On the year gone by

Its been an eventful year in the US, politically speaking.   We have finally realized their is a constituency for fascism in our county, thanks to The Donald.  At least 30% of the electorate is pining for a dictator to make their decisions for them and Trump is down with that.  Making America Great Again, whatever that means, is the platform on which this Rube Goldberg authoritarianism will be built.  It remains to be seen if more than that benighted 30% have an appetite for this type of government.  As Argentina and many other Latin American countries have demonstrated over the years the yen for a strongman or "decider" is an atavistic yearning for many.  Cooler heads are likely to prevail in 2016, but a timely terrorist attack could unhinge enough people to make this dark fantasy come true.  President Obama remains cool in the face of constant sniping by those who question his commitment to the country.  As someone who harbored dark fantasies about the Shrub's supposed plans to declare martial law and become a dictator, I think I understand the critics, but in the main, I believe most opposition to Obama is strictly driven by racism.  Another phenomenon which was finally recognized this year was the wholesale killing of Americans by the police departments which are supposed to "serve and protect" citizens.  Here again, racism is the proximate cause of most of the killings as a mostly white police force in many cases police a brown or black neighborhood where residents are considered the enemy.  I hope we begin to tackle these problems in the new year, but election year politics will probably pollute the process.  On a personal note, the garden was an up and down enterprise and will likely be smaller and more manageable next year.  The grandchildren continue to grow and prosper and the Divine Mrs. M remains very much so.  As the final grains of sand empty from the glass of 2015, I wish everyone who reads this a happy and prosperous and progressive NewYear.

Gaming the system

What do police officers in Cleveland, hedge fund billionaires in New York and a drunken teenager in Texas have in common?   It would seem that they all benefit from a system that is heavily weighted in their favor.  For the cops in Cleveland it is a justice system which virtually eliminates any penalties for killing civilians they are supposed to be protecting, especially if they are black or brown skinned.  As many have pointed out, if Tamir Rice had been a white boy in an affluent neighborhood with  a toy gun, he probably would have had a stern talking to.  Instead, Rice was shot within seconds of police arrival in his poor, mostly black neighborhood.  Meanwhile, the NYT points out in an article this morning that the 400 richest families in the US, using sophisticated lobbying and large political contributions have actually seen their tax liabilities fall as a percentage below that faced by people reporting $100,000 per year income.  Elaborate shell corporations and money laundering techniques are not available even to many in the top 1% of earners.  Finally, the affluenza defense which got a drunk Texas teen off with probation after he hit and killed four people stopped by the side of a road to aid a disabled motorist will probably help him escape serious jail time again after he violated probation and fled to Mexico.  These examples of flagrant favoritism by the law threaten to undermine the very fabric of American life.  Our country was built on the belief that all should be treated equally under the law.  How can we long endure this inequality?

Weather for winter sissies

Waking up to 6 inches of snow and more coming down is a reminder that despite climate change and this blog's referral to my location as the North Country Riviera or NCR, winter is a cruel mistress in the North Country.   Basking in 60 degree temps on Christmas day to shoveling snow 3 days later is a brutal way to acknowledge December.  Having my snowblower break the chain on the augur was merely the icing on the cake of my misery.  Freezing rain is next on Mother Nature's agenda, so power outages are also a possibility.  The last major weather event in the area was a major ice storm in 1999 courtesy of El Nino.  I don't want to contemplate the possibility of something similar in 2016.  Meanwhile, I hope today's weather is not a preview of the rest of the winter.   In a have your cake and eat it scenario, I want the warmer weather climate change brings but without the horrific by products.

O come even the not so faithful

The last strains of the O Come all ye Faithful had finished bouncing off the ceiling of St. Agnes church in Lake Placid and the ever smiling Divine Mrs.  M was bidding farewell to her fellow singers at the end of a long season of weekly rehearsals.  The Northern Adirondack vocal Ensemble had just finished a presentation of Nine Lessons and Carols for the Christmas season.   All across America, singing groups have presented everything Christmas, from the majestic strains of Handel's Messiah to the more mundane "It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas".  Most of the performers are unpaid amateurs who do it for the love of singing and the season.  It is a convivial tradition which seems to survive despite the mounting tensions Christmas seems to exacerbate.  In an increasingly multicultural nation, the obligatory celebration of a Christian holiday would seem to be at best a mild insult to non-Christians.  But Christmas somehow seems to overcome its parochial origins and invites everyone to partake of the religious or the secular side of the holiday.  Much as it appropriated ancient pagan festivals celebrating the winter solstice, Christianity overwhelms all other religions in the western world for a short time at the end of the year with a feeling of goodwill.  As have many others, I lament the sentiments expressed so eloquently by choirs around the country cannot carry through the year.

