January 8

Well I guess it is a good morning. I am still trying to recover my equilibrium after spending about three frustrating hours between yesterday and early this morning. We got an e-mail notification yesterday that Xfinity was ending the economy package we have had for more than a decade and that gave us exactly what we wanted as of this morning and we had to choose a new plan or lose several channels we regularly watch. Damn!!!! I finally got it sorted out but the company site is the most confusing and difficult I have ever dealt with. I am not a clueless elderly woman. I earned four college degrees (two bachelor's and two master's) and other certifications. I have been using computers and the internet from the moment the desktops and dial up became available but dealing with that site had me screaming swearwords. We have to spend more to get services which are marginally better than what we had or accept much inferior services. I guess we will pay that until we decide that we get rid of it all together. 

 Interesting article on neighborhoods where the living is not easy. A very long time ago I was stationed in Washington DC. I remember a city very much like those described: a glittering core which includes all the monuments, shopping areas, government buildings, and accommodations for the rich and politically connected. But travel only a few blocks away and it looked very different, some of it every bit as run down as the areas described in the article. On one of the local military bases the family housing was called "Dogpatch USA." For those of you too young to remember Dogpatch was the home of the cartoon character Li'l Abner.

The BBC had a snippet that said Trump signed an executive order which withdraws the U.S. from 60+ international organizations. DW has a list of some of those agencies. The agencies all deal with Trump's favorite punching bags: poverty, women, children, climate. I think the America First program has gone into the America Alone phase. Soon, giving the recent developments we will be America Isolated. Isolated diplomatically, politically, militarily, and economically.

The news today is smothered in the tragedy in Minneapolis. Trump's ICE (a.k.a., Gestapo, jackbooted thugs, Tonton Macoutes) shot a middle aged white woman at an "enforcement action" as Kristi (the Gnome) Noem said in a press conference before any investigation had been done. I'll leave that to the news/commentary pundits. Instead, I offer up this longish article. A number of the writers I follow have been looking into our future as a people and asking where the f*** are we going. (decided to be a bit more polite because I have used up more than my daily allotment of profanity). A lot have been saying "That's not who we are" while others say "No, that's exactly who we are and have always been." The point Colin Trent makes is that both are correct. The first group are thinking about what has been the ideal of America as a tolerant, welcoming place where people have the freedom to build their own lives on their own terms. The second group rightly note that we have constantly deviated from that ideal from the beginning. We say the Pilgrims came for religious freedom. Well, for their freedom yes, not for anyone else's freedom. The vigorously suppressed dissenters from their ideas (Roger Williams), they hanged more Quakers than they did witches, and they massacred Indians regularly. We were no kinder to other groups who came over or were brought over at various times as seen by the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Black Codes, signs saying "no dogs, or Irish." He rightly says that the hypocrisy that pundits have taken note of reflects the gap between our ideals and our reality. Will we turn back to our ideals? Will we jettison those ideals? Will we completely turn toward the reality Steven Miller sees where might makes right and the rest have the choice of surrender or die. Who are they nominating for Voldemort?

Ugo Bardi has an interesting article looking at the careers of Napoleon and Benito Mussolini through the lens of his "Seneca Cliff" notion--human events follow a pattern of gradual build up to a peak and a rapid fall back to a baseline. An interesting observation he brings up from diaries of people close to both conquerers is that they seemed to fall into the grip of an unshakable faith in their own infallibility and going into military adventures agains sage advice. He speculates that Trump might be at the peak or perhaps at the precipice.

Stray thought: one segment on the news today featured an interview with NY Governor Hochul about the Trump administration's suspension of child care payments to state organizations using accusations of fraud. Asked about the rational she and the pundits in the discussion remind the audience of the administration's  previous assaults on programs serving poor children and their families. They are all outraged on the "war on children." I thought they were missing the real point: it is a war on women. After all if they take away the support for childhood nutrition someone has to supply the need. If they take away the support for child care someone has to supply that need. And overwhelmingly the burden falls on women. Have they seen the statistics for women leaving the labor force?