A Government Of Smart-Assed Punks

      The current collection of ne'er-do-wells, failsons, solipsistic opportunists, toadies, religious extremists and other vile nutjobs and crooks -- see the list from Blazing Saddles -- running things in Washington D.C. and throughout the Federal government includes a great many men and women of a familiar type, one that comes tagging along no matter what party is in power: arrogant punks, secure in their access to authority and/or knowledge of how to manipulate the law.  They sneer and wink their way through Congressional hears and press conferences, not just lacking in humility but contemptuous of it.

     Yesterday, the Department of Justice announced they have issued an indictment against six Cubans allegedly involved in shooting down two unarmed U. S. private airplanes in 1996.  The planes were operated by Brothers To The Rescue, an effort to help people fleeing Cuba by sea.  There are genuine questions of fact -- Cuba says the planes were in their airspace, the U.S. says they were over international waters.*  There are genuine issues of the Cuban government being repressive and generally awful, of the need to help people who got to sea in inadequate vessels; there's a lot of go work out in court, and plenty of room to argue over what court it should be, or if diplomacy is a better way to sort things out; or even if thirty years is too long to wait.

     But one of the Cubans is Raúl Castro.  He was in charge of their defense department at the time, and later served at President and leader of the Cuban Communist party, positions from which he has since stepped down.  He's 94 now.  Age is no shield from criminal prosecution (though you do have to wonder what the courts could do to him that Time has not already done or is about to do).  He's charged in the U.S.; we don't have an extradition agreement with Cuba, naturally enough, and there the matter sits.

     Or does it?  Acting U. S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking at the press conference announcing the indictment yesterday, said this to reporters: "There was a warrant issued for his arrest. So we expect that he will show up here, by his own will or by another way."  Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

     Cuba's government is far from admirable.  Raul Castro is no teddy bear.  The incident in question was tragic at best.  But the acting AG is hinting and shrugging his way through the kidnapping of a former foreign head of state, in his own country.  That's fine for the movies, but in the real world?  It's not.  Oh, we've probably all got lists of leaders and former leaders we'd like to see nabbed and hauled before a court (if not worse), but that's not how it works.  It's how wars start, and there are plenty enough of them simmering already.  Regular, ordinary Cubans are already suffering and the kind of military intervention it would take will only make things worse for them.

     But to the smart-assed punks of the world, the "little people" don't matter.  They're up there parading on the world stage, all suits and uniforms, legal writs and jet planes, bombs falling clean, high above the dust and blood and tears.  People getting killed are just a handy prop to them, to be pulled out and put to use decades after the fact.
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* All things being equal, I'm a lot more inclined to trust the accuracy of U.S. radar than Cuba's; but unless you were staring at those screens at the time, it's a matter of opinion.

Crazy Pills? Voters Eat Them Like Candy

      Apparently, crazy wins.  At least in some elections.

     This post could have been called, "Why I'm no longer a Libertarian," except I never was a big-L Libertarian.  The state party was always too welcoming to people whose ideas skirted racism, eugenics and/or religious extremism.  It might have been called "Why I stopped being a default Republican voter," since it used to be that most of Indiana's GOP politicians were safe choices: they didn't support change.  Cautious to the point of stodginess, when the state did manage to change the laws and regulations, they stayed changed.  Progress was slow but it didn't go backwards.

     The problem was, some voters wanted something different -- and it wasn't classical libertarianism.  It wasn't steady-on conservatism.  It wasn't New Deal progressivism, either; it wasn't even old-time machine politics, with cigars (and and more substantial rewards) for party workers and the well-connected and damn-all for individuals, groups and organizations on the outs.  No, what voters wanted was--

     But why should I try to formulate it, when Kentucky's Thomas Massie put it so well in 2017?

     "All this time, I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron [Paul] and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas—they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along."*

     So far, what voting for crazy has got us is gas over $4.00 a gallon -- over $5.00 in seven states, fueled by a simmering war of choice with Iran; ballooning measles cases in the U.S., a hantavirus outbreak that officials assure us is bottled up, a rare strain of ebola without any vaccine or specific treatment erupting in Africa not far from overcrowded and under-sanitized refugee camps, and a President who just got immunity from federal income tax enforcement, while building himself a combination bunker/ballroom and declaring, "I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation, I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me."

