations in Gaza until they destroy (obliterate??) Hamas and "win" the contest I remember a scene in a sci-fi novel where a warlord tries to educate a subordinate in the notion that you can lose the war by winning a battle and retreating isn't the same as losing. Will Israel have its own Pyrrhic "victory?"

This story about a former Harvard professor of medicine who took a contrary position on COVID, COVID vaccinations, and COVID lockdowns illustrates the problem with censorship, whether official on any level or informal) is a bad idea. It is also why I follow several blogs which try to present critical information that goes against the official position on our controversial topics. I might or might not agree but at least the information is there for me. That is why I also disagree with the current efforts to prohibit TikTok unless its Chinese parent company divests and sells it.

Bill Astore posted an interesting bit on his Bracing Views substack. He expresses thoughts I have had since not long after 9/11. We have had a long period where our government uses the military to enforce solutions international problems. They swaggered around the globe like some kind of modern cowboys. We needed (and need) leaders who can think on a different bandwidth. I also believed we needed to get beyond the Cold War but were still dominated by Cold Warriors. But that doesn't describe either Biden or Trump. Astore is right: they aren't the politicians  to formulate a new path for the country.

March 11

 Sunny and warmer today. It looks, according to the Weather Channel, like we will have a week of 50s and 60s. Good. I can get some more of the patio cleaned up and begin rearranging the containers. We had to return the old modem to the Xfinity store and Mom has an appointment tomorrow so I guess I won't get to it til Wednesday at the earliest.

Stray thought: Lindsey Graham (Sen.-Mar-a-lago) suggested that any aid given to Ukraine should be in the form of loans citing the $34Trillion national debt we have. WTF--how does he expect to repay loans any time in the foreseeable future? Especially since the price tag for rebuilding the country when the war ends is almost as much as our national debt last time I heard. And no one really knows where the resources for that will come.

A second stray thought: I have a nasty, suspicious mind listening to the news stories about our plans to build some kind of pier to get relief supplies from ships to Gaza. I could just see Netanyahu deciding to bomb that pier on the excuse that the supplies are going to Hamas.

James Howard Kunstler writes some thoughts I have had about how our high tech world depends on fragile and aging power systems. John Michael Greer and Gail Tverberg have also written on this theme in their various blogs and talks about catabolic economic collapse. About twenty years ago I read news stories about Alaska's government basically pruning most of higher education--actually completely up rooting it--except for the University of Alaska itself which was also pruned. The state was facing a serious budget problem as some of the oil revenues dried up. The University system in Ohio also suffered a similar cut back for the same reasons at about the same time. Yesterday I read that Duke is planning to close its Herbarium, a world renowned collection of plants and printed materials, because the cost ($25Million) to rehouse the collections in a suitable modern building was too much. (My own snarky question is how much their sports facilities cost and which would be more valuable to Duke's supposed purpose of education.) All of those stories center on the flow of money which seems to be slowing. Several months ago I described my shock at the condition of a city nearby which I remember from 50 years ago. It has lost population and, with population, tax revenues. The result was a scene that could be the set of a post-apocalyptic movie. Street lights were replaced by stop signs. The streets badly needed repair and the sidewalks were broken. The flow of money has slowed to a trickle. Under those conditions governments, companies, and individuals choose between expenses cutting those which are as good but not as critical as others.

March 10

Sunny today. So things might have a chance to dry out and warm up. Just finished putting together a tuna casserole which can sit on the counter for an hour before I put it in the oven. That should take care of today's and tomorrow's dinners; perhaps even Tuesday's. I know people who hate left overs. My late sister-in-law was that way. I plan on having multiple meals from one cooking session and any leftovers will be frozen to be incorporated in some future meal. Considering it is only Mom and me here that seems the most efficient.

