We're In The Hands Of Fools

     I'm starting to see news stories -- you know, the kind with actual news about things that are actually happened, supported by interviews with the people to whom they are happening genuine primary sources -- about shortages of agricultural workers: the people who set cow up for milking, harvest fruits and vegetables, work in meat-processing plants.  There's a lot of "touch labor," hands-on work, in that and it doesn't pay well.  Nor is it entirely unskilled.  The Trump administration and their Republican stooges in Congress keep claiming that those food supply jobs will be filled by former basement-dwelling shirkers, newly kicked off Federal assistance.  Even if they do exist in sufficient numbers (unlikely), I'm not at all sure I want my tomatoes picked and beef slaughtered, cleaned and cut by under-achieving potheads, filled with resentment at being yanked away from their gaming consoles; they're unlikely to be as diligent as the guy working on a temporary permit -- or despite the lack of one.

     Meanwhile, tariff madness continues: they're on again!  Or off again!  Or put off!  "90 deals in 90 days" has become two deals, not especially good ones, with the UK and Vietnam, and a series of not entirely coherent letters sent to world leaders (scroll down to read the original releases on Truth Social).  The deadline to implement most of the higher tariffs has been pushed back yet again.  --And remember, they're assessed on the importer, not the exporter: Uncle Sam has no power to make companies in other countries ante up.  The higher rates are far beyond what any company can be expected to pay without charging more when they sell the goods, and those high prices will roll downhill to you and me.

     But don't worry, Republicans in government have got their eyes firmly on the prize!  Why, just the other month, Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith warned on Facebook, "PRIDE MONTH ALERT: The Rainbow Beast Is Coming For Your Kids!" (link for proof.)  He expanded his, er, thoughts on a podcast, saying in part, ""Back in ancient Israel, there was a goddess, her name was Ishtar, and she was the goddess of transgenderism, a gender-warping goddess. She was a homosexual goddess.[...] And she was represented by rainbows in her eyes. Anytime you saw her, you'd see rainbows. And it's like, wow, this is the same demonic playbook just playing out all over again."  This is a fear-mongering mish-mash with no Biblical basis and barely any footing in ancient history. Ishtar/Inanna was a Mesopotamian goddess roughly analogous to the Greek Athena, not strongly associated with rainbows (she "spans the sky like a rainbow" in one myth, seeking a lost associate).  Presumably, the Israelites encountered the Mesopotamian pantheon during their captivity/exile in Babylon, but there's no evidence they brought Ishtar home (she is not conflated at all with earlier Asherah poles and the associated goddess of motherhood, for instance).

     Elsewhere, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has weighed in on Governor Braun's Executive Order from earlier in the year, defining "sex" in the state as whatever a person was believed to be at birth,* echoing a similar Federal EO.  Indiana's being sued by the ACLU over it and the Attorney General recently issued a news release that any change to Indiana birth certificates (a process already banned by the Governor's EO) would be "falsification of records," lining up innocent clerks with possible felony charges for complying with court orders.

     So, the economy's headed over a cliff, we're likely to start seeing higher grocery prices and even food shortages (not counting eggs, already scrambled by bird flu) before Thanksgiving, and the GOP is making sure...we're safe from rainbows and congruent IDs?

     Boy, what a relief.  Who cares about a depression, as long as those multi-colored demons are kept at bay!  Bonus: an Indianapolis church thinks our government isn't doing enough: the church says they ought to be executing LGBT people.

     We're all in the hands of murderous fools.  As Roberts Rules of Order reminds us, silence is consent, and I'm not agreeing to this kind of craziness.  Look, I want people to dress modestly and keep their windowshades down, but I'm not the boss of them, their tattoos, or what consenting adult(s) they fall in love with.
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* Leaving physically intersex people, a group only slightly less common than natural redheads, at the mercy of the attending physician's best guess.  Sure hope they got it right!

"It's All About Salemanship!"

     Elsewhere on social media, a writer told the tale of doing a book-signing, and having a guy come up and ask why he ought to buy that writer's book, in a friendly, convince-me kind of way.

