December 21, 22

***********************************21********************************

Welcome to Winter--today is the Winter Solstice. We are expecting a massive winter storm starting today and going through Saturday. We are hibernating until after New Years.

The news yesterday and today has noticed a shortage of children's Tylenol and other fever meds due, according to CVS and Walgreens, to supply chain problems. Though the pharmaceutical companies are, at the moment, limiting customers to small number of items, we took stock of our adult strength meds and determined they were sufficient.

We finished our shopping yesterday--actually we moved some up so that we could be sure we wouldn't have to go out into crowds over the next two weeks. Shopping during the holiday season isn't much fun so we avoid it whenever possible. Others had similar ideas because there was a larger crowd than we normally see and a lot of open shelves. I got the impression that the merchants were having difficulty keeping the shelves stocked and, possibly, some supply chain problems. Our dairy was having trouble filling some of their customers, especially those who wanted goat's milk.

**********************************22**********************************

Another day and still waiting for the big winter storm which is supposed to come in in full force about 3pm and continue through Christmas Day. We plan to go out to pay our rent before it gets bad so we can also wish everyone there a Merry Christmas. We used to pay in person each month but the pandemic forced us to start paying all bills on-line. But a recent problem with a scam which we were afraid had infected her computer (it hadn't--but caution seemed a better strategy) caused her to return to paper checks and snail-mail for a bit. We will do that again whenever it seems prudent and we will keep the old ways in mind for a backup.

Anyone else notice how annoyingly smug Mitch McConnell was telling reporters how satisfied he was with the spending allotments in the new massive omnibus bill. The military spending increased by 10% while the non-defense side of the ledger increased by 5%. So, with inflation running at 7+%, the military got a net 3% increase while the social side got a 2% cut. THAT was what he was proud of. As a number of bloggers and commentators noted, If we simply cut the military side of the ledger to parity with the other side (or to the level of the next ten largest departments cumulative spending, or to the next ten largest foreign countries' military spending) we could fund that child tax credit and/or fund other social priorities. 

The House Ways And Means Committee finally got The Former Guy's tax returns for the last six years. Although I have to quibble a bit on that--after all, in the next sentence the articles say that the IRS didn't audit TFG for the first two years of his administration as it was by law mandated to do. The Committee said at the outset that they wanted to examen the IRS with respect to its performance in this regard. Not a bad idea since TFG kept claiming his returns were under perpetual audit. I wonder if they could also examine the very intrusive audits conducted on two former attorneys generals that fell afoul of the TFG. Were those really justified? The fact that the agency didn't carry out its responsibilities with respect to TFG leads to suspicions to how well they do with regular individuals. This post by Rachel Maddow casts doubt on their excuse that they didn't have the resources.

Cartoon found on the Direct eZine.