February 9

 Some sun and some cloudy and COLD. Feels even colder considering the warm January we had. We have been ignoring the news so far this weekend. Things are just so insane it takes a bit to clear my head.

Some observations:

The arrogance of the Trump/Musk administration is beyond belief. Well they did tell us what they intended. Many of us simply couldn't believe they would actually do it. And certainly we didn't think Musk would bring on barely post pubescent boys who think it is great to have been "racist before it was cool" or who seems to think using an internet handle of "big balls" really indicates he is an alpha male or competent.

The courts have, at least momentarily, slowed their assault on our politics and finances. But even if the final decisions of the courts go against them things won't go back to where they started. Either Musk, et al., will simply play the Andrew Jackson card telling the judiciary to enforce their own decisions or they will simply tell their opponents to fix things themselves. They will have broken it but we will have to fix it.

Some things, once broken, won't be fixable. How many of the organizations, governments, or people who depend on USAID will trust it or the U.S. again? How many of the farmers who sold their crops to USAID will recover from the losses they are suffering and will suffer? And how many other things will be broken because USAID has been shattered? The U.S. has become very unreliable  on several fronts. For decades we have been told we are and  have had the appearance of being the leader on the international stage. "Leader of the free world." "Leader of the world's democracies." Not so much, I think, anymore. Trump may be a big fish but his pond has become smaller. Maybe that is why he keeps hallucinating about adding Greenland, Canada, and/or Gaza to the U.S.

One of these days I might stop being surprised by the myopia of experts. A couple of days ago I was watching a segment on CNBC where their guest opined that the U.S. economy was not likely to slide into recession. He talked about a strong job market, a strong stock market and a couple of the usual metrics solely relating to the rarified economics. He never considered how Trump/Musk mucking around with the government agencies and firing people might affect the job market. Or how breached contracts might contract the economy. Or how foreign affairs cockups might destabilize the world economy and ours.

Similarly, all those who bitch about the price of eggs don't seem to realize that bird flu is raging and producers have lost tens of millions of birds over the last year alone. And that isn't something either Republicans or Democrats can do anything about. I was somewhat amused by the reports of thieves stealing 100k eggs recently. But I remember when a warm winter caused a drop in maple syrup production and thieves hit shippers for the syrup. I am sure you can recall similar episodes over the last few years.