As I read this report from Climate & Capitalism I stripped out the terms "capitalism," "Marxist," and "revolutionary." I didn't need the ideological or political overtones. Take a look at the list of novel (at least to Americans) diseases outbreaks. Take a look at the list of once familiar diseases we once thought extinct or at least under control. There are several features that have little to do with political/economic philosophy. First, the world population became more than 50% urban only a couple of decades ago. Crowding, especially in countries with inadequate or aging sanitary infrastructure. Two, in a global economy any place in the world is only a plane ride or two away from any place else. And more people are traveling. Three, a significant number of people in countries around the world have become skeptical of institutions that we once relied on to keep us healthy: medicine, science, public health, governments at all levels. Fourth, advertising has produced a befuddling amount of information, misinformation, mistaken information, and downright false information. During my lifetime I have seen nutrition ads that touted various artificial sweeteners over regular sugar. Many of those sweeteners are not at all as good for you as the ads claimed. Remember the ads touting pork as "the other white meat" after various studies seemed to condemn red meat. Or how eggs suddenly became a boogyman after studies panning cholesterol? Or the drives against sugar, fat, and almost anything that accounted for flavor in foods because of we had to cut calories? We always joked that we saw ads touting certain foods after the ads condemning those foods drove sales down. 

I have let this post John Michael Greer posted on his Ecosophia site ferment for a few days. I grew up in the same time Greer mentions--when the pundits were hyperventilating over "The Population Bomb", which I read when it first came out. I remember when the Chinese government mandated one-child families and their concern over the pampered "Little Emperors/Empresses" and political/economic thinkers thought they might have a good idea. Things have changed radically in the last twenty or so years.  It has been a long while since demographers noted that the U.S. had the only growing population in the industrialized world--because of immigration. Germany and other countries welcomed the first wave of climate refugees from Africa but now as they face the problems of absorbing large numbers of people who don't know the local language and customs their attitudes have changed. I read a couple of histories which mentioned in passing the problem sudden population losses caused--taxes declined because fewer people meant lower revenues, infrastructure declined because fewer people couldn't maintain it, food shortages because fewer farmers were growing food. In some cases the entire area was abandoned.

March 8, 9

Rainy this morning but we have to go shopping. The canned cat food won't last the weekend and, believe me, the cats MUST be fed. Otherwise they WILL make their displeasure known.

Update: we are back home and the cats are pleased. We had heavy rain; heavy enough I let Mom off at the supermarket door, parked, and then went through the rain. And then let her tend the groceries while I went for the car. I will say that the grass is coming in very green with the rains we have had.

09********************************************************************

We had a heavy rain overnight but has stopped now. The sun broke through a bit ago but we now have more clouds. It looks like we will have a partly cloudy/sunny day. The temperature was quite cold this morning.

We have three soccer games today. We enjoy some of the sports because they aren't politics and they limit the commercials to focus on the game. We anticipate a good day tomorrow with three rugby games.

Yesterday the post mortem on the State of the Union dominated the news. The coverage ran pretty much along the commentators and media outlets political alignments. Those who were more Democrat (or anti-Trump)aligned thought it went well for Biden. Those who are right wing Republican or MAGA aligned damned with faint praise saying Biden managed to clear the very low bar they laid out for him. I am amazed at how abysmally stupid some of the Republicans are and how easily Biden baited them and embarrassed them. (I am talking from the clips the news played.) I don't give much weight to what is said in these speeches. They might present goals I agree with but they depend on 1) the mix of personalities occupying the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives and 2) what happens between now and then socially, economically, and in world events.

The House finally got off their butts and passed one of the two groups of fiscal packages they had to pass. They finally got enough cuts in programs they don't like to do that. The Senate showed they can move when they have to and passed it themselves Friday. Now we have to go through this again for the second package that has to pass by the 22nd of this month. Let's see if they can get their heads out of their butts long enough to do that.

In another act of the Republican Comedy Hour, George Santos has announced he will enter the primary race for the 1st Congressional district in New York. He can do that since he was only expelled from Congress not impeached and convicted. He is still under indictment for criminal charges but, hey, so is his mentor Donald Trump.

