This gang can't even shoot itself

The Republicans have had control of congress for a month now and it is quickly becoming a punchline.  While most Americans can't or won't spare the time to make sense of the dysfunction, I believe we are seeing the birth of a third party.  The Christian Right, the racist South and assorted crazies have either hijacked the GOP, or they will form a separate power center.  Most of these ideologues are elected from safe seats gerrymandered by Republican legislatures to ensure domination in congress.  A funny thing happened though.  The zealots elected in these districts are the real RINOs or republicans in name only.  These people are beholden to the far right fringe voters who elected them, not the leaders of their putative party.  They have no loyalty to Boehner and his leadership.  So in reality, there are three parties vying for power, the Dems, the Repubs and for lack of a better term, the Crazy.  The sooner Boehner realizes this and allies with the democrats to get legislation passed the sooner he will take a step toward a more sane political discourse.  We can only hope.

Lying in plain sight

It looks like Faux News has given up any pretension it is a straight news outlet as the fallout from the Bill O'Reilly scandal grows.  As in the case of Brian Williams, it has come to light that O'Reilly has embellished his recollections of his time as a correspondent in Argentina during the Falklands War and in El Salvador.  When called on the difference between his grandiose remembrance and those of his contemporaries, he reacted with his typical mix of bombast and threats.  The odd thing is his superiors sided with him and support his version of events, even as they unravel in the media spotlight.   As the defacto face of the cable "news" outlet, O'Reilly will be protected at all costs, even to the last remaining shreds of the channel's reputation.  Of course, to the target audience this will be of little consequence.  The angry old white men who habitually watch O'Reilly and the rest of the gang at Fox will identify with the persecution of their hero.  Facts it seems do have a liberal bias after all!

Words to live by

Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly Plants.  These seven words put together by Michael Pollan in "The Omnivore's Dilemma" is a motto most people can live by.  That is the takeaway from the folks who make the recommendations for the government's guidelines on what we should be eating.  Specifically, we should be eating less meat and more vegetables.  Another target of the experts is processed foods.  The agro-industrial complex will fight these recommendations throughout the public comments period.  The last time around, the admonition to eat less meat was changed to "eat more lean meat".   The corn/soybean/feedlot system has led to an unprecedented rise in obesity in America.  The addition of high fructose corn syrup to almost every processed food makes it harder for the poor to access nutritious foods.  The produce industry has a great opportunity to make the case for more consumption of fruits and vegetables.  The huge subsidies granted to the corn and soybean growers could be diverted to support a 5 or 7 a day program to encourage more consumption of whole foods.  Veg and fruit producers should be encouraging consumers to make their voices heard as the Agriculture Dept. acts on the recommendations and comments.

This and that

-20 degrees this morning on the NCR.  Just sayin.   An intriguing article in the online aggregating site Vox says self driving cars will be a major slice of all autos by 2035.  The article was written by an avowed city dweller who I doubt ever had a 40 mile commute.  The theory of self driving vehicles is great, but the potential social fallout could be greater than any possible benefit.  The writer blithely predicts the displacement of millions of delivery people.  I suppose he figures they will all become software writers for other burgeoning industries which don't rely on human labor.  When will our machine overlords decide humanity is a useless parasite.  Let's not go down that road today.  In other news, the fight in Congress between the republican crazy caucus and the rest of humanity goes on.  It's looking more and more likely DHS employees will be working for nothing as the agency is defunded because the Senate refuses to undo the president's defacto immigration reforms.  Sounds crazy, and it is.  I can't wait to see what entertainment the Boehner's merry men will come up with when President Clinton is inaugurated!

Turning the page

The seed orders are in.  Finally making decisions regarding varieties and quantities is always wrenching for me.  The proliferation of variations of so many vegetables makes it very hard to settle on the ones which will perform best in my own garden.  Johnnys Seeds, which is where I get most of my seeds and plants has a dizzying number of choices.  For corn alone, there are over 30 varieties listed.  Likewise carrots take up several pages in this year's catalog.  Then there is the choice between organic and conventional, pelleted or naked, coated or non.  At some point  exhaustion sets in and decisions are made based on expediency, availability and the prettiest picture for each variety.  My other big supplier is the smaller, Vermont based High Mowing Seeds.  They at least are all organic, all the time which means one less choice to be made.  The prices are up quite a bit this year.  Some of the priciest seeds can run as much as $.75/seed!   Even with the best of care, 100% germination is unlikely.  This adds even more cost and inconvenience when figuring out the how many tomato, pepper and eggplant seeds to order.   As with all gardeners, I am starting with hope for all of my selections.  I also know there will be winners and losers.   To all of my fellow sufferers, good luck.