Radical Economics

As the invaluable Paul Krugman pointed out in his column this morning, the economic plans laid out for our perusal by all the republican candidates for president blow up the federal deficit with the efficiency of a hydrogen bomb.  Jeb! and the Donald lead the pack with deficit busting tax cuts which benefit the top one tenth of 1% of income earners.  Their unspoken corollary is that to make the cuts "deficit neutral" they would propose shredding the social safety net which more and more of our fellow citizens depend on.  As Krugman points out, the only time the republicans worry about the deficit is when a democrat is President.  They never worry about anyone not in the top 10% of income.    At least Trump is speaking to the rest of the country when he defends Social Security and Medicare.  That is why his poll numbers remain strong.   Even GOP voters have figured out the shell game most of the others are playing.

I'll be home for Christmas

After the mad rush of the approach to Christmas it will be a joy to spend the day with family at Casa Monzeglio.    Three grandchildren will be there to remind me of the excitement such a gathering can cause.   All three are young enough that they have not reached the stage where disappointment is as much a part of Christmas as joy.  The incredibly mild weather is another reason to cheer, although the implications are a different story.  However, this is a Christmas Eve scribble, so I won't mention the environment, politics or any other button pushing issues.  Let's spend at least one day counting our blessings and enjoying the company of family and friends.   Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, Kwanzaa, Chanukkah and any other holiday you can conjure.

The New Political Correctness

Where can you start with Donald Trump.  After making fun of Hillary's bathroom break at the Democratic debate last week, he went one better and used a Yiddish vulgarism describing a sexual assault to describe her loss of the Dem nomination in 2008 to President Obama.  Without a doubt, I have been in men's locker rooms with more decorum.  The inspiration for this blog, my dear friend Jerry Shulman would have been shocked to hear The Donald use his beloved Yiddish used to denigrate another human being.  To borrow from him, I would say Trump is the anti-mensch.  How this incarnation of what most  of us are ashamed of: racism, sexism, misogyny and plain mean spiritedness is within striking distance of a major party's presidential nomination is a sad commentary on our national dysfunction.  The long, slow devolution of the GOP to become the mouthpiece for the politics of hatred has been documented by many, but there will be a plethora of books devoted to the final descent of the party to its present depths.  The revulsion most of the country feels when the present front-runner for the republican nomination speaks will be manifested in the election results next November...I hope.

Shortest Day

It's easy to imagine a huddle of druids at Stonehenge on a Winter Solstice day 3000 years ago, waiting for the Sun to proclaim the shortest day of the year.  Without our astronomical certainty of the change of seasons, ancient peoples resorted to monuments and festivals to mark the change from dark to light.  The lengthening nights and paucity of light makes me a little crazy this time of year, so the prospect of even 4 more seconds of light tomorrow is enough to merit a celebration.  Banishing the night and celebrating the day is in our collective DNA.  The early Christians jumped on this solstice festival to legitimize their new religion and Christmas was born.  Shortly thereafter, the War on Christmas was declared, at least in the fevered imagination of Bill O'Reilly. 

The cult of Putin

In the feckless corner of America inhabited by those who pine for a "strong leader" there is ever more love for Russia's president.   Vladimir Putin has fired the imaginations of authoritarians who want someone else to tell them what to think and what to do.  What's the next best thing for this aging mostly white male cohort with a disdain for an intellectual black president.   Enter The Donald.  Killing a few of the media scum, invading and annexing another country's territory, intervening in another nation's civil war is all in a day's work for Vlad.  In his quest to make America great again, Trump proclaims Putin's tactics as great leadership.  Much as the Italians of the 1920s and Germans in the 1930s lauded Mussolini and Hitler as strong leaders, some now proclaim Putin's policies as a panacea to solve our problems.  Russia's brief flirtation with democracy is now over, but hopefully there are enough Americans who realize self governance is a messy enterprise without easy answers. 

