Wow

      It's more frustrating than I would have thought.  My replacement desktop computer has been delayed by a day, and I'm not good with it.

     Which is silly.  It will be here when it gets here, and until it does, I have many alternatives.

     I can't say the same about the current Administration: there are no alternatives, and they are taking the kinds of actions that suggest to me they expect a drubbing at mid-terms and want to accomplish as much of their extreme agenda as possible before the axe falls.

     From paying off energy companies to not build new wind and solar plants -- while waging a war that is driving up the price of oil! -- to making abortions ever more difficult to obtain legally, to last minute attempts at redistricting now that the U. S. Supreme Court has finished gutting the Voting Rights Act and frivolous, vengeful prosecutions (most notably over a former FBI director posting a photo of the number "8647" to social media, despite the current President himself having posted a picture that included "8646" and a bound and gagged Joe Biden during the latter's time in office*).  None of it is popular outside of the most dedicated portions of the MAGA base or those to the extreme Right of even it.

     That's both Wow-worthy and frustrating.  This is well past "political hardball," and on its way to a soft coup or autogolpe.  I think a majority of voters won't like it and will register their disapproval at the ballot box this Fall.  But will it matter?  I don't know.  And that worries me most of all.
______________________
* They're both childish things to post.  This is exactly the kind of ultimately petty tit-for-tat that led me to start using only actual names and titles for politicians, no matter what I thought of them.

Backup Laptop, Backup Skull

     I'm stuck with the original-issue Mark I head -- which is a pity, since I have a migraine of remarkably dizzying intensity.  I have taken OTC pain and allergy medicine and promised myself that as soon as the symptoms fade a little, I will rinse out my sinuses.  The wave after wave of rain and the pressure fronts that drive them are playing a big part this, I hope, and clearing things out should help.

     Meanwhile, I managed get my desktop to run long enough to grab essential Firefox stuff and the Downloads, Documents and Pictures folders.  I'm on my backup (Windows-lite) laptop and my pandemic-indulgence MacBook Air for now, which gets me just about everything except the big screen.  Fiction and writing-related stuff was already on Dropbox, since it allows me to go between Windows and the MacBook almost seamlessly.  I've got a replacement desktop machine on the way, and there will be a certain amount of rebuilding once it arrives.

And..."Your Computer Has Encountered A Problem And Needs To Restart"

     Over and over, and the longer it runs, the worse it gets.  I thought I had solved the problem, but nope.  My current desktop computer was like a hundred and a half when I bought it, used/refurbished, almost three years ago.  So I guess I have got my money's worth, and nearly all my writing is saved elsewhere.

     Not everything else is.  I'll recover what I can and keep moving, but it's annoying and unexpected.  And yes, once I have a replacement up and running, I'll be checking for thermal issues and other simple stuff.

Punished For Retroactive Bad Taste

     There was a time when you didn't mess with The Mouse.  Used to be, if legislators started talking about the need for copyright reform, you knew one or more of the copyrights covering a certain famous animated cartoon rodent and his pals was about to expire.

     Back when every major TV network changed hands and ended up belonging to one huge corporation or another,* Disney got hold of ABC.  They've never let go.

     And they had deep pockets.  TV networks in the United States own only a few of the stations that carry them, with the remained being independently-owned "affiliates."  ABC's got seven stations that are all theirs at present.  And in the U.S., the FCC regulates stations: anyone using up over-the-air RF spectrum has to have a license.  Networks themselves don't get a lot of FCC regulatory interaction; the individual stations do have to promise to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate and caring, courageous and strong, and responsible for what they say and do, and to respect themselves and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place, and....  No, wait,  that's Girl Scouts; but the FCC regs for broadcast stations are almost the same thing, plus a pile of technical stuff.

     ABC was a latecomer among radio networks; NBC had "Red" (primo stuff) and "Blue" (B-grade, things they were trying out, some highbrow shows that didn't make a profit) networks serving different stations and went into WW II under an anti-trust cloud because of it.  Once the war was over, Uncle Sam made 'em sell one off, and of course it was Blue that went.

     A candy company bought it up and eventually changed the name from "Blue" (c'mon, the word already had that connotation) to ABC, the kid brother of networks, gamely charging after the older, larger NBC and CBS (and Mutual), doing their best to keep up.  The first two were already into TV and as television bloomed, ABC leapt in after them, underfunded, scrappy, willing to try almost anything.  (After a few experiments, including developing Meet The Press, Mutual stuck with good, dependable radio.  They're gone now.)

     ABC remained the upstart network for decades, until Fox (entertainment, not News) came along and showed there were realms of edginess yet to be explored.