Neverending winter

If not the coldest February ever, it is certainly the coldest I have seen on the NCR.  With a windchill reading of 20 below zero this morning and blowing snow squeezing some streets down to one lane, it was a thrilling ride to work.  The ten day forecast through the end of the month features several chances of more snow and many nights of subzero temps.  Even the hardiest natives have given up any pretense this weather is something to celebrate.  Survival is more the name of the game.  The Divine Mrs. M and I are holding on until the first week of March when we will be digging our toes into the sand in (hopefully) sunny Cancun.  Until then, our stiff upper lips will be frozen in place.

The New Crusade

Slowly but surely, we are being manipulated into a holy war.   Islam vs. Christianity and the West would seem to be the title of this little charade.  The so-called Islamic state, a rag tag conglomeration of Saddam Hussein's Sunni army, Al Queda and self styled jihadists from across Europe and Asia is in one corner.  America and its allies are being dragged into the other corner by the machinations of Christian fundamentalist, neocon hawks, supporters of Israel and the John McCain wing of the GOP who would like nothing more than perpetual war in the Middle East.  The present administration is resisting the lure at this point.   The president made nice noises about Islam at a meeting to deal with religious terrorism, correctly pointing out the fundamental tenets of Islam are not what ISIS is all about.  However, the continued massacres and gruesome executions of innocents will force his hand in the end.  The diehards on both sides will get the war they want.  God bless them, because I certainly will not.

Relentlessly ripping off the poor

First it was the reporting on the situation in Ferguson, Mo.  In the wake of the Michael Brown shooting, many news outlets reported on the odious practice of charging and convicting low income people for minor offenses.  Since many of them can not afford to pay the original fines, the costs escalate and many find themselves in prison for parking fines or speeding tickets.  In many municipalities, a significant portion of the budget is financed by these police actions.  Now, news organizations are looking at dollar stores and seeing the same pattern.  Large companies are targeting poor shoppers who are looking for bargains.  Sales of highly processed, packaged food are off at traditional grocery stores as middle and upper class shoppers heed the call of fresher, nutritious whole foods.  Meanwhile, cash strapped poor people  wind up buying "cheaper", processed garbage at rip-off prices.  It seems everyone wants to target the working and welfare classes to pad their bottom lines.  Then everyone wonders why powder kegs like Ferguson explode when violence, rather than the normal fleecing operations impinge on the inhabitants.

Defense of what

The nice polite republicans on NPR commented this morning the new Secretary of Defense has problems to solve, like dislodging the terrorists of ISIS in Iraq.  Memo to NPR.  That is what the State Department is for.  It seems we are giving more and more power to the laughably named "Department of Defense".  What this agency is defending are the moneyed interests of the American Empire in the early part of the 21st century.  With a bloated budget equal to the combined budgets of the next 20 countries, just what are we defending against.  The answer is the fallout from American foreign policy dating back to the overthrow of Mossadegh's government in Iran in the 1950s.  Virtually every government in the Middle East has danced while the CIA pulled the strings since that time.  The resentment will take generations to abate if it ever does.  Meanwhile we are told we need to spend over $600 billion dollars a year to defend the homeland.  The mind reels at the duplicity and arrogance of those in charge of our foreign policy  and the complicity of most of us in this charade.  The fighters flocking to the ISIS banner are driven by hatred of policies which have beggared many for the enrichment of few.  Without drastic changes, the recruitment will continue and we will be dragged into a ground war we cannot win and will continue to hemorrhage blood and treasure until we fall as have all empires throughout history.

