Up For Debate

     If your rights are up for debate, they're not being recognized as inalieneable; the debaters do not think those rights are inherent.

     In Tennessee, there's a bill under consideration that would deny children in this country illegally the right to a public education.  ICE is conducting operations based on the notion that anyone in the country illegally is not entitled to due process of law -- and that they can"illegalize" anyone in the country on a student visa or "green card" simply by claiming they pose a threat to public safety or national security (or if they are found to have engaged in criminal activity or fraud).  Laws and Executive Orders in multiple states have barred adults changing the sex or gender marker on their ID -- and this applies not just to they/them boogeypersons with unusually-colored hair but to people like the late computer scientist Lynn Conway and electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos.  Bear in mind that "Real ID" driver's licenses and State ID cards require this information, and you'll soon need one just to board a passenger flight.

     All of these are examples of people whose rights are being debated -- not just in public forums but in legislatures and governmental executive offices, and while it is problematic in and of itself, if the rights of some group are questioned, the rights of everyone are under question, too.

     Within my lifetime, a single woman had difficulty opening a bank account, getting a credit card or buying a house; a married woman had to have her husband's consent, even to open an account solely in her own name.  Within the lifetimes of my grandmothers, women could not vote.

     When the rights of one subset of people are up for grabs, everyone's rights can be.  Maybe you believe you're safe.  Maybe you are -- but you'd be a lot safer if your inalienable rights were genuinely protected from the grubby paws of partisan politicians, stirring up division in search of power, and the only way that works is if those rights apply to everyone -- whitebread types happy near the statistical mean, weirdos, freaks, foreigners and criminals, even people who didn't vote for the same politicians you chose.

Gone Too Soon

     Henry Petroski, the unofficial poet laureate of engineering, left us in 2023, leaving the world considerably better off from his many books -- and considerably poorer by his absence.

     A wonderful writer, witty and accessible, he gave detailed attention to many of the things most of us take for granted, from pencils to paperclips to bookshelves to bridges, and explained why they worked and who made them work.  I am sorry not to have noted his passing when it happened.  Have a look at his books.  You won't regret it.

Beans And Rice

     Most of the people I know do not like beans and rice-based meals nearly as much as I do.  For me, it's comfort food.

     For most of my early adult life, I didn't make much money -- but I had the advantage of only working forty hours a week.  If you're low on money, you can still eat well if you have time to cook, though it took me a couple of years to figure that out.  Dried beans and rice are cheap, filling and take time to make.  If you've got more to spend, you add more stuff -- fresh vegetables, meat and so on.  If money's tight, dry spices are inexpensive and store well.

     So beans and rice means I'm doing okay.  A little money, a little free time.  During the stretch when I was working two full-time jobs, I ate fast food, cheap ramen, hot dogs -- and splurged on peanut butter and jelly or bacon and eggs occasionally.  When my wages have outrun inflation, which has happened a few times, though it never lasts, I eat better, but money-saving habits persist.  I freeze leftovers, try to plan meals to fit what's already in the fridge or on the shelf.  And I'm never without a little "just in case" stock of rice and beans.

Playing Their Game

     Outrage -- reaction.  Shock -- reaction.  Blow past limits -- reaction.

     That's the game.  Every day, a new bad thing -- or three, or four.  Even ostensible errors work for them.  And anyone invested in norms, in stability, in lawful, orderly liberty is left off-balance, struggling to keep up.

     I could write about one of the most recent, a harebrained scheme to essentially flash-migrate the Social Security Administration's vast codebase (and the database it manipulates) off ancient, crusty COBOL and the machines it runs on over to something newer, sleeker and supposedly better, but I don't know if I can share just how big a nightmare it is, especially since DOGE code kiddies have already demonstrated hat they don''t even begin to understand COBOL and all the tricks and cruft it takes to make it work.  Informed speculation claims they're going to use AI to get it done -- you know, the same AI that still can't get the right number of fingers on pictures of people.

