October 28

 Still dark outside because it is only a bit after 5am. Supposed to be sunny so I will try to remember to go out and sweep up leaves and tidy up outside. I say "try to remember" because I often get to doing something and forget something else I planned to do. Thankfully, nothing I forget is really vital or needs to be done now.

Only a week and a half of this phase of our never ending election cycle left. We have seen more canvassers this year than in any previous years. I have noticed that none of the candidates state their party affiliations explicitly. The only reason I know that the trustee candidate who came by yesterday was a Democrat was he included the flyer for our Democrat Representative to Congress in the campaign literature. I used to split my votes but that was when the Republicans hadn't gone bat-shit crazy. They had policy positions we could evaluate and values beyond a lust for power. I plan a straight Democrat ballot this year. Looking at the Republicans I think about the description a character in a novel I like gave of another: he wants power very badly and would use it badly when he got it because he had no value beyond power.

A bit earlier I saw the best definition of the political polls: mood altering statistical drugs. It is seems to be most effective at altering the moods of the leaders of both parties.

I have seen the amazing endorsement of Hershel Walker by Senator Lindsey Graham several times. I say amazing because it is so demeaning to Walker specifically and blacks more generally. Walker is as much a statue as the Heisman Trophy he won once upon a long time ago. He is the political equivalent of the trophy wife. The perfect n-word. If I were a betting person I would take odds that if Walker gets in the Republican will put up a white candidate next time and abandon him. Right now they are using him to take out a creditable, accomplished black man. That is his only value to them.

Robert Reich posted the first part of a series he calls The Great Power Shift. He writes about the shift over the last forty years that concentrated political/economic power in corporate/financial elites to the detriment of the rest of us. Pay close attention to the self-serving definitions of "the market" and how public policy has skewed power (and revenue) toward the upper 10%.

Had a bit of a laugh during a segment on the news about the political/economic situation in the U.K. The reporter said that the political parties are fracturing to the point where neither party will be able to do anything they don't all agree on "which isn't very much." Sounds very familiar. Our electorate can't even make a reasonable choice among our alternatives because one party refuses to put out either policy or philosophy.