December 28

Rainy, very rainy, this morning and warm for the season--or what used to be the season. But any puddles left tomorrow morning will be ice. The high today should hit the lower 50s and fall to the teens overnight. The next week is supposed to be in the 20s for the most part. We haven't any errands scheduled so, barring the unforeseen, we won't be going out in it. I do have to go out and get the car running to make sure the batteries are still alive. If we didn't have doctors' appointment we could easily do without a car.

Bill Astore has linked to a spoof video of an Italian woman claiming a British man's house in Bath where Romans had a commanding presence about 2000 years ago. Since she is Italian, a descendent of ancient Romans, she figures she can evict the guy and claim the property. As Astore notes it is, and probably was intended to be, a good analogy for the Jewish presence in what used to be Palestine. About the time the Romans occupied Bath they were expelling Jews from Judea.

This is one reason why I don't expect 2026 to be better and fear it might be worse than 2025.

Found this by way of LAST WEEK IN COLLAPSE and even though it specifically deals with Canada and how dis/misinformation affected how Canadians responded to government information about drought and wildfires many of the observations apply on this side of the border as well. How people respond to information depends on several factors but especially how people in their social circle receive the information, how it accords with their own perceptions, and how reliable the "experts" are viewed. But I had another thought as I read this: neither the experts nor a government can really force people to respond in any given way. Some people die in every hurricane because they don't believe it will hit, or that it will be as severe as predicted, or believe that because they survived previous storms they will survive the next one. The economists and the government can say what they like about how good the economy but if people don't see it in their lives the experts and government lackeys can piss into the wind.

The GUARDIAN posted this article (also found via LAST WEEK IN COLLAPSE) concerning the Trump administration defunding of a long term research program studying soil fungi. The article details the long term possible benefits from the research it doesn't say anything about why the program has been defunded. I can make a guess. The fossil fuel industry produces the fertilizers applied in very large quantities to crops AND those fertilizers have to be applied every year. That creates a cycle of profits they want to keep. Also, agribusiness runs on large scale and it is far easier to apply a chemical than to learn how to farm without the chemicals. Individual and independent farmers also have been lured away from sustainable techniques because applying the chemicals seemed easier and produced, they thought, more reliable results. What people don't value they see no reason to study or understand.

And what makes anyone think "reality" will in any way affect what Trump does or wants. CNBC posted this article on Trump's proposal to build new battleships and declares that it will run into a major problem: reality.

December 27

 Cloudy and cool this morning. The weather people say we should have rain later. Right now we are watching Premier League soccer (or football  if you are from or are on that side of the Atlantic). We have stayed away from the so-called news pretty much. We did see that the FBI has pulled another god-awful humongous number of "Epstein documents" from somewhere or other. So the Bureau has another reason to continue dragging their heels on the release. Nobody is very happy--not Democrats, not the administration, not MAGA, not the Epstein victims.

I will be glad to see the end of this year but, thinking about it, I have been glad to see the end of each year since COVID hit. Perhaps even before. I don't really expect 2026 to be better and just hope it won't be worse. If Mom and I manage to get through the year without serious medical problems I think it would be a winning year. Mom's fall, surgery and extended hospitalization made it an exhausting time for both of us. Things seem to be settling down now.

First item on my reading list today was this by Charles Hugh Smith. It reflects some of what I have been thinking for sometime. The institutions (government at all levels, corporations, and others) can no longer be relied upon to serve ordinary citizens' needs and the only help people will get will be their own resourcefulness and their communities.

Everyone by now has seen some of the ridiculous redactions in the Epstein documents the FBI has released. The only reason to release a hundred page document completely blacked out is to give those demanding the release and the politicians who passed the law by large enough margins to force Trump to sign it a BIG MIDDLE FINGER. But that may be circling around to bite them in their collective ass as people have found ways to un-redact some of the docs and are posting the results as Rachel Biticofer tells us here. Mainstream media has picked up on the story but are cautioning readers that the reversed redactions may be manipulated or faked.

CROOKS&LIARS asks a good question in the subtitle of this piece: "Is there anything left they haven't F*&*&ed up." It looks like nursing homes are in the crosshairs as the administration rescinds the rule the Biden administration put out that requires a REGISTERED NURSE at nursing homes 24/7 because of course--Biden. The article details many ways the Trump action will hurt the resident and the already overworked employees of nursing homes. 

December 24

 Good morning and Happy Christmas Eve. I have decided to make this a lazy day--as little housework as possible and no news. We found that one of the channels we can access has a Harry Potter marathon so that is what is on the noise box. I managed to get a couple of hexagons crocheted and some research on my family tree. I have untangled a couple of questions I had and found several more. Pretty soon I will have to fix supper which will amount to putting a couple of things in the microwave. I will leave the real cooking for tomorrow.

Stray thought: it is interesting that Trump wants new battle ships in a new class named after himself. Problems abound. First, he promises that these will be the largest war ships on the seas and most expensive at several billion dollars each. But the plans unveiled show they wouldn't even be as big as. the WWII battleships. Second, the battleships were made obsolete by the introduction of the aircraft carrier during WWII. What a humongous waste of money to simply stroke a little man with a monstrous ego. CROOKS&LIARS has a bit on the proposal.

I was amused that the new chief editor at CBS, Bari Weiss, scrapped the 60 MINUTES story about the treatment of prisoners Trump's government sent to CECOT prison in El Salvador claiming that needed some tweaking because "critical voices" were absent. Those voices were administration appointees who didn't respond for requests for comment. What I found amusing is that the Canadian affiliate linked to CBS ran the piece as scheduled and it is now all over the internet. She tried to censor 60 MINUTES and failed. There is a lot I might not like about the internet but this isn't something I will complain about. I detest censorship on every level.

David Kaiser has a good appraisal of the past year and Trump generally. I have often thought Trump was more interested in PLAYING a President than BEING a president. He isn't a successful in that role than pretending to be a successful businessman.

December 22

 Good morning on a cloudy day with three days to Christmas. Since I started this the sun has decided to come out a may be burning off the clouds. 

We don't have any special plans. Once upon a time only about 15 years ago we would have spend Christmas Eve with either my sister or brother and their families and Christmas Day with which ever we didn't visit the day before. But Sister found the preps too exhausting to continue the big celebration. And non of her kids wanted to take over. Also Brother's celebration was overseen by his wife. Sister-in-law died a few years ago. Everybody on that side of the family has scattered to other places (except for his daughter who died a couple of years ago).

For Mom and me holidays have lost much of their meaning though they are still on the calendar and some people get holidays on them. When I was a child Easter, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas were eagerly awaited. And garnered a good bit of news stories in the run up. But now Thanksgiving has been almost subsumed by Christmas the season of which now seems to start on Labor Day. We stopped giving out candy several years ago because children stopped trick-or-treating here and we didn't need to keep the chocolate (which is what we gave out because we would treat ourselves with the leftover candy) on hand. I think civic and commercial groups have organized safer options.

Holidays seem to have lost their attraction and I don't think it is entirely that we have become grumpy old ladies. We have but other factors have come in: commercialization (we hate being sold to), changes in family circumstances, and the difficulty of traveling to gatherings. We don't have the room to host ourselves.

On to reading:

Unfortunately, this article on the REAL purposes of the ICE raids to closely follows my dark and suspicious mind. I have thought that Trump is setting up an internal army which will do what he wants even if the real military balks. We keep getting closer to a police state.

