An Hour And A Half Of Fun?

     I watched a few minutes of last night's big Presidential speech and picked up the box scores and highlights this morning: it mostly covered what he's already done. Republicans cheered wildly and offered standing ovations; Democrats sat, jeered a little and held up small, polite signs with simple messages like "FALSE," "MUSK STEALS" and "SAVE MEDICAID."*

     In short, nothing unexpected, right down to cantankerous Representative Al Green getting ejected for heckling the President, saying, "You don't have a mandate to cut Medicare."  (A power Presidents, as a matter of law, do not have -- which may or may not carry much weight at present.)

     Either you welcome chaos or you don't, and if you do, consider your fellow citizens -- veterans relying on benefits, the elderly and disabled relying on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.  What did they ever do to you?

     But I guess we're finding out now what you will do to them -- and possibly to your own tax return, et Federal cetera.

     Tam and I watched an episode of Resident Alien instead, a refreshing, cheerful comedy about an alien sent to destroy the world who crash-lands in Colorado.  Gotta tell ya, in context he seems benign.
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* As an opposition party, their current motto is something along the lines of, "You wouldn't hit somebody who wears glasses, would you?"  Guess what?  That never did work and it's not working now.  This is no way for adults of any political stripe to behave, on either side of the equation.

The Bulwark Says It

     In 1933, Jews constituted one percent or slightly less of the German population, a tiny minority.  Tiny, visible and increasingly despised.

     In 2025, there's a tiny, visible, and increasingly despised minority in America -- and they are canaries in the coal mine.  I have no idea how to write about it effectively, but over at The Bulwark, someone does.

Grim Statistics

     Spent part of the weekend and this morning looking up some very grim statistics, but I'll spare you for now and just share the gist:

     The United States is a big, sprawling polyglot country, filled with people who came here from all over, for all sorts of reasons -- misfits and high achievers, people with a checkered past hoping to start over, people with a fancy pedigree in search of the next big thing, religious (and antireligious) nuts of every kind, people with big dreams and people with low ambitions.

     Politicians want to slice us and dice us and hammer us into molds -- "woke," "conservative," "liberal," "moderate," sort us by skin color, natal language, religion and so on and on and on, but we're all here.  Red state or blue state, red city or blue city -- it's really all shades of purple and we're side by side, like it or not, fixing one another's cars, cutting each other's hair, punching a timeclock at the factory or cattle on the open range, writing poems, building houses, spraying graffiti on walls or painting it over.

     A few of us -- a tiny minority -- have billions of dollars.  A sizeable minority of us are barely getting by.  Most people living in the U.S. are somewhere in the middle, a little worried over bills but on average, not missing any meals.  We're all a tiny bit special and we're all pretty ordinary.

     And they're all the same as you: they have dreams and hopes, sore spots and gripes.  Try to give 'em the benefit of the doubt.  Even the oddballs and weirdos.  You look pretty strange to someone yourself, right now, just as you are.

On Sunday

     It was cold outside.  I went outside anyway.  I touched some grass -- well, mostly in the process of cleaning the soles of a pair of tennis shoes, or whatever we're calling them now.  I have four pairs, one of which is about due for retirement, but they're all washable and they all got washed today.

     They still wear out at the balls of my feet and down the outside to the heel, same as always -- I leave question mark-shaped footprints, thanks to having very high arches.  It's rough on the soles.

     But I got outside.  In Nature.  With the birds and the squirrels and the plants that are, even in the cold, longing to be green again.  (That last part is just the plants.  As far as I know, the birds and squirrels are okay with being reddish or gray or whatever they got handed.)

Okay, I'll Bite

     Half everybody -- or maybe it's three-quarters by now -- has their own take on the meeting yesterday between Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump, Vice-President J. D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and various assistants, flacks, hangers-on and the Press.

     It's not news that things did not go as expected.  Word was that Ukraine had agreed to a deal swapping access to their rare earth deposits in exchange for past and future U. S. help.

     Everybody went off-script.

     Here's the thing: while such agreements are usually worked out well in advance by underlings, who can have all manner of deep and vociferous disagreements in private, and then put forth by their principals in carefully-planned press events, that particular assortment of national leaders is remarkably lacking in political experience.  Sure, Mr. Trump was President for one term already, but before that?  Real estate promoter.  Reality TV star.  Mr. Zelenskyy was a professional comedian.  Mr. Vance spent part of one term as a U. S. Senator, after dabbling as a memoirist, venture capitalist and attorney.  The only long-term expertise in the front row at that meeting was Secretary Rubio, and it didn't appear to me that anyone was looking to him for guidance.

     Everybody's got some opinion about who was out of line and who was merely standing up for their side, but what I have to add is just this: these are not old hands at diplomatic give and take.  I did not get the impression any of them were playing a carefully calculated game.  They surprised themselves and each other.

     I'm not much inclined to give President Trump or any member of his Administration the benefit of the doubt, and I do my best to take that into account.  Conversely, I'm overly aware that Zelenskyy has had his back against the wall since the Russians first invaded.  But no matter how I feel about the participants, that meeting was a cock-up, in full view of the Press.

     And you'd have to be entirely ignorant of at least the last three or four hundred years of history to know that when major powers fail to oppose aggressive territorial expansion in Europe, it always grows to become a huge problem.

Sometimes....

     Some days, it's not worth turning the TV or radio on.  The news gets stranger and stranger.  The Feds lay off a few thousand more people every day, most of them doing jobs that need doing, and we'll find out which ones were essential the hard way, when airplanes fall out of the sky, severe weather forecasts are screwed up, TB cases soar worldwide and famine spreads.

     All those things come home to roost, even when it's people starving and falling ill in far-off, distant lands: hunger leads inevitably to unrest, unrest to radicalism; disease can circle the globe in months, as we only recently experienced.  Other effects are more immediate -- I hope you've already filed your taxes and received a refund, because the IRS is laying off many of their tax-season hires, the people who were helping to process returns and talk to puzzled taxpayers among them.

     I've got my own Uncle Sam worries, the least of which is renewing my ham radio license.  There are a few weeks before that window opens -- you've got ninety days before the expiration date and, if memory serves, two years after -- and I'll be using one of the commercial services for it, just as soon as I can.  If you've got fed.gov stuff to get done, from Social Security and Medicare to pilot and maritime certification, better get it done now, because the public-facing jobs at most of these agencies and departments are often entry-level, and those jobs are shrinking fast.

     Maybe it'll all be just fine.  But when the inspiration-if-not-official-head of the Federal job-cutters makes a joke out of "little mistakes" like cutting funds for ebola suppression and treatment, hah ha hah, don't think your corner of fed.whatever is going to be immune.  It's not.

     Things are not going to get better soon.

Can't Even? Not Even!

     It's exhausting, but the unceasing churn of the news cycle bears watching, mostly to see who they're after now.  It's basically a Junior High School slumber party, with AP presently on the outs and the mean girl who's playing hostess talking smack about 'em, but there are whole cliques of insiders, outsiders, wannabees and news orgs trying to get their hair and outfit to match the prevailing style, and it's all--

     Bullshit.  It's all bullshit.  I want the President -- any President -- and Congress -- all of 'em -- to be covered by the widest possible variety of news outfits, from toadies to skeptics, from liberals to conservatives, from budget hawks and war hawks to pacifists and save-everybody socialists.  I want 'em singing praises and digging through trash to find evidence of malfeasance, I want 'em doing deep-dive backgrounders, chirpy puff pieces and viewing with alarm.  I want all of it -- because I am paying for that damn fed.gov, I am subject to its benefits and laws, and when they get hinky, I am sure to be screwed over.

     I don't think the White House ought to be picking and choosing exactly who gets to sit in on their news conferences and events, and who gets left out.  Limited number of seats available, okay, got it -- but the Press has done an okay job of sorting that out among themselves, and the pols and their flacks could then seek out special pals and sneer at best enemies among those ranks, just as they have always done.

     No matter who is in power or what party they belong to, they should be under a microscope, warts and all.  Especially the warts.  --And we need all of the Press there, not just to watch the gummint but to be watching one another.

     Evil fears the light.  So does incompetence.

So, How's It Going?

     The U. S. joined with Russia, North Korea and a rogue's gallery of nations in voting against a UN amendment that condemned Russia for invading Ukraine and told 'em to withdraw their troops.  Our NATO allies voted the other way.  Are we still the good guys?

