It's Good For You

     Tam's been fighting a cold and yesterday, it was pretty bad.  So I made chicken soup.

     Thursday is Trash Night, when we change all the litter boxes, gather up all the trash, and get it out to the curb for Friday morning pickup.  We usually order pizza, to avoid time spent cooking and cleaning up the kitchen.  To make matters worse, I worked over.

     But canned chicken soup is--  Well, it's good enough and some brands are better.  Still, for full effect, home made chicken soup is best.

     I compromised.  The neighborhood grocer had diced fresh white onion in deli containers, about a third of a cup, and snack-sized celery right next to it.  A small bag of baby carrots rounded out the vegetables.  They had nice, big chicken drumsticks in the hot deli counter, too, so I got four of them.  Noodles were going to be time-consuming, but Pacific brand chicken soup has lots of nice, broad noodles.  I picked up a 16-ounce can of soup and an eight-ounce container of chicken broth.

     Once home, I didn't want to fiddle around too much.  I heated up about a teaspoon of good olive oil in the medium stock pot, dumped the onion in and gave it a couple of shakes to coat.  The baby carrots were skinny enough to snip with kitchen shears right over the pot (no cutting board!) and once they were in and cooking, I gave the celery the same treatment.  I followed with the chicken.  It's a little tricky, but the meat snips right off, skin and all.  By the time I finished the last one. the onion was translucent and the carrots and celery had brightened up.  I poured the can of soup over, added the broth, put in a shake of Bragg's seasoning mix, gave it a stir, put the lid on and went about setting up for supper.  Ten minutes later, we were enjoying big, hearty bowls of not quite homemade chicken soup, loaded with fresh vegetables and roasted chicken.

     No, it's not as quick as using the phone or computer to summon food.  It's not as quick as opening a can and heating it up.  But it's not that much slower, and it's better for you.  It's a lot faster than doing the whole thing from scratch, and while I didn't simmer the broth down for hours, the profit-minded hippies at the soup company did, or at least used some process with the same end result.  And the deli roasts chicken as well as anyone.  If I'd had more time, I would have thrown the drumsticks in whole for a half hour, then taken the meat off and put the bones back in to simmer with the broth; but sometimes you have to choose your degree of difficulty and the end result was a healing treat on a busy night.

"What's In The Box?"

     The title of this post is a line from Dune.  The young hero (or is he?) Paul is about to undergo a test meant, "To determine if you're human," if he can deal rationally with fear.  What's in the box is pain.

     America's economy -- the global economy -- has been handed a box, too.  We don't know what's in it.  The President and his advisors who devised our new tariffs say it's full of wonders.  Many highly-qualified economists say it's full of pain.  The history of tariffs is, at best, alarming; the Smoot-Hawley tariffs didn't cause the Great Depression, but the general consensus is they made it worse.

     What's in the box?  We'll find out -- and you can bet none of the higher-ups in Washington will feel any pain, including the spineless Congress that has, once again, dodged responsibility by handing the Executive a power, in this case taxation, normally reserved to the Legislative branch.  The power to declare war, they abrogated that long ago; the power to make laws is ebbing, what with Executive Orders now being treated as if they were laws; impoundment of allocated funds and the imposition of "emergency" tariffs cede the power of the purse.

     Anyone with an eye to Classical history can tell you that the Emperor of Rome didn't spring forth full-fledged, but by the gradual accretion of powers and responsibilities once held by the Senate and people of Rome and their various Executives to the office of Emperor.  The framers of the U. S. Constitution were wary of such a thing happening in their new republic, and did their best to hedge against it.  Did they do enough?

     What's in the box?

Quick Dinner

     Last night, I wanted something easy for supper.  I'd had a lousy day and I didn't have much energy.  Our corner grocery often has fresh vegetables and a basic seasoning, bagged up and ready to microwave.  Last night, their "mixed vegetables with Tuscan butter" was front and center, a collection of green and yellow zucchini, pea pods, broccoli, cauliflower, onion, asparagus and shredded carrots with a dollop of seasoned butter.  There's a bit over a pound per bag.