     I'm not too keen on a nuclear-armed Iran† -- who, other than some Iranians, is? -- but bombing their nuclear program flat whenever it got too busy seemed to be working.  Not as well as the enforced treaty they were under for a few years, but it worked.  At present, they've got more incentive than ever to be building a Bomb, and I think only the fact that they can shut down the Strait of Hormuz and dare the world to do anything about it has distracted them from whatever remains of their nuke effort.  Naval mines are cheaper than Manhattan Projects, and there's less to worry about downwind if one goes off unexpectedly.

     The thing about leaving out big bowls of crazy pills is that eventually everyone either freaks out or passes out.‡  I don't know if we've reached that point yet, and I'm worried about just what form it will take if we do.

     After World War Two, the United States took on, however imperfectly, the role of the world's designated driver.  We've now given up on it and joined the partying.  It's fun, fun fun -- until we wrap the T-Bird around a tree.
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* Massie tried to keep up, but as of this morning, he's no longer the craziest S.O.B running for U. S. House in Kentucky, having lost his primary to Ed Gallrein.
 
† I'm not especially happy with a nuclear-armed anybody.  We're stuck with the countries that already are, but expanding membership in that club is a very bad idea.
 
‡ Or, in fact, leaves.

Do Your Homework, Politicians

      I usually run radio news in the morning as I clean up the kitchen and make breakfast, and this morning, they were interviewing a U. S. Congressman on a recent mass shooting in his district.

     Not knowing the man, not even knowing his party when I heard the interview, I was struck by how much he sounded like a schoolkid called on to deliver a book report when they had not read the book, right down to desperately riffing on the title.

     "Congressperson" is essentially an impossible job if you make an honest effort at it.  A good staff can help, knowing or at least looking up the things the officeholder needs to know and feeding them just enough information, right before they need to know it.  It's not even dishonest: it's effective staff command.  Nobody can know everything that job requires 'em to know; the best we can hope for is that they dig in and learn the most salient stuff, and get good support for the rest.

     But this morning's guy?  At a guess, he'd seen news reports; he had some idea of the location, might have shaken hands or given a campaign speech there, but he hadn't even hit Wikipedia for more information.

     I'd have to know more about him before I made my mind up, but if I lived in his district, I'd sure be finding out.  House and Senate seats are not sinecures.  They're not supposed to phone it in.  Do the darn homework!  Is it a hard job?  Yes, it's extraordinarily hard, and if they do it right, the paycheck-to-effort ratio is lousy.

     I'm sick and tired of Senators and Representatives who won't do the work.  I dislike 'em more than the few whose politics I dislike who actually show up to interviews and events -- and their Chamber -- with a good grasp of what's going on (or even the mere appearance of understanding): at least they put in the effort.  Even if it's glib, facile and based on a quick sheet of talking points a staffer handed 'em at the last minute, better that than trying to get by on BS and blather. 

Maybe Later

     This morning, I'm just tired of the chaos and stress.  Which is, of course, what the forces of oppression want.

     Too bad, authoritarian losers: I'm not giving up.  But this morning, I'm denying you my specific attention.  Go play in traffic or something.  Go harass the birds for singing, the butterflies for being too colorful, the ants for being too organized.  (Y'all are coming in a distant third to ants on "regimentation," which I'd think would be a good strong sign that humans aren't wired up to do a whole lot of it; but you've already shown you won't be convinced by evidence, so....)

Got Through Another Day

     I even managed to finish up the laundry, do some vacuuming, change my sheets and grill a couple of little steaks for dinner, with mixed tiny potatoes, fancy mushrooms and a bagged salad.

     That's about as low-effort a nice meal as can be had.  Sure, I had to build a charcoal fire (even emptied all the ash from the grill!), any clean and cut up the mushrooms -- but the purple (all the way through!), red (only on the outside) and brown (ditto) potatoes get microwaved in their bag along with the pat of seasoned butter they're sold with, and the mushrooms go in a covered pan over low heat with a little olive oil, a smidgen of butter, some truffle zest and a hint of salt -- you just put 'em in there and ignore them for ten minutes or so.  I would have cooked them in a grill pan, but I forgot about them until the last minute and stovetop is easier to prepare.

     Tomorrow, back at it!  I've had a project going downtown at work that I might be able to make some progress on.  It involves working on the rooftop, which is good (no adult supervision!) and bad (a long climb up a fixed ladder and people tend to forget you're up there).