And here is a heart-warming story. A 102-year-old woman asked her community to celebrate her birthday by donating 102 food items to the local food bank/community. They came through with 400 items.Bill Astore has a position on our "aid" to Israel I can agree with: stop giving. Of course our arms manufacturers would object because they are the main beneficiary of the aid we send. If I didn't already have more books on my reading than I can keep track of I would look up that memoir Astore refers to in his piece. I had second thoughts--I will pick up that book. It would give a different perspective on the Israel situation. By the way, Astore also has a good take on both the SOTU and (the even worse) Republican rebuttal. As to the truth or untruth or whatever contained in either, check my third paragraph above. And truth is often like beauty--in the eye of the beholder.

And for our bi-annual OH, SHIT moment--I was just reminded that we will have to adjust our clocks forward. I hate those times because the furry clocks (a.k.a., cats) can't be reset and our own biological clocks are out of sync for at least a couple of weeks. I really wish our asshole legislators would simply pick either daylight (not)saving or standard and leave it.

Have I mentioned before that I really, really hate getting new equipment--as in phones, computers, internet gateways. I just spent an annoying (to put it mildly) getting our new Xfinity gateway installed and working. Then we found that Mom could get on line without any problem but I couldn't. We originally had a "family" plan that allowed both of us to log in. We tried every way we could think of to get me on also but no luck. Finally, I bit the bullet and signed up for my own paid separate access. This might be part of the move in the industry to eliminate any kind of sharing (of passwords or accounts). Luckily we aren't so cash strapped as we were when we first got the account nearly 25 years ago. Thinking about it (and getting my temper back) it might also be good from a security point of view. OH, well, we adapt--some of us more easily than others.

All of this sounds so familiar. 

March 7

 Good morning, all. Cloudy and frosty this morning. The frost on the roofs has gone. Not much planned today. The State of the Union is scheduled for tonight. We won't watch. It starts about the time we call it a day and go to bed. I don't think it is worth staying up to watch Biden's amorphous hopes for his agenda which depends on his own reelection and a majority of like minded Democrats being elect also. And I suspect we would see the usual ill-mannered Republicans acting up in spite of their Speaker asking them to behave like adults.

Reading this Business Insider article about a woman who warned of the meltdown in the derivatives markets a decade before the 2008 crash I remembered The Big Short which detailed another Cassandra, male this time, who saw the same danger much closer to when it became obvious to all of the people whose job it was to look out for such catastrophes.

EuroNews reports on a drug causing concern. Physicians have prescribed pregabalin for a variety of condition but patients have had problems from side effects and then even more severe symptoms when trying to get off of it. Studies in Sweden report a significant number of suicide cases had the drug in their systems.

Stray thought: It feels like we have been on a merry-go-round (or a gerbil ball) for the last three years. When the Senate held their "trial" of Trump's Impeachment Republican leaders (and Trump's lawyers) insisted that it really wasn't their job to do anything so drastic as find him guilty, on the political stage, of insurrection and bar him from further office. Instead they insisted that there is a judicial system which can hold him accountable of the crime of insurrection.  It is the DOJ's job. The DOJ took a long time to charge him for that and now the case is languishing waiting for the Supreme Court to decide on Trump's claim of Presidential immunity. Then when the courts in Colorado and the Secretary of State (backed by the courts) decide he is an insurrectionist and should be bounced from the ballot, the Supreme Court rules that ONLY CONGRESS can decide how the 14th Amendment should be administered. Isn't it so reasonable that the very institution that abdicated that job gets it back gift wrapped by the Supremes. And so it goes. Thomas Zimmer says pretty much that in his substack post.

March 6

 Looking out the window it looks like we have clouds still. The Weather Channel says our current temperature is 40F and the high should be about 50. They expect the clouds to move out without dropping more rain. But I will wait until the next sunny day, at the moment predicted to be Sunday, to do the next round of garden clean up.

Super Tuesday came out pretty much as everyone expected. Biden and Trump won most of the states and their delegates. But each has his own problems with his supposed constituencies. Haley won Vermont and got a significant proportion of the vote in most of the remaining states. Who knows how many of her voters will vote Trump in the fall. Biden's big problem is the number who voted "uncommitted." Many of those are critics (whether Jewish or Palestinian-Americans) of our Israel policy. I think so many of our fellow citizens really want someone who will solve knotty problems (the way they want them settled) the same way Alexander "unraveled" the Gordian Know--for those who don't know the story, he simply drew his sword and cut it. Cutting through human problems that way is more likely to damage a lot more than it will solve.

