September 10

 It is hazy and partly cloudy but warm enough that I changed from the flannel shirt I wore for my errand to the drugstore into a t-shirt. This is the time of year that what you wear in the morning may not suit that afternoon. But at least we don't have the 90s. We don't have rain either so tomorrow I will have to water the hibiscus plants, the large clump of chives and the Asiatic lilies. That is all I have on the patio right now.

There is so much stupidity in the oral defecations of some political pundits. I heard one yesterday which had me scratching my head in disbelief. A MAGA lawyer said that President Trump could declare an emergency over conditions that he thinks threaten the very existence of the U.S. and suspend elections. She cited the 22nd Amendment as the basis for the notion. That amendment specifically prohibits any one who has been twice elected to the presidency from serving any more terms. Also it prohibits anyone who succeeds to the presidency on the death or disability of the president and serves more than two years of the unfinished term from seeking two full terms in his/her own right. But it DOES NOT provide for any president to declare a national emergency and suspend elections. I decided to check on whether the Constitution has any such provision anywhere and found it does not. I did have to look this up because although I did read the Constitution a long time ago in my high school Civics class (required for graduation). Evidently such classes are nearly extinct in our school systems.

I have been watching the mess in France as its second prime minister in nine months and its fifth in two years. The French government is in the midst of a financial mess with the interest on its debt exceeding what they spend on education and defense together (according to BBC). For the last ten or fifteen years they have been trying to get their fiscal house in order but their usual tactics have been measures that are deeply unpopular such as raising the retirement age to cut down on pension payments, raising fuel taxes etc. All of those affect ordinary citizens while not touching the corporate or financial sectors at all. And they have the additional problem of the pressure to meet the perceived threat from Russia by increasing their defense budgets a lot. France isn't the only country that has tried to deal with budgetary problems by imposing "austerity" on their people. The Greek government almost two decades ago imposed stringed cuts because the IMF and European Central Bank insisted on that to get loans that would allow them to pay their foreign creditors. They also had to sell off national assets at bargain basement prices. The EU has tried to force similar measures on Italy. What always ticks me off is how the notion of "austerity" is always applied to the citizens and not to expenditures for business industry, and the military. Over on this side of the pond similar noises have been made and no one in any government has mentioned the corporate and industrial give-aways or to the Defense Department which hasn't passed a mandatory audit forever.

Poland has, according to reports, shot down Russian drones that invaded their airspace. A lot of pundits are clutching their pearls over the "provocation". From the video I saw this morning the damage in Poland came from the drones that were shot down. I am a curious person so I started looking at the maps of the area and wondered how Russian drones supposedly bound for Ukraine managed to stray into Poland. Well there is one direct path that would put such drones into Polish airspace. If they were launched from Kaliningrad, that little slice of detached Russian territory surrounded by Poland and Lithuania. But, I just saw a plot of the drone traffic over Ukraine and several of the paths the drones were on would take them over Polish territory. However, to say the matter isn't provocative is akin to saying that the Germans at the beginning of both world wars didn't "intend" to invade Belgium but merely took the easiest route to get at France. I always hated the term "collateral damage.

We see another bit of "collateral damage" in Israel's attack on Hamas leaders in Doha. I suppose we should not be surprised since part of the agenda for the talks was whether Hamas would accept an American proposal that would free all the hostages at once. After all, almost every other Israeli attack has come when the peace talks seemed to be gaining ground.