September 15

Welcome to half past September. We have had about two weeks of cool temperatures and very cool nights. I said yesterday that with those cool nights the trees would start turning colors. When we went shopping yesterday we saw that along the highway. Every year you can see the change of seasons in the trees. Spring is foretold by a shimmer of iridescent green in the willows first and then the other trees. Fall is ushered in by a yellow, orange, or red ting to the leaves which then spreads through out the canopy. Across the street, one of the houses has a pretty bush that is a glossy dark green in summer but which has turned completely red now and its companion a few feet away is beginning to turn.

In case you thought that ransomware attacks were old news take a look here. My first thought: they had really poor cyber security. Getting into my bank account requires a password and a phone call from the bank. Getting into my cell phone account requires a password and the company sending an access code to my e-mail box. All the gang had to do at MGM was find an employee by way of LinkedIn and call the help desk impersonating the person and ask for help to get into that account.

I heard last night that Fox News was facing new lawsuits and assumed that it was another defamation case. Well, Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars covers that and the defamation situation is related but not central. Instead the New York City pension funds (read fire fighters and police) and the state of Oregon are suing because of the threat to their investments. I've never thought much of Fox and never tuned in but they deserve everything they are getting.

Jake Johnson, also at Crooks&Liars, covers the UAW strike, which started last night. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the auto companies or their executives. However, the corporate behavior is in line with what we have seen over the years. Remember when the retail industry touted their "essential workers" during the pandemic and bumped up their pay or provide "hazard pay" with a lot of fanfare. And then cut all of that very quietly as soon as they could. I don't see that any of the executives are worth 200 or 300 or 400 times their average worker's pay. I think they shouldn't get more than 10x the pay of their LOWEST paid employee. I remember an article from several years ago which took apart the justification that such pay levels are provided as an incentive to do a really good job. The authors found no linkage between job performance and remuneration: those whose company lost money got their "bonuses" and raises as did their counterparts in companies that made profits. The real incentive was provided to the lower level executives and managers who could dream of getting into those stratospheric pay levels with their golden parachutes. Few of them ever would.

Several blogs I read have had stories about a possible new U.S. central bank digital currency. The Hill carries this story which indicates the program is rather far advanced. For several years we were pretty much into  digital banking. Our retirement checks are and have for years been directly deposited. When we had to file tax returns our refunds were directly deposited. We both paid our bills on line. Then we almost got scammed and were only a couple of clicks away from having one of our accounts emptied. Since then we decided that using checks and cash for the most part is wiser. We don't really think going entirely digital is a good idea.

This doesn't sound as far out in left field as one might think. And while everyone is fixated on the abortion angle no one thinks what else might be behind the tactic. And if the notion of The-Former-Guy-desperate-to-be-the-next-guy getting to appoint every senior military officer while gutting the civil  service doesn't scare you shitless it should.

September 12, 13, 14

 Just getting light outside and we should have another day of clouds and rain. I'm not complaining--my gardens look very lush. 

13********************************************************************

It started out sunny but the clouds are moving in. We may get more rain but not, hopefully, nearly as much as areas in New England have received.

The news announced that Mitt Romney isn't going to run for reelection when his current term ends. He cited his age and the current deadlocked politics. He is 76. Note: Biden is 78 and The Former Guy is 77. But no one has any idea of who should replace them. No one is really offering any proposals or policies. No arguments other than each loudly proclaiming "I'm not THAT guy." Aurelien has a nice (though long) article on the state of politics in the West today. He continues the series of critiques of the basic incompetence at all levels of government, business and all institutions. I'd like to say he's wrong but everything he writes reflects what I have seen over the last 30 years.

14**********************************************************************

We have our regular shopping to do later. But otherwise nothing else planned.

The first sentence in this EuroNews article is stunning: There have been deadly storms in almost as many days in September so far, as climate scientists warn that “nowhere is immune”

And then there is this article from the same source. I wonder how our disaster relief funds and organizations are doing given the 23 billion dollar+ weather events this year--a record.

September 9, 10, 11

We have had three days of off-and-on rain. The temperatures have cooled off which is nice. Not watering the gardens is good but not watering and not having to run the air conditioner is even better.

Doomberg has a good article that makes points I have read in other bloggers' posts for some time. As organizations have grown larger the number of divisions, committees, departments, etc., have exploded and the number of managers have also. There is an old saying that a committee is the only form of mammalian life with six or more legs and no brain. It is also a formula for doing less with more.

10*********************************************************************

Bright and sunny today. I have opened the patio door (leaving the screen door shut) hoping to get fresh air in the house.

I am getting very tired of all of The Former Guy's sycophants bleating that if he has to suffer the indignity of a trial on trying to subvert the last election or if he is barred from running (or being seated in office if, Gods help us, he wins) there will be blood in the streets. So the "mob boss" tells us that we have a nice little country and it would be a terrible shame if anything happened to it. All we have to do to make sure the terrible doesn't happen is pay the SOB off and SHTF up.