     It's the wrong question, asked of the wrong person.  The author can tell you what their book is about, who the major characters are, and perhaps even why they wrote the book.  They can't tell you why you should buy it and read it.  Only you can.

     To put it another way: "You have clearly mistaken literature for vacuum cleaners.  That's not how books work.  Pick it up, read a few pages.  Does it speak to you?  If not, put it down, go to the shelves and try one of the thousands of other books."

     The purpose of sales is to convince you to make a choice between essentially identical items -- Hoover or Electrolux, Camels or Luckies, MickeyD's or Burger Thing.  Books are not essentially identical, at least good ones aren't, and what appeals to one reader may leave another reader cold.  Flashy covers, blurbs, promotions and yes, even book signings notwithstanding, it's the reader who works out why they ought to buy a particular book.

Whining

     I woke up with a cataclysmic headache, grumped and stumbled my way through the dishes I put off last night, and, having taken an OTC analgesic, I'm sitting in anticipation of eventual relief.

     Why'd I put off the dishes?  There hangs a tale.  Last night, I heated up some Hoppin' John for supper;* I'd planned to add a little canned corn, but I'd used it up and not restocked.  A big can of fire-roasted chilis, simmered in beef broth, was awaiting the defrosted gallon-sized freezer bag of leftovers.  --A bag that slipped in my hands between microwave and stove, and spilled about a quarter of the contents on the stovetop, my legs, my sandals and the floor.  This mess became a short-term emergency, as I tried to clean it up without tracking the mess any further and Tam corralled the cats: bag contents into the big stewpot, bag in the sink, a long reach to the paper towel and a very slow process of cleaning up without stepping in it.  There were Words.  Dinner was delayed.

     We watched an episode of Murderbot (the bot in question is not murderous, per se, but...well, it's a long story and Martha Wells tells it better than I could hope to) and had little ice cream cups as a treat, after which Tam took out the kitchen trash and remarked, "It's about to pour down rain out there."

     It seemed to me that was important, but I couldn't remember why.  I cleaned up the dishes and put the leftover Hoppin' John into a marked freezer bag, to freeze now and discard later.  Outside, the skies broke and it started to rain.  Looking out the back window after putting the bag into the lowest drawer of the freezer, I noticed...the uncovered grill, left from roasting hot dogs and corn on the cob the previous night!

     Yeah, that would be why the rain mattered.  I dashed out and got the cover (a large heavy-duty trash bag) over the grill as the rain proceeded to come down in sheets and bucket-loads, soaking me to the skin.

     Despite the heat, I was thoroughly chilled.  And pretty well over my limit of excursions and alarums for the evening.  Back indoors, I dried off, changed into my nightgown and went to bed, leaving the dishes for later, a problem for Future Bobbi.
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* I typed "dinner," which was the big evening meal in my childhood home, then went back and changed it to "supper."  For many people, "dinner" is the midday meal.  And yes, we called it "Sunday dinner," the nice meal with rolls, salad, mashed potatoes, a side vegetable and some centerpiece meat enjoyed on the second-best china after church.  But the rest of the week, dinner was what you had before TV-watching and bedtime.  (If you were wondering, the best china -- and "the good silver" -- was only for Thanksgiving and Easter, possibly Christmas.  As an adult, I have one set of "china."  I was determined to not have any once-a-year frippery; so instead, I have what's left of the square pink Melmac everyday dinnerware of my childhood, stacked in a cabinet and never used.)  

Bots And Bots

     Blog traffic is way up -- and it's all machines.  I'm not here to feed machines.  So I took the weekend off.

     Need to figure out a way to bollix 'em.

Music For The Day

      Aaron Copland somehow managed to put the best fireworks into music, an astonishing feat even with the score in front of you, up-close magic for brass and percussion.

A Waste Of Ink And Electrons

     Over the last two days, news media have made very very sure -- to the point of program interrupting news bulletins for one of 'em -- that I was aware how the criminal trial of Sean "I have an enormous number of nicknames" Combs came out, and that another group of Men With A Theory are launching a brand new search for the remains of Amelia Earhart, Fred Noonan and their airplane.