Seasonal nostalgia

After spending a weekend immersed in the sounds of the holidays, it is hard to get back to the workaday world.  The familiar music evokes the more innocent days of childhood when December was for many of us baby boomers a long buildup to the joys of Christmas morning.  It was a combination of guilt and glee as we tried to balance our reverence for the birth of Christ with our bourgeoning materialism.  This dichotomy still haunts me, although the religious aspect of Christmas has long been erased from my consciousness.  The Messiah by Handel still gives me chills and challenges the easy dismissal of the spiritual aspect of the season.  The inspiration of this music and much of the sacred reparatory of Christmas is inspiring, no matter how it can be analyzed.   As the Divine Mrs. M and I listened to the last strains of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing", it was hard to say Bah, Humbug.  The Scrooge in me was hearing the better angels of my nature.  The Flying Spaghetti Monster "Bless us, Everyone".

Hosed for the holidays

The confluence of the arrest of Martin Shkreli for fraud and the opening of the movie "The Big Short" once again exposes the greed and shortsightedness of the elite in this new gilded age.  Shkreli has become the poster child of the 21st century story of the utter disregard most on Wall St. and Big Pharma hold their fellow citizens.  His cartoonish villainy is of the Snidely Whiplash variety; namely stupid cruelty for the sake of deriding those of us who feel a little empathy for those less fortunate.  First, he jacked the price of a life saving drug by 5000% because he could.  Feeding on the public revulsion of this action, he next purchased the only copy of a Wu Tang Clan album in order to deprive everyone else of the possibility of hearing it (no problem for me).  His mocking of virtually everyone who is not Martin Shkreli is the story of his contempt for the "little people".   Now indicted, I doubt too many tears will be shed when his sentence is read. The Big Short, on the other hand is the meticulously told story of how many on Wall St. lost their moral compass in the quest to make astronomical amounts of money and how a few profited by betting against them when their proverbial chickens came home to roost.  Many of the country's opinion makers are horrified that the unwashed will see this movie and be educated as to the scam perpetrated on the public in the latter years of the Shrub's administration.  We can only hope that Shkreli gets his just desserts and the rest of us view the cautionary tale of The Big Short as a blueprint for a kinder, gentler financial system.

The "New Economy"

The Fed, bowing to pressure from banking interests has finally raised the benchmark interest rate it charges member banks.  From near 0 to at least a quarter per cent, the raise is not expected to tighten the screws on the economy too much, but an article about a union settlement in Kohler, Wisconsin yesterday caught my eye and vividly contradicted Janet Yellin's rosy predictions.  The union in Kohler voted to ratify a new contract with the Kohler Corporation, best known for high end plumbing fixtures.   The contract solidifies and two tier wage system.  Veteran employees make up to $23.00/hr., while new hires, doing the same jobs make about half that wage.   Many on both sides of the divide agree the newer employees can't possibly raise families on that kind of wage.  Despite the continued profitability of Kohler, whose chairman is worth $7.4 billion, the company threatened to move jobs to factories in the southern US or overseas if the union insisted on wage parity.  So instead of a new generation starting families and building homes, you have an underclass, living with their parents and failing to start their American Dream.  According to the Fed, we might as well get used to it as the new economic normal.  Thanks Janet, but maybe you should get out more and stop listening to the $5000.00 suits who keep telling you everything is coming up roses.