Found this on my e-mail this morning. We live in Northwest Indiana about 40 miles from Chicago. We go to bed early and were asleep by the time the quake happened. I had heard about one of the three others which occurred in August. Note: we are just over 200 years past the last big quake in a similar area: New Madrid. That episode consisted of two quakes over a very short time which changed the course of the Mississippi River. The area was still sparsely populated (by white people) so the death toll, that we know of, was light. A similar quake nowadays would resemble something like that along the Türkiye-Syria border, or worse considering the major cities along that fault.

11*********************************************************************

Welcome to 9/11 Remembrance Day. It looks like all of the news today will be interspersed with ceremonies across the country. I saw on little piece on a different 9/11 event that perhaps we should also be remembering: the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende and the institution of the Pinochet dictatorship fifty years ago with the financing and help of the U.S. A reminder that our politicians love democracy until democracy produces a result they don't like.

An analysis of Biden's trip to the G20 conference in India made a comment we should take to heart. It was clear that countries like the host, India, were't going to jettison their relationships with Russia and China. And the U.S. can't impose its view on other countries. And perhaps we should start adjusting our attitude by recognizing that demanding that others, either individuals or individual states, comply with your demands doesn't work.

And now for something really depressing. I read blogs by a different survivor of the Camp Fire and an account of another fire that destroyed another town. Their accounts reflect what the author of the linked article has written. I really dread what the aftermath of the Maui fire will mean for those victims, especially since the vultures are circling hoping to snap up property to turn it into something that screws over the survivors yet again.

MSN says the U.S. has set a record for the number of billion dollar+ weather events/disasters: 23.

September 6, 7, 8

 We should have thunderstorms off and on today. I hope so. I would rather let nature water my plants.

This is simply astonishing. It is hard to imagine two feet of rain in a 24 hour period. And they are talking about a possible tropical style cyclone developing in the Mediterranean.

I hadn't heard of "conservation gardening" and this article on Anthropocene is a nice introduction.

Medium put this article up that is interesting.

07******************************************************************

We had long and repeated internet interruptions and our cable also went our for about 4 hours. Hope that doesn't happen today.  We commented that such interruptions seem to be happening more frequently.

We had rain overnight and it is cloudy now. So another day or more that I won't have to water plants on the patio.

08*********************************************************************

No internet outages yesterday just nothing much worth writing anything about. Two more RepTHUGlicans lost in court. And Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis sent a reply to the RepTHUGlican who is pretending to be a Representative from Ohio telling him to butt out of her state case against The Former Guy and his merry ban of idiots and enablers. 

A report on the morning news said the GOP is considering "rebranding" its "Pro-life" slogan. The option mentioned is "Pro-Baby." Problem: their policy proposals are no more Pro-Baby than they are Pro-Life. The interest in life ends with birth either way and completely ignores the woman who has to carry a fetus to term no matter what risks to herself or the potential baby. Also the man involved in creating the potential baby is NEVER mentioned. I haven't heard of a second divine conception or an example of human parthenogenesis so why is the male partner never sanctioned or even mildly criticized?

Some of our indicated politicians should be very happy they aren't in the Turkish justice system.

September 5

Supposed to be sunny today and a little bit cooler with rain moving in tonight and through tomorrow. I hope so. The fewer days I have to water plants the better. After that we should get much cooler weather.

Yesterday was very short on real news over the holiday weekend--including yesterday. There was so little on TV we indulged in a Charlie Chan marathon followed by a whole bunch of our favorite SciFi oldies. Thank goodness for our DVD collection.

So far I haven't seen anything much on the news but we'll see what I find.

With schools reopening the ADHD drug shortages are again on the news this morning.  A quick Google search reveals a lot of stories on various drugs in short supply and it seems to me the shortages are pervasive and increasing. According to EuroNews the shortages are also pervasive in Europe as well with very long delays in getting new supplies. The basic problem is both the U.S. and Europe has shifted from making drugs (and a whole lot more) on their own territory to importing them from other countries, especially India and China. Perhaps that economic model should be reconsidered.

I found an interesting piece on Medium today: Is Democracy Committing Suicide? For quite a while now a major refrain on our various news/talk shows has been "our democracy is in danger!" Democracy is an idea; it can't really die or commit suicide. People can abandon it or be forced to abandon it. That has happened before. And what we call "democracy" can change. When I taught Western Civ classes at least one student would ask how ancient Athens could be called a democracy when a lot of the population couldn't vote. The franchise was limited to adult men of the "citizen class" which meant their parents (both parents) had been citizens. Women, like children, were under guardianship (females for their lives, male children until they came of adult age). The United States became a "democratic republic" when the Constitution took effect and the fact that the franchise was limited to white men who had "productive" property worth a given amount. It remained a democratic republic when the franchise was broadened to include all white males in the 1830s, and when women were included in the 1930s, and when African Americans right to vote was secured by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  We also remained a democratic republic when post Civil War violence and the imposition of poll taxes and literacy tests excluded most Freedmen. We are still a democratic republic as gerrymandering and other measures are whittling away at the electorate, especially among racial minorities. After a long time of broadening the pool of citizens who can exercise the vote we seem to be in a period of contraction when certain people want to exclude those of us they can't count on to vote the way they want us to. We have come to define "democracy" as "one person one vote" but that hasn't always been the operative definition. We are in the process of redefining it yet again.

