November 30

 We have made it to the last day of November. Somehow all the wild weather that hit the Pacific Northwest and the east coast almost totally missed us--so far. Meteorological winter starts tomorrow so we have plenty of time to get hit. Astronomical winter is December 20 (or thereabouts). I am just starting to think about what next spring's garden will contain and how the containers will be arranged.

The best comment I heard lately about the incoming administration was from a guy named Grant. He was interviewed on MORNING JOE early last week promoting his article (I forget where) and it was, to paraphrase the title of the article, if you think you know what is going to happen--you're wrong. It looks like there might be a fight over confirming some nominees and one has already thrown in the towel. Trump seems to have decided to nominate serious candidates for the departments he, or his oligarchic supporters, like. But he is nominating people with serious character flaws and very limited experience and/or expertise for those departments he hates. How well they will work together is a question and whose advice, if anyone's, Trump will take is another. Although Trump constantly extolled his "promises made, promises kept" slogan, his first administration promised much and delivered little. And he has to deal with a very closely divided Senate and House.

I have watched MORNING JOE for several years and was surprised when Joe and Mika announced a couple of days after the election that they had gone down to Mar-a-largo to meet with Trump. However, I am not, like some, going to stop watching. I can agree with them on the subject of the toxic nature of politics nowadays and that the rhetoric should be tamped down. I notice that they promised that they will still criticize Trump when they disagree with his policies. I heartily agree with that also. Unfortunately, over the last 12 years or so ad hominem insults have passed for reasoned debate on both sides of the ideological divide. Trump has been a master of the form and the Democrats have been sucked into the pattern. I haven't seen anything to indicate that Scarborough and Brzezinski have "kissed the ring" as alleged by this piece in CROOKS & LIARS and some of the commentators at the end. I follow a number of bloggers and commentators who espouse conservative views, many of whom supported Trump and expect good things of him. I don't intend to stop reading/watching them either.

This piece is a nice change of pace. Not everywhere is a carbon copy of New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, or San Francisco or any other highly urbanized place. Not all of our borders border Mexico.

November 29

 Happy day after Thanksgiving. We stayed home. It was a last minute decision because my brother invited us to an "if you can make it" dinner. We make a lot of those last minute decisions. We wake up feeling energetic but my the time we have our coffee and breakfast all the energy has dissipated. Or we say we need to do laundry on Monday but by Wednesday we still haven't done it. Thankfully very little in our lives is of any great urgency or need to absolutely accomplished at any given time--except doctor appointments. We planned to go up to the dairy we patronize on Tuesday. It was supposed to be the only shopping that day but we suddenly realized that we were already in the last week of the month and we had rent to pay. So we  put all of our errands into that day--dairy, grocery store, bank and rent. We were totally wiped out.

Bill Astore makes a number of points about our military, our use of the military and the military budget I have thought for some time. First, the Pentagon is the poster child for unaccountability. The problem is that there aren't any real measures by which to measure the Pentagon's performance. Our military hasn't won a war since WWII--and that was a coalition effort which we rarely recognize. Korea wasn't won--we, the Chinese, and the North Korean politicians merely agreed to go back to the pre-war boundaries and have maintained a de-militarized zone to separate the combatants. We didn't "win" the Vietnam conflict--Nixon merely "declared victory" and we left. We won battles in Iraq and Afghanistan but eventually lost the wars. We spent a hell of a lot of money for no real gain by any definition of "gain." Second, Astore mentions that many of the weapons systems were obsolete fifty years ago. However, the Pentagon has spent billions on new systems that have failed to perform as advertised. Third, too much of our foreign policy relies on the threat of military force. As the old saying goes " if all you have is a hammer all your problems look like nails." Unfortunately, that isn't likely to change since the incoming administration relies on threats of force--whether military or economic (tariffs). Fourth, I think our leaders need to rethink our relationships with foreign countries and entities. Unfortunately, I don't think the new administration is going to do that in any really constructive way. Simply getting out of NATO or abrogating our participation in the climate talks, etc., won't be constructive.