Just saw an interesting headline that isn't really surprising: "1 in 10 Americans want a larger defense budget; 8 in 10 Senators passed one." It isn't surprising because I can't remember a defense appropriation that hasn't added substantial amounts to the funds granted. Also, remember who is funding political campaigns.  Politicians like to tout how many "small dollar donors" they have. It is a nice track on how their campaigns might do at the polls. However the real money is in the corporate and wealthy donors who give to the PACs and whose giving is unlimited thanks to the Supreme Court.

Stray thought: I wonder how many of our "warriors" who are getting the "bonus" payments (of $1776 to celebrate the country's birthday) sporting Trump's signature will be grateful if it reduces their housing stipend since that is where Trump grabbed the money from--not from the tariffs as he claimed.

Stray thought: do you all remember the various "stolen glory" scandals of the past two and a half decades? Various politicians were challenged for embellishing their military records or even for claiming military service when they had not served. Some of the charges were true but others were even not proven or not true at all. We have another case of stolen glory on an incredibly grander scale: Trump's slapping his name on every surface he can like the Kennedy Center. And his desecration of the White House to put up the Trump Ballroom. I could go on buy don't have to. I wonder why he doesn't pull a page out of Kim Jong Un's playbook and order every American to adopt Trump as their surname. Kim simply ordered all women whose given name was the same as his daughter's to change them.

Robert Reich has a great piece this morning on aging. It had us laughing.

December 19

 Good morning. Well actually "good early afternoon."  Looking outside it is hard to believer we are almost at Christmas. Very little snow is left of what fell several days ago. It just doesn't feel like the end of December or nearly so. Talking to my brother a couple of days ago I told him that I brought out my snow boots but had only used the once when I shoveled a path from the patio door to the gate and around the trash tote so I could get it out to the street for pickup. That was the first time in three years. I also used the sidewalk deicer. I haven't had to restock that item for the last two years. If things continue I won't use all of it for another year.

It has been a morning for a number of small jobs: sifting the cat box and shaking out the rugs so I could sweep up the litter in the area. Finally, folded up clothes I had washed last weekend. I kept forgetting to take them out of the dryer. Out of sight, out of mind. Got the dishes washed. We don't have a dishwasher because we don't use enough dishes and such to use one effectively.

I noticed a yesterday, I think, that the Trump administration has decided to erase the National Center for Atmospheric Research on the grounds that it is a major source of "Climate alarmism" or "climate anxiety." I guess they are following the wisdom of Lazarus Long (character created by Robert Heinlein): In a government of the people, by the people and for the people--don't tell the people. Bill McKibben compares it to closing the fire station so no one will suffer from "fire alarmism." 

Ramona Grigg at CONSTANT COMMONER has a longish piece about growing older. She says a lot that strikes a chord or two. I am a decade and a couple of years younger but the feelings that sometimes my body just doesn't want to do what I want it to do are the same. I am not on any chemo, thankfully, but my sleep habits have changed. Sometime I snuggle down to sleep having spent the hour before yawning repeatedly and find I can't fall asleep. Or I wake up after four hours having to pee and can't go back to sleep. And then spend the next four hours napping before the cats insist on being fed. I can't vacuum the carpet in the living room and dining area without stopping three times to rest and am listless for the rest of the day. Some days I wonder where my "get up and go" went. 

December 18

Cloudy and rainy today but fairly warm. Should reach the low 50s. We also have some wind rattling the trees. I spent the morning doing a couple of lessons on Duolingo and working on my Ancestry family tree and finding what all their programing will do. Just playing around I found an aunt's obituary on Facebook. That was a surprise.

The news is pretty much what it has been for days. Whether it is healthcare, or the latest school shooting, the shooting in Australia, Trump's push against Venezuela, the Ukraine/Russia mess, the Gaza catastrophe. The talking heads keep talking but the treadmill keeps on running. 

Stray though as some talking head mentions the attempt to get support for a "one time" payment to individuals so they can buy their own health insurance. I said in an earlier post that they are asking people who don't have the money for health insurance without the subsidies to somehow find the money for a "health savings account." But this morning I my thoughts went into a slightly different but parallel line. Once upon a time not so very long ago my dad had a pension and health insurance through the Teamsters which paid out until he died. My stepfather and brother worked in the steel mills and had pension and health insurance through union negotiated plans. Those paid out for stepdad died. My brother is now, and has been for a bit more than a decade, receiving his pension. However, the health care plan has become somewhat unreliable as the company got out of providing direct care through a company run clinic. The union now runs both the pension and health plan but it decided to go with an insurance company which has such a bad reputation for slow, shorted, and contested payments that many medical hospitals and doctors' groups won't accept it. But that is only part of my musings. I am also remembering a process that gained steam in the 1980s where many companies stopped agreeing to provide pensions themselves and pushed employees into IRAs. They argued that such plans would increase because in addition to contributions from the employee and the company the funds would be invested and earn interest. However, many of those funds took severe hits during various downturns and didn't fully recover what was lost. The companies got out from under growing costs as employees got older. However, the costs continued to grow and someone else, usually the employees themselves, had to cover them.

Another stray thought: several commentators have noted that one of the probable consequences of the expected explosion of insurance costs as ACA subsidies go away a lot of people will have to cancel their plans which will force the insurance companies to raise their premiums which will put pressure on their remaining customers. That is a cycle which can't go on very long before the companies have to get out of the market or go bust. See what has happened with homeowners insurance in the wake of all too frequent disasters. Corbin Trent at AMERICA'S UNDOING says much the same thing.

CROOKS&LIARS posted a very telling cartoon on where we are now. I have wondered how long before our government starts to demand all of us carry internal passports and check in with the local police where ever we go. I read about things like that--in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Yet another stray thought: the Trump administration has done a very good job of convincing some of us that their "information" and especially with health information. For most of my life vaccines have proven effective. I am on the cusp. I was born six years before the first polio vaccines were released. I didn't get my first polio shot until I went to boot camp at age 19. Actually, I think that was when I got all of the then available vaccines and I didn't have a choice. But my brother visited yesterday and he said he thought his primary doctor was rather disgusted with him. When the doctor asked if he had received a flu shot, the RSV vaccine, and the latest COVID jab Brother told him "No." Whereupon Brother was reminded that "at your age" getting any of those bugs might mean hospitalization and even death. As the man left Brother reminded him that at his age (a couple of years younger than me) any number of things might kill him. I haven't had those shots either. But I look at it from a different standpoint. I don't often go out of the house and don't encounter crowds so the likelihood of being infected is low. I might get unlucky but who knows. As a couple of elderly characters say, in a novel I like, say when a younger person asks how they are reply "At my age one is either well or dead." So far, I am well. If things were different (I had to go out or a family member I saw came down with something, or there was a particularly virulent variant) I might make a different decision.

December 9. 11, 12

 Started sunny this morning but the clouds are moving in. The weather people predict rain for later. But tomorrow will likely produce snow. It looks like we are going to have a slushy time ahead. I shoveled the short path from the back door to the gate so I could get the trash out tomorrow for pickup. And I scattered some deicer on the ice which formed under the snow. The area is pretty well clear right now. But the next ten days look to be a mess with alternating snow, ice, rain. Thankfully we don't have to go out.

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

I'm a bit late getting started on my reading today. It's already past noon on a cloudy day that is a bit too warm to snow--yet. Most of the snow we had on the ground has melted though the piles from the plowing still persist. I got sucked into the Ancestry site and in consolidating my notes on a separate document on my computer. I have filled in a number of holes in the tree by checking other sources as well. However I am ready to check out what might be interesting that has come in by way of my e-mail.