September 3

 The temperature today and tomorrow is supposed to be in the 90s. No gardening beyond watering the plants very early. Otherwise nothing planned.

Perusing the news this morning I found this--another about the crisis in the insurance industry and insurance companies pulling out of Florida. A few months ago the story was about insurance companies leaving California because of the fires. The article said that all 50 states have areas where insurance is difficult or nearly impossible to obtain which sent me on a search for more information. This Axios article gives more details on the conditions in the industry. I also saw mention of the problem of rebuilding the public infrastructure: roads, power lines, sewers, water treatment plants. Insurance is such a large part of our economic lives it is hard to imagine how we would do without it. We are expected to have life insurance, property insurance, auto insurance, health insurance. I have seen increasing ads for pet insurance. Legally, we can't drive a car without auto insurance though we often hear about some driver involved in an accident who doesn't. Mortgage companies/banks often won't approve a mortgage if the potential borrower doesn't have home owner's insurance which only covers the lenders interest in the house. To rebuild you have to have property insurance on the house and be aware of what catastrophes aren't covered--like flood. The articles noted that many communities are at a tipping point of whether the have the resources to rebuilt on site, to move, or can't rebuild at all. If we paid all of the premiums to guard against future disasters what living expenses would we not have the funds to pay for in the here and now: food, rent/mortgage, fuel/utilities.

Every now and then something a politician says just is so stupid I can't not comment. The Stupid of the Week award goes to Vivek Ramaswamy for his claim that he would LET Putin keep the UKRAINIAN territory Russia currently occupies and DEMAND he end the military cooperation he has with China. Point #1: Ramaswamy doesn't have control of Ukraine and it doesn't look like the Ukrainians are in the mood to keep Ramaswamy's promise for him. I guess he thinks we can "starve" Ukraine of weapons and money to force them to capitulate. But that will really roil our alliances to our detriment. Point #2: he assumes that Russia would give up Putin's fevered dream of a new Russian Empire if we simply end the sanctions. I have read a lot of contradicting accounts of how effective (or not) those sanctions have been. I doubt they are doing enough damage to make Putin do anything he doesn't want to do any way. Point #3: why in the hell does Ramaswamy think the U.S. has any leverage in the bilateral relations between adjacent countries a world away.

This is interesting. Retailers are changing what goods they carry and how it is stocked because of massive losses from shoplifting and organized theft.  We have seen changes over the last several years that parallel what the article describes. Walgreens has installed several locked shelves for high priced items. Target removed many of their electronics after a spate of smash and grab robberies. And other stores have changed what they stock and drastically dropped several products. Another account of the trend is here.

September 1, 2

 Welcome to September. I got all five pots of mums planted. Sounds simple but for a couple it involved rearranging a couple of areas and digging out enough of the soil to remove a couple of blocks I put in hoping to stabilize the shepherds' hooks. By the time I finished I was pretty wiped out.

Listening to the news story this morning about the long sentences given two of the Proud Boys convicted of sedition. A couple of commentators were surprised that the sentences were half of what the guidelines set down. A couple of others were more sympathetic citing the tearful claims that the offenders were obeying a summons from their President. Not a one noted that acting on a superior's orders is ever an excuse for committing a crime. Most of the defendants at Nuremberg used that and found it falling on deaf ears. Even the code of military justice notes the right of service people to disobey unlawful orders. There are times when people have knowingly disobeyed a law they thought immoral as when they dodged the draft during the Vietnam Era. Some of those stood by their decision and went to prison for the principle. However, that isn't what happened on January 6. They were trying to overturn the results of an election they disagreed with. In an insurrection, as in a revolution, the rule is win or die. They lost.

02*********************************************************************

It was nice and cool this morning so I opened the doors and upstairs windows. But we expect the high to be mid 80s and the thermostat read 76 just now so I closed up again. But we did get some nice cooling for a while. We expect the next several days to be in the 90s before the 70s return late next week. I checked everything on the patio and only the large pot of sage needed water. It also needed some more soil since the level had subsided a bit. Tomorrow morning I will water everything well. Summer is evidently telling us she isn't done yet.

I almost forgot: Happy Labor Day weekend. Most holidays aren't all that significant for us so we tend to forget them. I forget where we were shopping at the end of June and one of the clerks wishes us a happy holiday. We wondered "holiday?" and she reminded us that July 4th was the coming weekend. We had been hearing fire works for nearly a month so the holiday itself  got lost.

Another Baby Boomer icon has passed: Jimmy Buffet at 76.