     It's a good assortment and "Tuscan" had me thinking.  I picked up a container of fresh cherry tomatoes, a 16-oounce container of quality red sauce (Michael's of Brooklyn "Homestyle Gravy," which we here in the Midwest know as spaghetti sauce with everything, the full garden of vegetables, cooked down) and a little under a pound of mild Italian sausage.

     This is not the cheapest collection of stuff, but it's still far less than dining out or ordering in.  I browned and drained the sausage with some extra spices, adding a generous double-handful of chopped cherry tomatoes after draining.  I ran the bagged vegetables in the microwave while that cooked, adding the sauce to the meat and tomatoes after a few minutes.  With the pan bubbling, I put in the vegetables (leaving any excess melted seasoned butter in the bag), covered it and let it simmer for a few more minutes -- but not long enough for the vegetables to get mushy.

     The end result has enough sauce to coat everything but not drown the other ingredients.  You could have it over pasta if you wanted to, but we didn't.  Tam even went back for seconds!  Total time was around fifteen minutes and it will easily serve four or five adults.  We had leftovers.

In Which I Address Fools

     An unpublished commenter has chided me. "The right to an education isn't a real right," they claim, leading into a basic explanation of the difference between positive rights (requiring some action on the part of others) and negative rights (requiring only that others refrain from interfering).

     It's all stuff no one who was awake and paying attention over the last 30-odd years could have possibly missed, especially if they inclined to libertarian or even conservative views.  It's also not the point.  Free public schools exist; our taxes fund them.  Speaking as a childless homeowner (Indiana school funding comes from property taxes), I would just as soon live in a world with fewer ignorant children left with plenty of idle time to get up to trouble and I'll pay money to get it.  Like it or not, free universal public education through Grade 12 is how it works.

     If Billy, who was born here but whose parents came from elsewhere and Ramon, who was born here and whose ancestors came here before the Civil War, one of them on the Mayflower, both get a free education, but Billy's big sister Daphne, who was born in the old country before Mumsie and Daddy sneaked across the Canadian frontier, does not, that's pretty plainly bullshit -- especially when Vladimir and Valerie, children of legal immigrants, one born in Undershirtistan and the other here, both attend the same public schools, free for nothing.

     One of the biggest problems with this exclusion is it amounts to punishment of a child for the offenses of their parents -- while Billy and Daphne's parents are presumably still some sort of scofflaws,* little Daphne had no choice in the matter.  In Indiana, this is known as "corruption of the blood," and our state Constitution specifically forbids it.  You can lecture me about it all day, but it's still there, in black and white.  It's got antecedents that go right back to the Old Testament, for that matter.
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* Or possibly not; there are a number of paths, now and in the past, that might let 'em stay here under various sorts of residency.  And just how a law barring children of "illegals" from public education might apply to those situations is unknown and untested.  It's nice that attorneys have a chance to earn a living finding this stuff out, but we don't owe them the opportunity.

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.

Sometimes....

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

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

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

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

     Things are not going to get better soon.

Can't Even? Not Even!

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

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

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

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

     Evil fears the light.  So does incompetence.

So, How's It Going?

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

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

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

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

Judicial Review

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

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

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

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

Nope

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

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

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

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

Saturday

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

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

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

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

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

Reading Is...Too Much?

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

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

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

Skipped

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

     Catching up is its own kind of headache.

Found It

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

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

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

Nice Of Him

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, Goodness!

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

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

Omelette-Topped

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeech

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

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

Keyboard: Back

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

     So far, so good.

Forget It

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

     The future is here and it is staggeringly stupid.

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

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

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

     And some of you are still cheering for this.

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

     You wanted King Stork.  Well, you got him.

Clumsy

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

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

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

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

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

A Tune For These Times

     Round and round and round it goes -- mostly.

Reading For Our Times

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

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

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

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

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

     Those three books offer a perspective sorely lacking at present.

Buttered Saltines

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

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

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

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

Hamfest Missed

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

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

About Those Frogs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loosely Translated

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

Ticking Away To Spring

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

It's Veiled Threat Season!

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

     How will I live it down?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Reminder

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

     Or were you not planning on ever having another election?

Regressives

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

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

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

"Run The Government Like A Business"

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

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

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

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

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

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