On a sad note--the news this morning announced Haley's press conference this morning in which, a staffer confirmed, she will announce she is ending her campaign. Sad because I liked how she has morphed into a serious Trump critic. I only hope she never endorses him.

The Hill reports that the Biden Administration will form a "task force" to delve into the problem of price gouging. Various CEOs might regret their comments during a meeting a couple of years ago that they should raise prices as high as they could because of the COVID dislocations in the economy. The attitude basically was "do it while you can and as high as you can" consumers be damned. Found by way of Naked Capitalism with the reminder that the WIN (whip inflation now) Nixon and later Ford tried in the 1970s. It failed but what the admin on Naked Capitalism forgot to add was that in the next decade inflation was broken as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to the sky. That slowed the economy and seriously hurt anyone who had fixed incomes, had low wage jobs, and held CDs and savings accounts. Real prosperity didn't return until the late 1990s under Clinton. I wonder how the history rhymes this time.

Yesterday Krysten Sinema decided against running for reelection to her senate seat. Over her time as a Senator I have rarely agreed with her positions which seemed, to me, to favor corporations and the wealthy and did little for people at the lower economic levels. However, I will agree with her that the political environment today is not at all conducive to honest negotiations or mutual accommodations with opposing views. Instead politics has become a "scorched earth war" in which little gets done. But, I remember several instances where she seemed to be deeply involved in throwing gasoline on the fire.

March 5

Rain today and, oh my, what thunder, lightning and wind we had over night. The cats were not happy at all. The weather has calmed a bit for now. Needless to say, I won't be doing anything on the patio today. Glad I got some of the clean up done yesterday.

Thinking about the Supreme Court decisions over the last few years I had a stray thought: liberals and progressives have gotten too used to relying on the Court to drive their issues. That has been the case since the Brown v Board decision in the 1950s. I thought that some years ago as conservatives made concerted efforts to remake the top court and finally succeeded in Donald Trump's administration with the connivance of Mitch McConnell. What the court has given it can take away as we are finding out.

Watching the morning news coverage of Trump's latest efforts to put together coherent speeches I had another stray, and gloomy, thought: who is going to be the "gray eminence" behind Trump's throne if he wins again? Who will be his pick for Vice President? Most of the likely are, honestly, frightening. Worse, remember the talk about his cabinet invoking an Article 25 removal during the last weeks of his term. What if he wins, is sworn in, gets his cabinet in place (even if on an interim basis), and then they successfully pull off the maneuver?

Question: Is it really the job of the Supreme Court to decide "novel Constitutional issues" in a way that "insulates this court and petitioner from future controversy"? That is the comment from one of the "concurring" justices that filed a separate opinion that agreed with the basic decision (that the states don't have the power to disqualify candidates for federal office on Constitutional reasons) but disagreed with the reach of the decision (which claims that ONLY Congress has that power and then told them exactly how they should frame the legislation). That is incredibly close to "judicial activism" which conservatives claim to hate.

Stray thought: I don't know how many remember a couple of opinions that distinguished between "running" for office and "holding" office." If Trump wins will the Federal Courts have to deal with lawsuits hoping to prevent Trump from "holding" office per the 14th Amendment Section 3? If so will the court come back with the same argument that ONLY Congress can do that?

It is a day for stray thoughts. Here is the last for today: a quip I like points to American insularity. A person who speaks three languages is trilingual. A person who speaks two languages is bilingual. A person who speaks one language is---an American. I would add another line. A person who can't speak any language coherently is---Donald Trump. 

March 4

 It is starting out sunny and 52F. Might be time to do more on the patio. I have some drip pans to wash out and put out. I should also see how workable the soils are. As I mentioned yesterday I found green shoots in the pots of chives. It is time to clear away the dead leaves. I noticed the trees outside our front window is starting to put out leaf buds.