     Uncle Sam is spamming Federal workers with "justify your existence" emails that they could be either required to respond to, prohibited from responding to, or in receipt of evidence of Federally-prohibited unfair labor practices.

     Farmers who use water from the Colorado River had been getting Federal grant money to scale back crops, so the reservoirs could retain enough to spin the generators at places like Hoover Dam.  Those grants are now "under review" and nobody knows when the review will be complete -- but lacking the funds, they'll need to start planting or go broke, so....

     Yeah, how's it going?  Meanwhile, the price of eggs is high and rising.

Judicial Review

     Yesterday was an important anniversary.  I'd never heard of it.

     Hylton v. United States was argued before the U. S. Supreme Court on February 23, 1796.  The Court decided it on March 8 of that year.

     The particulars of the case are unremarkable.  Congress passed a law that levied a yearly tax on carriages.  The law was challenged on the basis of being a direct tax and therefore Constitutionally prohibited.  The Court disagreed, in a ruling that stood until 1895.

     But it set up the notion that the Supreme Court could review the Constitutionality of laws passed by Congress and by implication, the Constitutionality of official acts of the Federal government, paving the way for Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the first time the Court threw out a law on such a basis.

Nope

     A commenter recently suggested one of the online, black-market (masquerading as gray) digital archives as a source of the out-of-print Andre Norton books I had mentioned.  I'm not going to publish his comment, nor the name of the archive.

     While it's perfectly okay to share works in the public domain -- the Library of Congress has plenty -- and there's a (weak) argument to be made for doing the same with out of print books that are unlikely to be republished, those archives also host copyrighted works and it is, simply, theft to share them without payment to the copyright holder.  Just as bad, in my opinion, is that these lawless collections are used to train "AI," stealing from the writers now and using the input to create soulless crap afterward.

     I won't support them.  I encourage you to not support them, too.  The only thing that ought to be fed into "AI" engines is a wooden shoe.

     Writing pays starvation wages to most writers.  Don't make it worse.

Saturday

     Saturday, I once again chaired the writer's critique group, an activity I enjoy but which leaves me exhausted.  Unless you're an introvert, it's difficult to explain how draining social activity can be, especially if you're running the show.  Fortunately, it's a well-disciplined group of talented writers.  I count myself lucky to be able to spend time with them.

     The same Saturdays always (or nearly always) include a general meeting of a local writer's group.  Their guest speaker yesterday was Charlotte Halsema Ottinger, who has written the definitive biography of Madge Oberholtzer, a young Hoosier woman who kneecapped the 1920s Ku Klux Klan.  I'd like to tell you she was a crusading reformer, but she wasn't.  She was a victim of the brutal D. C. Stephenson, political power-broker, Klan leader, murderer and rapist.  Abducted and abused by Stephenson, Ms. Oberholtzer attempted suicide and died a slow and agonizing death -- but not before supplying testimony that led to her attacker's arrest, conviction and imprisonment.

     Indiana's Governor at the time, the Klan-endorsed Edward L. Jackson, refused to grant clemency and in retaliation, Stephenson spilled all he knew, releasing previously-secret lists of paid-off officials and prompting extensive investigations by the Indianapolis Times that resulted in charges against the then-Mayor of Indianapolis, the Chairman of the Marion County Republican Party and others.  It was the beginning of the end of the second incarnation of the KKK in the United States.

     Authoritarians are often brutes, hiding behind a facade of old-fashioned respectability.  Stephenson, who liked to boast "I am the law in Indiana," had promoted the Klan as stalwart defenders of sobriety and the purity of American womanhood while drinking and womanizing with abandon in private.  It is a pattern that has repeated itself throughout history, and appears to be repeating yet again.

     You can find the book Madge at the link above or via Amazon, who are also selling a digital version for substantially less.

Reading Is...Too Much?

     It's looking like Dolly Parton's Imagination Library won't get matching funds in Indiana's next state budget, putting the effort at risk of having to shut down in Indiana.

     The charity sends kids one free book a month from birth until age five.  All parents have to do is sign up.  The hope is that, in a world of screens and clicks, if you get kids around books even a little, they'll start to find out just how interesting they are.  The Indiana Legislature has been able to find spare change for it in the past, but times, apparently, are tight.  Or perhaps they're not as concerned about illiteracy these days.  I don't know.

     You can pitch in; it appears some of their funding is through United Way, and you can earmark your donation.  I'm not finding a "Donate" button on the Imagination Library website, but you can email and ask; they're a 501(c)(3) non-profit and I doubt they'll turn down gifts.

Skipped

     Yesterday was a wipeout due to a migraine, and the migraine came in with the wave of colder weather and snow.  Better now, especially since I made a point of avoiding the news.

     Catching up is its own kind of headache.

Found It

     Space Service, the book I was after, showed up at a well-known online auction site for slightly more than the dust jacket I almost bought.  It's on the way to me now.

     Better still (but to the detriment of my lunch money), the suggested purchases included another anthology edited by Andre Norton, Space Pioneers.  The same publisher, cover art very similar in theme and style -- and another case of collector rather than reader prices.  A check of Alibris and AbeBooks found better deals, and why not order it now?  I'll be skipping the expensive vending machine treats at work for a while to make it up.

     I'm curious to find out more about the series.  There was a third, Space Police, but I'm not finding any others.  The books don't seem to be very well known.

Nice Of Him

     The other day, I almost bought an obscure anthology edited by the late Andre Norton* that I wanted to read.  Space Service is long out of print.  I recognized most of the authors and a few of the stories.  Norton's judgement of what make a good SF story is trustworthy† and it looked like the kind of good old stuff I'd enjoy.

     The book was never published in paperback as far as I can tell, and the print runs might not have been very large.  Used copies are expensive -- but a seller at one of the big aggregators listed it for $10.00.  I ordered it on sight.

     Five minutes later, an email arrived directly from the seller: "Did you notice that you ordered a dust jacket, no book?"

     I had not.  It was there in the description, if I'd read that far.  I told him so and he helped arrange cancellation of the order.  The guy was even gracious about it.

     Of course, I'm still looking.  The cheapest copies are almost within reach of my somewhat skinflint sensibilities, but I can't justify it until payday.  If then.  Who knows, maybe one will turn up at a better price in the meantime.

     And if it doesn't have a dust jacket, I'll know where to go to buy one.
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* Andre Alice Norton, changed from Alice Mary Norton...so she could cash the checks for her first few novels, published under her pen name!  Starting with fantasy books, by the time her first magazine SF story was published, she was using "Andrew North" as her byline but getting checks with her right name on them.  Why all the names?  The past was a different country even in SF, and it took a long time for women writers to get much traction.  See also C. L. Moore and C. J. Cherryh.
 
† Her story sense in general was outstanding.  She turned out a number of engrossing and entirely credible Westerns, sagebrush, horse sweat, six-shooters and all, which is particularly impressive for a librarian from Cleveland, Ohio who was of somewhat fragile health.

Oh, Goodness!

     The day is almost over and I haven't posted anything!

     Look, we warmed up to temperatures in the teens today and there's three inches of snow on the ground, over a layer of ice.  I think I did well to get out of the house.

Omelette-Topped

     Corned beef hash is a favorite of mine, though presently available canned versions fall short of the mark in my opinion.

     The best kind is home made, with fresh potatoes and left-over corned beef brisket, both of them diced and fried together.  Next-best is served at SoBro's Good Morning Mama's, with their hash browns, onions and shredded corned beef brisket.

     But my quick home version has been evolving.  Mary Kitchen brand over a breadcrumb (Panko) and/or cornmeal* crust is pretty good.  Mixed with diced onions and/or fresh or canned peppers is even better, and I like to top it with an egg or two.

     Tam's no fan of the eggs, which, in fairness, can be a little thick and rubbery.  So this morning, I was thinking about brunch, and that she does like omelettes, and how would it work out to top the canned hash with omelette batter?

     I started with the usual, a heavy sprinkling of cornmeal with some onion powder and Italian-mix seasoning, and spread the hash over it and turned the burner on, medium heat.  Next, I made basic omelette batter: mashed a couple of saltines in a measuring cup, added a little water, let it sit a bit and then stirred in a couple of large eggs (egg$?)† slowly: you want to get them very well mixed without beating a lot of air into the batter, at least if you don't want it to come out fluffy.  (Not that fluffy topping would be bad -- I'll have to try that sometime, with three eggs and a lot of fork work.)