Jan in SanFran at CAN IT HAPPEN HERE has a good post for Thanksgiving.

Stray thought: news this morning reported bombs threats against both Republican and Democratic politicians. The time line in one of the stories I found indicate that the threats against Republican proposed members of Trump's cabinet were followed by threats against Democratic congresspeople. One would think that some Democrat-aligned idiot decided to swat Republicans and some Republican-aligned idiot decided to reciprocate. I guess I am a total skeptic and I wonder if there isn't a different party (or parties) playing both sides.

November 22, 23, 25

 The snow is gone. The temperature rose to between 45 and 50F. That pretty well took are of all the snow and slush. We have an appointment today so the clear sidewalks and streets are welcome. I got my two new embroidery projects set up and started. They are small table cloths so I might finish them by the end of 2025 or, more likely, in 2026.

Well, Trump has already picked a new candidate for the Attorney General slot after Matt Gaetz pulled out. It seems there are some senators who do have a limit to what they will accept--enough that only a few can sink his agenda. I wonder if those Republican senators would have swallowed the sex with under age girls (for which he paid a hefty amount) at drug fueled orgies if he had been even marginally qualified for the job. At least the new nominee, I will remember her name if she is confirmed, has practiced law for more than five minutes and was Florida's Attorney General.

23****************************************************************************

I didn't have much time after the appointment yesterday and Mom wanted to stop by Michaels to see if there was an embroidery project she would like to do. We found one that is fairly simple since she hasn't done any needlework for about 20 years. It is cloudy and cool--not yet quite cold though that is coming. I spent about five hours on one of my table cloths while mom tried to make sense of the pattern kit she had. Michaels has changed again and I am deciding whether I like. They don't have any needlework pieces for me because I don't like kits and I prefer working more advanced pieces. But they have brought back fabric on the bolt and sewing patterns. That might be interesting.

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

Yesterday was Sunday soccer--two Premier League games and cooking. I did a nice beef roast and a cake. Part of the roast was put into containers in the freezer for future meals. I got some more done on the cross stitch table cloth. However, it was a "do as little as possible" day. Today is a bit different. I put away the clothes we washed over the weekend  and straightened up more in the What-Not Room. I can actually use the table now. I have a new winter wreath in mind so I needed the space to lay things out. After that I have some quilt pieces that have languished for some time. I want to get it started again.

Reading list:

    Ugo Bardi has a few things to say about "green bashing." I think that people can be relied upon to follow business as usual until it goes off the rails. It is difficult to change an established pattern. We have been trying to shift away from plastic but it is difficult to do. Almost everything at the grocery store is in plastic containers. We have managed to eliminate most bought plastics. We also reuse what packaging is suitable. However, eventually we run out of room to store those containers. The plastic grocery bags we use to clean out our cats' boxes and line our trash cans. We push our set pattern beyond their usefulness or fail to recognize changes that make them no longer useful. Bardi is also right to observe that when things go wrong we tend to look for scape goats. No one wants to admit that they might be part of the problem.

Stray thought on the end of the COP29 talks: the delegates finally negotiated a "deal" that doesn't mandate a shift away from fossil fuels (a Saudi demand) and "commits" the developed countries to pay $300billion/year and gives them til 2035 to make good on the promise. Too little and too late. (Side note: That was what the initial summary was of only two of the major issues. More may come out later.)

Another stray thought on the end of the COP29 talks: the most vulnerable nations and developing nations wanted a guarantee of somewhere north of, I think I heard, $3trillion. The advanced countries offered only $250billion which sent the opponents into a snit. I noticed the reporters on BBC (note: the U.S. news media barely mentioned the meetings) reported that many of the so-called rich countries are having financial problems. The incoming administration is proposing a department of "government efficiency" dedicated to cutting "waste" (which isn't specified.) I read that the Canadian government is planning measures to relieve its citizens of some financial pressures. EU countries are also having various fiscal difficulties. Where the money is going to come from is a good question. "Rich" is a matter of perception and most countries aren't feeling rich right now.