I have seen a number of cites which try to tell us what "lessons" we should learn from the Ukraine/Russia situation. Most of those authors come from the side which say Ukraine has already lost. It is a bit too early to say who has won and who has lost. For now Europe is trying to support Ukraine and Russia is still pecking away at the eastern territory of Ukraine. Trump's efforts are text book examples of futility. He is like the donkey who starves to death because he is between two equally distant piles of hay. He can't get any where with either side because Putin wants Ukrainian capitulation and Ukraine won't give up its territory. But none of the speculators on what will happen after the conflict ends don't recognize the possibility that Russia might "win" but collapse again from the cost of the war. This armed forces have been shown to be far less formidable than originally thought. He has tapped all of the "expendable" and easily conscripted populations in Russia and tried to bring in mercenaries from North Korea and Africa. His manufacturing base isn't able to keep up with demand and he has had to call on China, N. Korea, Iran and other allies to help out. All that doesn't mean Russia can't win but rather that winning might be way too expensive especially since, even if he gets everything he wants, it won't help Russia's economy all that much.

Well, Trump has proposed a $12Billion bailout for American farmers. I heard that story right after I heard that economists estimate the loses they suffered with the tariff SNAFU amounts to between $36 and $48 Billion so it won't cover more than a third of THIS YEAR'S losses. No one has even thought about nest year.

Another story that is percolating through the news--bound up in the "affordability" debate--is another Trump suggestion: health savings accounts. Trump and his acolytes suggest the sort of plan would ease the problem which is looming as the expiration of the ACA subsidies grows closer. So people are supposed to find the money for the savings account while losing the subsidy and that somehow they will be able to cover costs for health care out of those savings. I wonder what they are smoking. I have heard of many people who couldn't afford their medicine or medical treatments without the ACA so thinking they can afford all that while siphoning off money for savings accounts is an exercise in, to put it gently, wishful thinking.

12*********************************************

I got tired yesterday before hitting the publish button. I spent a good bit of time looking at genealogical records and a bit more in Spanish lessons. That was before reading the e-mail feed and commenting on odd things. Let's see what I find today.

Well, first up is this piece by Bill Astore. I have thought for some time Trump should have labeled his "movement" MAWA (Make America White Again) instead of MAGA. That would be more reflective of his administration's efforts to erase any part of American history that isn't White, Male, and Northern European. Like Astore I am an All-American Mutt--Scots, French, English, Welsh, Dutch, Irish, and a dollop of Native American. So far in my newly started genealogical study of our family I have traced some ancestors back to Ireland and England. Haven't found the others--yet. I find Trump's vicious chauvinism more than irritating and the signs of a very little soul.

Stray thought: the Trump incompetents have failed to get a grand jury to indict Letitia James for THE THIRD TIME. I have often heard in this Age of Trump that the Justice Department can successfully indict a ham sandwich but that assumes they have competent legally appointed prosecutors, have well investigated facts, and reasonable legal arguments. It says something abysmally pathetic about the whole situation.

December 8

Sunny but very cold this morning. I haven't seen much on the e-mail and blog feed so far. But I spent more time this morning getting back to Spanish lessons on Duolingo and time on Ancestry. My youngest brother started his efforts a while ago and then Mom wondered what happened to her father who left when she was very young. So far I have got our family traced out to six generations. It will be more difficult from there but we'll see what I can find. For a bit later I have three new books of cross-stitch patterns and a Herrschner catalog to look through. But for now I am clearing my e-mail.

Stray thought: we used to say that you know you're getting old when the music you loved when young is now Muzak you hear in the background while shopping. This morning I was amused reading a bit which talked about seeing the candy colored Macs from 20+ years ago and how "aging millennials" are reflecting on their past which included said computers. I had one of those myself but they don't appear in my reflections. I am an aging Boomer and my memory goes much farther back. I reflect on using paper and pencil, using the library card catalog, and browsing the physical bookstore.

Pawel Moscicki has a longish post about the "Class Warfare (On the Top)". Our class war isn't so much a matter of the privileged against those lower on the economic pyramid  but of the factions of the upper-upper fighting over which cabal controls the distribution of the spoils. The ripples of that struggle of course affects those lower down. However, what Moscicki says reminds me of a segment on this one of the news/commentary shows which went through examples of how the Trump relations and allies "repo-babies" are feasting at the government trough. It tells you where some of the money they "saved" by taking that DOGE chainsaw to the government agencies.

I noted yesterday that the end of an era sneak up on you in small things but this article by Richard Haas shows that such a change might feel like a sharp slap across your face.

 

December 7

 Snowy good morning to all. We got another couple of inches overnight and earlier this morning. The forecasters predict a slight warm up (very slight) in the middle of the week. Hopefully some of this mess will melt. I am taking things easy today. Friday was especially exhausting. I struggled with two different sites trying to order some particular embroidery threads and couldn't make either work. After a good deal of yelling and swearing I decided to simply go to the local Michaels, whose on-line site had been particularly frustrating, and purchase the threads there. To do that I had to clear the car of about 8 inches of packed snow. It took me four trips out to do that and left me a bit light headed. I also had to take out my winter boots for the first time in three years. Yesterday I woke up feeling very foggy but, thankfully, that has pretty well passed. This not-so-little old lady should NOT be clearing snow. Oh well I have enough thread to begin work on my last table cloth--a cross-stitch piece.

I didn't really read much yesterday but today I found this by Bill Astore which sums up the entire Trump administration and Trump himself especially. He says what I thought but more gracefully. Given Trump's stamping his name on what used to be the United States Institute For Peace, after essentially eliminating it in all but name. I wonder if anything at all in this country will be stamped with his name.

Corbin Trent at AMERICA'S UNDOING posted a longish article "The System Has No Reverse." I agree with most of it especially when he writes that Trump is only half right when he says Trump's charge that "affordability" is a Democrat hoax. Neither party has or, I would say, ever had a real plan to manage the economy for working people. They do a bang-up job for the ultra wealthy but not for the lower two-thirds of the economic pyramid. But the hoax it that they CAN do anything about it except muck it up. If they change one aspect they may set up a wanted change only to find that secondary, tertiary, and other down stream aspects unfavorably.

Stray thought: sometimes you can see that an era has changed in a small detail. This morning I realized 1) it is December 7 and 2) no news shows covered any commemorative observances of Pearl Harbor. Last summer several of the reporters wondered how many more years the "HONOR FLIGHTS" taking veterans to commemorations of D-Day. I speculated that they wouldn't continue much longer as the Veterans are mostly in their late 90s.

December 4

 Good morning. It is still cold with flurries every now and then but not amounting to much more snow. I put several hexagons into the shawl before I switched to finishing the edge on the little blanket of pin loom squares and started weaving in the ends. There a lot of them. Nowadays I get them taken care of as I am working the piece. Then I decided it was time to vacuum the traffic areas of the downstairs. I don't bother with the upstairs as neither of us go up there much since mom's accident and surgery. I just published the post covering the last couple of days because I shut down the computer before I got back to post it.

Gail Tverberg at OUR FINITE WORLD has a new article posted today. I always look forward to her writing because she looks at today's problems as interlocking phenomena influencing each other to exacerbate their effects. Several economists have written over the last couple of years about our society's dependence on rising levels of debt, on increasing supplies of energy (and fossil fuels particularly), and increasing production of materials we depend on (rare earths etc.) Tverberg shows how those factors have been declining and that all the promises that been given to various people (and not just those who receive social security or other government promised benefits but those who expect private pensions, etc.) which are based on rising levels of debt, increasing supplies of energy and materiel. 

December 1, 2

 Welcome to December. Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. We are hibernating. We got quite a bit of snow but most of it has been removed. The pavement is still warm enough that the lowest levels are slushy. It looks like we are going to get several days of cold temps and sporadic snow. Welcome to meteorological Winter although I put up my wreath for the season a week ago. Well, since I pretty much ignored the news over the weekend I guess it is time for a jump into what's going on.