     But it's only one shock among many, and that is the point: shock and awe.  Blitzkrieg.  Storm in, tear stuff up high, wide and mighty, leave it screwed up until people don't think it it will ever work again, then patch together some cheapjack mess that kind of runs and claim to have saved the day -- though we're nowhere near the "slap up a crappy replacement and play for applause" stage yet, and there's always the risk the trick won't actually work.

     And through it all, attention, attention, attention.  The newsies say the President's name hundreds of times a day, all the nations of the world watch to see where his (and his staff's) whim will fall next, a planned tariff there, a proposed annexation elsewhere....  It'll make your head spin, and it's supposed to.  It's supposed to keep you so off guard you don't notice rights and freedoms ebbing away -- people are grabbed off the street by masked law enforcement, held without recourse to counsel, jailed without trial.  Law firms are being made to bend the knee to the Executive Branch, officials dismissed without following Congressionally-required procedures, and everywhere, the heavy hand of authoritarianism is descending.

     This isn't the America I learned about in Civics class.  And it's not like we weren't warned.

It Couldn't Be Real

     Surely it was "black propaganda" video (alternative) worthy of a modern-day Sefton Delmer: Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem warning people to not enter the U. S. illegally -- which is okay-fine, that's part of her remit -- in front of an El Salvadoran jail cell crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with shaven-headed, shirtless men, presumably deportees.  That part is shocking.  It's a real "are we the good guys?" moment, especially considering these people did not get due process.  Hey, if they're criminals, charge 'em, run 'em through the courts, and if found guilty, make 'em serve their time (etc.).  If they sneaked in, deport them back to where they came from.  But indefinite jail time without trial, in a prison outside U. S. jurisdiction? That's not how civilized countries enforce their laws.

     Here's the thing: if the men in the video are deportees, they were shipped out under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which applies in times of war, and there are international standards for persons so imprisoned.  Among other restrictions, you don't get to use 'em as photo-op props.  If they're not deportees, they're just random El Salvadoran prisoners being used as props, a horrifying breach of civilized norms.

     This is Stalinesque stuff.  And it is for real.  Secretary Noem appears to be proud of it.  You can be for tough border control and enforcement without playing footsie with crimes against humanity, but this Administration doesn't care.  They're running up a bill we will all have to pay.  Maybe it'll be a punchline in 65 years.  Maybe not.

     Update: There are claims going around that this is a keyed-in background, that she's in front of a "green screen."  AP has raw video and nope, she's there and so are they.

Onward!

     All this excitement from Washington, DC and we're only 64 days in.  Three years and a little under ten months to go.  The only way through it is forward.

     I keep thinking about the story my mother told, of when she was in the hospital delivering me or my brother.  Back then, they still had wards, rows of beds with heavy curtains that could be drawn between them for a bare minimum of privacy.  Sound still traveled.  Somewhere in the maternity ward, a young woman was beginning labor with her husband beside the bed, alternating between complaining bitterly to him, "You did this to me!  You!" and sobbing.  Yes and no; they did it together, and presumably the result was around for a long, long time.

     And now here we are.

I Suppose I Should Comment

     The thing is, when top Federal intelligence and defense officials plan international military action:

A. Using their personal cellphones and not the secure means and methods OPSEC and general good practice require, and which Uncle Sam provides them at considerable effort and expense;

B. Via an inherently insecure commercial service;

C. In plain, clear language;

D. Having somehow inadvertently added a journalist to the group;

E. While one of the other members of the group is apparently in Moscow (and not the one in Idaho);

and

F. The Speaker of the House all but laughs it off as a little peccadillo, an oopsie that they'll learn from;

and

G. The President and his closest advisor do much the same;

     I got nothin'.  It's Amateur Hour and the grand prize is everybody's future.  This is an Executive Branch filled with thugs, nitwits, religious and pseudo-scientific kooks, racists and rigid ideologues.  Their incompetence may be their least appalling shortcoming.

