June 10

Goodness, it's already a third of the way through this month. The sky is just beginning to get lighter. The forecast was for another sunny day. We'll see. We have one errand--a trip to the seasonal market. I would call it a "farmer's market" and farmer's do sell there but more are local small businesses selling foods and craft goods.

Denise Donaldson at the Ponderments substack has an interesting piece I can definitely relate to: R.I.P. Customer Service. Since most of us have had experiences like the ones she describes I don't think I need to comment further.

Heather Cox Richardson posted this concise and thorough account of the last two days in The Former Guy's legal soap opera drama. "Soap opera" is too trivial a description for a serious matter. And, as Richardson notes, the saga is far from over because Special Consul Smith still is looking at the January 6 insurrection.

JaninSanFran put up this item today. She has been down with a mild case of COVID and her doctor prescribed Paxlovid. The packaging is interesting because it is in rip open, color-coded foil pouches which have instructions for how to take the pills. That makes it easier to keep track of whether you have actually taken your pills when you were supposed to take them.

John Feffer examines the "Mineral Rush" and its implications for the push toward "green energy." It isn't pretty. It make me very skeptical of the insistence of our political and other elites that high technology to save us.

Infidel753 lives in a state with some serious political divisions that mimic some I have seen in other states. I think that those divisions are going to become even more evident in the future. For years I have heard grumbles about the Northwest corner of Indiana from people down state. Downstate Illinois has been very unhappy with the large influence that Chicago and it surrounding suburbs have and Chicago has been very unhappy about how little of the tax revenue it generates comes back to the northeast. There was a proposal I saw over last winter to trade the Northwest four or six counties of Indiana in return for a segment of southern Illinois with equivalent population and economic resources. To do that the swap would have to chop off about 40% of Illinois. Texas has a bill in its legislature that is specifically drawn to allow the Secretary of State (presumably a Republican) to nullify the outcome of an election in the county containing Houston (largely Democratic). The state government in Mississippi has been making moves to cut the power of elected officials in city of Jackson (the state capital) because the state government is dominated by Republicans and Jackson is a Democratic stronghold (and majority black.)