     Anyway, in 2026, with the world a mess and seriously askew people in leadership at home and abroad, today was about as good as it gets. 

Lookit Me! I'm Almost Human!

     I chaired the critique group this morning, and that went well.  It's usually pretty draining -- the cost of being an introvert -- but afterwards, I actually managed to get nerved up to walk over to Fat Dan's and enjoy a late lunch with Tam.  (Adequate coleslaw -- look, I'm judgemental about that dish because I like it -- and a very good toasted pastrami and corned beef sandwich on rye, with Swiss cheese and brown mustard.)

     It might not sound like much, but it's been months since I had a meal out -- and months since I walked that far.  I'm having a lot of trouble with social anxiety these days, and with my knees, and it's much too easy for me to just avoid it all: to have minimal social interaction, not go to new places, order online as much as possible and avoid physical exertion.  I'm trying to break those habits, reinforced during the pandemic (except for walking -- Tam and I were taking daily walks around the block for a couple of years), and it's slow going.

     One step at a time.  I can do this.  I've done it in the past.  The knees get better when I get out there and interact with the world, and so does my ability to deal with people.

Nuttier Than Ever

     Indiana's Lieutenant Governor continues to express peculiar opinions -- now he's concerned "Marxist Democrats" are going to lay the groundwork for an "Islamic Caliphate," right here in River Cit- er, Indiana.

     Take this as your regular reminder that not even our arch-conservative Governor Mike Braun wanted to run with this guy as his Number Two; the state GOP leadership made him do so.  And Indiana Democrats, while they're certainly Democrats, run more in the Evan Bayh mold, Lefty-Centrist or even a little Right, depending on the issue and the individual.  (Our actual Hoosier socialists -- Eugene V. Debs, for instance -- never hid it.)

     I'm not at all sure why he thinks there's any love or collusion between Islamic fundamentalists and Marxists; history suggests they're not exactly compatible, from Afghanistan to Chechnya to the Uyghurs.*  He appears to be just piling up scary things so he can warn everyone of the terrible, terrrrrible dangers that he's sure only an application of the exact right kind of Jesus to civil government can protect against -- I'm surprised he didn't throw feminism or transgender people in, as well.  Oooga-booga!  Guys like him live their life as if it's an episode of Scooby-Doo, never realizing that they're not the good-hearted "meddling kids" but the man in the monster mask.

     Bonus: Ohh, friend, either you're closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated....

     Always doubt the motives of a man who's pushing you for a quick emotional reaction; he's reaching for your wallet -- or your fundamental freedoms. 
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* Largely but not entirely Muslim.

A Return To Space

      The next season of For All Mankind is out.  On Apple TV, it's an "alternate history" in which the Russians beat the U.S. to the Moon (barely) and the Space Race never stops, forcing technological advancements.

     It's a world both familiar and strange.  In some ways, it's the future the adults promised us during my childhood -- but in the real world, we'd stopped going to the Moon before I started High School.  Because of that, at times it's almost painful to watch the show: they've got science bases on the Moon and a settlement on Mars!

     In other ways, it's clearly fiction -- and remains on a timeline that would result in the setting of The Expanse.  Politicians exhort, "Earth first!" in both shows, Martian settlers are determined and resentful, asteroids are mined for minerals (just beginning in For All Mankind and an ongoing industry in The Expanse). Some of the fractious nations of Earth have come together in the Apple TV series as the "M-7," which runs Mars and oversees the exploitation of space-based resources.

     It's a timeline based on the Sunday-supplement articles and TV specials of my childhood, but the showrunners aren't looking through rose-colored glasses.  "If only..." is a wistful dream and the TV series eschews wistfulness for a sprawling cast, a storyline as wide as history and a past that feels like a future.  The story hasn't quite leapfrogged the calendar -- the current season is set in the 2010s -- but the technology certainly has.

Television Of Interest

     Tamara and I recently watched the entire run of the CBS-carried show Person of Interest, finishing last night.  Despite ending nearly a decade ago, the show is surprisingly current, addressing the rise of "machine intelligence," pervasive surveillance, government (and government contractor) corruption and the morality of power.

