November 15

 Quite Chilly today and cloudy. The temperatures have been near normal for the season but it feels colder because of how warm it has been. I haven't been paying much attention to the news or the commentary because it is the same old mush. Right now the only firm facts on the political scene are 1) Joe Biden lost and will leave office on January 20 AND 2) Donald Trump won and will be taking the (sort of) oath of office on January 20. The stock markets are all over the place sometimes euphoric over the Trump victory and at other times depress over speculation about what his cabinet nominations will mean for American business.

Stray thought: about half of Americans have been skeptical of our health care system. A couple of the bloggers I follow refer to it as the "sick care system." I call myself a "medical minimalist." I see a doctor at our urgent or immediate care clinics when I feel the need to get a medical opinion. We don't have a "family physician" because we haven't found one we have been comfortable with. Mom went to one her endocrinologist recommended but the doctor seemed to pay more attention to her computer than to her patient. And after noting that there was nothing anyone could do about the shingles except treat the symptoms she prescribed a whole bunch of tests for everything else. One could tout the system as geared to finding problems while they are small but I get the feeling it is geared to ensuring a steady stream of income.

Stray Thought #2: If half of Americans were skeptics before Trump named Bobby Kennedy, Jr., to be his Secretary of Health, the other half will become skeptics because no one will be able to have any faith in medical science. Trump promised that Kennedy would "return" the department to the "gold standard" of scientific procedures but Kennedy has no experience or education in medical sciences. 

Unfortunately, some of the crazies have returned to Washington. Example: Lauren Boebert fresh from being elected in a new district after deciding that the old one wasn't likely to re-elect her. She seems to be intent on protecting us from an alien civilization under the sea.

Stray thought #3): Most of the commentators I have heard are appalled by the cast of characters Trump plans to nominate. They foresee catastrophe piled upon more catastrophes. Their prognostications may come true or they may not and I have read some other bloggers who think at least a few nominees, if confirmed, may actually (accidentally ?) do something positive. Who knows--I don't and my cats knocked over my crystal ball which was never very clear anyway.

November 8, 11

 Nice and sunny today with temps staying in the 60s. We won't get more rain til Wednesday--maybe. It is always maybe with the weather. I should be cleaning up the patio and planters but I simply don't have the energy. This year the time change has hit me harder than it has before. Between the change of the clocks and how it has upset my sleep patterns, I am just plain washed out. I hope by next week I will be back to normal.

I have managed to get some things done: finished one crochet piece and started another. I started another which is going pretty well. Actually, I started two but unraveled one because it wasn't working well. I will try that one again sometime. I finished one embroidered dresser scarf and by Monday I should be finished with the cross-stitching on the last of the quilted placemats. I will be so glad to finish them. Have I said before how much I HATE pre-quilted pieces. Thankfully, I don't have any more of them.

The post-mortem on the election continues on the Democrats side while the Republicans are crowing about how well they did. I read/skim them all with a skeptical eye. I don't see it as either an utter Democrat disaster or a sign of a Republican eternal Heaven on earth. Although Robert Reich starts his post today with the claim that it was a disaster, he writes that many are "learning" the wrong lessons from it. He goes through six such lessons which I agree are exactly wrong. The major lesson he draws is, basically, the same one James Carville proclaimed thirty years ago: it's the economy, stupid.

11**********************************************************************************

I finally finished the quilted placemats and their napkins. Stitched on them about three hours on Saturday, most of Sunday, and another two and a half hours this morning. I spent part of this morning getting the left over bobbins from several projects sorted and some skeins not yet wound put on bobbins, sorted and ready to be merged into the rest of the stock. I pulled out the table cloth I will start after my hands have rested for a couple of days.

We had guests on Saturday: my sister's son, two of his children, and his year-old grandson. So Mom has another great-great grandchild and I have a great nephew to go with the great-niece in my sister's other son's family. Little Anthony was quite a pistol. I sent them home with a small crocheted blanket for another grandchild expected early next year.

I am skimming or ignoring most of my political blogs and most of the news. So much of it is just speculation about what the new Trump administration will bring and no one really knows. I suspect even he doesn't really know. When he was elected last time a pagan blogger I read took exception to another who referred to Trump as "Loki in the White House." I can understand her objection since, as a pagan, she venerates several gods including Loki. However, trickster gods are featured in all pantheons I can think of and I would call them "features" not "bugs" in the system. They all upset the staid order and cause change--often uncomfortable change. Trump is certainly an agent of chaos and things are going to change. I would remind people who voted for him that they should have been more careful about what they wished for because they might get much more than they bargained for.

