March 27

 Cloudy this morning with rain and thundershowers predicted with temperatures in the mid-50s. The weather people say we should have a stretch of this weather punctuated by a day or part of a day with some sun.

There are times when I hate some of our technology. Three or four years ago Xfinity pretty much forced us to "upgrade" to the new "hub" or pay a "ransom" each month to keep our old system. I have never been able to get the system to network our computers and our printer. With a lot of swearing, I decided to fix up an end around and connect my laptop directly to the printer since we don't use the printer as often as we once did. We can't do without the printer because two or three times a year we have to print off forms to sign and send back to whoever. Well, today is one of those times and I had to relearn how the damned thing worked. Again, with a lot of swearing, I figured it out, printed the forms, and put the little monster to bed until next time.

I am restricting my news. I am tired of exhausting my quota of swear words with the idiocy the kakistocracy elicits from me. Especially when the incompetence is combined with the greed of the oligarchy and the kleptocrats. Jan in SanFran has a post which echoes my thoughts on Trump's cabinet picks: they were picked FOR their incompetence not IN SPITE of it.

Reading this piece by Bill Astore I remember an old saying: if all you have is a hammer, all your problems look like nails.

Heather Cox Richardson wrote an article which completely dissects what people are now calling Signalgate. I have nothing to add to it.

Stray thought: Some few years ago I read Octavia Butlers THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER and I remember a scene where the main characters are planning to go to the local police and ask for information about a missing relative and family. One would think that wouldn't be a problem but it is in a world where law and law officers are capricious (and totally self-serving). The discuss how much cash and/or valuables they should carry so that they might get some information and won't be too badly beaten. I wonder is similar discussions are taking place in our institutions of higher education and in the big law firms as Trump make his demands and they capitulate. I won't find links since the news carried the stories earlier this past week. Actually, I will give you a link because I just found Jennifer Rubin's latest post at THE CONTRARIAN which lays out the situation very well. 

Another stray thought: It seems that some of the vaccine skeptic parents in Texas (maybe other places??) decided to follow the advice of the scientifically ignorant Bobby, Jr. and give their darlings Vitamin A to "prevent" measles. Doctors in the area have reported cases of children coming in with signs of Vitamin A toxicity which include, according to the NIH,  nausea, vomiting, headache, dizziness, irritability, blurred vision, and muscular incoordination. To start with and can escalate to thinning bones, liver damage, skin irritation. But of course why should they trust the NIH when they have Bobby.