     And with that as background, their evening talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel, a few days before the White House Correspondents Dinner, made a tasteless joke about the First Lady and how she'd look at the dinner, referencing the 23-year age gap between her and Mr. Trump (and perhaps her usually-serious expression): he said she had "a glow like an expectant widow."

     It's funnier if you don't see public figures you dislike as quite human.

     It's not funny in hindsight after a guy apparently tried to make her a widow at the dinner.

     It's much less funny if you react in an all-too-human way: the Trumps aren't laughing.  FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has crossed swords with Kimmel and ABC once already, and blinked, announced the handful of TV stations directly owned by ABC are now up for license renewal, well ahead of schedule.  They've got thirty days to get their paperwork together and filed (and there's rather a lot of it), and they're going under the microscope.

     This is bureaucracy-as-punishment, and it is punishment not so much for a crass joke but for failing to predict the future when the joke was told.  It's a clear violation of the First Amendment, which protects even cruel and insensitive speech.

     The Mouse still has deep pockets, and though they have, finally, let the earliest version of their well-loved Mickey slip out from beneath copyright protection, Disney may decide to fight this one out; knuckling under will just get them more of the same, and the burden is likely to be laid more heavily on them than the three other major networks.  Or they may try judo: those "O&O" TV stations represent the smallest part of ABC's income; running them, mostly in major metropolitan areas, is more for prestige and ready access to newsmakers and they could easily sell them off and stand back, largely insulated from the wrath of Chairman Carr and the President he serves.
____________________
* Arguably, when General Electric bought RCA, NBC wasn't their main interest: RCA had a nice collection of lucrative government contracts, including plenty with the Department of Defense, plus an array of patents to warm the cockles of shareholder's hearts -- or wallets.  Nevertheless, GE held on to the network through some years of David Letterman ribbing that kept the company name front and center, before selling it off and making money on the deal.

Idiots

     Did we -- as in our Federal government -- not already know this?  Late word from the White House is that if the White House Correspondents Dinner gets a do-over, maybe -- just maybe -- Vice-President James David "JD" Vance won't be there.

     No, not because he doesn't like the Press; not because they tend to loathe him, either.  And like him or not, we can reasonably assume that a Marine would not flinch from either the prospect of violence or the rubbery chicken and overcooked vegetables common to such dinners.  A serving politician is going to eat a lot of lousy food and sit in an exposed position in a lot of large, crowded rooms.

     But Saturday night, a remarkable lot of the line of succession to the Presidency was at the dinner, an event of zero diplomatic or government importance, where a remarkably inward-looking (if sometimes confrontational) collection of people look even more inward, and if the would-be assassin had completed his aim, Iowa's Chuck Grassley could well be President today.

     Senator Grassley was apparently the designated survivor (or not; there are contradictory reports, including that with the President Pro Tem of the Senate and a few Cabinet members not at the dinner, nobody got the official designation).  He's also the last elected official in the order of succession and maybe -- just maybe -- the Executive Branch might want to hold one more high-level player in reserve.  Most of the Cabinet was at the dinner, possibly because the President's people were hinting he was going to say scathing things about and to the assembled reporters and they do so enjoy that.  And the problem is, the Cabinet fills out the list of successors.  Hey, I think they're a pack of incompetent clods -- but even when it appears the Executive Branch is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, the result of a successful decapitation-level attack would be immeasurably worse.

     There were eleven known attempts against Barack Obama's life during his Presidency, more than one and a third a year.  Mr. Trump is on pace to beat that rate rather resoundingly, but all Presidents are targets and one way to limit the possible damage is to limit who else in the line of succession is exposed to the same threat at the same time and place.

     The Daybreak series by John Barnes explores some of the ways Presidential succession and Continuity of Government plans can get tangled up.  He used a science-fiction setting, with an (ultimately) external threat -- but internal factors do much of the damage.  I'd prefer not running the experiment in real life.

     "Idiot" comes to us from Ancient Greece, where it came to mean something very much like "rube."  The present Administration likes to bring in relative outsiders to politics, to government, and that means they don't necessarily have all of the situational savvy the insiders have got, things like the importance of not putting all of the eggs in one basket -- or the yeggs, either.

"We're All Looking For The Person Responsible...."

     Who's most likely to commit politically-motivated violence, the Left or the Right?

     It is unlikely to surprise you that the answer is "people askew from reality," close to a wash between Republican-or-farther-right and Democrat-or-leftier, with "fricking incoherent" in close third place.

