July 5 (or as some have said "July 4th observed")

It is quite warm again today--High 80s right now with the highest temp predicted to be low 90s. I didn't get the gardening done. We had to run an errand this morning and by the time we got back the patio thermometer was already indicating 90+. That temperature is always way higher than the real temperature because of the white fence and cement. I watered everything really well yesterday so the plants should be fine til tomorrow morning.

July 6

Another hot day predicted with temps in the low 90s. I hope to get out long enough to empty the large pot I started on over the weekend. We don't have any errands planned today so I just might get it done.

Right now I am reading some of what has come into my in-box. I don't know how much I will comment on or even link to. So much is both repetitive and uninformative. We'll see.

I heard about this on BBC yesterday. It is covered more fully here. I never heard of "mud volcanoes" before.

July 7

As you can see I didn't find anything I wanted to link to or comment on yesterday.  Most often my reaction to what I read and hear is "My God, how can you be so stupid??" Just this morning comments on the controversy over police funding elicited that reaction. "Defund the Police" has become a meaningless phrase always been a meaningless phrase. But questioning the level of funding and how the funds are used--that is a legitimate activity. What ticked me off was the off hand remark that some unspecified towns/cities are replacing funds after a spike in crime. Was the rise in crime actually caused by the reduced funding? Correlation does not mean causation. We have done with police power what we have done with military power: applied them to circumstances for which they are unsuitable tools. Hammers are good for nails but not all problems are nails and we have failed, consistently failed, to make any distinctions.

I started reading this piece on TomDispatch yesterday but wanted to let it ferment a bit before commenting on it. It is another reminder that lying politicians aren't anything new. Check out the part on the Nixon administrations use of political lies on drugs to enact laws that targeted political enemies: the anti-war movement and blacks. It wasn't the first time in our history that happened. In the late 19th and early 20th century moralizing American politicians focused on opium (because of an association Chinese immigrants) and marijuana (associated with Mexicans) and claiming to protect weak-willed white people from those pernicious influences. Another idea surfaced which the author didn't deal with: the failure of prohibition. The Temperance Movement won that battle but lost the moral war and in the process created what Ken Burns in his miniseries on Prohibition called a "nation of scofflaws." The "war on drugs" has been as futile as our "war on terror."

Axios has a piece other news sites have picked up: Americans have increased their alcohol consumption over months of the pandemic. I am not surprised. When you need an anesthetic for social and psychic pain you find it.