     With the corned beef hash starting to sizzle, I poured the omelette batter over it and snipped a Pippara pepper into rings scattered across the surface.  I covered it and gave it five minutes, then alternated stretches of three minutes uncovered with five minutes covered until the bottom crust was browned.  After the first 5-3-5, it should be firm enough to lift up with a spatula and check.

     How did it turn out?  I liked it; Tam didn't want to try.  Maybe next time.  (She's holding out to walk over for slow-cooked ribs at Fat Dan's, one of her favorite lunch choices. The sidewalks and streets have a few inches of wet snow over a glaze of ice and it's plenty cold, so that's not a walk I'll risk, not with two bad knees.)
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* Masarepa cornmeal is my preference. It is pre-cooked, and browns to a nice crunch.
 
† Y'know, I'm starting to think neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Musk's "DOGE" cares about or can do anything about the price of eggs.  Gee, thanks.  But we've got 'em now and it's not like you can stuff 'em in the mattress to save for later.  Eggs, I mean.

Yeech

     Today was a miserable cold, wet day, and tonight all that dampness is going to freeze.  The rain will turn to snow and Sunday with stay below freezing all day.

     And there's no one to blame for it.  It's just plain old winter weather, in an especially inconvenient form.  It's kind of a relief, really.

Keyboard: Back

     Taking my coffee-splashed keyboard as far apart as possible without prying at the switches uncovered pockets of coffee and gave me a chance to scrub the chassis and keycaps.  After drying overnight, I put it back together yesterday morning and tested it last night.

     So far, so good.

Forget It

     I admit it: I have lost all hope for the immediate future.  Things will continue to get worse, not better, and the most we can hope for is a valiant rearguard action against a rising tide of not just authoritarianism, but ignorant, meme-level authoritarianism.

     The future is here and it is staggeringly stupid.

     At 66, I may not live to see the end of it, especially if the current Administration crashes the economy or stumbles into a world war.  Even if all they manage to do is hose Social Security, Medicare and ACA-driven insurance markets, they'll do me real harm.

     This is not to say our Federal bureaucracy is a model of perfection; it's messy.  It's slow.  It is undoubtedly wasteful -- but you don't fix that with a handful of 20-something software engineers and deep, uninformed cuts.

     Every government that has prided itself on "efficiency" has been heedless of human cost, indifferent to human suffering, injurious to individual freedom and dignity.  The Trump Administration's unwarranted vandalism to USAID has already cost lives and will cost many more.  They're dinking with the military, with the VA, with Education, and they're lurching towards a Constitutional crisis with the potential to do immense harm.

     And some of you are still cheering for this.

     Me, I'm resigned to hanging on with no prospect of a better life and scant odds it will stay even as good as it is.

     You wanted King Stork.  Well, you got him.

Clumsy

     Things aren't going great this morning.  I've been using a Qwerkywriter II keyboard for several years.  I really like it, and since I bought it during the funding phase of the maker's Kickstarter, the price was substantially lower than what they cost now.

     This morning, I knocked about a third of a cup of coffee into it.  I usually put my coffee cup on an elevated coaster between the mousepad and the keyboard and today, a little distracted while moving my right hand from the mouse to the keyboard, I caught the upper edge of the cup and over it went.  (I have to pay close attention to where my hands are in relation to external objects; starting out severely nearsighted seems to have left me with a lousy sense of where things are unless I slow down and look right at them.)

     There's a lithium battery in the keyboard.  To make matters worse, I take my coffee with cream and sugar.  So immediate action was required.

     Once I had the keyboard draining and cleared off the desk to wipe up the worst of the spill, my computer crashed and started an update!  I had to ignore it while I got the battery out (only a little coffee on it), wiped up the coffee on the desk, rinsed off some small items and started opening up the rest of the keyboard.  It's got several tricky screws and I've only accessed the worst-soaked part so far.  Full disassembly will have to wait.

     I can't afford to replace it at present.  The exact model is no longer made, but the current version is a functional equivalent.  So I'll see how the cleaning process goes.

A Tune For These Times

     Round and round and round it goes -- mostly.

Reading For Our Times

     While many people have read and enjoyed the Narnia books by C. S. Lewis, his "Space Travel Trilogy" is less well known.

     The first book, Out of the Silent Planet, is, at first sight, a straightforward space adventure of its day: our hero stumbles into a secretive mission departing for the planet Mars and is abducted.  Arriving at Mars, he and his captors are separated, have various adventures and are reunited.  --But all is not as it seems.  Like the Narnia books, there is considerable Christian allegory at work.  It's entertaining fiction, and is probably the most widely read book of the trilogy.

     The next two are...different.  Perelandra is a fairly overt struggle between Good and Evil, in which Lewis treats in some detail the banality and pettiness of evil.  I was reminded of it when I read Adam Serwer's 2018 essay "The Cruelty is the Point" in The Atlantic.  While C. S. Lewis devotes considerably more wordage to the topic and addresses it within an explicitly Christian context, the parallels are indeed striking. Professor Weston, the villain of both Perelandra and Out of the Silent Planet, has many counterparts in current politics, willing and even eager to commit cruelties both great and small, allegedly for the greater good but in fact, largely for their own sake, artifacts of a corroded soul.

     The third book, That Hideous Strength, is a cautionary tale and one the years have brought into ever sharper outline.  Combining elements of Arthurian legend with the mythos established by the preceding two books, it investigates both the risks of reducing of the human experience to a series of algorithms and the perils of AI simulating human behavior.  You do not need to share the religious spin Lewis gives these themes to follow along -- and the entire story is set within the exciting tales of a young academic who is drawn into and the ultimately rejects the machinations of the antagonists.  I won't spoil the story with too many details, but it's well worth the read, full of tension and excitement.

     Lewis saw trends well in advance of his time.  He filtered his impressions through his own education and religious beliefs, but his unwavering belief in the value of the dignity of the human soul shines through his work in a way impossible to ignore.

     Those three books offer a perspective sorely lacking at present.

Buttered Saltines

     I had a good one all lined up, a blistering piece about how the protege of a billionaire who doesn't think freedom and democracy are compatible was pushing an extreme version of the unitary executive theory in which the courts must never, ever review the Constitutionality or reasonableness of Presidential decisions.

     It's a notion that runs counter to the principle of judicial review, the Major Questions Doctrine and the Administrative Procedure Act.  Perhaps it's exactly what you might expect from a man whose membership in the ruling elite is highly contingent.  He was, after all, willing to exploit his own mother's addiction and dysfunction to further his ambition, an act roughly on a par with sending her out to walk the streets for his own gain -- although at least then, she would have been better able to refuse to go along with it.

     But no, never mind.  If that could reach you, you have already been reached, and if it cannot, you're a lost cause.  Or at least a lost symptom, netted, reeled in and and ready to be sold.  Realization will arrive with the filleting knife, if it ever dawns at all.

     So I'll stop and instead remember the simple joy of a little butter slathered between two saltines.  It was a treat when I was a child and it's still a treat now -- and still, so far, an affordable one.

Hamfest Missed

     There's a hamfest near Indianapolis today and I was going to go -- but there's also flu and worse circulating, and I kinda didn't want to give my fellow hams a chance to disappoint me, either.

     At an outdoor flea market, there's more space to avoid germs and more chances to overlook the politics that were starting to infect hamfests even before the pandemic.  It used to be just looking askance at CBers* and griping about the FCC and the ARRL (and whatever feuds were infesting the local repeaters), but people started drawing partisan lines.  Me, I just want to look at interesting old junk in person, and swap signal and weather reports over the air.
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* And refusing to sell them linear amps.  4 Watts is plenty, guys.  If you want more, study up for a ham ticket.

About Those Frogs

     In a move that is more rock-throwing than frog-boiling, FCC head Brendan Carr has started an inquiry into KCBS in San Francisco, a radio station that had the audacity to -- gasp -- report on real-time events in public view as they were happening!

     Commissioner Carr says the station has been sent a letter of inquiry, pending "...a formal investigation[...], and they have just a matter of days left to respond to that inquiry and explain how this could possibly be consistent with their public-interest obligations."