Evidently South Asia is feeling the fury of a monsoon cyclone with heavy rain from Sri Lanka to Thailand. They have had unbelievable flooding and land slides. Last I heard the death toll from the region surpassed 1000. In BBC interviews some residents of Ache province Indonesia compared the devastation to the massive tsunami that hit about a decade ago.

Stray thought: we really need to get back to using words in a way that doesn't stretch their meanings beyond recognition. The "terrorism/terrorist" merely means anyone you consider an enemy. Political opponents become minions of satan that need to be obliterated. Drug traffickers suddenly are narco-terrorists and our government feels free to murder them on the high seas. The latest obscenity Hegseth may have perpetrated when he allegedly gave an order to "kill them all" when survivors were seen at the wreckage of one of the boats our government blew up. One of the pundits wrote that the action was "a war crime at best" since the survivors were not a threat any longer (if they ever were.) Note our military hasn't been involved in an unambiguous war since WWII. Here are some depressing comments on where we seem to be going with our current government.

02***********************************************

Sunny so far today. I got a short path shoveled to get me from the patio door to the trash tote. I might get the path to the gate done. I had to find one of my winter caps and my gloves before I even try that. It is really cold and isn't likely together out of the 20s. I just put together a scalloped potato casserole and got it in the oven. My version adds frozen peas and sliced smoked sausage to the original recipe. I had to do some searching because so many that I found seem to think scalloped means au gratin. I like one dish meals though next time I will use the larger casserole dish. I also like to fix enough to freeze for future quick means. It is just too much of a pain to try to adjust the portions for two--especially when Mom's appetite is rather variable.

First up on my reading list was this piece from CROOKS&LIARS. I have a couple of thoughts on it. First, who can possibly be surprised. Trump is an equal opportunity "looter." I wonder where he is putting the money a rational president would have sent to Michigan. Second, another reason not to be surprised is Trump really doesn't like the lower economic orders of what ever race or ethnicity. They trend likely to put any money in his pocket. Third, I am getting really tired of the undertone of schadenfreude with the whole "people are in the FO phase of FAFO" meme. Just because some people didn't see what those who didn't vote for Trump doesn't mean they deserve the cruelty of this administration. That falls on all of us. Fourth, these stories simply solidifies my thought that we should become as independent of government programs. The old saying "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away" reflects a broader truth: whatever is given can be taken away by the giver at any time.

Stray thought: there has been a lot of verbiage spent on 1) whether the strikes on alleged drug-running boats is actually legal (as in justified by actual national or international law), and 2) whether the facts justify charges of war crimes or murder all ignores a fact which might bite good many people in their posteriors: there is no statute of limitations on the most serious possibilities. And we still have elections and the results may not be favorable to those in power now supporting blatant thuggery.

Another stray thought: the shooting of the National Guard troops a few days ago has ignored something that is important though it doesn't absolve the shooter: he was trained by and worked with the CIA as part of a "death squad" in Afghanistan. He work for our government and nobody is looking at how much culpability attaches to that government which waged that pseudo war for two decades. I say "pseudo" because there was no declaration of war to authorize the military action. Well, not everyone is ignoring the background. Corbin Trent at AMERICA'S UNDOING covers it in detail.

November 25, 28

 The fog has finally lifted. We had rain overnight. The temperature is still mild, especially for the end of November but that is expected to change starting tomorrow. The last forecast I saw, yesterday, predicted possible snow over the weekend. I think the four pots I cleaned out yesterday will be the last work outside unless it gets dry enough to sweep up leaves.

A couple of days ago Treasury Secretary Bessent appeared on one of the Sunday current affairs talk shows and tried again to convince people that they aren't really experiencing inflation. He is an economist and was relying on the idea that people generally don't know that the technical definition of inflation doesn't actually refer to prices. When people talk about inflation they us the term colloquially to refer to increasing prices for everyday items. Bessent is still trying to gaslight us into thinking we don't know what is happening in our lives.

28************************************************

Sunny so far today. We didn't get any noticeable precipitation yesterday. The next front should be moving in later this afternoon which the weather people say should drop significant snow, perhaps as much as a foot. I brought the snow shovel out of the shed and put it in an accessible corner of the patio and the sidewalk deicer which is in the house by the door. I turned off the TV news early today. I can't stand listening to Trump, Vance or Hegseth. They spew so much shit that you can fertilize every farm field in the country for a century.

We watched the Chicago and the Macy's Thanksgiving Parades followed by the Weather Channel's coverage of the winter storm marching through the northern tier of the country. The two parades were quite a contrast. Chicago highlighted local culture, or cultures, and local talent. Macy was a slicker production which would have told you very little about the people inhabiting the city. Chicago's production featured performers from local ethnic organizations which keep their music, dance and other art alive. Macy's focused on popular entertainment with several hip-hop artists, one of the stars of WICKED FOR GOOD, and other nationally popular artists. On the whole I preferred the Chicago parade. 

This NBC article has some interesting aspects. The author(s) say that attitudes toward higher education changed significantly starting about 20 years ago. My own attitudes changed slowly starting ten years before that. For the so-called GREATEST GENERATION a four-year degree was worthwhile. Many of them used the G.I. Bill to fund their educations. And those funds were available for both college and trade schools. My father used his to learn to maintain semi-truck engines though he soon found he preferred to drive rather working as a mechanic. All of the professors in the classes I took were Veterans and earned at least their bachelor's degrees through the V.A. A theme that ran through the article was that the respondents thought a college degree was too expensive for what people got was because students were not taught skill that would have prepared them for the labor market. I will ask a different question: could college programs have prepared students for modern work. I would say that they couldn't and don't for all too many students. They were geared for the economy of the 1950s not the economy of the 1980s or any time since. The economy has changed drastically and rapidly and the colleges haven't been good at turning on a dime to meet new needs. One could also ask if a lot of the programs should be offered in a college at all.

Bill Astore at BRACING VIEWS provides a good piece our military spending for your post-Thanksgiving reading: GUNS AS BUTTER. Economists often talk to the general public (or their intro ECON students) in terms of "guns vs. butter." But Astore notes that for the significant part of our economy guns are butter; spending on guns (and everything associated with them) are the butter of the military and its associated industries. And that sector is soaking up so much of the budget it limits the public access to butter (health care, food, education etc.).

November 24

Good morning. It is overcast so the sun promised by the weather people over the weekend has failed to arrive. My thermometer on the fence says the temperature is just above 50F but it certainly doesn't feel like it. I just cleaned out four pots of dead plants and moved the two from the front door to the back. That was enough garden work for today. I have some more cleanup planned but it wait til tomorrow or whenever. I decided that I won't put any pots by the front door. Our landlords insist on keeping the pampas grass (I think that is what the crap is) and I am tired of trying to keep it from falling into my flowers. The news this morning was about the same as it was on Saturday (and on Friday and on Thursday... .)

Ugo Bardi at THE SENECA EFFECT writes about "Global Dumbing: the Consequences." I don't have much faith in IQ test results. I read a bit about how they were developed and Bardi is entirely correct in saying that they were developed for Western peoples. I would go farther: they were developed by White, Western European men for White Western European men and if you aren't in that group you often don't test well. I have read even more on exactly how that works. And there were very early evidence that the level of education was a better indicator of how well a person would test than the results of the test indicating how well anyone would do academically. Those tests showed an increase in "intelligence" across generations. Immigrants scored low but their children scored higher and the grandchildren scored higher yet. The children and grandchildren had higher levels of education as well.

