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.