     Indeed, the radio spectrum has limited space for stations, which are charged with operating in the "public interest, convenience and necessity."  We've also got the First Amendment, the relevant sections of which read, "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press [...]."  The FCC has their own read on how those principles interact.

     The old Photography Is Not A Crime website was built around the fact that in the United States, it's not a crime to take or to share pictures of anything in public view.  If you ever wondered why the government kept extending the fences and "No Trespassing" areas around Area 51, now you know.  And if you can photograph it, you can report on it.  Simple as that.*

     Then-candidate Donald Trump was very open about his plans for Federal forces to round up and deport illegal immigrants if he won the Presidency.  He did and they have begun, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)† doing most of the work.  So the Press knew well in advance and looked for activity.  When ICE acted in the San Francisco area, KCBS covered it, who-what-when-where-why, live as events went down.  "What" included ICE raids in East San José ("where"); "who" involved uniformed agents in unmarked vehicles.  It's not a secret: anyone could see what was going on.  Commissioner Carr is nevertheless unhappy.  (The Völkischer Beobachter, er, New York Post seems worried about "rootless cosmopolitan" involvement -- but having been there, I can tell you the distance between corporate shareholders and a field reporter is impossibly vast.  Not only do the shareholders not tell 'em what to do, they don't even know who they are.)

     Elsewhere, there's unhappiness all around in Denver, where ICE covered up a home-security camera while knocking on doors.  Border "Czar" Tom Homan wants an investigation -- not into the illegal interference with video recording, but into how local news reporters found out about the raids that, this past October before he'd even got the job, he had promised were coming.  9News reporter Chris Vanderbeen has the skinny on that (BlueSky thread):
      "As a local news operation, it's routine for various people to tell us [...] when a boatload of federal agents are amassing in a parking lot [...]  A number of our crews went to these staging areas and then -- mostly this is because it's what journalists do -- they followed the teams when they went out on the raids. [...] Keep in mind, the ICE presence was OBVIOUS to anyone nearby too"
     His thread is accompanied by multiple pictures of uniformed ICE agents in marked vehicles.  A crew from the Fox News Network was embedded with at least one ICE squad in the area during the raids.  These were not covert operations.

     This isn't a new administration finding their way, unsure of the rules and customs; the principles of press freedom and "in public view" are very well established.  And, yes, there is always some tension between what the Press wants to drag into the light and what governments want to keep quiet.  That's normal.  In the United States, our Constitution and legal tradition favors truth and daylight over night and fog --  or Nacht und Nebel, if you'd prefer it in the original.
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* Interestingly enough, if you're in the military or working for Uncle Sam or a government contractor, there may be things in public view that you, personally, cannot talk about or share images of.  But that's a you and your employer issue.
 
† You'll recognize them in the field by their vests and jackets that say "POLICE ICE" in letters at least six inches tall.  They are indeed ICE, Federal Agents, but they're not, strictly speaking, police; it's there to keep other kinds of law enforcement from making embarrassing mistakes with firearms, etc.

Loosely Translated

     "Boys throw rocks at frogs in fun, but the frogs die for real."
     --Bion of Borystenthes

Ticking Away To Spring

     We're a week into February.  Three weeks to go and it will be March -- and you can see Spring from March.  Dimly at times, but it's there, looming up from the fog.

It's Veiled Threat Season!

      Checked on comments yesterday, only to read, "Your liberal bias is showing."  Ohhh, nooooes!  Jeepers, what'll I do if people find out I voted for Kamala Harris?  What if they learn I think there's still systemic racism around that we ought to be engaged in ending, or that I am a-okay with same-sex marriage,* think government regulations often serve the common good or that trans people shouldn't be erased or even made to ride in the back of the bus?

     How will I live it down?

     I still don't think an unlimited government is an unlimited good -- and Mr. Trump and his minion Mr. Musk (et barely-adult subminion cetera) are presently engaged in showing exactly the kinds of harm governments can do when unrestrained by Constitution, law and tradition.

     Another commenter mentions a handful of minor actions by the Biden Administration, many of which were held by courts to be over the line, apparently on the theory that if a Democrat President bumps into legal limits, a Republican one should be allowed to take a sledgehammer to them.  Yeah, wrong: when the Dems got slapped for stepping over the line, they took it and stepped back; in the case of student loans, they tried multiple approaches, mostly one at a time.  Comparing that to a full-on partisan assault on intentionally balanced and impartial Boards and Commissions, to a multi-pronged attack on Congressionally-established Departments and budgets, is claiming apples and hand grenades are the same because they are both dense objects that can be thrown.

     Both of my would-be and vaguely-threatening commenters appear dense and can be thrown, too.  Such boys are usually thrown for a loop when a woman tells 'em, "You're not the boss of me."  You don't get to police my opinions.  Go strain at Democratic gnats while swallowing Republican camels whole in someone else's comments.

     Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump, his appointees and all their little Misters, along with Karoline Leavitt, the Administration's Baghdad Barbie of a Press Secretary, may indeed succeed in making a huge mess of our Federal government, leaving our Constitution, laws and customs in tatters.  Certainly Congressional Republicans are not going to stand up to them, with several already on the record acknowledging and shrugging off the illegalities being committed.  Their Democratic opposite numbers have largely been ineffectual, their leadership making only feeble protest.  That doesn't mean I have to go along with it.  Wrong is wrong.  The Constitution says what it says, the laws say what they say, and simply because the Trump Administration is getting away with high crimes and misdemeanors at present doesn't they're not going to get slapped down, one way or another.  Maybe in the near term; maybe only in the history books.

     They're villains.  If they will be numbered among the most infamous or are merely minor malefactors who will rate no more than a footnote remains to be seen.

     But my addled commenters, intent on herding the wimmenfolk back into line, need have no doubt about themselves: faceless members of a hateful mob, intent on excusing the actions of men to whom they are nothing at all.
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* Why should the expense and unhappiness of divorce be limited only to heterosexual couples?  Divorce attorneys have to eat!

A Reminder

     Blowing past all Constitutional limits on the power of the President might make you happy when the guy in the White House is doing things you approve of, but what happens when he does things you didn't want?  What happens when the other big party is in power?

     Or were you not planning on ever having another election?

Regressives

     The "Repeal the 20th Century" boys were active in my comments yesterday.  It turns out they don't give a darn about rising egg prices, as long as they can keep African-Americans and women from voting, as long as they can ensure I can't get a bank account or a loan without a man to co-sign it, as long as they can repeal same-sex marriage, antibiotics, food safety, anti-trust laws and television.

     They're not just willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater -- if the baby isn't a healthy, white heterosexual male or his largely silent and totally complaint female helpmeet, they're more than happy to throw the baby out.

     To hell with you guys.  We're not running history in reverse.  It might be what you voted for, but you're not going to get it.  Not even from the grifters you voted in.

"Run The Government Like A Business"

     I have worked for small to medium-sized companies all my life, with a short stint at a big multinational decades ago.

     The medium and smaller outfits are often bought and sold, at which point you get a new set of managers, new procedures, new policies and new goals.  Sometimes it goes smoothly, especially if the place was making money before the sale.  More often, it was a mess; either there was a long, slow march though the departments, the heads being inexorably replaced one by one, no matter how hard they tried to adapt -- or the new owners would sweep everyone away as quickly as possible.  The new acquisition would often be used as a kind of "lab," where new ideas would be tried, and quite often a new boss brought along all his old friends and family members.  (One of the most duplicitous bosses I worked for was famous company-wide not for skill, but for marrying the daughter of a majority stockholder.)

     You didn't always end up with the best and the brightest.  What you got was the best-connected.

     Governments are not companies.  They've generally got hedges against cronyism and sudden changes, which help to protect citizens (and markets!) against uncertainty and the whims of new elected officials -- and their pals and relations.  They have Constitutions, laws, court decisions and customs, a framework that members of the government abide by, a kind of contract with the people.  They have competitive examinations for civil service jobs.

     The United States appear to have elected a government that wants to break the contract.  It has handed over the keys to the President's buddies,  people who were not elected, not officially appointed and not confirmed by Congress and they are moving fast and breaking things with little regard for the human cost.

     They say they want to slash the Federal workforce.  But they're trying to chase away the people who process tax refunds and Social Security payments, veterans benefits and disaster relief.  Is that what you voted for?  Is this an experiment you want to be subjected to?