Stray thought: a lot of the commentary on the election criticize Harris for failing to provide voters with a "story" they could relate to. That is much too simplistic. Both Republicans and Democrats lost votes and it wasn't voters moving from one to the other or to a third party. Most of the missing voters simply stayed home. A significant part of the electorate rejected what the major parties offered. They didn't buy Harris' contention that the economy was really great and they didn't buy Trumps claims that the economy was catastrophic.

Another stray thought: however there is an economic story out there. Leigh at Five Acres and A Dream has raised Kinder goats for several years and has always had a brisk demand for her excess kids--until this year when the demand simply went away. She also mentions people she knows who are having to give up their pets and making other cuts to their expenses. Charles Hugh Smith at Of Two Minds notes a part of the home ownership equation that isn't much mentioned in the media. Most of the focus is on the escalating prices and difficulty of getting a mortgage but other costs are also going up: insurance (mortgage, property, flood/fire, liability), maintenance, utilities and other services.  And then there is the increased cost of transportation. Like to take a bus or train or subway--fares have been increasing. The costs of owning a car (loan payments, maintenance, insurance, parking, and fuel) have also gone up. The economic statistics may be good but those numbers really don't support the Harris story that everything is good and Trump hasn't got a magic wand that can do much about them.

November 7

 Ah, yes--Election Day plus 2. A couple of the commentators this morning noticed the data I saw yesterday about the "lost" voters. They confirmed that Trump (though winning) lost 1million voters compared to 2020 and Democrats lost about 17million. I did take exception with the notion that Trump "increased" his support in traditional Democratic demographics. It can look like increases when you simply lose fewer than the other guys. Another set of commentators noticed also that working class voters had a case for their economic angst which neither candidate really addressed. And Trumps proposal to massively increase tariffs of imports aren't really a solution. I saw one amusing post on Facebook, one of the few posters I follow, which suggested that we go out and stock up on any imported goods we normally rely on in the few weeks before Trump's inauguration and the threatened tariffs kick in. Most of the commentariat is claiming he won't follow through on any of the extreme policies he promised like mass deportations or huge tariffs. We'll see.

Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern asks "What will happen next?" He presents a very black picture of what Trump and his cronies might do. We have received two mailings from organizations dedicated to preserving Social Security and Medicare asking for donations to help them fight any attempts to cut or end them.

 

November 6

Well, I'm back. Welcome belatedly to November and to the post election. Most of the commentators I saw and read reminded everyone that the polls were all within a "margin of error" which meant that Harris and Trump were essentially tied. Now the postmortem dissections begin. I find most of the so-called experts are giving explanations which don't really explain anything. I will be honest and admit that we didn't vote. We started out to vote but the line stretched halfway across the a six aisle parking lot. The last time we saw such a line was 2020 during the pandemic when we stood in line for almost two and a half hours. This time neither of us could physically stand that long. We drove by twice more but the line stayed as long. If I were wearing a hat I would tip it to the college students the news correspondents interviewed standing in such a line. Next election we will get mail in ballots.

I saw something interesting in the coverage and had to check my memory which I found was pretty accurate. I thought I remembered the vote tallies for Trump and Biden in the last election as 74+million for Trump and 83+million for Biden. The figures I saw for Trump this time was about 71+million and 66+million for Harris. I checked a couple of different sites and they all came in with about the same figures. That means that Trump lost between 2 and 3 million votes while Harris lost around 17million. Question: where did about 20 million voters go? Jill Stein and RFK, Jr. together only pulled in about 1.1 million votes. That was a harder datum to find.

Stray thought: the results of the election reveal, to me at least, a serious disconnect between the so-called political leaders and the people they try to convince to vote for them. While Trump talked down the economy insisting it was so much better for ordinary Americans when he was President, and Harris and her surrogates insisted that the economy was humming along very well if only all the critics would simply look at the statistics, the voters looked at things from their own experience and drew different conclusions. From my level neither described my experience. For all Trump's touting his economy it was never all that great for me and his tax cuts never touched my life. I have been criticizing the statistics for a long time because they usually paint over what happens to me every time I go to the store or pay a bill. Although the inflation rate is (supposedly) down what I pay keeps going up and I don't give a damn what the technical economist definition of inflation is because it doesn't touch me where I live. The unemployment rate is supposed to be declining to an acceptably low number but I still see numerous commercial establishments with "help wanted" signs. Where are the workers looking for work? How many discouraged, longterm, or detached workers aren't even counted any more? Take a look at Shadowstats to get an idea of what the published stats are covering up.