The Force is always with us

As the juggernaut "Star Wars The Force Awakens" takes aim at all time box office records this weekend, many people question its hold on the cultural zeitgeist.  After all, the first movie was described as a space opera with cartoonish characters who made a serviceable sequel, but then descended into varying levels of mediocrity during the next four pictures in the series.  Advance reviews are mostly favorable, indicating JJ Abrams has resurrected the franchise for another round.  What prompts grown men and women to dress up as storm troopers, hairy aliens and robots in homage to the movies?  In my humble opinion, George Lucas tapped into a primal need of people in the late 70s.   America was digesting the awful defeat of our empire at the hands of the Viet Cong, the Nixon Administration had proved to be a nest of liars and the energy crisis of 1973 had buffeted the economy for the first time since the Korean War.  Instead of this moral, economic and political debacle, Lucas offered us the surety of good guys triumphing over evil, even if only for a moment.  Luke Skywalker is everyman, Princess Leia is the combination of the damsel in distress and proto-feminist and Han Solo is the redemption of all our wasted youth.  Obi Wan Kenobi represented to me the enduring values our civilization is built on.   You don't have the layered intellectualism of a Kubrick or a Jean Cocteau.  It's more like an extended Saturday afternoon B movie western, but the special effects are tremendous and the story is timeless.  I'll wait til the crush at my local multiplex  lessens sometime next week, but I hope the Divine Mrs. M and I get to see the newest installment in the saga  before Christmas.

Predicability

It was almost a no-brainer (pun intended) when the republican candidates for President gathered in Las Vegas last night.   Advising us to wet our pants in terror of ISIS inspired gunmen and endorse WW3 with Russia over no fly zones in Syria (that's where my leakage started), the candidates sought to outdo each other as our security daddies.  Disregarding the fact more Americans die at the hands of police violence and fellow citizens every year than have been killed by terrorists since the country's founding, we were told we need to give up our privacy rights and most of the other guarantees of the constitution (except of course the right to own our very own arsenal of democracy) in the name of defeating a rag-tag bunch of Saddam Hussein's former army commanders and assorted Muslim jihadists.  This is what passes for national security debates among GOP candidates.  Certainly last night's festivities disqualified most if not all of the erstwhile candidates from getting within  a Brett Favre hail mary of the nuclear football.  The scary part is one of this motley crew will be the standard bearer for one of the two major political parties in our country.  May the Flying Spaghetti Monster have mercy on our souls!

Work in Progress

The world climate conference in Paris is finally over.   The delegates listened to some feel good remarks by world leaders and relaxed a little after haggling over everything from responsibility for climate change to punctuation  of the conference's final document.  Everyone is going home to start the harder job of forging a consensus among the world's population that everyone needs to do their part to avoid a climate catastrophe in coming decades and centuries.  How they will sell the bitter pill of fossil fuel avoidance and reliance on new technologies is one problem.  How to get the wealthy, developed nations to share with the less fortunate is the other.  Despite President Obama's stirring remarks to the attendees, he must now do battle with a know nothing republican party whose raison d'etre has and continues to be relentless opposition to anything he proposes or any cause he espouses.  Powerful media antagonists, including Faux News and Rush Limbaugh will do little to educate their benighted viewers and listeners or will actively disinform them of the very real results on the climate of doing nothing.  With upwards of 97% of scientists convinced of the man made origins of climate disruption, we can't afford to kick the can down the road for the next generation to deal with.  How the present population of the planet behaves over the next 50 years will probably influence life on the Blue Planet for many generations. 

My religion, not thine

As the Donald struggles to show his religious bona fides to the evangelical set, he is setting up the GOP for a huge fail.   Showing little tolerance for other faiths, the modern Republican party will make itself increasingly irrelevant and indeed frightful to those of other religious persuasions or the increasing minority of atheists and agnostics.  The confluence of  hard right politics and the evangelical sects' intolerance is a heady brew, but one which only a minority of the electorate is comfortable with.  I daresay Trump has not been inside a church in decades, and his new found faith is unlikely to sway the bible bangers.  The less scary but nevertheless more dangerous Ted Cruz will probably be the alternative for those who love the old time religion.   Besides many passages in the Old Testament, the religious right and hard line Islam have one very inflammatory doctrine in common.  They both preach intolerance of other religions.  They both feel conflict between them is inevitable and both feel they will win, whatever the cost. 