     It will be a wonder if this bunch manages to avoid stumbling into another pandemic, a global depression, a world war or something unexpectedly worse.  They have already done irreparable harm to U.S. military and commercial alliances, our Defense industry and the useful functions of the Federal government.  There are 588 days until the midterms, 1,323 days until the next Presidental election and until then, we have got to get by with an Executive Branch that is not simply embracing a radically different political philosophy but is actively bad at their jobs; a largely supine Legislative Branch that only might toughen up after the 2026 elections, and a Judicial Branch with willing enablers larded through it from bottom to top.

     I'd like to have a clever comment.  I really would.  But all I can think is that there's nowhere to go when (or, with enormous good luck, only if) these clowns screw up even worse.  At least Casey Jones's fireman could judge the right moment to leap off the locomotive; at least the crew of a shot-up B-24 over WW II Europe could try to get out and parachute down.

Report Card Due

     The next set of U.S. GDP numbers will be released in a few days.  On March 27th, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will look back at 2024 and the numbers for the fourth quarter of that year.

     A month later, at the end of April, the earliest look at GDP for the first quarter of 2025 will be released.  This doesn't quite provide an apples-to-apples comparison, but it'll be numbers that can be held up side-by side.  There is one caveat: the Trump Administration plans to remove the kinds of government spending that are normally included in the formula, and I'm not sure if that's happening for the numbers to be released this month or if it will be introduced in April.

     It has never included some of the biggest chunks of "government money" -- transfer payments like Social Security don't go into the math.  But the government spending is not small; The U. S. went from -9.3% growth in four years under Herbert Hoover to +10.1% in twelve years under Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the huge bump comes from 1941 - 43: WW II spending.

     So we'll see what comes out, and what the pundits think it might mean.  BEA is filled with exactly the kinds of math, statistics and economist geeks you'd hope it would be, and they love to share their numbers.  There will be plenty to look at.

     (Speaking of GDP and industry, how many of you have read of Samuel Slater?  Oh, we all learned about Eli Whitney, who turned cotton -- and, somewhat inadvertently, slavery -- into an industry, but once you have the fiber, it's still got to be spun, and it was Slater who got the U. S. into the business of spinning on an industrial scale and helped fill New England with mills.)

"Lady? Wake Up, Willya?"

     Last night, I slept badly.  Fell asleep with the TV muttering to itself, woke up to find it was busy Voyaging To The Bottom Of The Sea (did you know there was a real flying submarine?) and both cats had colonized me.  I shut it off, dozed off but kept waking up.

     When the alarm went off at six, I fed both cats, as contractually required (just ask 'em -- they've got a strong union!) and laid back down.  I was absolutely out until ten, when Huck decided I'd slept long enough -- he climbed on my shoulder and batted at my face until I woke up, nose to nose with with a concerned tomcat.  When the cat thinks you're sleeping too much, you probably are.

Will They? Won't They?

     Coming along at the tail end of the Baby Bloom is colossally bad timing.  Oh, it could have been worse; my parents were born within a couple of years of 1929's "Black Friday" stock market crash and grew up in a Depression that morphed into a World War -- and their older siblings, well....

     Nobody escapes some kind of bad timing.  But I managed to reach the date for full Social Security benefits just in time for the various agencies and departments of the Federal government to be thrown into chaos.  Bingo, right on the nose.  I applied without much hope, was surprised when the first payment showed up, and a little relieved when the various cards and Informative Brochures arrived.  Will the payments keep on coming?  Don't ask me; the present top man at SSA has been playing a game of chicken between "DOGE" and court orders, suggesting he might have to shut the whole thing down, relenting, and then allowing as how he just isn't quite sure.

     It's uncomfortable for me -- but I haven't had time to get used to the eagle flying like clockwork one Wednesday a month, every month.  Ahead of me, as always, is that great big cohort of Baby Boomers.  One of the Administration's zillionaire department heads recently opined that good, decent, virtuous older folk would just take it in silence if the money stopped, and the only complainers would be cheats and frauds -- and all I've got to say to that is, dude, do you know any Boomers at all?  They started getting loud in the 1960s and most of them have never shut up.  Stiff 'em on their Social Security, and they'll go right back to the kinds of things they were doing in the day, only grouchier, meaner, a little more slowly, and with a whole lot more lawyers.