New Passengers in the Clown Car

John Kasich, the governor of Ohio for those who don't follow politics, has started to explore a run for the Republican nomination for the presidency.  He is a white bread republican whose claim to fame is he was more conservative than the norm 25 years ago.  Of late, he has dabbled in voter suppression in  Ohio while simultaneously proposing Medicaid expansion.  He doesn't seem to have a sugar daddy among the billionaire set, so it would seem he will have to stand or fall on the merits of his proposals.  It's a shame we can't judge all candidates that way.  Instead, the Koch fueled candidates will have hundreds of millions of dollars to obfuscate their way to a nomination they will probably regret when they run into the Clinton meat grinder.  Despite the money the reactionary wealthy are ready to spend, unless they come up with a candidate with compelling ideas that resonate with the middle and lower classes it would seem we are in for another Democratic administration.

Winter blues

With a windchill of 21 below this morning  and even worse predicted for most of the weekend, it looks like it might be time to curl up with my Valentine and maybe a DVD of the Big Chill.  Call it 50 Shades of White!

Intolerance and us

The cartoon character POGO famously said "We have met the enemy and he is us".  Looking at the murderous thug who killed three young muslims in North Carolina supposedly over a parking dispute, I would have to say the quote still rings true.  To look at Chris Hicks and his wife you see typical Americans.  Look closer and you see the twin scourges of the early 21st century, namely guns and intolerance.  Together, they are a heady mix.  When ordinary people have lethal force available to them at any time, the temptation to use it to settle something so mundane as the availability of parking spaces becomes the logical extension of the NRA's mantra that good guys with guns are the antidote to bad guys with guns.  Unfortunately, neither people or the situations they encounter are quite as black and white as sloganeering would have us believe.   Maybe if Hick's disputants had been as white as he, and as well armed he wouldn't have blown them away.  But they were unarmed "foreigners", so his violent fantasies played out with tragic results.  That's not the way this story will be played by the media.  The root cause of the crime it allowing citizens to walk around with a gun strapped to their hip and very little restraint on their ability to use it.  We are trending in a very dark and dangerous direction.

Nourishment or Enrichment

Marc Bittman makes a salient point in his column in the NYT this morning.   Is the purpose of agriculture to nourish the population and make a living for farmers, or to denude the country's topsoil, poison the water and workers and enrich corporations?  Most of us, if we think about it would like to say it is the former, but agree for the most part it is the latter.  How did this happen and what can we do to reverse the process?   The logical step would be to make agriculture more local and smaller scale.  If most people knew where their food came from and how it was produced, they would be horrified.  Even the winter vegetables we take for granted are for the most part produced unsustainably in the desert west.  As Bittman points out, it is one thing to rail at the practices of corporate agriculture and quite another to actually do something about it.   Supporting local producers and eating a sustainably are the easy fixes.  Prodding our representatives in Congress to look at our rapidly breaking agricultural system is another.  The Cargils and Tysons are not going away without a fight and they have not felt any pressure from consumers to change their business models.  From salmonella laced chicken to pesticide loaded fruits and veggies, we are slowly being poisoned.  The only way this changes is for us to demand the kind of agriculture which promotes health and well being on the production and consumption sides of the equation.

History

The study of our past has always been a favorite subject for me.  If I had been born into an academic family, I don't doubt I would have been a history professor at a college somewhere.  Unfortunately, most of my fellow Americans feel history is something you avoid.  When the Kenyan usurper, a.k.a the President of the United States dared to suggest that Christianity has a historical record which compares to Islam, he was immediately taken to task by Faux News for making inappropriate comparisons.  I wonder if the "fair and balanced" network will comment on the report in the NYT today regarding the nearly 4,000 lynchings of black men and women which occurred between the 1870s and 1950s in the "Christian" South.  Not to mention the many biblical justifications of slavery in the previous two centuries.  While the thugs who run ISIS are beyond the pale, the brutality they have manifested has been exceeded here in our one nation under god in relatively recent times.  The phrase "Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it" should be the first sentence from every history teacher's mouth at the beginning of each course.