I saw a number of commentators trying to smooth out what Trump, and surrogates like Elon Musk, have promised for our future. I tend to follow Maya Angelou's advice: when someone tells you what he is, believe him the first time. Dave Karpf evidently follows that same advice.

Stray thought: anybody else notice a very self-satisfied, sanctimonious Elon Musk telling an audience that when Trump's economic plan (perhaps administered by Musk himself) we will experience a lot of pain but eventually we will experience a far more prosperous economy. That is the same promise Argentina's president offered and which people are now very upset with. It is similar to what the EU, ECB, etc., foisted on Greece as the price for loans (an increase in their debt) to help them with a debt crisis. Or that Macron proposed to French workers which raised the retirement age. That didn't go over well either.

Infidel753 posted this today and I totally agree. I turned off the commentary on the election early because it was largely a litany of complaints that the Trump aligned voters are racist, sexist, selfish, and other adjectives. The commentators didn't really try to understand their opponents especially since Democratic down ballot candidates (male and female, white and ethnic) won while the top of the ticket (Harris) lost.

October 22, 23

 Heather Cox Richardson posted a good article today. I have listened to too many of Trump's sycophants this last week dismissing Trump's remarks. Whether the were challenged with his  lewd remarks about Arnold Palmer, or his promise to go after the "enemies within," or promising to "deport" tens of millions of immigrants, or (insert any other examples you remember). They insist he didn't really say what the tape shows him saying. They insist that he didn't really mean what the tape shows him saying. They insist that the Constitution and Federal law will prevent him from doing any of the heinous things his critics say his words foretell. Well, Richardson recounts exactly how Hitler did all of that and more within the year he took the oath to respect the German Constitution. I also read the Bitecofer article Richardson cites in her piece. They are both illuminating.

23***************************************************************************

I am going to take a break from the blog until after the election. See you after.

October 18

 Good sunny but cool morning to you all. I got out on the patio and continued the process of putting the gardens to bed for the winter. I cleared out spent plants from three buckets and finished clearing out the stalks of sunflowers. I cut down the plants a couple of weeks ago. I started taking down trellises but too many still flowering plants are vining up the remaining support. I tried to detach the hose but, like last year, I couldn't move the connecting piece. I will have to call our landlord and ask if one of the handymen can swing by for a couple of minutes between other calls. We gave all of the wrenches that were of a sufficient size to my brother and nephew. They have more use for that kind of thing.

The news announced that the Israelis killed Yahya Sinwar the "mastermind" of the October 7 assault last year. Everyone hopes that will induce the Israelis to go back to negotiations to end the war and release the remaining hostages. Netanyahu has coyly said that this is only the "beginning of the end of the war" but no end is in sight. Stray thought: who is left for the Israelis to negotiate with? Hamas has been decapitated and its organization shredded. The Palestinian Authority has been invisible in this entire fiasco, its octogenarian leader (Abbas, I think) totally silent, and the organization has never had much clout in Gaza. It has even less now in the West Bank given the actions of rogue Israelis who the government either supports or has no power to stop. Point to remember Hezbollah is NOT Palestinian; Saudis, Omanis, Syrians, etc. are NOT Palestinian. Who can truly speak for the Palestinians?

The last "full scale" Target store in the U.S. is slated for closure. The retail giants I grew up with are dwindling. Sears, Penneys, K-Mart are all ghosts of what they once were--if they still exist in some form at all. We often drove down to the large mall and started at Sears then strolled past the small stores to finish up at the Penney at the other end.

Concerning Israel's aims (or Netanyahu's aims) Bill Astore has some opinions that parallel my own: the real aim has been to annex both Gaza and the West Bank and for Netanyahu to short circuit the corruptions indictments against him and remain in power. Astore is quite cynical about the role the U.S. is playing. I don't know if our government is really on board with the Israeli program or if our politicians really can't adjust to the fact that the Israel of today is not the Israel we originally supported. Or perhaps the problem is a residual sense of guilt for not doing anything much to counter the Final Solution and did quite a bit to trap Jews in Europe as the Nazis killed 6 million of them.