React? Better To Act!

     For any pessimist who was paying attention, the early days of the second Trump Administration have been a real-life version of one of those horror movies in which the villain outlines exactly what he plans to do -- and then proceeds to do so, despite the valiant efforts of the hero(s) and victim(s).

     The Project 2025 playbook (the one Mr. Trump and campaign members distanced themselves from prior to the election) is being put into effect with dizzying speed.  It doesn't make any difference at all if you think Mr. Trump has plotted it all out in intricate detail or if it is a natural consequence of hiring senior officials from the pool of committed Trump partisans who developed Project 2025: either way, it's happening.  And, fueled by Elon Musk's money and daunting reputation, it is happening hard.  It is remaking the Federal government we're used to into something more partisan, less predictable, stingier and less helpful.

     The problem with "move fast and break things" when applied to government is that a lot of the "things" that get broken are people, and the damage lingers.  So does the resentment, boiling over at events for Congresspeople and government officials all across the political spectrum.  Republicans have cancelled town meetings and public Q&A sessions; some Democrats have stepped up to rally opposition -- and others, like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are dodging withering scorn for failing to oppose the GOP's efforts.

     Depending on where you get your news, you'll hear a variety of takes on all this, but what they have in common is that they are all reactive: Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk, "DOGE" or some Trump appointee takes controversial steps, and everyone else reacts to it; injured parties and concerned activists sue, supporters gloat, NPR does weepy interviews, Fox (etc.) and MSNBC (etc.) do pro and con man-in-the-street pieces: it's all in reaction to what's being done.

     There's very little action so far.  The first politician, philosopher or rabble-rouser who comes up with a plan of action in opposition that can attract wide support is going to have a considerable advantage.  With every change, more people suffer adverse effects, from plunging stock prices to lost benefits.

     "FA" is running full steam ahead.  "FO" has scarcely begun.

Bingo Card

     It's a bingo card for the demolition of the Federal government -- first to get a complete row vertically, horizontally or diagonally wins!

     And we all lose.

Shortwave Data

     Going into WW II, the U. S. had a number of commercial shortwave stations, owned and operated by NBC, CBS and some big AM stations.  They all pitched in to form the basis of Voice of America,* and that kind of commercial shortwave broadcasting did not resurface on the same scale after the war.

     At present, there are about seventeen commercial shortwave stations in the U. S. All but two are owned by religious institutions, from the Catholic Church to mainstream and evangelical Protestant denominations to a few churches with a unique take on their faith.  The non-religious stations make their money by selling airtime, most of it to, you guessed it, religious groups.

     I'm all for freedom of religion; it's right up there with freedom of speech.  But should that be our only message to the farthest parts of the globe?
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* And some other things -- the high-power transmitter from the shortwave operation of WCAU in Philadelphia apparently become the transatlantic and worldwide communications transmitter at Canada's Camp X, where U.S. intelligence and sabotage agents were trained, intel gathered, coded orders sent and so on.

Philip K. Dick Or Jules Verne?

     It seems too far-out to be real: Silicon Valley techbros and their pals really, really like the idea of "Freedom Cities," where only the owner(s) are free and the laws of the surrounding state and nation don't apply.  Salon says Elon Musk and Vice-President Vance's sponsor Peter Thiel are all in on the idea, linking it to Musk's appetite for bulldozing Federal agencies.

     Gil Duran expands on the general idea, linking back to a (subscription required) article at Wired that goes into even greater depth.  Tl;dr: they figure the more broken the surrounding polity, the better these fiefdoms will prosper.

     On first sight, it reads like something out of Philip K. Dick: relentlessly commercial neo-feudalism, with little regard for individual freedom as an inherent right: everything's got a price tag, including human dignity.  But the notion of a carve-out for ruthless sociopolitical experimentation goes back much farther, finding expression in The Begum's Fortune by Jules Verne,* in which a pair of millionaire-run competing cities, operating in the late-19th Century American West under a carve-out from Federal sovereignty, compete in super-science and forms of government.  I won't spoil the ending for you, but even the hero's city sounds a lot less free than then-contemporary Chicago or Boston, especially for the inhabitants working for a living.