COP30 is winding down with so little accomplished that some question whether another should be held. I heard one report which said that meeting was better attended by the fossil fuels industry than by diplomats and climate scientists.They made sure that any proposals that would affect business as usual for them was removed. The next COP will be in Turkey, if it is held at all.

Well, something did move this morning. The judge who was hearing the Comey and James motions for dismissal of the cases because Halligan was illegally appointed to the office of prosecutor. The motions to dismiss on the grounds of "vindictive and selective prosecution" are still alive.

Stray thought: just this morning on BBC they featured the story of a very young boy who is suffering from Hunter's Syndrome which causes progressive physical and mental deterioration leading to death in the teenage years. His family went to England for gene therapy which has been in development for a couple of decades and which appears to have been successful in arresting and even reversing the symptoms. The only sad thing in the story is that his older brother is also suffering for the same condition but is too old for the trial. But just now MSNow has a segment on Tatiana Schlossberg's new article detailing her struggles with cancer culminating in her new diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia and her doctors' futile efforts to find a treatment. The mRNA research might have yielded a cure for the same condition but not in time for her. But the funds for that research has been terminated by her cousin, RFK, Jr.

The CITIZENS UNITED decision conferring on corporations the rights to use their money to express their political opinions has unleashed a plague of money on our politics. Robert Reich details a way states might erase the effects of the decision though not the decision itself. Corporations are fictional persons formed in states according to state law. The state approves the corporation and can regulate what it can and cannot spend money on and could bar the corporation from spending in political causes. After all physical persons are barred from spending on certain things at certain times. I can't buy beer, wine, and liquor before noon on Sundays. You can't legally donate to terrorist or criminal organizations. Whether you can place a bet on line (or at all) is regulated by the state you live in. Evidently Montana is introducing an initiative to regulate corporate participation in politics. That would be an interesting situation if it passes. 

November 22

Nice sunny morning. First for several days. It didn't always rain but it sure was gloomy. We are watching the soccer games and being lazy. I have washed dishes and cleaned up most of the kitchen--have a bit more to do during half times and the post game shows.

Affordability seems to be the watchword for politics now and Trump is trying very hard to claim it was his own. Unfortunately for him not many believe him. Yves Smith posted this on NAKED CAPITALISM which gives an indication of why. She cross-posted a COMMON DREAMS piece by Stephen which does a deeper dive into food prices that goes beyond Walmart's much touted Thanksgiving family meal which keeps the price down by reducing the number of components by one quarter and substituting lower priced house brands. Hey, Trump, we call that shrinkflation.

Another step in the evolution of THE UNITED STATES OF SURVEILLANCE. I wonder how long before they drop "land of the free" from the STAR SPANGLED BANNER. 

I found this article about rising rates of malnutrition and malnutrition related diseases in the UK which triggered my curiosity. A quick Google search yielded this article at USNews. The U.S. is experiencing similar conditions and increasing food insecurity. This report from the WHO indicates that food insecurity and malnutrition have reached levels not seen since 2008-9. Back in the 1980s the original "green revolution" aimed to reduced hunger by introducing new high yield crops and better farming methods. It seemed to work--at least for a while.

Just when you think you have seen the worst the Big BeautifulUgly Bill/Act included--you find there are even more nasty inclusions. According to CROOKS&LIARS, the (Formerly) Department of Education nursing is no longer a profession and post Bachelor's students won't qualify for all of the available loans designated "professions" would have received. I found other reports which claimed that the Department considers the new designation a cost cutting measure. But I also noticed that several of the re-labeled no longer professions are female dominated. Coincidence? I don't think so.

 Cloudy this morning and cool. The forecast has changed to say we won't see the sun for at least the next seven days. My fuzzy little stubborn "alarm clocks" annoyed me into feeding them about 2am. Then they started in again an hour later. They weren't happy when I ignored them for their mid-morning feeding til 9am. They still haven't adjusted to the time change. And I am sleep deprived. Oh, well.

Robert Reich makes a good point in his latest post. The CEOs of corporations like McDonalds complain the low and middle income people aren't patronizing them and their profits are falling but they are in fact part of their own problem. They pay low wages to front line workers which forces those workers to sign up for SNAP or other benefits to make up the shortfall. The CEOs "earn" hundreds of dollars more than their average workers but have been, with their corporations, of the Republicans reduction in their taxes. So we pay for the benefits for the lowest wage workers AND we pay for their tax breaks. Their workers don't earn enough to buy the goods they push across the counter to the few low and middle income patrons who are still coming through the door. (Confession here: I haven't patronized a McDonalds in eight years. That was the first time in over a decade before that and only because Mom and I were driving to Denver and couldn't find any other eatery open at the time. The food was incredibly disappointing.)

November 17, 18

 Good sunny mid-November day. Had a couple of errands this morning. Most intended to take us over next week and avoid the holiday shopping. But needed to go to Michaels for some solid color balls of crochet thread and a new winter wreath. I decided that I am not going to make any more wreaths. That has become more of a chore than a pleasure and I can do without it.

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

Cloudy today with rain continuing, perhaps, for the next three or four. This is the time of the year when sunny conditions can be more of an irritant because the angle of the sun reflects off the table under the windows right into my eyes. That will happen again six months from now. Got the crochet thread and noticed how restricted the selections were. Almost all of it was in size 10. Luckily that matches most of the partials I have. But I found two old balls of size 30. I don't remember exactly when I got them but I guess they are more than 25 years old. I am planning on paring them with another thread for some project as yet undecided. Michaels used to have an 8 foot section of racks with threads sized from 3 through 30. Not any more. I have watched as the selections of materials for needlework has contracted. I gave up on needlepoint kits when the fashion shifted to long stitch which I hated at first sight. I remember when I began doing embroidery 60 years ago (when I was in my middle teens) I could walk into the local Ben Franklin Five and Dime (or any one of other such stores) and see full aisles of pre-stamped pieces from doilies to table cloths. And any kind of knitting and crocheting threads and yarns from lace weight to bulky. Again, no more. Mom and I have commented with sad amusement that no one sewed or did other needle crafts any more. Thankfully some do and I follow a number of crafting groups on Facebook and some of the work I see is incredible.

Major irritation over the last few days: pundits talking about Michelle Obama's comments about women in politics. She basically said that we, as a society, have a lot of growing up to do before we, again as a society, will elect a woman. A couple of the pundits tried to blame the female candidates who ran because they were "flawed." Exactly what flaws they exhibited the pundits didn't specify. Frankly that notion pisses me off. How many "flawed" male candidates have occupied the White House? UH--how about 47? And the most flawed is the current occupant who managed to be elected twice. It occurs to me that male plumbing makes up for any amount of character deficiencies in a man. And female plumbing erases any number of good qualities in a woman.

Random thought: it is interesting to see people like Marjory Taylor Green fighting with Donald Trump about what and who is MAGA. Some time ago, during Trump 1.0, some MAGA voters were claiming that MAGA wasn't Trump's creation or property. He managed to put a catchy title on MAGA and express a lot of the values of the "movement." But he wasn't inseparable from MAGA. Now some of the MAGA-verse is considering a divorce most explicitly over the Epstein scandal. The disillusionment may go deeper yet.

November 16

 Welcome to half past November. It is a slow and lazy Sunday during which I plan on doing very little beyond fixing what ever we will be eating, planning what I will do over the next week, and going through my reading list. 

On that last, on the top was this article by Timothy Snyder. I think he accurately explains what's going on. His description of what Trump, Vance and their minions see inside the grift bubble aligns pretty well with their attitudes and actions. Snyder's last tow paragraphs are important. The grifters assume that there will always be another grift and that they can turn any crisis to their profit. That works until it doesn't. And there might be crises they can't manage. As a couple of economics writers have written repeatedly over the last years bubbles ALWAYS burst. And as other economics writers have said for some time nothing GROWS FOREVER. There are limits.

