December 1

Welcome to meteorological winter and the last month of 2023. The snow we had earlier in the week has all gone. We have rain now and the overnight temps remained in the 40s. I got our dishes sorted out and the cabinet arranged so we can find things. Once upon a time all of the sorting of the books, pantry, and dishes would have occupied a single day. Not now. Now we do things a bit at a time.

Most of the news today has concerned two f**kups: Israel's intelligence failures leading up to October 7 and George Santos. The vote on whether Santos is expelled from Congress is supposed to take place later today. The Speaker is publicly telling his caucus to "vote their consciences" but who knows what he is saying privately. I was about to write "--and who knows whether the even have consciences" but stopped because I reminded myself that some may actually have good reasons for voting against expulsion just as some may have selfish and self centered reasons to vote either way. ( UPDATE: Santos has been expelled.) The Israel story is in early days and I am sure there will be more juicy details coming up. This is CNN's coverage this morning. What we can be sure of is that the politics in both Israel and the U.S.--and beyond--are in chaos. More chaos that has become usual.

The growing animosity between blue cities in red states is going to be another source of political chaos. As this article notes the cities are often far more diverse and liberal than the state which is often controlled by white men. But a more important fact is the growing divide between rural and urban areas in states. I think a conversation I had with one of my brothers with the last election--another in which the electoral college vote was closer than the popular vote though the two did coincide unlike the 2016 vote (and several others over the last 20 odd years.) The roll of the electoral college came up and my disappointed brother grumbled "why should a man's vote in Wyoming count less than another man's vote in California?" I asked "why the vote of the population of Wyoming count less than the vote of the population of California?" Wyoming has a bit under 600k while California has almost 40million. This was exactly the kind of discussion which led the framers of the Constitution to create the Electoral College: how to balance the power of the large states vs the small states. That is also why the House of Representatives is apportioned by population and the Senate is set at 2 senators for each state no matter the population.

I keep thinking I should put the winter wreath on the door but--it simply doesn't look or feel like winter.

Robert Reich posted his second installment on his series "Why American Capitalism is so Rotten" with What Really Happened to the American Dream. He makes the nexus between economics and politics very clear.

Richard Haas deals with Israel-Hamas (of course), Cop-28 (pessimistically), and Henry Kissinger (respectfully.) The glaring problem with the war in Gaza is that Israel has no realistic political path. As he notes that they can't seem to translated Clausewitz's observation (war is politics by other means) into Hebrew. Theirs is a war with any practical political objective. I have quoted an old saying before "when you go out for revenge dig two graves--one for your enemy and one for yourself." Israel went out for revenge and looks likely to bury both Gaza and itself. Haas isn't the only one who is pessimistic about finding a course of action that all  (or even a large proportion) of the participants will find acceptable or will hold to. And, finally, on Kissinger I think it is fair to say we will be arguing about his impact and legacy for decades to come.

On the Weather Channel the stories this week have focused on the continuing fall out from Hurricane Ian two years ago and what might happen in the next hurricane season only 6 months ago. Many people still haven't received their insurance payouts. Many can't rebuild because they can't get a mortgage without insurance which is hard or impossible to get. At least three major insurance providers have left the state leaving the state backed provider to carry the burden. They are talking about a "hurricane tax", a surcharge in double digits on ALL insurance policies (including auto and pet) in the state.

 Naked Capitalism posted a long article on what might develop into a border war between Guyana and Venezuela. And another on the election in the Netherlands which brought Geert Wilders a win. He is part of a move to the right in Europe's politics. Now the process of forming a ruling coalition begins. It took the just defeated Prime Minister 299 days to do that.

RIP Sandra Day O'Connor.