     There's a lot of loud, noisy politics in the center ring at present, headline-grabbing stuff.  But something else may be gnawing away at the base of the Big Top's tent poles, and it bears watching.
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* Verne maintained extensive press-clipping files, covering cutting-edge science and technology -- and politics.  Famous as the father of science fiction, from another angle he's the parent of Crichtonesque technothrillers as well.  English translations have often failed to live up to the originals until fairly recently.

Voiceless America?

     As I write this, President Trump has recently issued an Executive Order* defunding the Voice of America to the greatest extent possible within the power of the Executive Branch, along with Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.  (All under the United States Agency for Global Media.)

     He appears to bear some personal animus toward VOA, as may be seen in this clip from a few days ago, prior to the EO.  A White House Press release cites a number of complaints about VOA, all but one in the period between 2016 to 2022, mostly from partisan sources, alleging bias.

     It's an interesting quirk of VOA that while it is somewhat isolated from being told what to cover by the Federal government, it is quite firmly required to be accurate and objective, -- and can be held to account when it is not.  VOA is America's face to the rest of the world, and while they can at times be a little bland and overly upbeat, they take their mission seriously.  You can go to their website and judge for yourself -- for instance, this explainer covering the circumstances under which Permanent Resident status can be revoked.  Or at least you could do so at the time I wrote this.  There's little reason to believe the VOA website will still be around next week.

     The Voice of America dates back to the Second World War -- and yes, it's propaganda, but it's honest propaganda, demonstrating the workings of a free press and a representative democracy to the entire planet, delivering truth to people who were often being lied to.  Shutting it down is hiding our light under a bushel.  It has been an inexpensive effort, measured on the scale of Federal projects, and has paid off over and over.  If the President thinks they're slanting the news, he's got the power (via their overseeing agency) to get them back on track.  If he doesn't like how they cover him, he can restrict their access to White House events.  Pulling the plug instead sends the wrong message to the world -- and while VOA directly operates only a few transmitting facilities these days, once you walk away from a high-power shortwave transmitter and antenna installation, it can be tricky bringing it back up again.
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* The same order yanks the rug out from under the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a big source of funding for public libraries, especially in areas where the population is too thin to support much of a library.  Plus several other Federal organizations, none of which amounts to much more than a rounding error in a budget dominated by defense spending, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. It all seems more mean-spirited than frugal, more culture war than penny-pinching.

And Then Friday...

     Friday, I spent a lot of the day working on some low bookshelves, in poplar instead of pine.  Poplar is not my friend.  I managed to get the basic assembly done, went out this morning to move it and broke the glue joints between the top shelf and the sides.

     It has been reglued, and once the glue has set, it's going to get some dowels to help pin everything together, and perhaps the last few small pieces will be installed.  But I'm not in a hurry to do it; it will probably be too cold to glue anything tomorrow and I'm not going to move the shelves indoors until they are fully assembled, sanded, linseed oiled and waxed.

     I have been avoiding political comment recently.  It's not like you can miss what's happening, and you're either appalled, as you should be, or you think it's a great idea and everything will work out fine.  Just fine.

     Don't count on it.  But there are people far more well-informed than I am already beating that drum, and I'm tired of being Cassandra.

Coffee

     I like coffee.  I'm not a connoisseur; I can't go on about the "spicy, earthy, chocolatey notes" of various kinds (taking it with cream and sugar is a downcheck for coffee snobbery!), but I know good from bad, and I know what I like.  Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee smells wonderful, tastes just like it smells, and if it didn't sell for thirty dollars a pound or more,* I'd probably drink it every day.

     Our corner grocer sold a "Blue Mountain Blend" in their bulk coffees that was solid stuff.  Not as rich as the real thing, but smooth and flavorful.  Awhile back, their supplier changed the composition and it has become hollow.  The aroma's fine, but the flavor lacks something.  The mouthfeel isn't the same.  I'd guess they changed the source of the less-expensive beans in the blend.