Peter published this piece that examines the health insurance history with the decline in adult male height as a proxy for affluence and health. I am still mulling this over. In a sense it parallels the statistics which show that though our health care costs, including insurance, are the highest in the world we are not the healthiest or the longest lived.

I saw a headline on this event but did a search on line to find more information from a more familiar source. I have read about "Gen Z" protests in several countries lately. Young people worldwide are upset about corruption, limited opportunities and poverty. Governments worldwide respond similarly by blaming political opponents and outside agitators.

Found this by way of THIS WEEK IN COLLAPSE. Over the last several months I have seen sporadic accounts of a worsening water situation in northern Iran due to an extreme drought. The article reports that the National government is thinking of ordering restriction on the hours of water service and, perhaps, evacuating cities, some of Iran's largest, due to the emergency.

November 12

 Good morning, all. We have sun and chilly, not cold, temps. A lot of the snow that fell has melted and should be mostly gone by the weekend. I don't know if I will make it, but I want to stay awake to see if the aurora will be visible here. We are in the zone which should give us a good show. A friend in Iowa, located just north of I-80, had some spectacular pictures. I put some of the hexagons into the shawl I am constructing. It is looking good so far. I just put in my grocery order through Instacart also and had a lot on the list because I let a lot of items go down. But I have decided that I am going to build my pantry up again. I expect that the political and economic disruptions will continue and I want a cushion against whatever might happen.

Well, the House is back in session and getting ready to swear in the Arizona representative Johnson has refused over the last two months. And they are considering the Senate CR to re-open the government. Before we celebrate we need to remember that it lasts only til the end of January. The end of the ACA subsidies take effect on January 1 and I think the Senators will vote on a bill to continue them was entirely empty. By the time the CR expires the full effect of the insurance increases will have hit.

I guess the housing sector of the economy is really hurting because the FHFA director Pulte took a suggestion to the White House for a "50 year mortgage." I have been laughing ever since. We already have 30 year mortgages available but a lot of people can't qualify. A mortgage going over 50 years would provide lower monthly payments but, as most people should know, you won't make a dent in the principal until late in the term of the loan. We also have adjustable rate mortgages which have screwed a lot of would-be homeowners because the low payment at the start can, and often do, increase drastically at any time. I said "would-be" because until the mortgage is paid off you don't really own the property. Given the economy  not many people stay in a house long enough to pay off the 30 year mortgage. Right now the average age of first time home owners is 40 and I wonder how many would want to still have a mortgage at age 90. I hope others in Trump's orbit laughed him out of the room. Yves Smith at NAKED CAPITALISM goes into the murky depths of the consequences of a 50 year mortgage covering points I made, in greater detail, and points some drawbacks I didn't think of.

November 11

Veterans' Day--the day when some of us ceremoniously "remember" those who fought/died in our various wars while forgetting them the rest of the year. Perhaps that sounds cynical but I have met far too many veterans whose medical, economic and other needs aren't being met. My long deceased ex-husband tried for months to get an appointment with doctors at a VA hospital and died several months before the one appointment he finally had scheduled. I knew a student in an American History course I taught at a community college who had serious injuries from his service in Desert Storm that left him with severe disabilities but who had his benefits threatened because he wouldn't agree to go back into the service. I saw my niece who suffered as injuries she sustained during service got worse and the doctors belittled her because she wanted help with the severe pain. She had to go into a screaming tirade to get help in one hospital. I think I have good  reasons for a bit of cynicism--especially in the age of Trump.

Well, the Senate did indeed pass that continuing resolution and now it is up to the House to do the same. I'm not holding my breath because Speaker Johnson is not in any kind of turbo mode for getting the job done. And there is no assurance that, if they do get it past the House, Trump would sign it. At best we have three or four more days of the shutdown; at worst, God knows.

Jennifer Rubin expresses a thought that occurred to me about this whole mess: how do those Senators who gave the Senate the 60 votes to pass the mess know that as soon as they get the bill the House won't come back with rescission bills to take back what the Senate Republicans promised. That is exactly what happened with the last continuing resolution. Rescission bills can be passed with a simple majority. We might get the worst parts of the bill with none of the good.

Yves Smith at NAKED CAPITALISM posted this article, with her introductory remarks, about how the big-box "super-centers" encourage overconsumption and waste. Nothing about the study surprises me. The whole system is designed to encourage you to buy more than you intended. We used to shop at the local Target and Walmart super-centers but haven't done so regularly for the last fifteen years. For several years we went in for specific items and couldn't find what we wanted or found crappy quality in what we did find. We had already shifted to using a list and rarely deviated from it--only for items we happened to see and had been discussing for some time offered at a good price. Impulse has diminished as we have gotten older. We did shop at a different chain's "super-center" but even there our impulse shopping has fallen as we have gotten older. Since Mom's accident last spring and her long recovery we have gone to using InstaCart and stuck, mostly, to a list. I found Yves' comments to introduce the article struck chords of memory. What was once a convenience has over the last twenty has become, on several considerations, less of a convenience. 

I also found this article posted with NAKED CAPITALISM. Canada has lost its measles free status and the U.S. is expected to follow if the current outbreak can't be stopped before January. Canada's outbreak has been going since this time last year. And I also saw a headline that China is having a rough flue season with co-infections with H3N2, H2N1, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) and rhinovirus.

I guess the numbers are in and they aren't good. The last three years, including this year, are the hottest in the last 176 years and it will be pretty much impossible to maintain an average global temperature of 1.5C over pre-industrial levels.

Stray thought: Schumer has been criticized brutally for everything from not whipping the vote against the continuing resolution to his age. The CR is basically, on the surface, a win for the Republicans but may turn out to be a loss. And the aftermath might be an even greater loss for the Democrats if the Republicans come back with rescission packages which takes away with what little they did get. However, it strikes me that the shutdown progressed exactly as Schumer predicted it would when he persuaded his party to vote for the continuing resolution offered earlier this year. They had no concrete plan for exiting a shutdown and Trump did exactly what Schumer predicted: picked and chose which parts of the government would close and who wouldn't get paid. Schumer was correct then and his prediction came true over the last 40+days.

In case anyone thinks my first paragraph was a bashing of veterans--it isn't. It is a critique of a society that calls people to military service in the name of duty, patriotism or whatever precious value and then shorts them on the care they need once they come back injured, unemployed, in debt. I served before combat was opened to women, my brothers served, my ex-husband served, several uncles served and a niece served. I honor those who also served. They aren't suckers or losers as a certain President claimed. 

November 10

 Well the snow has stopped--for now--though west of here the lake effect snow is still falling. We still have a Winter Weather Warning so more might be coming. We aren't going anywhere. (Update: it's about 12:30 and the new wave of snow is coming down heavily.) I put a big pot of beef/vegetable soup on the stove. It will provide at least two days supper and some left over. I used a lot of our left overs and cleaned out the fridge. I don't use a recipe because I simply dump what ever is on hand into the mix. The best thing is I won't have to cook til at least Wednesday. I have said before that cooking for two is a pain in the butt. It is far easier to cook how I have always done and freeze leftovers--which provides quick meals later.

I tried a couple of crochet patterns with my worsted weight yarns but wasn't too enthusiastic about it so I pulled the stitches out and rewound the balls. I am in that mood where nothing catches fire with the needlework. That is good for finishing projects but lousy for starting something new.

