June 15

Cool this morning--very pleasant. We have had our windows open and the  air conditioner off for the last couple of days. I have a new miniature rose to plant because I found a pretty white one while we were out shopping. That will make, I hope, four: red, pink, yellow, and white. I wrote "I hope" because the yellow and white have to survive their first winter in the gardens. I don't have any open large pots so I will put it in a smaller one until fall when spaces will open up.

For a bit of amusing military history check out this article explaining a custom I didn't know about. Evidently submarines coming back to port after a successful "operational" voyage fly the skull+crossbones.

June 18

It looks like I lost a couple of days here. I get busy on something and forget to check in. We are back to warm temps again--supposed to be around 90F today. And it is muggy. We had rain early this morning--a very heavy monsoonal type of rainfall. Several of my smaller plants were flattened but are trying to get upright again. They changed the forecast so that they expect several days over the next ten to have at least some rain. Since we are  exceptionally dry on the drought monitor we won't complain.

The legislative dance continues on several issues. Joe Manchin came out with his list of what he wants to see in the voting rights bill--finally. And Glory be, Stacey Abrams said it is a good basis for negotiations. But all the Republican sourpusses nixed it immediately even though it contained several ideas they were fervently wanting--they said. I expect something similar to happen with the infrastructure and the police reform bills.

Most of the reasonable opinions of President Biden's trip through meetings with Boris Johnson, Nato, the EU, and Putin are positive. They didn't expect any major development (negative or positive) and none were forthcoming. But the relief of European leaders to be dealing with a normal , human being who had done the necessary prep work astonishing. The only ones who seem to want the swaggering, blustering buffoon with a bad combover back are the Republicans who couldn't find anything positive to say. Why in the hell they seem to think that Biden's quiet demeanor is weak and Former Guy's bellicosity was strength I don't know. Unless Former Guy was dealing with Putin when he was servile.

Well, the ACA dodged another legal challenge this Supreme Court term. As soon as I read the full story I realized that the basic constitutional issue wasn't decided. Instead the court dismissed the case because the litigants had no standing to bring the case. Since the individual mandate had been nullified by Congress some years ago, the states and the attorneys general couldn't claim any injury the court could address. Basically, the court has told the critics (congressional and otherwise) that they need to clean up their own mess because the court isn't going to get their fannies out of the fire.

I watched the Israeli political situation for the last couple of years with a bit of disbelief and a bit of appalled recognition. Their Former Guy tried to pull a page from our Former Guy's playbook insisting that he had been fraudulently done out of the prime minister's position. After four elections in the last two years and intense negotiating over the last few weeks, they finally have a government that doesn't include anyone named Netanyahu. However, he isn't gone and can still do a lot to destabilize an already unstable government. The only thing those various parties all agreed on was getting Bibi out of power. They did that; now let's see how long they can keep the wheels on that buggy.