     They used to sell Tanzanian Peaberry, which is sorted to produce singleton beans, at least partially by hand (!).  The nearly spherical beans roast a little differently, and between that, the extra attention and the usual varieties grown, it's good stuff.  It vanished from the store during the pandemic and has never returned.

     They stock other stuff -- Columbian (almost the generic American coffee), dark roasts, various flavored types, and Brazilian.  The latter has whatever their Blue Mountain blend lacks these days.  It's good by itself, or mixed 50/50 with the blend before grinding.  --And I am not the only customer to notice: they run out of it first and fastest, which is why I end up mixing other kinds to stretch it out.

     But that's not the only option.  Today, I'm enjoying another reliable option: Ethiopian!  That's where coffee-drinking began, after all.  They grow a wide array of coffees and (with competent roasting) all of them I have tried have been good. Yirgacheffe and Sidamo both show up here.  I brewed a pot of Sidamo this morning,and it's a strong contender to become my first choice.
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* However, depending on how strong you brew your coffee, this works out to a per-cup price less than 25% of what you will pay for the cheapest cup at a chain coffee shop. So yes, it's expensive, but you'll pay four times as much to drink low-end stuff from a cardboard cup with a name-brand logo printed on it.  Sixty-eight cents for smooth or three dollars for burnt, you decide.

I May Have Created A Monster

     I like ham salad sandwiches.  Since the Marsh supermarket chain went bankrupt, dependable ham salad has not been easy to find.  Our neighborhood grocery only has it in their deli case occasionally; tuna salad is their daily staple, with egg salad (and I like it, too) as a frequent backup.

     The Meijer store has a decent grocery section, especially for a super-giant everything-under-one-roof place.  And they nearly always have their own brand of ham salad.  It's been a long time since I bought any, but I picked up a tub of it a couple of days ago and made sandwiches on toasted rye bread last night.  Tam polished hers off and went for seconds.

     Tonight, there was just enough left to make a couple more sandwiches, and why not use it up before it turns?  I added a bagged salad,* and there's a decent supper.

     Tam had all of hers and then allowed as how she would not pass up another sandwich.

     "Those two were the last of it," I admitted.

     "What?  No more?"

     "Nope."

     She sighed.

     "You know where the Meijer is," I said, "And you ran your car just a couple of days ago, so the battery's charged."

     "I'm thinking about it."

     She decided it could wait until tomorrow morning.  But she's right -- there's something about the simple pleasure of cool ham salad on rye bread, the crisp crunch of the celery bits, the umami of the ham....

     Y'know, I could run over to the store tonight, myself.
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* Those things are an utter indulgence.  There are dozens of varieties, with everything you need and not too much excess -- and some olives and fresh tomato will elevate most of them.  They're even making single-serving sizes.

I'm Just Watching

     The more I pay attention to the news, the weirder it all gets.  I'm just watching, waiting to see what's next.

     If you put the events in U. S. politics of the past few months in a novel, you'd be accused of hackwork, melodrama, stuff that wouldn't pass muster in a penny dreadful.

It's Grill Time

     The temperature has been warming up and this past weekend, the weather suited running the grill.  Friday, our neighborhood grocery had nice corned beef brisket* at prices that were not dire and I bought the largest one my checking account and oval grill pan would support.

     Saturday, it went in the covered pan, fat side up on the roasting rack with a turnip cut into large chunks (and another one would not have been remiss) at an hour per pan, to be joined an hour into the process by potato sections, a cut-up white onion, celery and carrots.  I put the seasoning that comes with corned beef on it, smoked paprika on the turnip and some rosemary-and-friends on the potato.  Without any added liquid, it ends up with a cup and a half of broth, the turnip mushy and loaded with salt -- a little bit on the potato chunks is better than butter.

     There was enough left over to save some corned beef back for homemade hash Sunday morning (mine with scrambled egg, Tam's the plain meat and potatoes) and freeze a bag of fat-separated broth, meat and vegetables for soup later.