Like a Monday

Having taken my own advice and read a couple of books in front of the fireplace, I can face the upcoming week with equanimity.  The latest winter storm gave us a light brush on Sunday with about 4 inches of new snow.  Unfortunately for Boston and the rest of New England, the hand of winter storm Marcus will rest a little more heavily.   More than the snow, the relentless cold is grinding spirits and heating budgets.  We have not been above freezing here on the NCR in several weeks.  The forecast is for the coldest weather yet to hit us later this week.  When your high for the day is below 0, it is definitely time to think about palm trees and funny drinks with umbrellas in them.

Silly season

It looks like another weekend of hibernation is coming up.  With snowfall prediction of up to 10 inches of new snow spread out over 3 days, I might be tempted to break out the cross country skis, if only to remind myself why I hate struggling through the snow at a painful walking pace with the possibility of falling awkwardly and lying like a turtle in the white stuff.  A better plan is to head to one of the local hills where at least going downhill on skis or snowboard does not require sweating.  On second thought, a good book an a hot cup of coffee sound even better.  Winter, ya gotta love it....

Boots on the ground

It seems there is no war that John McCain and Lindsey Graham can't find some rationale for planting American boots in someone else's country.  If, god forbid the senator from Arizona had been elected president in 2008, who knows how many brushfire conflicts would have claimed American lives.  Not to mention the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan where McCain famously said we would stay for a thousand years if necessary.  Meanwhile, on the home front a partisan Supreme Court seems ready to do what 56 votes in Congress could not; gut the Affordable Care Act.  This in the face of overwhelming evidence the suit in question is entirely spurious.  As one SCOTUS watcher put it, the Supremes will have a lot of explaining to do to future historians if they strike down a significant part of the law, since most of them have been on the other side when it suited their ideological purposes.  In both of the above cases, public opinion is against the course we are being dragged down.  Further confirmation, if any was needed that our democracy is increasingly in peril.

Warming to the task

It's 30 degrees warmer today on the NCR, but somehow it still feels like winter.  The successive cold waves sweeping across the northeast have put us on a roller coaster of ice and snow, even as the west coast remains warm and dry.  The rational part of my brain says this is just a temporary movement of the jet stream and by the end of February the blocking high pressure will be history.  The lizard portion of the above mentioned brain is screaming this will never end and we are in a new ice age.  It's time to start some seedlings!  The surest method of combatting winter is the sprouting of the new year's crops.

Moving expectations

There seems to be a hint of compromise coming out of the republicans after the preview of the president's budget for this year.  By moving the conversation in a leftward direction, Obama has finally realized the futility of trying to anticipate what Congress is willing to tolerate.  Offering a compromise ahead of any debate is a sure way to have the republicans move the goalposts to the right.  Laying out a moderate progressive agenda has Boehner and company scrambling to appear reasonable.  Perhaps a real legislative compromise palatable to both partners in governance can finally be reached.  Even Newt Gingrich and his bomb throwers would have seen something they could work with.  It remains to be seen if the new, radical right republicans of today can be seen as treating with the Muslim, Kenyan usurper.

Winter Storms and spring policies

With the Northeast mired in another winter storm, even the Patriots' victory in the Super Bowl is unlikely to lift the spirits of any but the most diehard Patsie fan.  Half a foot of snow and a high temperature of around zero is a recipe for depression.   Meanwhile, the entertainment quotient in D.C. will be high for the next few days as the administrations' budget is presented to a hostile congress.  Obama is playing to the cheap seats with his latest throw down.  By offering help to the lower middle class at the expense of the wealthy, he is putting markers  out for the next Democratic  presidential candidate.  Everyone knows the repubs will poo-poo any attempt to attack the problem of inequality with higher taxes.  Also, everyone knows that is the only way to address the problem.  The wealthy control most of the levers in the economy and the government is the only player with the power to effect change.  Obama's message will resonate with populist leaning Dems, but he needs to generate enthusiasm among the potential beneficiaries of the policy.  The common wisdom is most people don't pay attention to their elected representatives except for a few days before each election.  That apathy needs to change, or we will be treated to more of the same wealth concentrating policies which will contribute to the stagnating economy we are still experiencing.  If the 1% don't see the wisdom of higher taxes, the President needs to make the case for a drastic change in 2016.  Are you listening Hilary?