Easy-Open Oranges

     They're not cheap, and they have a somewhat limited season, but "Sumo" Mandarin oranges are delightful, for all the name is a cultural mishmash.  The Sumo part appears to be because they're burly, as oranges go, and they have a topknot at the stem end.

     That topknot makes them easy to open: just grab it and twist.  The fruit inside is sweet and juicy, easily separated from the thick rind.  Tamara loves them, and will buy them any time they're available.

     As the season goes on, they get even sweeter and juicier.  I was enjoying one today (kind of, ahem, "borrowed" from Tam's stock) and I was reminded of a gadget from my childhood: An in-orange juicer.

     We called them "squooters," but the "OJ Squeater," world's smallest juice extractor, seems to be what we had, and it's a riff on the Citri Sipper, patented in 1931.  I looked in vain at the big retail sites, but eBay's got plenty of them, and the original Citri Sipper appears to still be a staple of Florida orange stands.  Caveat emptor on those links -- and are you sure you don't have one in the back of the kitchen-gadgets drawer?

     I didn't, and I wish I had.  These late-season Sumo Mandarins are made for 'em.  Nicest Vitamin C I ever had.

Blindly "Edgy?" Disgruntled Employee? What?

      Not to be too vague about it, but the online official swag store of a certain auto-racing sanctioning group briefly offered a T-shirt design so offensive that I won't post it here.

     There's also the fact that they memory-holed it shortly after the image started making the rounds on social media.  Sure, the page got archived; but provenance is a bit tricky when all you've got is a big stack of HTML that anyone with the skills could write, having grabbed the code from a different page of the same site.  I saw it myself, so I think it was indeed real; doubting the initial reports, I had done a search on their site to find it and had the page up for about thirty minutes before hitting "refresh" and pulling a 404. 

     The design in question featured a race-car driver in full kit -- helmet, fireproof union suit, gloves and so on -- seated in a throne-type chair modeled on the one the statue of Lincoln sits in at the Lincoln Memorial, fasces and all.*  Vertical red and white stripes in the proportion of the ones on our flag fill space behind and above the seated figure.  It was apparently in promotion of an automobile race in Washington, D.C. that is part of the celebrations for our country's 250th anniversary.

     The image itself is not the offensive part; it's a little tone-deaf to unseat Lincoln, but decades of zany Presidents' Day-themed ads show that general kind of thing isn't uncommon.  Nope, the problem was the text: Above the driver, "ONE NATION."  Below him, between five-pointed stars, "ONE RACE."

     It's not a cute pun. It's not a dogwhistle.  It's an air-raid siren.  To their credit, the page selling that shirt was taken down shortly after it started getting general attention; to their detriment, somebody made the decision to create and post it in the first place.
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* There's a tendency in various corners of the Internet to point at such representations of rods bundled around an axe in various government buildings, documents, coins, etc. and sagely intone, "That proves it! It's a fascist government!" It proves nothing of the sort; our government was established by men LARPing the Roman Republic (with a touch of Ancient Greek democracy) and for Rome, fasces were a symbol of the power to dispense high and low justice.  Mussolini co-opted it, but he was way late to the table, and was thinking more of Imperial Rome.  And yes, Republic or Empire, the Romans were a bloody-handed bunch, and there are better ways to symbolize government than implied beatings and beheadings.  It's a pretty good reminder of the need for checks and balances, and that justice had better be tempered with wisdom and mercy; but artistic and symbolic use in the U.S. is rarely that nuanced, either.  It's just one more bit of semiotic shorthand to say that government is still in charge of all levels of justice, right up there with the eagle clutching arrows in one claw and olive branches in the other.

Aw, Spare Me

     My family, what's left of it, sometimes shares nostalgic text messages about our happy childhood, and that's fine; we're all pretty old and enjoyable memories are a great comfort.

     Thing is, I disliked childhood.  I never saw anything clearly at farther away than arm's length until I was eight years old -- after being chided for years, "Don't you see it?  Oh, look there!" and not figuring out the reason why.  They tell me what a bright and inquisitive child I was, and darned right: I was trying to figure out the trick to understanding those blurred shapes.

     I spent all of first grade in trouble for not paying attention to what was on the blackboard, and all of second grade being humored as a child who was clearly, mystifyingly, unable to learn much.

     Here's a free tip: if your child is sitting a foot away from the TV or computer (etc.), it might be a good idea to get their vision checked.  Those halcyon years are apparently way better when you can see what's going on.

--

     This post started out to be a rant about news coverage of the current President, which still veers between normalizing stuff with an "Oh, that wacky, limits-testing Republican!" tone and pundits claiming that this time he's gotten himself way too far out on a limb or askew from popular opinion or whatever, and he's about to be brought to heel.  Yeah, well, his will to power is unprecedented for all it borders on incoherent -- and I can write that as someone who was reading newspapers during the Johnson and Nixon Administrations, though I did need some help with the big words in LBJ's early years.  And just who or what. exactly, is going to rein the man in?  His party?  Don't count on it.  Congress?  Nope.  The Courts?  The Supreme Court is brought and paid for, or a large chunk of the Court's conservative majority is. (Look up Leonard Leo, who is to the Right what they say George Soros is for the Left.)

     The misadventure with Iran may yet prove to be an own goal he can't avoid.  Fuel and fertilizer prices are nowhere near done spiking, even if the Strait of Hormuz magically opens up this afternoon.  It will likely be a year or more before the disruption works its way through the system and once it has, prices are unlikely to drop much.  2026 and 2027 will be hungry years.  How hungry remains to be seen, and this is the kind of thing that loses elections -- but it's also the kind of thing that powers major upheavals in systems of government.  So don't tell me "We've got him now!" when that pig isn't even in the poke.

