Hope you all had a good Veterans' Day

Sunny but cold today. It may get warm enough for me to go out and clean up some more leaves. Trees that still had their fall foliage a week ago are now winter bare. We had several days with high winds and a few with rain. That pretty well stripped the trees. The temperatures for the next week are more typically November--chilly.

I wasn't going to link to this. The COVID situation is as depressing as our political situation and there is nothing I can do about either other than limit my excursions out of the house while wearing a mask and voting. And I do both. I have heard the notion of a "lockdown" bandied about both at local levels and at the Federal level. One major point to start with--the Italian government can do (and did) impose a lockdown in the spring. The U.S. Federal government can suggest a lockdown but can't impose one. Major difference. But it is debatable how effective the lockdowns in Europe were. Sweden did not lockdown but their cases are surging now, they have the highest mortality rate in Europe and the economy has taken a serious hit just like the rest of Europe. Here in the U.S. cases are exploding with more than 120K per day for the last week. I think we set three records in three days with the worst yesterday at almost 149K. Hospitals are overwhelmed and N. Dakota's governor is relaxing rules to allow asymptomatic but positive personnel to work because they simply don't have more trained medical workers. Arguments over what policy to follow have usually been couched in terms of people's lives vs the economy. Unfortunately, I think we are at the point of losing both. But the author of the post I linked to draws attention to a problem we have over here but we have been able to whitewash it almost to oblivion: those hurt by what ever we do are at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale and have the fewest resources to sustain them through it. They are also the so-called "essential workers" who seem to be all too disposable.

November 13

Well, another record for COVID cases--159K. And another 1000+ death toll for the day. Chicago's mayor is issuing a stay-at-home advisory. She decided against a new stay-at-home order because too many people either won't or can't follow such an order. Those who are able are working from home and most everyone else has to go out to work. Indiana and Illinois have both been setting new records for hospitalizations and for deaths.

November 14

We have had frosts for the last three mornings including this morning and it was fairly heavy. Temperature on the patio was 30*F. Right now the sky is cloudy. 

So Jerome Powell (Federal Reserve Chairman) is saying out loud what I said back in late April: whatever economy we have on the other side of this pandemic will not be the economy we had. That might not be a bad thing because it didn't work well for a much too large a proportion of the population. It is nice he acknowledges the lower paid workers who will need support but given the current climate in Washington I am not holding my breath.We had a consumer economy but large numbers of consumers can't consume much beyond basics--if they can afford that.

 November 10

We have had an unusually warm stretch of days lately--mid-70s to low 80s in November. Very unusual. Right now we have a brisk wind with clouds forming that might give us rain. I finally got out on the patio to detach the hose, drain it, and get it in the shed for the winter. I also swept up a large amount of leaves though now you wouldn't think I had done any of that. This is the time of the year when my gardening zeal flags. The spearmint is still green as is the sage, the mums, the roses (which are still trying to bloom), the lavender, and a couple of other plants. But the woad, madder, and valerian are looking a bit sad. The indigo is long gone along with most of the other plants I had. As I say my enthusiasm and energy have dissipated and I am engaging in indoor pursuits.

I am working on the last motif on the table cloth and have two other projects on the embroidery hoops. I have been playing with my zoom loom and started another pineapple pattern crochet doily. The pineapples are my favorite patterns. I finished another doily I haven't yet blocked and stretched.

Something else that has a dwindling share of my attention is what #45 says or does. Thankfully, I am not and and am not signed up on twitter. Things post election are progressing in much the way I expected. Biden is attending to the business of moving into the Presidency while #45 is waging a legal and PR battle that backfires almost 100%. But the euphoria of having voted the idiot out has given way to anger and frustration that he hasn't shown the dignity and class to actually accept the fact. Well, dignity and class were qualities he never had and so can't show any more than he can show empathy which he also never had. One of the pundits on the morning news/talk shows wondered how much #45 planned to burn down on his way out--how far he would pursue a scorched earth policy. That seems to be on Tom Engelhardt's  mind as well. I expressed the thought that a part of his base were so pissed off with the status quo they simply wanted to burn the place down and voted for the arsonist.