I am calling it day. I am having a very hard time with my e-mail feed. It is slow and sometimes refusing to load the items.

November 21

 Good morning. We are getting a good snowfall that is picking up for now. The weather forecast was a bit tentative on whether we would get any snow at all or whether the system would set up to give us some lake effect snow. Evidently it set up for the latter. We decided to do our shopping Tuesday before the precipitation would move in so we wouldn't have to go out in it. Hopefully it will all move out by tomorrow when we have an appointment.

I have been ignoring most of the speculative news. Most of it focuses on what they think Trump will do and how he will do it but no one will really know any of that before he is inaugurated.

Reading List:

    Bill Astore posted a repeat of an article he wrote in 2013 and updated in 2017. I remember when sporting events began with a rendition (sometimes good--often bad) of the Star Spangled Banner and half-time entertainment featured a marching band and cheerleaders. But the displays have become more elaborate and more martial especially for championship games and the "Super Bowl". The change always made me somewhat uncomfortable as have the frequent expression of "Thank you for your service" both of which, thankfully, has become less frequent. I considered it a very cheap way of "appreciating" the military and its members that required very little of us. Certainly it didn't mean we had to ensure the veterans got the medical care for injuries then needed or assistance with housing and food when that was required. Nor were we encouraged to question where our service people were deployed or for what purpose. "Bread and Circuses" might be very apt.

    A second post from Bill Astore repeating an article he published in 2022 makes an interesting point especially considering Trumps plan to appoint Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. But a thought occurred to me as I read both of these articles: maybe this explains the misogynistic attitudes that have ramped up with Trumps rise. Hegseth has proudly proclaimed that women don't belong in combat. The news has recounted recent nasty episodes of men at rallies and on campuses yelling at women "Your body, MY choice" or "go back to the kitchen."

John Michael Greer has an explanation for why Harris lost and Trump won. Most of the other dissections begin and end with what each of the campaigns and the candidates did or said. It rarely and superficially mentions the voters as anything beyond an amorphous non thinking blob. I will make only two observations here: 1) Greer is absolutely correct to say that the Democrat message basically followed the dominant cultural narrative and demonized anyone who dared to say otherwise, and 2) A lot of disparate groups joined to make Trump's victory a reality either directly by voting for him or passively by staying home. However, the Republicans can't rely on those groups to stay together for whatever Trump plans or for the 2028. 

I noticed yesterday that Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution for a cease fire in Sudan. Today I saw a headline that the U.S. vetoed a resolution for a cease fire in Gaza. I don't really give a good god damn why these governments vote against cease fires; it just galls me that they do  what they have always done almost as a reflex.

Pet Pieve: We have found that a lot of the appliances we have are becoming real annoyances, aggravations, and frustrating time sucks. The latest such involves Mom's cell phone. Because she signed up for a Medicare Advantage program the phone has rang 20-30 times a day. Those fall into three groups: calls from a phone farm which drums up business for the insurance companies who provide the Part 3 programs, shills for insurance companies selling burial policies, another class of shills claiming that "the state" has a program which will give us money for expenses like food, utilities, or rent. All of these have the same patter: Hello! My name is "X". How are you today. Most of the time they are men speaking with an Indian accent but all too often I suspect they are really AI bots mimicking a friendly person. Today I told one of the perky girl callers that I was fine but I suspected she was a bot and she went into the spiel as if I hadn't spoken at all. I totally resent these calls. Those companies and people are getting paid for their time: I'm not. We have recently had another phase to this pattern: total silence--not even background noise--perhaps punctuated by a single beep after which someone may or may not talk. I have begun blocking the numbers. All of our family members and those we have business with are in the contact list. I think Dante's hell should have another level for the telemarketers.

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.