     Precisely why I should be concerned about the unsavory and at least partially criminal sex life of a celebrity -- a thing as statistically predictable as the sun rising in the east for as long as there have been celebrities -- and one more search for a lost aviator (she's dead, guys, and so is he) is a mystery to me.  There's a huge, tragic mess in Gaza, Iran may or may not presently have a viable nuclear weapons program,* U. S. domestic politics are getting crazier, our government is building straight-up concentration camps and treating one of the most outrageous examples as a no-humans-involved occasion for levity and Congress is in the process of pushing through a massively unpopular bill that is certain to have far-reaching effects, but I need to be told about the titillating details of what the rich and famous get up to behind closed doors, and that the sons and grandsons of the same kinds of men who misplaced her are going to go digging for whatever's left of a famous aviator and her slightly less famous crewman?

     No.  I do not.  There's actual serious grownup news to be reported and it would be damned nice if they'd act like it.

     I'm not holding my breath.
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* Fission, fusion, or--  One of the things that frets me is that a desperate and fanatical government with a smashed-up atom-bomb program probably still has loads and loads of nasty stuff with a long half-life, and a dusting of that on enemy territory does both immediate and lasting harm.  Dust and wind being what they are, most nations won't risk the fallout (other than as an add-on oopsie to actual nuclear war, at least).  Iran, however, is not most nations, and they have a history of funding groups even more heedless of consequences.

The Big Fugly

     I admit it.  I've been watching the progress of the so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" through Congress with bated breath and growing horror.

     It's an exercise in geeking, in the flexing of Presidential authority expressed as the "Leader Principle:* can the Executive chivvy both houses of Congress into biting off the head of a live chicken? 

     So far, the answer is yes, barely.  For both Dems and the GOP, there's a lot not to like in this bill, from the predictable scale-back (and outright elimination) of Federal services and funding predictably opposed by Democrats to massive increases in Federal spending and a mushrooming of the Federal debt and deficit that ought to give pause to any red-blooded Republican -- but only a handful of fiscal hawks on that side of the aisle appear to have noticed.  By shoving millions of voters off Medicare, it has produced a ticking time-bomb for mid-term elections, and many of the more obscure provisions of this over-900-page monster are likely to have similar effects on voters and their votes.

     The Senate-amended bill has now lurched back to the House, where the earlier version passed by a narrow margin.  Cut in places the junior body had expanded it, puffed up where they had trimmed, it's an open question if it's still got the votes -- but the Chief Executive, who is by explicit Constitutional structure not the boss of them, is cracking the whip just offstage, and Speaker Johnson is only too happy to perform on command.  Will his fractious body of Representatives go along?

     I'd like to tell you no.  I'd like to say they're on the whole too proud and too committed to their various individual principles to bend the knee.  But I doubt that's true.  Heads in the hog trough, a hand out for handouts and only too aware of Mr. Trump's willingness to primary any Congressperson who won't bend to his will, the House may squeal but I have little confidence enough of them will stand fast.

     The Legislative Branch is choosing to sow the wind.  The midterm results are likely to blow -- if the economy or voter reaction doesn't turn stormy even earlier.
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* The term sounds a lot zippier in the original German.

At A Loss For Words

     Between Friday's batch of Supreme Court decisions and the likely passage of the unpopular, so-called "Big Beautiful Bill," I'm not sure what to say.  They amount to Enabling Acts for authoritarianism, an accretion of power to the office of the President that bodes only ill for the American experiment in self-government.

     Many of the people I most expected to react negatively to such a development are instead cheering it on.  I've been treated to amazingly unmoored nonsense in unpublished comments, notions not just unsupported by but refuted by observable events.

     Republican politicians, the President in particular, are behaving as if they will never leave office, as if their party will always be in the majority.  In a functioning Constitutional democracy (using the latter term loosely), turnover is likely; any power one party has granted to officeholders will be available to their successors, even if they're from a different party.  The conclusion is obvious.