     Chaos is Mr. Trump's very own briar patch. He's not well-spoken; he has never struck me as being particularly bright in a puzzle-solving way.  But give him a clamorous mess, and so far, he has a real skill for coming out on top.  Maybe it's all just bluster and bullshit and associates who have figured out how to profit by upholding and riding his coattails, but it works for him, even as it leaves most of us worse off -- and it leaves his rank and file followers sufficiently less worse off than the people they (and he) most dislike that they have not been minding the downside.  That's a formula for a certain kind of political success, one largely confined to authoritarian, personalist movements.

--

     I believed I was out of childhood when, finally, I got to the point that I was free to starve on my own merits.  I wasn't done growing up until I learned that sometimes, you need a hand when things get bad.

     I won't believe we're done with Trumpism until we are -- and we're putting in the effort to build better checks and balances, to keep Congress, the courts and the Executive Branch more protective of their own powers and less inclined to get in one another's pockets.  If we do not, the system will remain vulnerable to whatever demagogue, from whichever part of the political spectrum, comes along next to work it for their own gain.

And The Winner Is...

      Advertising! That was the biggest winner in Indiana's primary elections yesterday.  There was a big uptick in ad money, largely spurred by supporters of President Trump's efforts to unseat the seven State Senators who thwarted redistricting efforts.

     Turnout was unusually high -- in Marion Country, nearly double that of the previous two primaries.  And that's half of the story.

     The other half is not so great.  All that money pouring in, those TV ads painting that candidate as a closet liberal* and this candidate as a true-hearted America First† stalwart did bring people to the primary polls in record numbers, but that record still amounts to a 14.9% turnout instead of the usual single digits.  Just over eighty-five percent of registered voters are, apparently, okay with whoever the rest of us pick.  I'm honored, I guess -- but should you really trust me when you have a chance to put your own two cents in?

     (And by the way, my thanks to the two parties, especially the GOP, for spending the big dollars buying airtime from my employer, whom you otherwise revile.  You helped keep my paycheck from bouncing, in a market where my industry's share of dwindling advertising dollars continues to shrink.)

     Looking at horserace-level results, of the seven primaried Republicans, five lost to nearly indistinguishable challengers, replacing Tweedle-don't with Tweedle-do.  One held on, and the seventh hung in the balance over a difference of three (3) votes for a long time before being called for the incumbent.  Still okay staying home for the primaries?

     Don't look at me to lay a feather on the scales against either candidate's heart in that close contest.‡ I voted in the Democrat primary.  These are times to pick a side, and downstream of the 2021 insurrection, I'll never vote for a Republican.  They could have cleaned house, tossed out the vandals, religious extremists and authoritarians.  They chose to retcon recorded history and double down instead, so I'll content myself with picking the best Democrats I can find.  (As the late P. J. O'Rourke said of Hillary Clinton in 2016, "...she’s wrong within normal parameters.") 

     The 2026 Indiana primary is done.  The main event is in November -- and the future of the country is on the line.  Nobody's coming to save us, nobody except for us.
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* Despite, in every instance I could check, a voting record somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan and fulsome support of the incumbent President on nearly every issue except redistricting.
 
† Seriously, when did they stop teaching U. S. History in our schools?  That slogan has an ugly history, only barely outside living memory.  Yes, the surface meaning of the words is just fine -- in much the same way as an English word of Scandinavian origin meaning miserly has utterly no relation to a vile racist slur and swastikas have a long and innocent history in Greek, Indian and Native American art.  People of good sense avoid 'em anyway, because the negative associations are far too strong.
 
‡ Indiana Senate District 23 isn't my neighborhood anyway.

Primary Day

     Today's election results should be interesting.  The outcomes for the Indiana Republicans being primaried at the behest of the Republican president may tell us a little -- not a lot, but a little -- about the extent to which Mr. Trump still commands his base.

     Hoosiers remain crossgrained, and tend to prefer the familiar to the new; the latter trait probably finds stronger expression among GOP voters than Democrats.  On the other hand, a lot of the former have hitched their wagons very firmly so Mr. Trump's star.  So we shall see.  A rising star -- or a falling one?

Election Homework Done

     A good start for a Monday: I have located our polling place (a little Lutheran church that has hosted voting several times in recent years) and re-reviewed the (few) primary choices.  Indiana runs closed primaries, but neither party fielded a whole lot of candidates; the Democrats managed a full slate, while the Republicans skipped a few offices, but neither one offered more than one choice for many offices.

     Most of them are unglamorous jobs, like county assessor and clerk of the courts, where there's a lot of actual work and not much shaking hands and making speeches.  Only a few are even useful stepping stones to anything bigger; so what you end up with are people who want the job, either in and of itself or to show they're good members of their party, willing to step up, run, and (usually) do the work if they win.

     Someone's got to do the dull grunt work of government, and I have made my list and checked it more than twice.  I'm going to be interested in turnout numbers; it's not a great predictive metric for the general election this Fall, but it's what we've got.  If turnout for the primary is usually high (or low), that'll be a hint what to expect.

I'm In!

     The new desktop arrived late this afternoon, and after a break for dinner, I'm setting it up.  I've got some applications to download, and I'm hoping to dig out an optical drive and install Word eventually, but the process is underway.

     It's a Windows computer, and this is yet another thing that is pretty comforting with an Apple/Mac product -- and kinda scary in Windows.  I haven't been pulled all the way into the walled garden; work is still very Microsoft-centric, but were it not for a lingering fondness for Paint and the older version of WordArt in MS-Word, I would be very tempted.

Wow

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

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

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

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

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

Backup Laptop, Backup Skull

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

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

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

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

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

Punished For Retroactive Bad Taste

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Idiots

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

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

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

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

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

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

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