November 15

 Quite Chilly today and cloudy. The temperatures have been near normal for the season but it feels colder because of how warm it has been. I haven't been paying much attention to the news or the commentary because it is the same old mush. Right now the only firm facts on the political scene are 1) Joe Biden lost and will leave office on January 20 AND 2) Donald Trump won and will be taking the (sort of) oath of office on January 20. The stock markets are all over the place sometimes euphoric over the Trump victory and at other times depress over speculation about what his cabinet nominations will mean for American business.

Stray thought: about half of Americans have been skeptical of our health care system. A couple of the bloggers I follow refer to it as the "sick care system." I call myself a "medical minimalist." I see a doctor at our urgent or immediate care clinics when I feel the need to get a medical opinion. We don't have a "family physician" because we haven't found one we have been comfortable with. Mom went to one her endocrinologist recommended but the doctor seemed to pay more attention to her computer than to her patient. And after noting that there was nothing anyone could do about the shingles except treat the symptoms she prescribed a whole bunch of tests for everything else. One could tout the system as geared to finding problems while they are small but I get the feeling it is geared to ensuring a steady stream of income.

Stray Thought #2: If half of Americans were skeptics before Trump named Bobby Kennedy, Jr., to be his Secretary of Health, the other half will become skeptics because no one will be able to have any faith in medical science. Trump promised that Kennedy would "return" the department to the "gold standard" of scientific procedures but Kennedy has no experience or education in medical sciences. 

Unfortunately, some of the crazies have returned to Washington. Example: Lauren Boebert fresh from being elected in a new district after deciding that the old one wasn't likely to re-elect her. She seems to be intent on protecting us from an alien civilization under the sea.

Stray thought #3): Most of the commentators I have heard are appalled by the cast of characters Trump plans to nominate. They foresee catastrophe piled upon more catastrophes. Their prognostications may come true or they may not and I have read some other bloggers who think at least a few nominees, if confirmed, may actually (accidentally ?) do something positive. Who knows--I don't and my cats knocked over my crystal ball which was never very clear anyway.

November 8, 11

 Nice and sunny today with temps staying in the 60s. We won't get more rain til Wednesday--maybe. It is always maybe with the weather. I should be cleaning up the patio and planters but I simply don't have the energy. This year the time change has hit me harder than it has before. Between the change of the clocks and how it has upset my sleep patterns, I am just plain washed out. I hope by next week I will be back to normal.

I have managed to get some things done: finished one crochet piece and started another. I started another which is going pretty well. Actually, I started two but unraveled one because it wasn't working well. I will try that one again sometime. I finished one embroidered dresser scarf and by Monday I should be finished with the cross-stitching on the last of the quilted placemats. I will be so glad to finish them. Have I said before how much I HATE pre-quilted pieces. Thankfully, I don't have any more of them.

The post-mortem on the election continues on the Democrats side while the Republicans are crowing about how well they did. I read/skim them all with a skeptical eye. I don't see it as either an utter Democrat disaster or a sign of a Republican eternal Heaven on earth. Although Robert Reich starts his post today with the claim that it was a disaster, he writes that many are "learning" the wrong lessons from it. He goes through six such lessons which I agree are exactly wrong. The major lesson he draws is, basically, the same one James Carville proclaimed thirty years ago: it's the economy, stupid.

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

I finally finished the quilted placemats and their napkins. Stitched on them about three hours on Saturday, most of Sunday, and another two and a half hours this morning. I spent part of this morning getting the left over bobbins from several projects sorted and some skeins not yet wound put on bobbins, sorted and ready to be merged into the rest of the stock. I pulled out the table cloth I will start after my hands have rested for a couple of days.

We had guests on Saturday: my sister's son, two of his children, and his year-old grandson. So Mom has another great-great grandchild and I have a great nephew to go with the great-niece in my sister's other son's family. Little Anthony was quite a pistol. I sent them home with a small crocheted blanket for another grandchild expected early next year.

I am skimming or ignoring most of my political blogs and most of the news. So much of it is just speculation about what the new Trump administration will bring and no one really knows. I suspect even he doesn't really know. When he was elected last time a pagan blogger I read took exception to another who referred to Trump as "Loki in the White House." I can understand her objection since, as a pagan, she venerates several gods including Loki. However, trickster gods are featured in all pantheons I can think of and I would call them "features" not "bugs" in the system. They all upset the staid order and cause change--often uncomfortable change. Trump is certainly an agent of chaos and things are going to change. I would remind people who voted for him that they should have been more careful about what they wished for because they might get much more than they bargained for.

Stray thought: a lot of the commentary on the election criticize Harris for failing to provide voters with a "story" they could relate to. That is much too simplistic. Both Republicans and Democrats lost votes and it wasn't voters moving from one to the other or to a third party. Most of the missing voters simply stayed home. A significant part of the electorate rejected what the major parties offered. They didn't buy Harris' contention that the economy was really great and they didn't buy Trumps claims that the economy was catastrophic.