Nikki Haley finally got a win in the primaries in Washington, D.C. As the commentators noted last night, it doesn't really matter given the disparity between Trump's delegate count and hers. Super Tuesday is tomorrow so the general election match might be fully set by Wednesday morning. People are accepting the notion that it will be a Biden/Trump rematch whether we like it or not. I don't.

Stray thought: sometime recently I heard on response to the often heard comment that Biden is just too old. Yeah, Biden is old; but the other guy is also old and he's crazy.

Second stray thought: I said before that this election is probably the last hurrah for the baby boomers (my generation) unless something unforeseen happens. I suspect that 2028 will be a real electoral donnybrook. Given the crop of younger politicians on both sides, it might look like blue crabs and red crabs in their separate buckets seeing who will eat whom last.

Next stray thought: I have been thinking about the self immolation of Aaron Bushnell and his statement that he could "no longer be complicit in genocide"--meaning Israel's war in Gaza. The relationship between the U.S. and Israel has looked more like a dysfunctional marriage for the last 30 years. Either a renegotiation of the parameters of the marriage creates a different relationship or there will be a divorce.

Another stray thought: one of the news/commentary shows over the weekend showed a graph of how much aid the U.S. sends Israel and Egypt each year. One commentator mentioned that the whole mess shows how little power a "superpower" has to affect the behavior of supposed allies. Perhaps it is time for some tough love. Cancel this year's military aid for Israel and transfer half of it to Egypt on condition that they accept the Gaza population crowded on the order into a designated area and provide aide with the money. It is time to chart a different course that doesn't involve complicity in genocide.

Bill Astore asks "Who needs Skynet?" Humans seem so eager to do the job, why worry about self-aware AI. The Terminators would probably just look on with bewildered sadness as the last two humans killed each other.

Yet another stray thought: did you all see the report that the U.S. debt is (and has been for several months) growing at the rate of $1 TRILLION/PER DAY. That isn't yelling--it's emphasis.

UPDATE: got 11 buckets cleaned up. I trimmed back the dead branches on two, the lemon balm and a mint, and left the roots to send out new shoots. The others I pulled. They weren't hardy to our winter temps. I started sweeping the leaves gathered around the buckets and pulled the stakes, shepherd's hook, and trellis panels. Also started washing down the fence. Thankfully, the dirt and muck easily wipes off with a wet cloth. I will have to reposition the buckets later. I've done enough today.

The Supreme Court just decided on the 14th Amendment cases: the states don't have the right to disqualify candidates for FEDERAL offices on the basis of Section 3 of that Amendment. I wasn't surprised and not because three of the nine justices were Trump appointees as some have opined. If it had simply been all stripes of conservatives against all stripes of progressive the count would have been 6 to 3 not 9 to zip. So many people forget that we have a Federal government system that is parallel to a system of state governments and each system has its powers and responsibilities. The states do run elections and as the court ruling (which I read) noted can disqualify candidates for STATE offices. But they don't have the power to disqualify candidates for FEDERAL offices on the basis of the 14th (or other) parts of the Constitution. That is in the Federal wheelhouse.

Still another stray thought: we saw two efforts to impeach Trump fail at the Senate trial stage--on political considerations. The second was on the matter of insurrection. We haven't yet had a criminal trial but what if that also fails. The Supreme Court ruled that the states can't disallow a candidate for a Federal office. That appears to be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation which simply leaves you damned.

March 2, 3

 Sunny this morning. It feels like it is a bit warmer. That I just confirmed on  the Weather Channel. They say the temperature will reach the mid 50s. We started off this morning with BBC. I really didn't want to see continued coverage of Trumps legal woes or the debate on whether the Supreme Court gave him a gift or might just sink his hopes that he will skate once again. Nor did I want to see more stories about him trying to plead poverty to get out of the monetary judgements against him. So we went from BBC to Premier League Soccer for the rest of the morning. Unfortunately the rugby season is on break for this week. Hope it is back next weekend.