Gathering storm

It looks like there will be a full on battle between those of us who believe in an inclusive, caring society and the racist, misogynistic, homophobes who make up the core of the Republican party and are the driving force of Donald Trump's campaign.   I don't mean a physical battle, although there will be skirmishes.  The soul of America is at stake, and the battle will be for hearts and minds.  The 30% or so of the population that supported anything the Shrub did will fuel Trump's campaign of hate for anyone is not like "us".   It is up to the rest of us to support those who would counter this view with a message of inclusion and a plan to alleviate the pain and suffering which has driven many to embrace a nihilistic view of our current society.  As Bernie Sanders points out, the economy which is weighted toward the 1% has left many behind and their angst is fueling the demagogues on the right.   While the Democrats don't have anyone with Trump's charisma, either Hillary or Bernie can make the case for economic inclusion which should draw off much of his strength.  We all need to listen to our better angels, especially as we enter the Christmas season.

The Banality of Evil

Was Hannah Arendt's description of the Nazi death machine during WW2.  It consisted mainly of normal people leading otherwise normal lives, but swept into the management of concentration camps and their attendant horrors.    As long as most of those bureaucrats did the job they were tasked with, the system allowed the killing of 6,000,000 Jews and other "undesirables".  Most of us think we would never participate in such a crime, but faced with the retribution if you disobeyed your orders, how many family men and women would expose their own families to hardship and possible death to save a faceless, nameless human being.   For every Schindler, there are hundreds of Eichmanns who obeyed orders and wittingly participated in racial extermination.  Nearer to our own time is the "ethnic cleansing" in Serbia.  Again, it was abetted by many otherwise exemplary citizens, although there were some monsters in both cases.   The internment of American citizens of Japanese origin during WW2 is a shame the US must bear.  Despite some individual heroism, most who participated in the roundup and imprisonment of fellow citizens did so without question.  The possibility of a Trump Administration fills me with foreboding.   The Donald is banal and evil.  What could possibly go wrong!

So it begins

I stole a few minutes last night to devote to study of the new Johnny's Seed Catalog, the bible for Almena Gardens.   I have been ordering seeds in increasing quantities from Johnnys for more than 20 years and it is my go to source for information.   My resolve to cut back on gardening in 2016  remains strong, but the siren call of new varieties is getting hard to resist.  I almost feel like I need to be tied to the mast or maybe the rototiller!   Must not give in.....

New Reality

The near universal condemnation of Donald Trump's call to exclude all muslims from the US is heartening, but the fact he was cheered by a crowd while making his outlandish declaration of bigotry is also a reminder of the racist history our country struggles against with varying degrees of success.  The fact Trump felt he could make his proposal with impunity is merely the logical extension of the dogwhistle politics Republicans have engaged in since Nixon's "southern strategy" pried racist southern Democrats away from their traditional allegiances and made them permanent Republicans.  Reagan continued and George H.W. Bush embellished the appeals to racism with Reagan's "welfare queens" and Bush's Willie Horton ads.  Trump merely says out loud what his competitors whisper, namely it is all right to discriminate against those whose customs and color don't match your own.  How far he gets with this strategy will be a measure of our maturity as a nation.  Unfortunately, H.L. Mencken's observation that you can't go wrong underestimating the intelligence of the American public will probably be borne out in the selection of the ultimate Republican nominee.

through the looking glass

Were Lewis G Carroll alive today, he would probably conclude the entire concept behind Alice in Wonderland was outmoded.   Donald Trump is the true Alice and he is taking us all on an excursion to a new Wonderland where weakness is strength, rational thought is fantasy and 300,000,000 million people need to cower before a couple of radicalized  Muslims.  The idea we should deny entry to the US based on the religion of the applicant is beyond parody.  As many have pointed out, Trump is now probably the biggest recruiter in the country for ISIS.   I remember in the aftermath of 9/11 how Sikh truckers delivering Canadian produce to the US were vilified and attacked because they wore turbans.  Fear of the "other" is a powerful force.  Beware anyone who advocates discrimination based on fear.   