Engelhardt also writes that "when Joe Biden, the definition of an old white man, finally limps into the Oval Office, he’ll represent a return to normalcy in Washington, the retrieval of an America that was. The only problem: the America that was -- if you’ll excuse the repetition of a verb -- was an America in decline, even if its leaders didn’t know it." That is also something I have felt. And it isn't just the last four years with the Arsonist-In-Chief in charge and this year from hell. The best we can hop for, according to Engelhardt, is a gentler slope downward whereas another four years of #45 would have accelerated things. That is a sentiment I have read from other bloggers including one who intended to vote for #45. He felt the decline was inevitable so why postpone it.

 November 8--Oh, What A Relief It Is!!!

I was surprised by how much better I felt when the election was called for Biden. It was as if something was constantly grating on my nerves for the last four years with acute flare-ups whenever that Great Dolt said or did something just a bit more grating. From the reactions on the news I guess a lot of others felt the same way.

But lurking behind the relief is the realization that, as one of the commentators reminded his listeners, every other person you see voted for #45. That is what it means when the popular vote was 74+million for Biden and 70+million for #45. Many pundits keep referring to Trumpism (damn how painful it is to type anything containing his name!) and they need to stop because the man was not the disease but the symptom of a deeper malady infecting society. Calling it by his name puts the focus in the wrong place and prevents asking exactly why so many people approve of him and what he does. David Kaiser has an interesting preliminary analysis of the results

November 9

Continuing the thoughts from yesterday, sort of:

I can't remember celebrations like we have seen for the defeat of any other sitting president. Not for Lyndon Johnson who declined to run for second term because of Viet Nam. Not for the resignation of Richard Nixon. Not for the defeat of Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush. I have never seen the street-dancing joy of the last couple of days.

On the other hand, I haven't seen the absolute refusal to accept the results of an election that has been run as openly and transparently as this one has; often under the scrutiny of both the public and the press. One of the "man on the street" interviewees insisted that fraud permeated the whole process. Another insisted that ballots had been shipped in from China. A blogger whose posts I frequently read presented the most rational argument for not accepting the results: the results haven't been certified by the states yet and the news media can say what they want. While technically correct and can be taken a step further since the results aren't final until the votes of the electors is counted by the congress. But while we have seen a few "Dewey Defeats Truman" moments for the news media.

In the mean time--the COVID numbers in this country have reached unimaginable highs. Some 10million Americans have tested positive. The number of cases per day has reached 100K several days over the last week while the number of deaths exceeded 1000 per day and the total deaths to date are almost 240K. One snippet this morning noted that, to date, 1 person for every 441 Americans have contracted the virus with more to come. Biden is naming a COVID advisory panel but I wonder what he and his administration can do. But then perhaps just setting a new tone will go a long way. Much that should be done has to be done at the local level. We can just wait and see. A "bully pulpit" can do a lot if used to send a coherent message.

On a sad note, the news reported that Alex Trebek of Jeopardy died yesterday. Jeopardy has been a staple of our afternoon TV watching and we will miss Trebek. Wonder who will replace him.

 Election Day +3

Who would have thunk it? The election still isn't settled. Some people were warning that the count would be protracted and they were right. Part of that is simply the fact that counting physical ballots take more physical handling and more time. It is wonderful that they tout their machines counting multiple 10s of thousands of ballots per hour. But when you have multiple millions of ballots that means many hours of counting.

Election Day + 4

Still no final decision on the presidential race. The percentages of votes already counted in the crucial states are in the 90% plus but the differences between the candidates are so slender that the remaining ballots may change the balance. I emphasized the 'may' because the chance that the split of the votes between #45 and Biden will change drastically in favor of #45 is about the same that any porker on a farm anywhere might suddenly sprout wings and fly.

Update: Well, all of the news outlets have called the election for Biden. About time. It has been a long four years and it isn't quite over since we still have #45 in office until January 20. Gods only know what damage he can do in that time. And we still have the hangover from the cruelty, rapacity, obscenity of #45 and his entire administration not to mention his Senatorial enablers most of whom are still in the senate.

