May 29

 Happy (Official) Memorial Day. Evidently the airlines learned something after the debacle of last year. Things seem to have gone smoothly for the travelers this year. As usual we are staying home and it looks like we will have a nice, warm, sunny day. I have some plants to pull because they didn't survive transplanting. But Saturday the seasonal market opens and we will visit. Vendors there always have some interesting plants.

I hope this really hits those idiots hard. It follows a long established notion that the convicted perpetrators of crimes that attract a lot of public attention can't use their crimes as a way to benefit financially. Just because other idiots are fool enough to donate money or buy books or go to movies based on the crimes doesn't mean the criminals should be able to benefit from their crimes.

It looks like both the RepTHUGlicans and DAMNOcrats are trying to take victory laps I don't think either really deserve any credit. They merely decided on a bad that was less than dreadfully awful. I think of the station commander in the second Independence Day movie telling his pilot that he didn't get credit for cleaning up his own mess. Both sides have made the fiscal difficulties worse over time. Each side threw billions (trillions?) at problems while trying to tell us that you can't solve problems by throwing money at them. Of course, each side were referring to the problems the other was favoring for the cash. Denise Donaldson has a long post that says much the same.

David Kaiser presents an interesting take on where we are and where we might be going as a society through a look at "Seinfeld". I never watched the show. In fact, I watched very few of the shows Kaiser mentioned. Only a few of the Cosby episodes but most of the Father Knows Best and Dick Van Dyke. I always felt caught in the middle of that first "culture war." I didn't have much sympathy with the rebels but the traditional was never very comfortable. In some ways, the current "culture war" is between those who are trying to reimpose the way they think things were on those of us who say "No way, Jose." Therefore we have those who want to outlaw women's agency with respect to motherhood; who want to outlaw LGBTQ agency with respect to who they love, who they marry, and whether they can openly express their personhood; who want to erase whatever about U.S. history makes them uncomfortable such as African slavery, genocide of Natives, despoiling of the environment, etc. And we have the other side who thing we haven't gone far enough. I read last week that there are some legislators in a few states trying to roll back no-fault divorce hoping to support traditional marriage which was a miserable straight jacket.