Played Part 2

     There's no sugar-coating it.  Judith Butler is a lot of people's idea of a boogeyman.  College professor, pioneering feminist, scholar of non-violence and censorship, Butler has written a couple of dozen books and is a highly regarded political theorist.

     Butler is a non-binary Berkeley professor -- ooga-booga! -- and so has an axe to grind in this particular political moment.  It's an axe with a keen edge.  Asked about "issue[s...] which affect very few people" in the context of GOP's attacks on "trans" and DEI, she replied:

     "You could say that about the Jews, Black people or Haitians, or any very vulnerable minority. Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you’re operating within a fascist logic, because that means there might be a second one you’re willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth, and then what happens?"

     Martin Niemöller has the answer to what happens next: "Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

     You can argue that some transpeople aren't very nice-looking.  Or that they're whiny, or pushy, or, ew--  These are not reasons to mistreat people.  You don't have to like canaries to understand how they are beneficial to coal miners.

     Butler's right.  We're being played.  A tiny, easy-to-despise minority is being used to establish the notion that it's perfectly okay to give up on one group of people so very unlike ourselves.  Who'll miss them?  --But after them, who next?  There is always a next.  Niemöller knew.  Butler knows.

     Eventually, they'll work their way to me.  As one of the very few women in a highly technical field, I spent over a dozen years working for a man who referred to me as an "EEO hire."  The next level up of management didn't believe me, and told me I needed to work harder at getting along with him.  Over and over.

     So I pay attention when people start getting singled out not for what they do, but for who they are.  "But they're sooooo icky."  Yeah, well, there's plenty ickier in this world.

     Don't get played.

Played, Part 1

     The makers of China's Deep Seek AI announced Monday they got the AI up and running for six million dollars -- pocket change in the AI world.  U.S. AI firms spend that much just furnishing their boardrooms, espresso machines and all.

     Stock markets plunged, especially AI-related stocks.  Chip-maker Nvidia, whose top-of-the-line chips were unavailable to Deep Seek, was hit especially hard: if you can run top-end AI on much cheaper second-tier processors, why would you ever pay top dollar?

     Two facts emerged:
     First, Deep Seek was a subsidiary not of some high-tech development company but a hedge fund.
     Second, and much later, they might have been a teensy bit wrong about the price tag.  It wasn't $6,000,000.00  It was at least $1,300.000,000.00 -- over 200 times as much.  It's like ordering a fancy $5.00 cup of coffee and finding out the real cost is $1,000.00: they lied

     Hedge funds are very, very smart about investing and financial markets.  From Wikipedia: "A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that holds liquid assets and that makes use of complex trading and risk management techniques to aim to improve investment performance and insulate returns from market risk. Among these portfolio techniques are short selling [...].

     Short selling?  Ahem, Wikipedia again: "In finance, being short in an asset means investing in such a way that the investor will profit if the market value of the asset falls."

     It doesn't require a genius-level investor to know that a drastically cheaper AI using drastically cheaper hardware would yank the rug out from under the big names in AI, some of whom are publicly traded.  With a big pool of funds to take advantage of that knowledge, hey, presto, Chinese hedge fund makes a nice tidy sum, Chinese government gets a week of financial instability in U.S. (and other Western-aligned) markets.

     We got played.

     And meanwhile, the giant, energy-sucking plagiarism machines still don't have a sustainable use case other than listening in on your Zoom conference and writing a more-or-less accurate summary of it.  You could hire a professional administrative assistant to do that without needing to boil Niagara Falls to power her, and she'd probably even make coffee, too, if you asked nicely.

     But you do you.  Just try to not do in everything and everyone else in the process, maybe?

It's Black History Month

      Apparently the Feds aren't going to recognize it much this year, but you can, because it's everybody's history: we're all in here together.  History, culture, invention and everyday life are wrought by everyone -- but some of 'em keep getting swept under the rug.  Let's take a month to roll back the carpet and see.

"TDS"

     Of course I've been accused of "hating Donald Trump," with the implication that I have taken some unthinking personal dislike to the man, sneering at how he combs his hair or ties his necktie.*

     Yeah, no.  I think he's a lousy boss; he's certainly got all the hallmarks of every bad boss I have ever had, and none of the behaviors of good ones.  But Presidents don't necessarily need to be super-duper bosses.  We've had some real assholes in the job who did it well enough.

     My problem with him is he's not a very good President.  He doesn't delegate well and he dodges responsibility.  He makes decisions I think are poor, from contradicting his own subject-matter experts to ignoring issues of Constitutionality and legality when undertaking Presidential actions.  (Sorry, President Nixon, but things are not presumptively legal just because a President does them, and you can tell your pal, the odious Woodrow Wilson, that the U. S. Supreme Court, James Madison and I said so.)

     As for the man, I think he is more to be pitied than loathed.  He appears to me to be deeply insecure.

    As President, he's going to break something you value; he has let Elon Musk and Mr. Musk's minions rummage around in the system that issues individual income tax refunds and Social Security payments and nobody appears to know what they're up to.  I don't know if that's where the fed.gov writes checks for Army bullets, Air Force jet fighters and Navy submarines, but I sure hope not.  That's not TDS.  It's not even PDS.  It's me, with my usual lack of trust in anybody in some sort of authority, looking with alarm at alarming behavior.  All U. S. Presidents are Just Some Guy, and all of them are capable of screwing up the job very badly.  It's not deranged to keep an eye on 'em, and to point out when they're messing up even worse than is usual for the office.
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* Let us distinguish between the questionable sartorial choices and oddball behavior of Presidents on the one hand and how they actually do the job on the other.  Tan suits, weird ties, goofy jogging outfits, press conferences while on the john, bitey pets or ugly kids do not actually matter.  Running the Executive branch and avoiding civil disruption and unnecessary war matters.  Mr. Trump doesn't have a real good record on civil disorder both Left and Right, especially compared to his last several predecessors from both parties, and he seems to be working on the second.

"...Don't Know Much About Government..."

     The current President -- who held the job before -- does not appear to know what "Continuity of Government" is.  Here's a bit from yesterday's press conference:

Speaker 17 (47:08): [...] if you could clarify perhaps something that the defense secretary said when he said that this helicopter went on a continuity of government mission?

Trump (47:23): I don't know what that refers to, but they were practicing. They do that. They call it practicing and that's something that should be done. It's only continuity in the sense that we want to have very good people and that has to be in continuity and that's what they refer to, but it was basically practice and it was a practice that worked out very, very badly.

      You can read the entire transcript here. I burst out laughing when I heard it live.  CoG is serious, base-level keep-it-going stuff.  When then Vice President Dick Cheney was evacuated to an "undisclosed location" on 9/11, that was a Continuity of Government move.  (He was probably taken to Raven Rock, a secure bunker.)  On one level, the various people who would be covered by CoG -- and who have CoG "shadows" in place -- don't need to know much about it, or the various scenarios the people involved train for.  They just have to get in the helicopter and trust the crew.  But they do have to know CoG exists, and why, and what it would do.  I got the impression our current President might not have been taking notes when they covered the topic.

     It was easy to miss among the bizarre, DEI-blaming comments, but it happened.  I don't think he's done his homework.

Create Chaos, Get Chaos

     There was a terrible air crash in Washington D.C. last night between a small commercial passenger airplane and a military helicopter.

     Night flying is difficult.  Washington's airspace is busy and flight paths are restricted -- nobody flies over or near any of the important buildings except a few government flights, just as you might expect.  In air traffic generally, there are rules about who gives way to whom, based on type of vehicle and activity, but an airplane on final approach and a helicopter complicate sorting it out, and around a busy airport, air traffic control has the final say.

     Ultimately, all airplane crashes come down to pilot error, mechanical failure or external action, and the worst ones most often have more than one cause -- things like an inadequate de-icing system and a decision to fly through bad weather rather than avoid it and so on.

     But around a busy airport, pilots (who do not have 360-degree vision from the cockpit) rely on air traffic to keep them safely clear of one another.  FAA's got radar, with transponder data to ID each blip, and a lot of eyes on screens.

     FAA is, of course, a part of the Executive Branch.  Their Administrator resigned a few days ago, under pressure from Presidential advisor Elon Musk.  FAA employees, like all Federal employees, have lately been whipsawed by a series of memos and e-mails warning them to end all "DEIA" efforts (with threats of dire consequences for holdouts and tiplines for informants), a clampdown on external communication, "buyout" efforts of questionable legality (and warnings not to accept them), and so on, creating a lot of buzz and uncertainty.  It's not impossible that some of those eyes on screens were distracted.

