June 1

 We had rain last night and were on the edge of thunderstorms. However, we still expect temperatures in the mid to high 80s. I hope to get my the last of my pots filled and ready to be planted. It depends on how warm it gets and how fast. I also want to get my dehydrator set up because a couple of the herbs are about ready for a clipping.

First thing I saw this morning was this MSN story. I hadn't really thought about the possibility of big chunks of Russia detaching (or being detached) because aggrieved nations on its periphery (e.g., Japan and China) or groups within who want to exert their own sovereignty. The Russia that crushed Chechnya isn't the Russia today. Also, Russia's alliances may not be as deep as they would like. One of the best things about the Post-WWII order was the insistence that national borders shouldn't be changed unilaterally by force.

This sounds very familiar. I spent a lot of time in reading history. Beginning in the 1880s the dominant political/social class in the U.S. (read white, male, Northern European in ancestry) starting clutching their  pearls over the fear that they would be "out bred" by inferior peoples. Good white women weren't doing their reproductive duty while black people, brown people, eastern and southern European mongrels were producing more babies threatening to swamp their "betters" with numbers. There was a strong push against "Uranianism" or lesbianism or what ever caused women to remain unmarried. (Interesting that there was a similar push against male homosexuality during the 1950s because of the poor performance--or perceived poor performance--of the American military in Korea. The new generation was perceived as effeminate and unsuitable for the rigors of military life.) Interestingly, one of the responses was a push to make homemaking a career. Colleges started programs in "Home Economics." Most of that was to make women's activities in the home appear more scientific, more interesting, more challenging and valuable. It didn't really change the economic trajectory which had for about three centuries removed productive activities from the home and relocated them in the commercial (male) sphere. One of the worst aspects of this era was the rise of eugenics. The devastation of WWII and the Nazi effort to eliminate those they perceived as "lesser peoples" (Jews, gypsies, slavs, and "useless eaters"--the mentally ill, intellectually challenged, frail elderly) buried eugenics under an extreme moral disapproval. However, the modern political controversies prove that ideas, however nasty, are like vampires and zombies--they always rise again.

I have often had some very pungent comments about "trickle down" economics; like, everything we, at the lower end, get is passed though the kidneys or bowels of someone higher up. Infidel753 posted this 

which sums up in one cartoon what I have been saying.

Yves Smith has an interesting post on Naked Capitalism "The Loss of Executive Function in the West." Explains some of the dysfunction in our political/economic affairs today.

The news about the Davenport building collapse has been very strange. The city declared they were going to demolish the building the day after the collapse while family and friends of residents were saying their people were still missing. The demolition was postponed after a woman was rescued who had been missed in the original sweep of the building. And then as people reported seeing pet cats in the windows that had also been missed. Reading this article had me asking "how many way can authorities f-up a disaster response?"

I found this article and only read about half of it. Now, I would think that the purpose of pre-positioning equipment is to speed and facilitate a rapid deployment if something happened. Just imagine if we were responding to an attack on our own people and we had to try use this kind of equipment. I wonder how much equipment in the U.S. has been similarly maintained. I think I mentioned recently that people who are chortling over the debacle of the Russian invasion of Ukraine should be wondering if the U.S. military would perform any better. Although, the U.S. has been involved in various armed actions since the Soviet Union collapsed none were very successful. We haven't won a war since WWII.