     Heavy stuff -- but carried along with no small amount of action and adventure, by a group of competent characters who will beat you at chess or in hand-to-hand combat.  The series begins as one more entry in the "mysterious strangers help good people and stymie evil" genre, along the general lines of, say, The Pretender, Mission: Impossible, Quantum Leap, Have Gun Will Travel, Danger Man, The Avengers and so on: drama in the Gothic mode, with a clear conflict between good and evil, in which good triumphs just in time for the credits to roll, usually by the skin of its teeth.

     That would have been more than enough to carry a TV series, but Person of Interest didn't stop there.  A smart underlying concept and strong characters pushed it more and more along science-fictional lines, in a near-future, near-cyperpunk world of corrupt cops, honest cops, warring criminal gangs, computer geniuses, super-spy/assassins -- and a number of surprisingly human touches, throughlines of love and loss.  From season to season, the story deepens, the bad guys get bigger and badder, and our small band of heroes rise to the occasion or die trying.  There are Classical mappings to most good drama, and if you ever wondered what might happen if clever, lame Hephaestus; bold, handsome Apollo; wise, cryptic Pallas Athena; implacable Nemesis; Artemis the huntress; the Delphic Oracle and a gritty NYC police detective* faced off against Hera, Zeus and Hermes (with a small army of giants and Titans on their side, all answering to Colossus the Forbin Project), this is an answer, with enough side characters and conflicts left over to fill out any collection of ancient gods or a modern rogues' gallery. 

     This is a series well worth watching while it is still fiction.  Don't wait too long.
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* Even I can only strain a metaphor so far, though impulsive Ares is a not-unreasonable analog for Detective Lionel Fusco.  But I will still argue that most ensemble-cast dramas (and not a few comedies) can be mapped onto the various pantheons of the past, for a very simple reason: our stories still deal in archetypes and in human emotion writ large.  Good casting helps; the actors in Person of Interest were as varied as their characters, people of divergent inclinations and career paths who all brought something of themselves to their roles. 

Eggs Pomodoro, Sort Of

     Last night, I made a kind of soup or ragout with ground turkey, mushroom, onion, carrot, celery and mushroom-chicken broth.  It was quick, fresh and easy to make, and there was a little left, which I froze.

     This morning, looking at the choices -- bacon and eggs, oatmeal, Malt-O-Meal,  toast -- I was unimpressed.  All good, but all the same old stuff.

     I had three mushrooms left over, and a little celery and....h'mm, a can of crushed tomatoes.  So I fried up a strip of bacon and drained off most of the fat, diced and cooked the mushrooms in the same pan along with a little celery, and defrosted the leftovers in the microwave.

     The broth had been okay at best.  I poured it off, then added the turkey and vegetables to the skillet with the can of crushed tomatoes and "Italian blend" seasoning, crumbling in the bacon.  Once it was bubbling, I broke a couple of eggs into it and let it simmer, covered.  (I have clear "universal" pan lids in a couple of sizes, very useful for this kind of thing.)

     A dozen minutes later, it was done.  A "fancy" breakfast from this and that.

Omininousity

      Things didn't end well for Cassandra, but they were bad long before they got worse: the thing about prophecies of doom is, even if they're right, they're a downer.

     The downer at present is that we're in a "K-shaped economy," which feels preposterous to most Americans: how can a rising tide not be lifting all boats?

     But that's how it's working: if you were well-off to begin with, came out of the pandemic with money to play the stock market and not worry, a bit in crypto, maybe dabble in prediction markets, you're doing fine.  The trade war (wars?) haven't bothered you; the un-war with Iran hasn't been an issue, and while there's a whole lot of oil and gas (and aluminum and ammonia plus nitrates for fertilizer) bottled up in the Strait of Hormuz, those chickens are still scratching in the yard, and aren't due home to roost for weeks yet.  The top half of the K is going up, up, up!

     But this K is a fancy font: the bottom half is a quarter circle.  If you started out just okay, you're still mostly okay; if you were worse off, you can already feel the pinch of high gas prices and grocery prices that have barely budged down or even gone up, of rising energy costs....  And the people near the bottom, where the curve is getting steep?  They're hosed.  (Welcome to Calculus 001, by the way.  Oh, we've reached my stop already.)

     There are a lot more of us in the bottom of the K than the top, but we don't make colorful news copy; we're not part of the "AI boom" and some of us have lost jobs to it; still, one of the biggest groups is right there where the curve is barely sloping: they're not feeling it much so far.