Stray thought: Putin might have been better served if he had been a bit magnanimous and allowed Navalny a public funeral. Russia might be one of the few countries where it wasn't covered and the crowds came in spite of the government's efforts to stymie the proceedings.

03**********************************************************************

Nice lazy Sunday. I made up a cream of potato soup with left over pork roast and veggies yesterday. We will finish most of the rest of it today. This morning has been spent putting a few more rows in a crocheted blanket and assembling a couple of flower arrangements. They are artificial because that will last through spring when I will remake them for summer. Growing any plant inside is problematic because there isn't enough light and the cats like to munch. I also got a look at the gardens and emptied out a couple of the drip pans that had accumulated water from the rains and snow. Found some green shoots in my two pots of chives and what might be a start of a shoot in the pot of asiatic lilies. Otherwise no growth elsewhere.

I saw a headline that the U.S. and Jordan are airdropping aid into Gaza. Yesterday one of the news accounts noted that an earlier U.S. drop  supplied the equivalent of 35000 meals. Sounds like a lot doesn't it. But there are 2million people (give or take) so it would take about 57 such drops to provide ONE meal for all those people. And that assumes everyone would get their share through the crowds.

I found this article posted on The Telegraph and was surprised by the picture of wind turbines on fire. I hadn't seen anything on that before. I wondered how often such fires occur and more generally how often the turbines fail for any reason. So far the information is sketchy and thin but I didn't see that wind turbines fail more often or more catastrophically than other power generating plants. The article did say that a turbine fire is generally left to burn itself out which results in a total loss and replacing any turbine for any reason is a very expensive prospect. However, I didn't see anything that justified the headline about an "American revolt" against green energy. It didn't give any statistics on how many counties and where they are that may not be willing to agree to host green energy plants. It does note that the legal framework for green energy is still being built.

March 1

 Welcome to meteorological spring. And a double whammy has hit Texas. The largest wildfire in their history that is only about 5% contained AND a winter storm that is dumping snow--some areas expecting up to 10 FEET. The California mountains are also getting huge amounts of snow. We have clouds but the temperature is high enough to give us rain--later today maybe.

Update: the Weather Channel has just reported (3:10 pm) that the Texas Smokehouse Creed fire is now the largest in U.S. HISTORY.

Epsilon Theory asks "Why We Don't Trust Each Other Anymore?" and has some interesting answers. One problem involves language: the words we use and how we perceive those words. The author notes one poll that when people were asked if we "should give the poor support" more than 70% agreed. But if the word support was changed to "welfare" the approval rate dropped into the 30s. It reminds me of the polls on the ACA. Asked about the ACA and people favored it; asked about "Obamacare" people rejected it even when they were benefitting from it. The two are the same thing. The author also goes into data and how people perceive it and misperceive it. Interesting read.

CNN put up this article today. The Biden Administration is going to investigate foreign parts designed for our "smart" cars, especially those made in China. They are worried that foreign adversaries can gather intelligence or use the connections to sabotage infrastructure such as the EV charging stations. However, the focus is going to be on all connected cars which use network connections for several functions.

Another episode in the Foreign Tourists Behaving Badly show.

CNN also had this piece on Japan's demographic woes. However, declining populations are evident in most countries with the exception of Africa where the populations are rising more slowly as the fertility rates are falling.

BBC featured a segment today on the growing global phenomenon of obesity. The report said that 1/8 of the world population is obese--in other words 1billion people. They didn't say why which is rather normal for stories about obesity when they aren't demonizing poor people. I can think of several reasons for the uptick. One, changes in where people live and what they do for a living. Not long ago the world population became 50+% urban. More and more people make a living in sedentary jobs. Two, the American diet has infiltrated most parts of the world as have U.S. food production companies with high levels of fats, artificial sugars, and high levels of various chemicals. Third, I suspect that the world population is getting older. In most of the industrialized world the number of people over 65 exceeds those under 25. As we get older our metabolisms slow down.

EuroNews has an article on the global increase in obesity which gives more details and cites The Lancet. I found the article a while after I saw the BBC piece.