Charles Eisenstein has an intriguing post on "political bypassing" which derives from the notion of "spiritual bypassing." Both are tactics that allows individuals to evade deeper and perhaps intractable problems by either spiritualizing it or politicizing it. I have it on my list to reread. I am not sure yet what I think of the idea.

October 16, 17

 Sunny day today after a stormy night. If the weather forecast is accurate we should have some dry, cool, and sunny days before the temperatures go back to above normal again. The cool nights have taken a toll on the warm season plants. I plan to start culling the gardens and rearranging things before things freeze.

Stray thought: I don't expect the election result to settle anything. No matter who wins or loses no one will be satisfied or accepting of the results. A lot of words have been bandied about concerning "our democracy" and the importance of voting. But no one is mentioning directly the importance of respecting the outcomes whether you voted with the winning side or agree with the results. We are seeing the intensification of a trend I first noticed about 30 years ago when a ballot initiative concerning gambling came up over and over again in successive local elections. The pro-gambling side would win and the anti-gambling side came back to rally their side to defeat the resolution the next time--and on and on it went till finally the proponents of the measure won back to back elections by very large margins. Even then the opponents tried to undo through the legislature what the voters had approved. We have seen that repeatedly over the last couple of decades. Voters in Florida approved an initiative to restore voting rights to felons who had been released from prison. The Republicans in the Florida legislature passed add-ons which basically reversed the intent of the voters who voted for the initiative. We watched as the Republicans in Ohio tried to rig the electoral process to prevent the likely approval of a Constitutional amendment protecting a woman's right to decide on abortion. They are still trying to nullify legislatively the amendment voters approved by a nearly 60-40 vote. We have a large part of the electorate who respect voting ONLY if the results of what they support wins. That ISN'T democracy. 

Aurelian has an interesting post this morning that I think touches on the stray thought above. I have kept the post on my e-mail to read again because it is quite long. But several points resonate. For instance, the growth of what I have called "rampant individualism." Our society is geared to producing psychopaths who are utterly self-centered. The former (and hopefully not future) president is the prime example. There is much more in the post which I need to ponder.

17**************************************************************************************************************

Another sunny but very cool day. I have been chilling out with a couple of computer games and my needlework. But it is now time to go through the blogs I find in my e-mail.

Reading Bill Astore's post today I had a couple of stray thoughts. First, I like the title and subtitle on his post: Remember When Politicians Made Promises? Want Meaningful Change? Forget About It. He basically says that Trump and Harris are sticking with a status quo program while Stein is the only choice for, as he puts it, "meaningful change." But the source for the graphic is the Stein campaign and it deliberately paints both Trump and Harris with the same black brush. Harris has proposed universal health care, capping medical costs, dealing with the high cost of housing and education among other proposals. Two, Astore evidently tells us to forget about "meaningful change" because only the candidate he prefers is proposing the changes he (and I would guess a lot of other Americans) want. But the only way Harris or Stein can get their programs enacted is if enough of the legislators to be elected in November also agree. The chances of Stein being elected are low to non-existent and the chances of a Harris winning with a majority in both the house and senate aren't much better. I don't expect "meaningful change," by any definition of "meaningful" or "change," no matter who occupies the White House.

Another Stray Though: many of the problems listed in that political ad will be solved or made meaningless over the next decades simply because people will act on their own to find their own solutions. College is too expensive? Over the last decade or so various universities/colleges have found their enrollment figures going down among their traditional pool of "customers:" recent high school grads. Actually the problem has been on the horizon for at least three decades because that is marks the time when they made efforts to bring in middle aged adults. But that hasn't made up for the loss of younger people. Housing too expensive? A lot of younger people whose jobs are in cities started some time ago to rent. Or, if they are really intent on buying a house, the follow the maxim that became popular about 15 or so years ago: drive till you qualify. And their needs are being accommodated. Our city has bus service connected to the commuter rail system going into Chicago and commuter bus service into the Loop during the rush hours. Cost of living too high? Well, multigenerational households have been increasing for the last two decades. Young people who find their incomes don't cover rent and other expenses (like student loans) have been moving in with parents who may also have grandparents living in the same household. That, however, doesn't bode well for the politicians because, if people find their own solutions, they will start wondering what the hell good is government and why the hell are they paying so much in taxes.