     Most people, including the ones with political opinions that many Americans find reprehensible, know you can't assassinate your way to a better world, and a little selective murder produces only more dead people and grieving families.  While major political upheaval often involves killings, it doesn't work the other way (and most Americans are not looking for major upheaval -- again, not even a majority of the ones you disagree with most).

     Don't get sucked into the nitwittery.

I Suppose I Should Comment

     It's appropriate to make some comment about the disruption at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

     It was something of a fiasco long before it started; the famously touchy President Trump has -- unusually for a sitting President -- never attended while in office until last night.  The event is often something of a mutual roast, it's always been a little too cozy, and mostly it's a rare fancy dinner for the White House Press corps, many of whom will who wallow in it while affecting disdain.  The entertainment this year was going to be a mentalist instead of the typical comedian, a transparent shying away from discord.  It was widely anticipated that Mr. Trump was going to go hard on the assembled reporters.

     And--  Most of it never happened.  Someone with a gun tried to crash the party, and failed.

     Security at events featuring high-ranking Federal politicians is always pretty tight, and the professionals do their best to manage every rational threat they can think of.  This means an irrational assailant has an advantage, and indeed, every known attempt on the lives of Presidents since John Wilkes Booth, successful or not, has been made by someone who was, in some way or another, not rational; they appear to have acted alone* in every case.  Add someone else to that kind of a plan, and it leaks -- and should.

     There's generally some distance in well-controlled space between the security gate(s) with metal detectors, suspicious Secret Service types, etc. and the room itself, and that's on purpose.  (I've had to pass though that exact kind of gantlet† on a couple of occasions.  It's serious business.)  It buys some time.  It worked just as it should last night; the would-be attacker -- whose precise target(s) remain unknown, but there's only one way to bet -- was stopped long before he got through the last set of doors.

     And I'm glad he was.  I happen to think Donald Trump is a loathsome human being, and his inner circle are no better.  They are doing immense harm to the proper functioning of the Federal government, to American society in general, and to both our country's stranding in the world and to world peace in general.  But nobody -- nobody -- not presenting an imminent mortal threat rates extrajudicial killing by some random guy with a grudge and/or a screw loose (or by anyone else, for that matter).  Impeachment, criminal trials, 25th Amendment, losing big at the ballot box?  I wish all of it on him.  But not what was successfully headed off last night.

     Of course, I have also been hearing claims it was all faked, or "allowed to happen."  I wouldn't count on it.  Everything about the sequence of events suggests very strongly one more Lone Gunman, getting as far as he got because he started out well askew.  And I think Trump and company are enormously more reactive than proactive.  They'll make hay with this; they already started to within the first hour.  But they didn't set it up.

     In a time of chaos, this is just more damnable chaos, and the worst people will proceed to turn it to their own ends as much as they can.
_______________________
* The Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists are welcome to debate that among themselves, but as far as can be proven, it is true.  (IIRC, there has been one attempt by a pair of desperate and borderline men working together, which failed.)
 
† Although the words are so widely misused that most dictionaries have given up, a gauntlet is a kind of glove, one that once upon a time was occasionally flung down in challenge.  A gantlet is a double row of your nominal peers, or perhaps Native Americans, who are going to whale the tar out of you as you run between them.  This does not sound like a good time, and heavy gloves aren't going to be much help.

LARPing His Faith

     It's been three days and I almost forgot -- or perhaps I should say that it is so preposterous that I nearly dismissed it out of hand.  But it's true: Indiana's delusional nutjob Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith continues to behave as if he's a supporting character in a Left Behind prequel film.

     The latest installment was prompted by his outrage that the Virginia legislature and voters had the temerity to redistrict the state's Congressional districts to favor Democratic candidates -- this in response to--  It's kind of a long checkers game.  I'd better review it.

