February 3, 5

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Cold, windy, and snowy today. We got our grocery shopping done early before the snow picked up. The wind howled last night almost like a big truck engine straining at top power. I wonder what it was blowing through to cause that much sound. We are hibernating today and hoping tomorrow will be clear and warmer.

The egg shortage has come to our little local dairy. They have limited customers to 4 dozen at a time. No increase in price--yet. The shortage was a topic of discussion among the customers who all seem to have read the same stories I have. We also came in at an opportune time because the cashier was checking in their new order of lard and it goes quickly. We just opened the last we had on hand so we got a new tub for back up. That is another way we have gone backwards. We do have some olive oil and grape seed oil for making salad dressings but for most other cooking we prefer lard.

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I spaced out yesterday. The temperatures are on the upslope of the roller coaster. It might feel like early or mid March instead of early February.

We shifted from our usual U.S. news channel early and put BBC  on for most of the day until the story of the Chinese surveillance balloon came to dominate the news. Otherwise nothing much came up worth writing something on about.

David Kaiser made some interesting, but not surprising, comments. He notes the shift in electoral patterns which resulted in at least one house of congress or the White House changing hands in eight of the last nine elections. That was a sharp break from the pre-1990 pattern. He attributes the pattern to the frustration of a "critical, swing portion of the electorate" who are frustrated and want a change of regime. I would go a bit further: the pattern indicates that neither party really satisfies them. The second pattern he saw was in Presidents whose party loses control of the House of Representatives after completing only half of their first term: Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower before 1990 and Clinton, Obama and Biden since. Kaiser doesn't mention what is driving the frustration he mentions. I think looking at the two sets of three presidents who lost control of the House gives a clue: they both involved periods of economic upheaval. The first period (Hoover through Eisenhower) involved the Great Depression, WWII, and the post-war readjustments. The second period (Clinton, Obama, and Biden) also involves economic stresses as the economic position of the middle class whose income has stagnated and whose middle class consumption patterns was sustained only with increasing levels of debt.

We have shifted from the news to soccer (for football for any Europeans out there) and hearing the fans singing wasn't sure I was hearing what I was hearing. I thought I Heard "When the Saints Go Marching In" and decided to do a quick Google search. Lo and behold that song is quite popular for various sports including both Manchester City and Tottenham which are the teams playing today. I do love Google.

The "combat littoral ships" have been a boondoggle from the beginning. Most have never completed a voyage without serious problems. But when the Navy decides to cut the losses and cancel the project while retiring most of the fleet, the "defense" industry lobby got busy and got congress to add an amendment to the latest authorization bill which prohibited that action. Even when the military tries to be fiscally responsible the politicos side with the "defense" hogs at the trough.