     It's one thing to make airy campaign promises about lowering the price of eggs, only to take office and waffle that lowering prices is difficult to do; that's the usual politician bait and switch.  It's quite another to bring so much chaos and worry to vital agencies that planes collide, leaving scores of citizens dead.  This tragedy is Donald Trump's doing, an albatross he will wear as surely as Joe Biden took the blame for an economic recovery that left the middle class worse off while billionaires rolled in booming profits.

     Sixty-seven people are dead, thanks in part to President Trump's addlepated "war on woke."

     Update: Already had a couple of "Wait until all the facts are in, you just hate Trump" comments.  Tell me, did you say that before you slapped a Biden "I did that!" sticker on a gas pump when prices were high?  Sorry, charlie: Mr. Trump is in the worry seat now and he gets the blame.

     Update II: I've received several comments from people claiming to know what happened and why -- but without any cited sources or even claims of holding a pilot's certificate, I will not publish them.  There will be a preliminary NTSB report in a month or so, and a full report in a year.  We'll know what details can be known then.  Nevertheless, President Truman's desk sign summed it up: the buck stops at the President's desk, no matter how much he might want to blame disabled people, sexual minorities, people of color or women.  You don't have to pitch in when that small, weak man tries to throw people under the bus for not being straight white men.

Ah, The Question

     Is it "monkeywrenching" if it has nothing to do with environmental activism, and isn't strictly illegal but just a little sand in the juggernaut's gears?

     Probably more polite to leave Edward Abbey's term for his destructive friends to use, and find some other name, like "malicious compliance."

One Week In

     A week in, the country is still under an unrelenting Presidential firehose of nastiness, slanted rhetoric, questionable firings, punitive reassignments, sweeping halts to Federal spending that may not actually be within the Executive Branch's power* and so on.

     Steve Bannon usually gets the credit for the Republican "flood the zone" strategy, and it's certainly effective; several high-profile stories have adopted the official framing without much fuss.  When Colombia refused military flights of handcuffed and shackled deportees, insisting their returned nationals be treated with dignity,† the U. S. President threatened tariffs and travel restrictions.  Colombia fired back, with hot words of their own and their own set of planned tariffs.  Diplomatic hijinks ensued and in the end, flights resumed, sans restraint on the deported passengers.  Our President got tough with Colombia until Colombia got what they wanted -- and then he told the Press they'd backed down.  And that's how it it got reported by many outlets.  If your child came home from school with a story like that, a bully who pushed them around until your kid got what he or she wanted, you'd be more than suspicious.

     One of the intentions of such a massive onslaught is to overwhelm, confuse and upset any people or institutions who might oppose it.  And it is a lot of stuff, sometimes couched in loaded language that can get under your skin.  But it's just stuff.  It's nothing that wasn't described in Project 2025 or Agenda 47.  There's nothing in the wording that isn't a quote from or a paraphrase of the new President's campaign speeches.  The Blitzkrieg may be full of Kreig‡ but for anyone paying attention, it is notably lacking in Blitz.  It's the same kind of ranting that was once found only on obscure YouTube channels or late at night on staticky AM stations, it's not any less mean or dull when it gets shouted from the bully pulpit of the Presidency and it is not at all unexpected.
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* Although with a cooperative Congress and a compliant Supreme Court, who's to say?  I'm sure this is just what James Madison had in mind.
 
† He's got a point.  While it's a crime to sneak into the U. S. without permission, and many of the returnees are said to have committed other crimes in the U.S., most of them aren't criminals under Colombian law.  If the aim is to get them out of the U. S., why should we care if they're handcuffed or not?
 
‡ Kultur-Krieg anyway, mostly sad-sack foaming at the mouth that some people might have dared to dye their hair unusual colors, marry members of their own gender, or had the temerity to practice a non-Christian religion, or even none at all.  Some of them even refused to vote for him!

Saturday Dinner

     Saturday dinner was pure guesswork, driven in part by our grocery store having only one pork roast, and it small and tattered.

     I bought three thick pork chops instead, along with an apple, potatoes, onion, carrots, celery, parsnips and mushrooms.

     Ahead of cooking, I marinated the chops for a few minutes in a mixture of balsamic vinegar and soy sauce, with ginger, garlic, smoked paprika, fresh-ground mixed pepper, some left over chimichurri herbs and dashed of celery salt and curry powder.  I browned the chops on both sides in a little extra-virgin olive oil and poured the remaining marinade over them, hoping for the best.  Once it was simmering, I peeled and cut up the apple, added it and put the lid on.

     Potatoes, carrots, celery and onion followed slowly, and I let it for about an hour, having forgotten the parsnips.

     I remembered when I went to prepare the mushrooms, so I hurried to peel three big parsnips, slice them thinly, and add them with a little hot water.  Then the mushrooms with a little more hot water, and I left it for over an hour.  It was smelling pretty good.

     When I went fish out the pork chops, the bones came out.  They were just about spoon-tender and juicy.  The sauce was dark and rich, the potato had soaked some of it up, and the whole thing was just right, carrots and parsnips about equally soft.

     The marinade had me worried.  It could have been too strong -- but it wasn't.  It was balanced between the apple, the balsamic vinegar and the soy, none of them predominant.

Don't Know Why I Bother

     There was a point during the pandemic when I stopped doing confrontational debunking.  People had their minds pretty well made up, right or wrong, and they were not going to change -- and some of them were starting get threatening.

     I try to not have strong attachments to anyone or anything (it's that Jr. High flirtation with Buddhism), and to not share too much about the stuff I really love if it's where other people can get at it.  I was always dislikeable: nearsighted, clumsy, stroobly-haired, a tomboy who never knew when to shut up.*  It's never nice to discover someone's poured milk in your school locker, glued your Lord of the Rings paperbacks into a series of solid lumps or keyed your car.  I learned to keep things shut away.  At my present age, I would prefer to retain all the teeth I have left and not suffer any more broken bones -- little things, I suppose, but such comforts.

     Nevertheless--  It irks me when molehills are inflated into mountains.  The Federal Emergency Management has been a prime focus for political extremists from the day it was proposed. If they stock up on house trailers, they're said to be planning concentration camps.  If they ask for bids to supply body bags, they're accused of plotting mass death.  FEMA workers are often greeted with hostility when they show up after calamity has struck, accused of being too slow (States usually have to ask for 'em) or too snoopy (it's a government agency; they have forms that have to be filled out) or of doing things they have never done.  (And I get it, it's nervous-making when The Gummint shows up; my Mom was a township property tax assessor, which occasionally meant having to measure the outside dimensions of somebody's house.  Not everyone was okay with that.)

     So I had a blog comment about how FEMA had left Trump supporters in the lurch, and that comment needs to be addressed.

     In the aftermath of disaster, people are on edge.  Armed with a clipboard and a cellphone or radio, FEMA workers have been known to encounter residents who have rather more armament.  I gather the advice they are given is to avoid confrontation.

     In early October of 2024, Hurricane Milton roared from the Gulf and across Florida, killing at least 35 people and doing over 30 billion dollars in damage.  Afterward (some sources say October 27), a FEMA supervisor of 11 canvassers working in Lake Placid, FL told them not "avoid confrontation" but to skip houses with Trump campaign signs.  She got caught; someone leaked the email and by November, she was fired and FEMA sent a new crew to cover the area.  Short write-up here, news stories here and here.  Any search engine will find more.  FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell was hauled up before the House Oversight committee, where she condemned the supervisor's action.  Jamie Raskin of Maryland called the instruction "a bad mistake, legally and constitutionally, which violated the core mission of FEMA and every federal agency to work on behalf of all Americans. [...] It’s plainly wrong and divisive to use a presidential campaign lawn sign as a proxy for someone’s dangerousness," and that's the ranking Democrat on the committee calling it out.  The Republicans said much the same thing.

     That is the sole documented example I can find of FEMA being partisan.  Some crazy rumors came out of North Carolina after their terrible floods, but it appears to be social-media fantasy.