     In late 2025, Donald Trump, frustrated by his party's bare majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, called on Republican-led states  ("About four," per the President) to gerrymander themselves.  The effort began with Texas, despite worries by some of that state's GOP politicians that it might dilute solidly-red districts.
     In August 2025, the Texas legislature approved a map that gave the state five more Republican-leaning districts than it previously had.  This was promptly challenged in court and worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, who let the new maps stand in December of this year.
     Meanwhile, California's Governor Gavin Newsom called on their legislature to counter the move.  That's not so easy as in Texas: California has an Independent Redistricting Commission that draws their U.S. House maps.  So the legislature had to put a referendum before voters in a tearing hurry: would they approve bypassing the Commission for the next set of maps?  The referendum was successful.  California's new maps moves five districts into the safely-Democrat column.
     Over in Missouri, Republicans planned to split up a Democrat-held district centered on Kansas City.  That's still in process, having cleared the legislature, been challenged in court and upheld, and challenged by petition, which might result in a referendum to overturn the new maps.  Or it might not; that's still up in the air.
     The North Carolina legislature successfully redrew their maps and will probably replace a Democratic Congressperson with a Republican.
     Utah's been going back and forth.  Anti-gerrymandering provisions of state law limit the amount of juggling either party can do, and attempts to carve up Salt Lake City into four districts that combine with the surrounding areas to create safe spaces for GOP candidates have failed after a court challenge.  SLC is likely to continue to be represented in the House by a Democrat.
     Indiana, four-square Republican, MAGA as can be, lacking any kind of independent board or commission to decide House districts and having no anti-gerrymandering laws, should have been a shoo-in.  But Hoosiers are muleish -- and cautious.  Redistricting can water down "safe" districts.  Confronted with an informal directive from Washington, DC, the State Senate mustered enough votes to stand pat: Indiana districts remain unchanged, and the dissenting Republicans who kept it that way are being primaried.
     Maryland has tried to redraw their maps to favor Democrats, an effort which appears stalled.   New York has had the same general result.
     Florida has changes in the works; their intent is to give Republicans an edge.  It's a multistep process with commissions, committees and a special legislative session, and it has only just begun.
     And that brings me, at least, to Virginia.  Remember Virginia?  That state has also cot an independent commission to draw up their House maps; the legislature managed to pass a proposed amendment to bypass it, and put the notion before the state's voters to decide: partisan maps for 2026, or not?  They voted to redistrict.

     And that effort in Virginia, that result at the end of all the preceding back-and-forth, is what drew Micah Beckwith's ire: "Democrats aren't necessarily all dark, but they are being led by the minions and the voices of darkness—they're going to win. They're playing to win. And so we have to wake up and guys step up. If we go on the battlefield, we will win. The question is, will we enter the battlefield?"

     Got it?  In a fight they didn't start, on a "battlefield" where the Democrats had to get voter approval to redraw maps while the Republicans can just let the various state legislatures rip,* he's still worried about the "voices of darkness," and warns Republicans, "Evil will find you."

     Better yet?  Ignoring polls showing increasing voter unhappiness with Republicans, all of this shifting around is pretty much a wash.  The balance lies in the few remaining competitive districts -- and in public sentiment.  I wouldn't advise either party to count those chickens before they have all come home to roost, no matter how much they want to believe someone's goose is cooked.  I know which side I'd like to see lose, but the results remain to be seen.
________________
* It is nevertheless not a bug but a feature that states decide how to draw their own maps.  Nor is it Federally prohibited to draw 'em up to favor one party or another.  "Fifty experiments in democracy" doesn't promise they'll all be noble, fair-minded efforts at uplift, or even especially wise.  Don't like it?  Vote in a new set of crooks!  

Friday, Trash Day

     Hooray, hooray, Friday's here -- and the trash isn't.  In fact, it just left.  Or at least the contents of the city-supplied bin did.  They switched 'em out a month or two back, after nearly a decade of big yellow and blue plastic containers.  It was the result of a new contract, but the old ones were starting to get pretty battered.

     The new ones are gray -- and (for a fee) there's still recycling, with its own green bins.  But something interesting happened: with the old bins, you got one for free, and paid a nominal recurring charge for a second one if needed.  There weren't enough new bins to replace all the "extra" ones and as a result, as a stopgap, you can use whatever you've got, as long as it's got the right tapered-rectangle shape the collection apparatus* can pick up and dump.  And they're not checking too closely.

     After a couple of weeks of noticing the neighbors set out various trash cans, I wheeled out the one we'd been collecting cardboard in, and lo, it was emptied.  This morning, the other one is out there, full of bagged yard waste.  It's almost impossible to throw away a trash can, and we have been stuck with these ever since the city started issuing Official Bins, back when the century was still dewy-fresh.  It's about time they got back to work!

     I expect the honeymoon will be over sooner or later, but for now, it's a time for disposal.
_________________
* You should see it!  --If you live in a city of any size, you probably already have, or something like it: a set of hydraulically-operated forks off to the left right side of the truck on a fancy "arm" that can be quickly steered (by a skilled operator) to pick up the bin, gripping just tightly enough to secure it but not break it, and dump it into a big steel box on the front of the truck.  When the box fills up, the driver pushes a button and the big box arcs up and is emptied into the far larger container on the back of the truck, which has a cover that retracts out of the way as the box swings toward it.  Rube Goldberg would be green with envy!  I'm sure watching it delights small children all over Indianapolis.  And, since they added trucks when they stopped carrying a helper to manually empty trash cans into the truck, collection is faster.  I hope the helpers got first crack at the new driver jobs, but the inner workings of trash collection in Indianapolis are as opaque as any large city's.  They've done a good job of it all along, at least. 