Another stray thought: however there is an economic story out there. Leigh at Five Acres and A Dream has raised Kinder goats for several years and has always had a brisk demand for her excess kids--until this year when the demand simply went away. She also mentions people she knows who are having to give up their pets and making other cuts to their expenses. Charles Hugh Smith at Of Two Minds notes a part of the home ownership equation that isn't much mentioned in the media. Most of the focus is on the escalating prices and difficulty of getting a mortgage but other costs are also going up: insurance (mortgage, property, flood/fire, liability), maintenance, utilities and other services.  And then there is the increased cost of transportation. Like to take a bus or train or subway--fares have been increasing. The costs of owning a car (loan payments, maintenance, insurance, parking, and fuel) have also gone up. The economic statistics may be good but those numbers really don't support the Harris story that everything is good and Trump hasn't got a magic wand that can do much about them.

November 7

 Ah, yes--Election Day plus 2. A couple of the commentators this morning noticed the data I saw yesterday about the "lost" voters. They confirmed that Trump (though winning) lost 1million voters compared to 2020 and Democrats lost about 17million. I did take exception with the notion that Trump "increased" his support in traditional Democratic demographics. It can look like increases when you simply lose fewer than the other guys. Another set of commentators noticed also that working class voters had a case for their economic angst which neither candidate really addressed. And Trumps proposal to massively increase tariffs of imports aren't really a solution. I saw one amusing post on Facebook, one of the few posters I follow, which suggested that we go out and stock up on any imported goods we normally rely on in the few weeks before Trump's inauguration and the threatened tariffs kick in. Most of the commentariat is claiming he won't follow through on any of the extreme policies he promised like mass deportations or huge tariffs. We'll see.

Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern asks "What will happen next?" He presents a very black picture of what Trump and his cronies might do. We have received two mailings from organizations dedicated to preserving Social Security and Medicare asking for donations to help them fight any attempts to cut or end them.

 

November 6

Well, I'm back. Welcome belatedly to November and to the post election. Most of the commentators I saw and read reminded everyone that the polls were all within a "margin of error" which meant that Harris and Trump were essentially tied. Now the postmortem dissections begin. I find most of the so-called experts are giving explanations which don't really explain anything. I will be honest and admit that we didn't vote. We started out to vote but the line stretched halfway across the a six aisle parking lot. The last time we saw such a line was 2020 during the pandemic when we stood in line for almost two and a half hours. This time neither of us could physically stand that long. We drove by twice more but the line stayed as long. If I were wearing a hat I would tip it to the college students the news correspondents interviewed standing in such a line. Next election we will get mail in ballots.

I saw something interesting in the coverage and had to check my memory which I found was pretty accurate. I thought I remembered the vote tallies for Trump and Biden in the last election as 74+million for Trump and 83+million for Biden. The figures I saw for Trump this time was about 71+million and 66+million for Harris. I checked a couple of different sites and they all came in with about the same figures. That means that Trump lost between 2 and 3 million votes while Harris lost around 17million. Question: where did about 20 million voters go? Jill Stein and RFK, Jr. together only pulled in about 1.1 million votes. That was a harder datum to find.

Stray thought: the results of the election reveal, to me at least, a serious disconnect between the so-called political leaders and the people they try to convince to vote for them. While Trump talked down the economy insisting it was so much better for ordinary Americans when he was President, and Harris and her surrogates insisted that the economy was humming along very well if only all the critics would simply look at the statistics, the voters looked at things from their own experience and drew different conclusions. From my level neither described my experience. For all Trump's touting his economy it was never all that great for me and his tax cuts never touched my life. I have been criticizing the statistics for a long time because they usually paint over what happens to me every time I go to the store or pay a bill. Although the inflation rate is (supposedly) down what I pay keeps going up and I don't give a damn what the technical economist definition of inflation is because it doesn't touch me where I live. The unemployment rate is supposed to be declining to an acceptably low number but I still see numerous commercial establishments with "help wanted" signs. Where are the workers looking for work? How many discouraged, longterm, or detached workers aren't even counted any more? Take a look at Shadowstats to get an idea of what the published stats are covering up.

I saw a number of commentators trying to smooth out what Trump, and surrogates like Elon Musk, have promised for our future. I tend to follow Maya Angelou's advice: when someone tells you what he is, believe him the first time. Dave Karpf evidently follows that same advice.

Stray thought: anybody else notice a very self-satisfied, sanctimonious Elon Musk telling an audience that when Trump's economic plan (perhaps administered by Musk himself) we will experience a lot of pain but eventually we will experience a far more prosperous economy. That is the same promise Argentina's president offered and which people are now very upset with. It is similar to what the EU, ECB, etc., foisted on Greece as the price for loans (an increase in their debt) to help them with a debt crisis. Or that Macron proposed to French workers which raised the retirement age. That didn't go over well either.

Infidel753 posted this today and I totally agree. I turned off the commentary on the election early because it was largely a litany of complaints that the Trump aligned voters are racist, sexist, selfish, and other adjectives. The commentators didn't really try to understand their opponents especially since Democratic down ballot candidates (male and female, white and ethnic) won while the top of the ticket (Harris) lost.