 Election + 3 days--

I have let the results (partial as they are) ferment a bit. I had hoped for a Repthuglican bloodbath but didn't really expect it. We are much too fractured population to realistically expect sun an outcome. I had hoped some of the more irritating Repthuglicans would have been defeated but most survived. At this point, with several states not yet settled and several races still up in the air, I have some observations.

First, American society is far to complex for pollsters to adequately pigeon hole groups or predict what those groups will do. We have heard about "suburban women" ("housewives" if you are as cluelessly stuck in the 1950s as #45) as though they were a stand-in for all white women or even a majority of all white women. We have heard about the "Latino" or, if you recognize that Spanish speaking societies are discussing de-gendering language, "Latinx" as if they are a monolithic group. We have heard about the "black vote" as though all Americans of African genetic heritage think the same way. News reports have begun picking those generalizations apart and showing how the assumptions have made asses of quite a few politicians and pollsters. We all (from the politicians down to ordinary people) need to question closely exactly all aspects of polls: who the targets of the polls are, how are the questions are posed and who is actually conducting the polls.

Next--an absolutely unbelievable and obscene amount of money has been spent on the various races and I am not at all sure it has produced much besides a slightly altered mix in the House and Senate, and (maybe) a new man in the White House. And more spending will be forthcoming since at least one of the Georgia Senate races will go to a run-off and possibly both. Lindsay Graham survived an avalanche of money trying to unseat him. Surely there are better ways to spend a lot of money.

Also, absolutely none of the basic problems in this society have been tackled in any meaningful way. The pandemic is still raging with new cases hitting 100k and a new spike of deaths likely before Thanksgiving. We have some better ways of treating serious cases but the hospitals are again overwhelmed and thought the mortality rate has gone down a small percentage of a large number is also a large number. The only part of the economy that has done sorta well has been the stock market but how many of us own stocks? The unemployment rate looks good only compared to the peak a couple of months ago and we still aren't counting the discouraged workers or the underemployed or the gig workers out of work.

As I mentioned above our society is a crazy quilt of groups and interests but the biggest division are the pro-#45 and the anti-#45 and those are pretty evenly divided. Just look at the popular vote totals if you think otherwise. Those at the moment stand at 72M+ (Biden) to 69M+ (#45). Right now each candidate is in striking distance of a win. But whoever wins the divisions will remain and half of the population will insist that insist that they were robbed if the other guy wins. By the way that division is also reflected in the election maps: blue cities vs. red countryside. This division won't go away after January 29.

As a diversion from the above consider Charles Hugh Smith's post on Of Two Minds.

November 2

Well, only a little more than 24 hours before the polls open on the last day to vote. For us the only thing left is waiting til enough of the results come in to see the shape of things to come. We voted almost a month ago on the first day of our state's in-person early voting. The news reports say that more than 90 million votes have already been cast.

Tom Englehardt has a blast from the past type of post tracing the strands leading to today's situation. More and more often nowadays I find myself connecting what is happening to what has happened. As the saying attributed by some to Mark Twain holds history doesn't repeat; it rhymes. I am always annoyed by politicians who loudly insist that we have to let the past go and move forward. It is hard to know where you might be going if you don't know where you have been.

Peter Turchin also has an interesting post examining the election and possible scenarios for afterward. Strangely, we have thought of many of the scenarios Turchin has. We certainly do live in interesting times.

 Welcome to November--only two more days

...And I am so tired of this s&%tshow. Hell, I was tired of it when #45 filed for reelection almost as soon as he took his oath (with fingers crossed) of office. Worse, I feel, deep in my bones, that Tuesday won't be the end but simply the end of a beginning and no one knows where what begins on Tuesday will lead. Although the question of who will occupy the Whitehouse may be settled on Election Day (or not as the case may be) damned little else will be. Most of the problems we see today have been brewing for years if not for decades.

And of course, we have the pandemic on top of all the other problems. This little piece makes some good points on how we have come to this point where infections are rising, hospitalizations are rising, and the death toll is rising.

Sometimes, you do, indeed, wonder.