     Here's what FEMA says: "FEMA provides assistance to survivors regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, English proficiency, political affiliation or economic status." They've got a whole fact sheet you can look over -- and if you've got evidence they're not playing by their own rules, there's a "contact us" link right there at the bottom of the page.  Cc the House Oversight Committee while you're at it, I'm sure they'll be interested.

     Or you can huff the fumes of overheated bullshit, if that's what gets you high, but don't confuse the resulting hallucinations with reality, and don't ask the rest of us to take a whiff.  The stink is unmistakable.
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* One of the first signs of trouble with my ex was when we were building a little platform at my previous home to get the house for the feral cats up out of the mud, and it became obvious he wasn't much good with a handsaw and had trouble sinking a nail straight.  It took me by surprise; I think of those as basic life skills, stuff my big sister, little brother and our parents knew before adulthood.  He was...not real happy that it surprised me.  I'll take half the blame for that, but, um, it was a warning of basic incompatibility we both should have heeded.

No FEMA?

     The Executive Branch is talking about doing away with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which operates under the Department of Homeland Security.  This would probably require Congressional action, given that the current version of FEMA was set up under the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

     While most people know FEMA from the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, or the short-term support they give to disaster victims, often in the form of funds for food and housing, they do a lot of the "grunt work" behind the scenes.  After Katrina, they took a long, hard look at themselves and the co-ordination process, and adopted, expanded and trained for the National Incident Management System, a flexible, modular command framework for disaster response -- and one in which FEMA officials rarely get the top job.  They also got handed the ugliest part of the EAS system: working out who initiates alerts, how the system passes messages, what the data codes are, and running periodic national-level tests.  FCC does the enforcement; FEMA has to make the thing work when needed.  That was a job that didn't get done at all before it was handed to FEMA; there was hardware in place, but it had never been tested and there was a lot of resistance to testing it.  When it finally did get tested, surprise: the national-level system mostly didn't work.  It does now: they ran the tests, found the weak spots, and fixed 'em.

     They're the agency state Governors call up when major disasters strike, and they're the ones who get the blame if response lags.  Congress sets their budget and they've got to go back to Congress if a string of floods, bad weather and wildfires run it dry.

     So set among DHS's super-spies, decorated soldiers and counterterrorists, FEMA is the agency in work clothes, rumpled and sweaty.  Could other parts of the government do their job?  Sure -- but history tells us that didn't work very well in the past and I see no reason to believe it would be any different next time.

     I was always told conservatives were all about keeping the stuff that worked, conserving it, and eliminating wasteful flash.  I'm not sure the present crop of 'em believes that.

The Next Four Years

     I'm going to do blog posts on things that catch my eye, and not follow all the various helmet-fire freakouts or unseemly celebrations.  These are going to be contentious times, as anyone who remembers the years between November 2016 and the Spring of 2020 could predict.  People will get burnt out on politics, and I don't intend to be one of 'em.

     Individuals will be physically hurt as politics play out in the real world and the only advice I have to offer is to try to zig when the bad stuff zags.  Protests and rallies carry a small risk if you're going with the flow, but the various kinds and intensities of riot absolutely do not care what your politics are or if you and all your friends think you are a good person: get in the way and you will come to harm.  Understand both the odds and the stakes.  Don't go doing stupid things in stupid places with stupid people.

     Mind the trolling and poking.  As the Cynic philosopher warned, "Boys throw stones at frogs in jest, but the frogs die in earnest."  And remember that while gentle persuasion sometimes works, screaming at people will never change their minds.  It just encourages them to yell back.  After a while, everyone is yelling and nothing gets done.

Contrasts Along A Timeline

     When I was growing up, if you went to a Protestant church on a Sunday, you knew you were going to get a sermon along one of two lines: Hellfire and damnation, warning of dire Divine retribution against sinners and the necessity of being saved or the Sermon on the Mount, emphasizing compassion and forgiveness and reminding everyone that the Almighty's love was raining down salvation like soup and the church was giving away bowls.  There might be the occasional digression on some point of theology or a Bible verse the preacher had found especially apt, but you knew you were going to be yelled at or gently chided, and either way, they wanted you to eschew sin and follow the Lord.

     With that out of the way, I'll move to the secular.  In his second Inaugural address on January 20, President Trump said: "After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America."  What decent American would fail to applaud such a firm commitment to free speech?  It is one of our proudest traditions and most valued rights.

     On January 21, the new President, Vice President and their families were at the National Cathedral for an interfaith prayer service, an event organized long in advance, with all of the speakers carefully vetted.  The sermon was delivered by an Episcopal bishop serving the Washington, D.C. area, who concluded, "Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they – they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors, they are faithful members of [religious congregations]. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land."

     This is pretty standard stuff, of the Sermon on the Mount variety.  It may not be your cup of tea; it may not be a particular politician's cup of tea.  But it's not an attack; it's not hateful.  And it is most certainly free speech; it is most certainly representative of our nation's cherished freedom of religion.

     Mr. Trump didn't like it -- and he, along with every other person covered by the Bill of Rights, is not obliged to.  A little after midnight on the 22nd, he posted to his social media site, "The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. [...]."

     He is entitled to his opinion; I don't think he's a very perceptive critic when it comes to tone or graciousness, but that's merely my opinion.  It is a matter of plain fact that the speaker is a Bishop of her faith -- and no President gets a say in that.

     Another member of the President's party had something to say.  Republican U.S. Representative Mike Collins from Georgia posted a video clip of the sermon to social media with the comment, "The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list."

     And that, too, is an opinion -- but it is also a call to action from a member of the national legislature, and as such it is, in the legal sense, chilling.  On the other hand, if he gets his wish, the Bishop will be sent packing, back to where she came from: New Jersey.

     Last time I checked, it was still a state of the Union.

     Last time I checked, speech was still free of government censorship and threats of punishment.  Congressperson Collins might want to do some checking, too.

Darwin Doesn't Need Your Help

     Channel-surfing this morning, on three separate occasions I happened on an NBC reporter, live from the latest big wildfire in southern California.

     She was about as close to the fire as she could get, with smoke drifting through and hints of flame in the background.  The report had "B-roll" shots from even closer, nightmarish images.

     But what kept giving me the shivers was the immediate background for the live report: A downed high-tension power line, the pole slanting away from the viewer's lower left to center screen, with a couple of crossarms making a steeper angle from lower right to upper left, big insulators gleaming, fat cables in slack catenaries crossing behind her making a dramatic scene--

     Dramatic and potentially fatal.  A downed live power line does not always arc, smoke or hum.  Electricity itself has no color, no smell, no sound.  Not every inert-looking wire is dead.  Power companies do not protect the high-voltage lines with the kinds of fuses and circuit breakers that trip once and stay off until reset.  They use "reclosers:" gadgets that open on a fault, wait some set amount of time, re-energize and try again, over and over.  It takes less human intervention and most faults -- a swinging branch, an incautious squirrel, a Mylar balloon -- will clear themselves.  Your lights at home flicker a little, maybe go out and come right back on.

     You not only can't tell if a downed power line is live or not, you can't even count on it to stay off!  California electric utilities routinely shut off power in lines feeding fire zones, especially if there's an evacuation.  They (somewhat reluctantly) shut them off in high-risk areas during fire season; power grids allow a certain amount of re-routing, though it takes extra effort.  Re-routing can light up a previously-off downed line, too; there's nothing magical about monitoring a power grid and the central control at even the most up-to-date utilities have only a limited picture of what's going on.

     The voltage gradient from a downed power line tapers off gradually with distance, in a logarithmic or inverse-square way.  The current is limited by the resistance of the soil, and current  across a resistor gives us a voltage differential.  The reality of this rough math means if you're too close, even standing with your feet too far apart can be fatal.  Holding onto a microphone connected to a wire plugged into a camera that is itself connected to a van some distance away will be fatal if the juice comes back on.  Oh, maybe she's got a wireless mic; maybe the camera is plugged into a video-over-cellular backpack.  Maybe -- and even then, maybe a long step to get back to the news van and make ready for her next live report will be her last.

