February 19, 20

 Rainy and cloudy but I looked out on the patio and didn't see any snow. Yeah!! The temperature today is predicted to go into the middle 50s but it should crash back to the more normal mid 30s tomorrow. I puttered around a bit with another afghan using worsted weight yarns I still have on hand. I pulled out my corded hooks to do some double hook Tunisian work. I got to the point where I really didn't want to do more crochet I am working on with size 10 thread. And I didn't want to bring out any of my three embroidery projects on hoops now. That happens every now and then. Luckily I didn't need any new materials to help me break my needlework blahs

A piece on a news/talk show last night reported that the administration has instructed DHS to "investigate" NATURALIZED CITIZENS for "voter fraud." For ever since Trump, during his first campaign for the Presidency, claimed that masses of "illegal aliens" were voting they have been trying to find examples of activity. They haven't found any significant numbers--about 20 examples nationwide last I heard which is negligible. So now they want to enlarge the target group hoping to find evidence of such fraud. I have heard more stories of Republicans committing election fraud.

However the story brought up a Stray Thought: a couple of decades ago I read an account of how IBM enabled the Nazi regime to trace Germans descended from Jews who converted and assimilated. They then removed the citizenship from those Germans and rounded them up with their Jewish neighbors. What will the administration do if (when?) they don't find the fraud they want to find? Trace the lineage and keep looking?

20*********************************************

Hard rain and high winds today. And much colder temperatures. I am sitting in front of my computer with one cat sprawled on my lap impeding my ability to type and the other one sitting behind the screen looking at me accusing me because she thinks I should already have given her the second breakfast of the day. I will probably relent because I need my second cup of coffee.

So much of the news I see skim and pass over. There isn't a damned thing I can do about it so--"que sera, sera" as the old song says. We did watch the thrilling gold medal ice hockey match yesterday between Canada and the U.S. which the U.S. won in sudden death overtime.

First interesting bit I found this morning was this piece on CROOKS&LIARS. I had never heard of psychrobacter bacteria so I immediately looked up the term and found that it refers to strains of bacteria that live in cold temperatures. They might be simply cold tolerant or they may actually thrive best at cold temperatures. The recently discovered strain was RESISTANT TO 10 MODERN ANTIBIOTICS. That is surprising since it was found in a 5000 year old layer of ice from a Romanian ice cave. Supposedly that bacteria hadn't been exposed to those antibiotics so the resistance is entirely innate. We have already had episodes of anthrax being released from frozen reindeer carcass in tundra that thawed. This episode in Russia infected more animals and some people. It doesn't take much imagination to picture the effects of an unknown disease arising from something like the psychrobacter.

Stray thought: the Federal government spent a couple of decades intensely forcing state governments to adopt the "Secure ID" drivers' licenses. To get one you had to document your identity. I have already described our problems with that since both my mother and I changed our names when we married (Mom twice.) We had to show birth certificates, marriage licenses, divorce papers for each stage. AND WE SHOW THAT ID WHEN WE VOTE. I have read the accounts of the SAVE act and I have to ask why should we need another ID that basically wants the same document chain? Why should we need ANOTHER F***ING ID?