     That would have been the weekend's adventures, except--  Our corner store also stocks some imported South American beef.  It's pre-packaged, and more affordable than their fancy butcher-cut meat.  Tam was celebrating the arrival of a check† when she noticed nice picanha steaks in that case.  Nice, and huge; she bought one and it was plenty.  Sunday was even warmer than Saturday, and the beef got seared and slow-grilled, rare for her, medium for me.  The fat cap renders as it cooks and melts into the meat -- and, very briefly, onto the coals and flares up, when I turned my half sideways to brown the cut end!  That's when a covered grill comes in handy: close the vents until the flames stop, lift the lid, turn the meat and open the vents back up, smooth as silk.  It came out fine.  Add a bagged salad and some 1-minute nuked bone broth rice, and it was about as simple a fancy meal as could be had.
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* Presumably for Saint Patrick's day, despite the fact that the actual Irish are more likely to be eating ham.  Oh, they won't stock corned beef for New Year's, but the incorrect pinkish meat for a religious holiday turned cultural and now an informal and widely-observed secular holiday, suddenly they can't get enough.  Oh well, corned beef is corned beef.  I won't pass it up.
 
† While the average income for writers is decent money (a tad under $50K for fiction novelists), they get that figure by throwing Steven King, Dan Brown, Suzanne Collins and so on in with the regular working stiffs making three cents a word: a few dozen millionaires skews the number way up. Most writers get paid on publication -- or months later, once the check has creaked through the Byzantine financial operations the typical publisher applies to any sap whose name doesn't guarantee best-sellers. So the arrival of a check is indeed cause for celebration, and if two show up in any given week, well, it's a Jubilee.

I Can't Spend Every Day On It

     "OMG, look what the current Administration did!"  Yeah, just take it as given: every day is a new spectacle of some sort, Federal workers abruptly fired and rehired, Constitutional or customary limits tested and retested, allies insulted, bombastic statements made and so on and so forth.  It's management by chaos, government as reality TV.

     And it is exhausting.  That's a feature for authoritarians, not a bug: they want critics burnt out, worn down, going bug-eyed over an unending succession of small excursions and occasional large violations of norms.  It's good theater: "Lookit 'em run!"  "Guess they were 'triggered!'" "Cry harder!"

     I'm not crying.  I'm not triggered.  I'm annoyed.  This kind of behavior is the ruination of republics and the genesis of autocracies, and we have damned few politicians who will stand up to it.  The ones on the inside are glorying in it (and suppressing the occasional wash of nausea) while many on the outside appear to be more envious than concerned.

     There are signs the Administration may be going a little too far; there are signs that they're ignoring the warnings in those tea leaves.  But that's a flimsy hope and naked, cynical opportunism is the dominant paradigm on both sides of the aisle.

     I could poke fun at Indiana's Attorney General for attempting to language-police local news media* after his party has been telling us that scolding people for not using pronouns of choice is overbearing interference with freedom of speech.  But hypocrisy's a widespread hobby these days and what's sauce for the goose is apparently no longer sauce for gander -- and vice versa.
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* A TV news station tweeted that Indiana's Governor had issued an Executive Order "banning trans women from women's sports at Indiana schools," and were promptly reproved by the AG, "Not correct. The order banned biological males...." I guess he wanted to make sure the Governor's preferred pronouns were honored, First Amendment bedamned?

Europe Crunches Towards War

     By my figuring, the planet's been in WW III since Putin's Russia invaded Ukraine and Ukraine called for -- and got -- international help.

     It was a small and proxy war; the West was prepared to fight to the last Ukrainian, the last Russian or peace, whichever came first.  Awful, cynical, heartbreaking -- but not atypical.

     Now that the U.S. has put assistance to Ukraine on hold, Europe is moving to a war footing.  Welcome to 1937!

     Being the world's policeman is a thankless and not-inexpensive task.  The only thing it beats are all of the alternatives.  As we may soon discover.

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.