     But the big dip in the road is coming.  There is no magic restart for the lost months of global trade in oil and all the stuff you can make with it.  Fertilizer is in short supply and expensive, and that's what grows the crops you and your entree eat.  Aluminum -- beer cans, soft drink cans, all manner of consumer and industrial goods -- is getting scarce and costly.  And oil prices -- well, you buy gas; you know how that's trending.  There will be a "capture transient" as it ends, prices ramping up beforehand, undercut by the sudden bump in supply that may result in a nasty fall.  A saving grace as the problem continues is that idled refineries and oil wells (etc.) don't start up quickly; but it's a bitter pill, since it will mean lingering shortages and higher prices until it's all back up to speed.

     Nobody liked Cassandra very much.  They liked her predictions less.  And in a K-shaped economy, you can see the party is roaring!  Look at 'em, in their Rollses and Bentleys, with BMWs and Mercedeses (Mercedii?) for the kids, and all their outrageous costumes -- surely you, too, will soon join them!  It's right there, online and on TV, glittering and shiny, nearly close enough to touch.

     Thing is, you're not gonna get there.  In a K-shaped economy, very few cross over.  The odds it'll be you or me are lousy.   I'm not Cassanda; I'll be happy to have missed my mark.  But that's not how I'm betting. 

Slow-Roasted Skirt Steak

      They've had skirt steaks at the grocer's for some time at a price that is only a little unreasonable and today, I decided to go for it.  It's probably going to cost more later, after all.

     They don't take well to rapid cooking.  You want to go at a skirt stake low and slow, or apply some interesting culinary trickery, or perhaps both.  I picked up some diced red onion, a Poblano pepper and a couple of containers of oyster mushrooms.  (And a box of beef broth, just in case, but I didn't need it.)

     I have just the pan for the job.  As winter ebbed and I started using the grill more, I was thinking about cookware.  I used cheap Teflon pans for years until that started looking like a bad idea, and Revere Ware (copper-bottom stainless steel), which is great to cook in but so very not non-stick. I love my skillet and stewpot from Our Place, but they don't like high temperatures.  My graniteware oval roasting pans are nice, but too thin for direct heat....

     Graniteware is enamelware, and there's a famous, colorful brand of enamel-finished cast-iron pots and pans that has long tempted me.  The Our Place people have a whole line it, too.  Both are first-rate cooking hardware -- and priced to match.  I went looking for something closer to entry-level, to give it a try with a little less commitment.  It turns out that Lodge, a company which makes all kinds of plain cast iron, also does enameled versions.  I've had a round 12" roasting pan with a lid for a while now, and it's working well.  (Bright red with a cream-colored interior!)

     It was just the thing for the skirt steak.  I applied unsalted "steakhouse" rub to it and let it sit while I melted a half-teaspoon of butter and a splash of light olive oil in the pan, just enough to coat the bottom.  I left the fire very low and once the pan was warmed up, I laid the skirt steak in it in a big circle,  covered it and started doing dishes.

     After ten or twelve minutes, it was cooking pretty well and smelled good when I lifted the lid.  I added about half an onion on the meat and put the lid back, and went back to my dishwashing.  When the sink was clear, I washed the Poblano, cleaned out the seeds and white pulp, and diced it finely, then added it, mostly on the steak.  There was now plenty of liquid around the meat; I wasn't going to need the broth.  I puttered around for another fifteen minutes, then washed, cut the stems away and added all the oyster mushrooms (you could use ordinary Porcinis, but we like the fancy ones).

     I let it simmer, covered, for about a half hour while I cleaned up the kitchen and set up for supper.  The total cook time was out an hour and a half start to finish.

     It was good -- the skirt steak is sliced into thin strips crosswise to serve, and with a generous helping of the mushrooms and vegetables and a bit of the liquid, it only needed the least touch of salt.  We had salad on the side, too.

     I am pretty sure hard times are coming.  The effects of the long closure of the Straits of Hormuz haven't hit yet, and when they do, it's not going to be the politicians or the high-rollers playing Wall Street who will feel the pain.  It'll be you and me.  Might as well enjoy a few small luxuries now, while we can.

     (I wrote this on the big iPad last night, and as the post got longer, the keyboard became laggier and laggier.  By the last couple of paragraphs, it was nearly impossible to edit, trying to chase the cursor around.  Better now, but there are probably still a few left.)