     Most members of the House and Senate appear to be quite comfortable with this state of affairs, nearly every Republican and an apparent plurality if not outright majority of Democrats.  Polls of likely voters show the opposite.  You'd think that would be a warning flag for men and women who depend on winning open elections, and yet their behavior indicates it is not.  Once again, the conclusion's clear.

     I don't know what to say.  I've been jumping up and down, pointing out storm clouds on the horizon, lightning, walls of rain and tornado funnels, and a lot of people just smile and tell me we ain't never been wiped off the map before, so why worry now?  Congress is getting rich playing the stock market while the President is selling tchotchkes and memecoins and U.S. citizenship, playing with tariffs like a child smashing toy trains; the Administration is back to insisting on "official truth" at odds with objective reality and the Constitution is slowly crumbling under the weight of "Christian Nationalism," authoritarianism and kleptocracy.  The people who ought to care about it and are in a position to take immediate action, judges and legislators, are smiling and nodding like a heroin addict right after a big hit.

     I am without hope for our country's future.

Buckle Up

     It looks like we're in for a bumpy ride.

The Crazy Never Stops

     The Federal lunacy and cruelty is too much to keep up with, from yanking funding from a program to vaccinate children to intramural fights over the actual impact of bomb raids on Iranian nuclear facilities.  It's an ongoing "shock and awe" campaign of fucknettery, grift, Social Darwinism and junk science, ultimately self-defeating.  The question is not if it will fall apart under its own disconnection from reality and ramshackle improvisation but when -- and how hard it will hit.

     Who it will hit is a certainty, or rather, who it won't hit: the rich are safe; inside-dealing Congresspersons are safe.  And I'm not talking about the guy in your town who owns a string of fast-food franchises and buys a new Benz every year; as far as the top one or two or even five percent are concerned, he's exactly the same as clock-punchers like you and me.  And we'll be left carrying the weight when things go off the rails, our retirement and Social Security looted (five years and counting until it starts to ramp down, and not gently), Medicare hacked down to whatever minimum, health research stymied, stunted and strangled a-borning.  The "beautiful people" will float secure in beauty; the rest of us are left picking up their mess.

     Right now, it's like watching the fall of a basket of eggs dropped from a great height: it will hit; they will break.  The only question is precisely when and how far the raw egg will splash -- and how badly they've rotted on the way down.

Under The Heat Dome

     Call it climate, call it weather: either way, there's broad agreement that this extremely hot weather is unpleasant.  So far, the central air-conditioning at Roseholme Cottage has kept up; I keep the dehumidifier going in the basement and manage the temperature setting on the main floor by how much condensation appears on the longest and most convoluted duct in the basement.  73° to 75°F keeps everything manageable and comfortable.

     My car's climate control barely copes.  The system is low on working fluid and I should get it into the shop, but it's not too bad, yet.

     The kicker is the building at what I call the North Campus.  The equipment up there is happiest between 60° and 65°F and it moves a lot of air.  A zip-up hoodie over a T-shirt is barely enough, and by the time my day ends, the oppressive heat outside is something of a relief for at least the first half-hour.  Going from one extreme to the other plays merry hell with my sinuses, and while it's definitely a "first world problem," it's a problem nevertheless.

     By the weekend, the prediction is that the worst will have passed, for now.  But if it's getting this hot in June, what's August going to be like?

     Call it weather; call it climate.  Either way, it's as real as a sledge hammer.  And there's no dodging the blow.

Cease Fi-- Incoming!

     In the wake of the U.S. bombing of several nuclear-work sites in Iran, there was supposed to be a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.  The President of the U.S. said so.

     Their militaries don't appear to have gotten the message.  I don't know if their governments have.  Each is accusing the other of going back on the agreement.

     I'm not chortling at Mr. Trump's disappointment (he was chiding the Israelis on social media not long ago).  I'm certainly not cheering on the conflict; it is messy, with missiles, bombs and drones striking civilians along with their (presumed) military targets, in a region already filled with tragedy.

     Who ever calmed a hornet's nest by shaking it?