Well, the Senate is working on a plan which might (MIGHT) end the shutdown. The Speaker of the House is optimistic enough to call the Republicans back for a possible vote. The Democrats have been in D.C. for the entire shutdown. The debate on the news/commentary shows this morning revolves around exactly what the gridlock achieved. The bill being drafted is supposed to fund SNAP for the next year, but no movement on the increase in ACA premiums. Unfortunately, the measure would only last until the end of January. My evaluation: 1) both sides really need to review the meaning of the term "Pyrrhic victory." I think, so far, this has been a lose-lose or zero-sum game. Neither side won much for all the damage done and both may have lost more than they realize; 2) we had best buckle up for a repeat performance early next year.

Overnight the Supreme Court refused to agree to revisit Obergefell decision which upheld same sex marriage. They didn't explain why they denied the appeal which brought the issue to the Court again. I am glad. I know same sex couples, including a relative, who married as soon after the decision as they could. After a decade of legal marriage, disallowing it now would be an absolute and total mess.

I am not going to comment on Trump's latest group of pardons. I am trying to curtail my tendency to swear a blue streak at such stories.

November 9

 Snowy morning today. We are getting our first "frost" at the same time we might get as much as a foot of snow. That is the combination of a system that came in overnight and lake effect snow off Lake Michigan. I had thought about getting out an cleaning out a couple more pots and sweeping up but the thought went away and I did other things.

I crocheted a few more hexagons this morning while watching Premier League soccer. When the last game is over I will switch over to a couple of rugby games. I did play a little bit on the computer but I really want to break that habit because it eats up too much time I could be using differently. Right now I am in the process of cleaning out my e-mail.

The first thing I saw on line this morning brought out a string of swear words twice. Once I saw the lead and second when I couldn't follow because of a damned pay wall. I hate pay walls. The teaser said that the Trump administration is demanding that states which put programs in place to fund SNAP benefits in the absence of the Feds immediately dismantle those programs or face the loss of funding. Well, what can you expect when agents of this government roughs up children, puts them in zip ties, and says "F*** the kids?" Right now they are saying "F*** all the little people who can't pay to play with us." (Update: found this on Huffington Post.)

On the early morning new: The administration will end the program which allows taxpayers to file directly with IRS themselves. The main parties pushing for the action: the for profit tax preparers. Profits above people--again.

And here is something else which pegged my shit-o-meter: a Safeway store in San Francisco changed their entrances and exits so that if a customer enters but tries to leave without buying something they won't be able to get out. For the last couple of years other Safeway stores have installed alarm systems at the self-checkout counters which require customers to produce their recipes for the readers. Some time ago Chicago went through a period when a couple of bank robbers held up the same banks for small amounts of money--about enough to cover basic living expenses. I said then that the situation indicated that the economy wasn't as rosy as our politicians told us. When grocery stores have to go to such extremes to "prevent theft" I think it is another such indication.

Three Chinese astronauts return to earth was delayed three days because their return vehicle has been hit by space debris. The Chinese Manned Space Agency is looking at the vehicle to determine the extend of the damage. But, given how much trash we have left in space and the increasing number of satellites going into orbit, collisions are becoming more probable.

November 5

Very bright sunny morning today. I think we have already reached the high temp for the day--just above 60. They expect the low tonight to be just about freezing. Right now we have strong winds. I erased what I had typed because it was so grumpy. I think I still wasn't awake and my second cup of coffee hadn't really kicked in. I got some crochet work done today on a new project. As you should know by now I don't now and never have followed the "finish a project before beginning another." I have followed some bloggers who rigorously do that. But I am more like one who has about five different quilts in progress and over the year has already finished a similar number. Right now I have to embroidery pieces on hoops. I   just finished one blanket using worsted weight yarn and another is now in the play-it-until-you-like-it phase. Two light baby weight yarn projects are either works-in-progress or just at the weave-in-loose-ends stage. And two thread weight pieces on hooks. And yes I have enough hoops and hooks to do all those and more. You can never have enough of either.

The various off year elections were interesting. I don't know if they mean much for the next three years or for however long our national dementia lasts. It is obvious that a lot of people are not happy with Trump and how the economy is going. Most of the administration is in the "believe me not your lying eyes" or the fake price tags in the local grocery store. Mamdani, Sherril, Spanberger hit their opponents repeatedly on "affordability" issues when they weren't hitting Trump. It also looks like a significant number of voters are not happy with repeated efforts to rig future elections by mid-decade redistricting. Thank you, Supreme Court, for gutting the Voting Rights Act and allowing political gerrymandering. 

November 3, 4

 Welcome to November. Hope you had a nice Halloween. We were quiet. Several years ago people around here pretty much stopped the neighborhood trick-or-treating so we also stopped getting candy to give out. We simply didn't need to have all that candy around here for us to eat. I think there are several local "block party" celebrations for the kids but, not having kids, I never checked.

Over the weekend I concentrated on needlework and ignored most of the news and my e-mail. I finished the Tunisian stitch blanket and a cross stitch dresser scarf. Made good progress on the table cloth and the other table scarf. This morning I wound a yarn cake into balls so I can start on another blanket. I haven't really decided on what stitches I'll use. I think it will be another Tunisian. Then I went into cleaning mode. I absolutely hate cleaning but several tasks are done.

04************************************************

Well, we have a sunny day and very typical of fall--very chilly mornings and cool days. I don't have much ambition today. I did a few rows of crochet--very short rows on hexagon motifs. I will fix up some cupcakes in a bit. But other house keeping can wait. Yesterday's burst of cleaning activity leaves me needing a bit of a rest. Supper today will be loaded baked potatoes.

But a lot of time will be spent watching the news. It looks like a very busy day and one which might have some inconsequence for the next few years. 

The New York City mayoral race with a former governor who was forced out of office under a cloud (Cuomo) against a perennial Republican candidate (Sliwa) and a self described "Democratic Socialist" who won the Democratic Party nomination (Mamdani). Our current "Very Stable Genius" President has announced his support for Cuomo with the nasty comment that given the choice between a "bad" Democrat and a "Communist" he would take the Democrat. Point 1: Trump (along with most Americans) don't recognize any differences between socialists and communists. And there are differences. Point 2: Democratic Socialist parties have been active in most European countries for most of my lifetime (if not before) and the democracies of those countries haven't fallen into despotism. Point 3: Trump's argument that the New York electorate simply hasn't any choice besides Cuomo is ridiculous. I would take the Democratic Socialist over the Chaos and hatefulness of MAGA any day.

Spanberger and Sherrill are trying to become governors of Virginia and New Jersey. Both are moderate Democrats.

California is voting on the measure to allow the redrawing of the electoral districts to favor Democrats by passing the independent commission tasked with that function until after the next census. The governor and fellow politicians hope to negate the Texas mid-cycle redistricting to give Trump five more Representatives in Washington. Other states, both Republican and Democratic, are considering similar moves. The last time a similar contest roiled this country was between 1820 and 1860--and that led to the Civil War. During that time the contest centered on the constitution of the Senate which was balanced between Senators from the southern slaveholding states and the northern states which had eliminated slavery. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed Missouri and Maine into the Union in tandem which maintained the balance of power for the next 34 years and prohibited slavery in the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory. The Kansas Nebraska Act (1854) eliminated the Missouri Compromised but was far less successful in tamping down the increasing violence. Today the contest is centered on the House of Representatives because of the close divisions within the electorates (national and state). My crystal ball and tarot cards aren't telling me where this power struggle (and it is a struggle between political parties) to get/keep power will end but I think we are only at the beginning of a massive realignment of this country's political establishment.