The Blanding

      I eat semi-healthily.  My weaknesses are a sweet tooth and a fondness for ham, sausge and beef.  Oh, and pasta.

     Salads are great -- they're better with a good vinaigrette, which includes, oh dear, salt, fat and often sugar.

     Oatmeal?  Yum -- if it's sweetened.

     And so on.  I've cut the amount of sugar in my coffee (again) to half a teaspoon, and all but given up Reese's Cups.  Salty crunchy snacks are harder to give up -- unsalted and half-salted mixed nuts help.  Bacon's got to be more of an occasional treat than it has been.

     Backing away from refined white flour is not a problem for me, other than pasta (and, okay, saltines -- oh, with a little peanut butter on them, is there a better treat?); I grew up with good rye bread and Roman Meal whole wheat, and have always preferred them to squishy, tasteless white bread.  (Our national preference for what amounts to brioche will never cease to amaze me.)

     I'm trying.  The last doctor lecture was just short of scathing; I'd not been eating as well as I should have been, and it showed.  I got worse about it during the pandemic, especially because I was keeping canned meat on the shelf and rotating through it to maintain a consistently dependable supply: Spam and corned beef hash are delicious, but....

     There are ways in which I'll never get out from under pandemic habits; I keep paper goods and hygiene supplies stocked in depth, and canned foods, too.  But I can and will eat better, and I have been doing my best for the last few months.

     I've got a lot of spices, and I'm always looking for something new.  A little more herbs and seeds, a little less salt; a little more pepper, a bit less sugar.  It's got to help!

Okay, I Did It

     I'm not thrilled about it, but there is so little good information available for older people trying to navigate the governmental and financial bureaucracy that I gave in and joined AARP.  I still think they're kind of manipulative, but probably less so than the fast-talking insurance hucksters and pettifogging bureaucrats, and I'm tired of it taking me two hours to figure out if I can rollover my work 401(k) into my personal (and embarrassingly thin) conventional IRA without taking a bath on income taxes.

     (Apparently, no, though the IRS presents the information in a confusing enough manner that it it might mean no taxes.  I'm still not entirely sure -- but me needing to pay them is probably the way to bet.  But if it was a Roth...?  I don't know, especially since I get taxed if pull money out of the existing IRA, so doesn;t that make it a Roth?  I may have to go ask the bank, though the last time I did that, they tried to refinance my house and rope me into some high-risk/high yield investment scheme and it took a rather tense meeting with a couple of suits in nice offices to convince them that I do not like gambling, I do not want all my financial stuff in the same bank, and what I wanted was an account that going to still have some money in it even if Wall Street decided October, 1929 might be fun to replay.  The number of people I knew who had their retirement plans wiped out in the dotcom bust has me convinced it's better to plan poor and be able to collect on it.  Think of it as choosing known mild disappointment over lasting regret.)

     This is going to at least double my junk mail, mostly "retirement planners" and great deals on funeral services.  Since I plan to be cremated as cheaply as possible and have most of the dust dumped out at radio towers (some are really easy to get to -- just sneak in and pour it out!), and my "retirement planning" doesn't include enough surplus to pay a planner, it's all just more trash.

Monday? There Was A Monday?

     There was a Monday, and I didn't post anything.  Sunday was a fairly busy day, once I got moving, but action has consequences:  grilling and doing a tiny bit of yard work left my knees sore, stiff and aching.

     Add in migraines and allergy symptoms despite taking the OTC pills, and I maxed out on acetaminophen and had added aspirin by Monday evening.  I have long known I was headed for arthritis in my knees; childhood rheumatic fever did a little damage, my 2006 motorscooter wreck did more (a lot more) to my right knee, and falling hard on my left knee over a year ago added to it.  The bill is coming due and all I can do is take my pills and try to move more.  Might have to go back to physical therapy.

     It was a distraction yesterday.  Who is this old person I'm riding around in, and why is she having so much difficulty standing and walking?  Oh, right.  Still me.  She's gonna have to keep at it.

     Current events keep on currenting.  I note with interest but without much comment that the President's "Liquor Cabinet" has shed another member.  All women so far -- but remember, "Women and children first," leaves plenty of leeway for SecDef, the FBI director and possibly the Secretary of State to hit the lifeboats in the first round.  There's probably a betting pool -- but don't you have better things to do with your money?