     In most TV markets, the news photographers (don't call 'em "cameramen," they're photojournalists), any tech who runs a remote truck and as many live-news reporters as can be rounded up and made to hold still for an hour are subjected to regular training sessions on the dangers of overhead* and downed power lines.  The industry didn't used to do 'em, but a string of fatal and near-fatal accidents over thirty years ago caused our insurance carriers to insist.  The NBC crew ought to know better.  I hope they don't learn better the hard way.
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* Overhead?  Way up there?  Yes indeed.  For a terrestrial microwave link, those trucks carry tall pneumatic masts that will easily reach power lines -- if the operator was fool enough to park under them.  Filling in on an ENG shift, I was once waved into a spot at the State Fairgrounds, started the mast up, grabbed a reel of audio/video cable and stepped out of the truck to run it into the venue -- only to look up and see they'd put me right under a ridiculously low power drop.  I darned near broke a wrist, flailing for the air compressor shutoff, and had a short, heated discussion with the well-meaning Fairgrounds worker.

Not Gonna Do It

     Just downstream of the Inauguration, the news media has locked themselves into a familiar cycle of "OMG, look what the President has done!"  Thrilled or horrified per their political bent, the coverage is long on generalities but short on specifics, and I find myself having to dig for details on the actions that strike me as significant.*

     I suppose I could turn around and share them with readers, but at that point it only throws a teaspoon of signal into a boiling pot of noise, and there's enough steam and fog already.

     Let it settle.  One of the few in-depth stories I could find sorted the flurry of Executive Orders and related actions into three categories: things unquestionably within Presidential powers; things that are going to take considerable adjustment, changes in rules and possibly Congressional action, and which may be challenged; and things that are most likely unConstitutional and either will be challenged or have already been challenged.  The last two sets aren't going to have much effect for some time, if they ever do.

     Presidents do not operate in a vacuum.  The Executive Branch is just one leg of the Federal tripod.  It happens to be the only one with a single individual at the top of it, and the full focus of the Press is on him in a manner impossible with Congress or the U. S. Supreme Court, but that's not the entire show; it's not even close.
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* An example: over 1,500 people were given pardons by the new President; fourteen had their sentences commuted instead, leaving felony convictions on their records.  Can you name the fourteen?  I couldn't find their names in any news story and had to go back to the White House press release instead.  It's an interesting group.

Margaret Atwood Says She's Not A Prophet

     Indeed, Ms. Atwood says The Handmaid's Tale drew on historical and (then) contemporary events -- which is one of the reasons she, somewhat sniffily, eschews being lumped in with "Science Fiction."  It's also one of the reasons I, somewhat sniffily, have shelved that book with my other science fiction books: all SF is, in one way or another, linked to current and past events, and to the writer's perception of them.

     You can read The Handmaid's Tale as a warning -- just as you can Le Guin's The Dispossessed; and they both warn about the harm caused by trying to hammer everyone into the same mold and the endless cruelties we inflict on one another when we don't stop to think and to care.

     The lesson is the same: Live however you choose -- but don't force the weird people across the road or the dull people next door to live the way you do.  Treat other people politely; you're not obliged to respect their choices but you don't get to be a jerk about it, nor do they about your choices.

     Otherwise, you're locked into an endless cycle of mutual retribution that will harm innocents every time the wheel turns.  "Oh," you may complain, "But look how it enrages those who disagree with me."  And with that, you have put yourself next to the Carthaginians as Roman historians described them, shoveling babies into the fire to ensure prosperity and victory.

     It's not worth so horrific a price.  It never is.

Fact-Checking

     I keep seeing mention of "Wilhoit's Law," sometimes attributed to Professor Francis M. Wilhoit, Ph.D., U. S. Army cryptographer, CIA agent, pal of Zbigniew Brzezinski​ and Henry Kissinger, political scientist and anti-racist.  He retired in 1990 and passed away in 2010 at the age of 90.

     Wilhoit's Law is younger than Godwin's Law, younger than Rule 34 (find your own links, weirdo), and states:

     "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

     Sad if true, and historically, it may be easier for an American to see it in application to European conservatism (and vice-versa); but the guy who coined it did so in 2018 as part of a lengthy reply in a discussion thread: 60ish highbrow composer Frank Wilhoit of Ohio.  He's got some pithy opinions about politics, but he is not a former spy and confidante of high-level diplomats, nor a professor of political science, and you should not come sailing into debate flying the banner of Francis M. Wilhoit aboard the good ship Frank Wilhoit, orchestra thundering at full blast.

Well, It's Done

     The new President has been installed, with slightly more fuss than screwing a new plug fuse into a 1920s electrical box.  Apparently, we're going to war against Panama, possibly Mexico, and Boy George.  The latter is a Crown subject and presumably protected; Mexico's reaction to organized U. S. efforts against drug cartels is an open question.  But I'd sure hate to be Panama right now.  No, strike that: I'd sure hate to be the Panama Canal.

     The thing about a vulnerable asset, of which the canal is a prime example, is that it is entirely too easy to destroy its value, especially while fighting over it.

     The incoming President's speech was -- and I don't want to be unfair, this is hardly atypical of Inauguration speeches -- long on rah-rah rhetoric and short on specific plans.  So was his express desire to "retake the Panama Canal" chest-beating boosterism or a definite plan?  Are his aims to turn the fed.gov on a dime going to run headlong into the reality that even a cooperative Federal bureaucracy has far worse cornering ability than a 1930s battleship?  I dunno about the first, but the second is likely, and the pile-up will be ugly no matter what.

Get Out Your Auguries

     I don't know, maybe augers will make holes to peer through into the future as well as they make holes in lumber.  But I think it's auguries you want, whatever tomorrow's inauguration may augur for the future.

     It's going to happen.  I'm not going to pretend he didn't win the election, or whine wordlessly over it either.  This is our reality and we're all going to see how it works out together.

     Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe it'll be wonderful, and his cabinet with almost no experience will live up to their jobs, each and every one.

     But I doubt it.  Anyway, tomorrow we get the scaled-down, indoor version of the same pomp and circumstance that first greeted George Washington and has greeted every President who has come into office on the Constitutionally-mandated day since then.

     A spate of Executive Orders are promised to follow, ensuring full employment for civil rights and Constitutional-law attorneys for at least the next six months and probably far longer.

     The Circus is back in town.  I wouldn't be holding my breath for any bread along with it, if I were you, and I kind of am.

Our State Is Beclowned

     Beclowned by disappointing Todd Rokita, who was once a pretty reliable, mildly-conservative, mildly-libertarian politician.

     That guy is long gone, burned on the altar of his own ambition.  He was leaning farther and farther Right before Trumpism sped him up, before the Covid pandemic spun him harder, and these days, well, follow the link to see the flexible office-holder flexing that our state is a place, "...where we can raise our children as God intended, without interference by woke schools, doctors or courts...where we are no longer vaxxed or masked."

     Yesirree, Todd considers the unchecked spread of disease as a gift from his personal conception of the Supreme Being, a being to whose tender mercies he, as a holder of public office, would subject each and every Hoosier -- Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, agnostic, Unitarian, atheist or whatever.

     I, personally, happen to be vaccinated against everything I can get a shot for.  At 66, I still remember rheumatic fever* at age five, chicken pox at eight, mumps at ten: you don't want any of these.  If Todd wants to be open to the possibilities of shingles, Covid or HPV (etc.), I'd like to encourage him to pursue it, but he can bugger right off if he wants to extend his crazy ideas to the rest of his fellow Hoosiers.

     This is what happens when a political party embraces a feelings-based, anti-science, anti-expertise approach: performative crazy, from cynical politicians who know better.  Medical privacy being what it is, we'll never hear from Mr. Rokita's physician, but I'm betting he's not skipping any shots; he's just pandering to where he thinks the votes are, to a base he expects will keep on falling for it.
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* There's no vaccine for this one.  It's an autoimmune disease, often in response to a strep infection, and it can come back for more later.  And colds can often leave you vulnerable to strep.  So leave me out of your "Let's all share viruses," lovefest.  I'm profoundly disinterested.

N.B.

     Comments like "Hahahahah. Your a idiot." are not, in fact, actual debate, and will not be published.  Give facts, cite verifiable sources, make an effort to be coherent -- or remain unpublished and much-mocked.

     I get that the junior stormtrooper thing is big fun for you, and you think it's very much the style these days; I get that it must be deeply satisfying for you, after all those years of trying to keep up with the smart kids (while deriding them as grinds and/or weirdos), but you're still a loser, even when you think "your side" is winning.

      PS: The gazillionaires you think are on your side?  The ones raking in daily more money than you'll make in your life?  They are not on your side.  They're laughing at you behind your back while they're picking your pocket.