Bill Astore has a post today which comments on the death of former Vice President Dick Cheney and ties his record in politics with our various wars over the last 45 years. The news programs have frequent segments on Cheney with various assessments of his life and achievements. I once absolutely despised Cheney, largely for his role in getting the U.S. into our "forever wars," including the "War on Terror." I didn't much like his daughter, Liz Cheney--largely because of her policy stances. However, I have soften a bit. I don't think I would ever have agreed with their politics but I have to respect their moral backbone. They clearly put concerns for the country over the Republican and its current leader, Donald Trump.

Stray thought: I would love it if all the gerrymandering produces results opposite of what the Republicans want. If it produces a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate would be fantastic comeuppance.

Second stray thought: It is interesting that the Democrats simply refused to be complicit in passing the Republican budget which increases the cost of ACA premiums, bigly to use the President's phrase. So we now have the government shut down because the Senate Republicans can't pass the House passed budget by themselves. Now they are blaming the interruption in SNAP payments even though there is an emergency fund they could tap for that purpose but they won't because they are trying to use it to pressure the Democrats to cave in on the budget. I don't blame the Democrats because the Republicans, from Trump on down, are untrustworthy negotiators. They included a number of provisions select Democrat legislators wanted in the continuing resolution passed in February and then passed measures to cancel what they had promised which they were able to pass on their own on a majority vote. The shutdown isn't the Democrats fault. It is the Republicans fault because they aren't trustworthy negotiators.

Third stray thought: I do feel sorry for those who have to make painful choices because their SNAP benefits have been interrupted. However, we should all of us consider something I read lately (sorry, I don't remember where): If someone feeds you, that person can starve you.

Corbin Trent at AMERICA'S UNDOING has written a piece that hits the bull's eye. The America so many MAGA supporters want to "bring back" never existed and what we had then and what we have now doesn't work for most of us.

I first heard the term "zombie companies" during the Great Recession and it applied mainly to troubled Chinese companies who had more debt costs than income. The Chinese government carried some of those companies hoping the economic conditions would improve the situation and keep unemployment low. Closing the companies would have ment a lot of people out of work potentially increasing political and social unrest. This piece, found at Yahoo economics, indicates that we have some zombies of our own and some large companies are on the list.

Hello, all. Welcome to the last week of October. Another sunny day in a continuing cool but sunny streak of days. I think the forecasters are still predicting rain for later in the week. But the western storm system is supposed to dip south to join a wet system drenching the southeast. Oh well, just caught the latest updated forecast and the rain has been removed. It doesn't matter because I am contemplating simply taking out what is still struggling along in the pots. I still want to take out three or four more containers but haven't got up the energy to empty them.

Bill Astore writes a good piece on his BRACING VEIWS site and I can give a whole heartedly AMEN! to it. However, I don't expect any of the politicians in power now to do what politicians for the last hundred years failed to do. 

I just saw a report on the news this morning that Milei has won his re-election in Argentina. I guess Trump's $20billion "investment" has achieved the first part of his agenda. The banks that coughed up another $20billion are breathing a sigh of relief along with the hedge fund billionaires who had already invested heavily in the Argentine economy. That doesn't mean Argentina and Milei are out of the deep water--they just got a leaky life raft. The economy is still deep in the crap.

Rachel Biticofer provides a history lesson showing where we came from and where we might be going. Do we really want to go there?

We hear people say often that "those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it." Usually that is coupled with a recommendation that we are taught history. Over the last 40 years I have come to reconsider that notion. I don't think people really remember anything of the past unless they have themselves experienced it. Biticofer mentions the Franklin Roosevelt "revolution" which was a response to the Depression. Historians I have read often say that his administration saved American Capitalism from socialism. Socialism and Fascism were very strong movements during the late 1920s and the 1930s. But the memory of the Depression is fading and has been for some time. My mother is 94 and she barely remembers that time because she was born in 1931. Most of her early memories are of the 1940s. And the cultural memory is largely reduced to what is written and not what was viscerally felt. The Second World War is similarly remembered largely by what is written about it as those who actually experienced it fades from living memory. Vietnam is now 50 years in the rear view mirror. A generation has grown up since Sept 9, 2001. What is really sad is that those who want us to go back to what they think of as a halcyon era have no more real, visceral memory of that time that those of us who don't want to go back.

Ugo Bardi wrote an account of what might seem to be a remote episode (or rather episodes) of collapse in the Chincha Islands off Peru. The Chincha people disappeared when their population declined by about 99% as a result of diseases and political chaos that came with the Spanish conquest. The islands became a profitable source of guano (bird shit) for a world wide expansion of agriculture in the 1840s. The industry grew exponentially until just before 1880 when it crashed. Another growth of the industry came in the 1920s but was shorter and never reached the earlier level of production before collapsing about 1960. The Peruvian government tried to rebuild the bird population and were moderately successful but eventually populations precipitously to only 500k. Bardi provides a number of factors involved in all of the collapses but the most basic cause throughout was the overexploitation of a limited resource which couldn't be rebuilt in a timely manner--after all birds can only provide so much shit.

October 25

 We had several surrounding areas that posted their first frosts of the fall. We were near that but not quite yet. We might get rain later and it is mostly cloudy today. Nothing much on the agenda today: needlework, cooking a pot of great northern beans and ham, and (later) cutting Mom's birthday cake. I got a carrot cake and promised her I wouldn't try to put 94 candles on it. Right now we are waiting for the cornbread muffins to finish baking before eating supper.

Not many things worth commenting on but one is this post by Heather Cox Richardson. She notes that the AWOL Speaker of the House has extended their PAID vacation for at least another week while the funds to pay SNAP benefits runs out. I saw an angry quip on Facebook which said that the military and government workers should be paid during the shutdown but NOT the members of the House and Senate. I agree.

But as I read the piece I had the same thoughts I usually have reading about SNAP, ACA subsidies, Medicare and other programs Republicans love to threaten. If we had a truly just economic system people wouldn't need those benefits. That so many people rely on those benefits is a sad commentary on our Capitalist system. I remember pundits who pointed out during the Great Recession when Walmart workers were going to food banks and applying for SNAP that those workers earned so little they QUALIFIED for supports for the POOR even though they had jobs. And Walmart encouraged its workers to apply until the news got hold of the story and they quickly came out all disapproving and denying. I think they even fired a few of the workers who were interviewed. Capitalism has become a system that pays subsistence wages to the people who do the work which allows those at the top to live lavishly and the system is propped up by the society through taxes funding the subsidies that keep the workers body and soul together.

Richardson goes beyond the discussion over the ACA subsidies the Democrats are focused on and drills down into a basic philosophical difference between the two Parties and it is well worth reading all of the post.

This post from CORBIN TRENT AND AMERICA'S UNDOING had me giggling from the beginning--not because it was funny but I had to giggle or swear. I am trying to break myself of swearing so much. As a culture we have indeed convinced ourselves that cost equals value. I would add that in addition to cost we have been suckered by the notion that the more functions something has (whether you need them or they work well or not) the better. I have a flip phone and even that has more functionality than I need. Also we have been sold the fable that new is better. The latest model has more features so it must be better. About five years ago we gave up on the programable automatic coffee makers because we had to replace them about every three or four years. The plastic degraded with the heat and the tubing became clogged with mineral deposits. The first problem wasn't fixable and I could have cured the second by buying distilled water. Or buying a line cleaner to remove the sediments. But both are additional expenses on top of the cost of the machine. Now I use a pour through system and heat the water in a steel camping coffee pot on the stove. I clean the pot every week by leaving diluted white vinegar in it over night. I always keep vinegar on hand because it is so useful in cleaning generally. Often simple and cheap are better.