Economics and Terrorism

Once again, the news which really affects most Americans; trade, jobs, climate change and local news is being crowded out by the ephemeral, non-stop 24 hour obsession with terrorism and what the President is doing or not doing to keep us safe.  Not the 80-100 people who die from gun violence every day.  There is nothing we can do for them, since it would interfere with our 2nd amendment rights.  No, we should turn our country into an authoritarian nightmare to stop terrorists who may kill us where we work, play or live.  Republicans are falling all over themselves to criticize the President for not proposing some fascist daydream to deter someone like the San Bernadino shooters, but if he had suggested we take away Joe six pack's assault rifle as part of a sensible plan to reduce the supply of death sticks, there would be howls of protest.  Meanwhile, the Fed is raising interest rates although the economy remains sluggish and much of the rest of the world is doing even worse.  This action will probably have far more impact on the country than radicalized Muslims, but you would never know it from the media coverage.   In more mundane news, the garden continues to produce with kale, nappa cabbage and carrots harvested over the weekend and golf continues to be played, albeit not very well.  The Divine Mrs. M's Champlain Valley Voices concert was a great success and we are looking forward to more holiday music from her other singing ensemble in the near future.

Reality and proportionality

In a rational, logical world, the horrors of the San Bernadino shooting would never occur.  Instead of 24/7 coverage of everything related to the tragedy and its aftermath, most news coverage in the US would be focused on the Paris climate summit.  The 14 people who lost their lives are emblematic of the dysfunctional world brought to us by a deranged political party.  The republicans in the Senate voted down a bill which would have made it harder for anyone on the terrorist watch list to obtain weapons.  The same stupidity was on display when the majority leader in the House of Representatives stated his party's opposition to any pledge the President makes at the Paris conference on behalf of the US.  The problem of gun violence is pernicious and deadly to thousands of citizens each year.  The problem of climate change can potentially end human civilization as we know it.  Virtually every country at least acknowledges both challenges.  Only the US and to a lesser extent, Australia have no coherent policy to at least work towards solutions.  Even Australia has tackled the gun problem.  That leaves one political party in one country with the awesome responsibility of addressing the most pressing issue in human history and so far the Republicans are failing in a most spectacular fashion.  I hope the 2016 elections are a referendum on guns and climate.   A pretty large majority of Americans acknowledge climate change and feel we must have sensible gun control measures.  Let's hope they all make it to voting booths around the country next November.

Another Day, another mass shooting

Even as the national media obsesses about the dead and wounded in San Bernadino, 4 more people were shot in Georgia overnight.  We are on track to record 1 or more of these massacres every day this year.   The hand wringing continues, even as it is now suggested that football fans should be allowed to carry concealed weapons to games!  There are solutions to this problem, but seemingly no one with any authority feels empowered to offer them.  If we treat guns with at least as much care as we do automobiles it would go a long way toward slowing the slaughter in the streets.  Register every firearm and license all gun owners.  Neither of these actions will impinge our so called second amendment rights, but will at least give criminals and the mentally ill some pause.  Background checks and perhaps advanced psychological testing for those seeking the right to wield firearms would be another check.  Something needs to be done before death by gunshot overtakes disease and vehicular accidents as the number one cause of death in America.

Global warming chickens coming home to roost

As made clear by a NYT article on the plight of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean due to rising sea levels, climate change will be costly to the US beyond the amelioration of its effects on the homeland.  Due to treaty obligations to the Marshallese, we will probably have to resettle the entire population in the US if the seas continue to rise.   This may be the tip of the proverbial iceberg of refugees demanding haven.  Meanwhile, the GOP is renouncing in advance any obligations the country may incur at the Paris Climate Summit.   It is increasingly ironic that aside from an occasional weather event like Superstorm Sandy or the ongoing drought in  California, most of the US has not experienced wholesale destruction due to climate change.  For the rest of the world, especially many countries in the Third World, the rising seas, catastrophic drought and super typhoons which regularly ravage their citizens, the changing climate is an ever present reminder their troubles are largely caused by the superpowers of polluters, the US, China, Europe and developing countries like India and Brazil.   Of the aforementioned, most are trying to do something about the problem.   In America, however, denial of climate change is more common than plans to do anything about it.   If Paris is the last, best hope for the human race, I despair of our congressional leadership doing anything substantive.

Climate Luddites

We will soon be treated to the spectacle of the US House of Representatives voting to not support anything President Obama commits the country to do to mitigate climate change at the Paris conference.  While this will not surprise most people it is deeply embarrassing for anyone who values our standing in the world.  After 8 years of the Shrub's jingoistic foreign policy which unilaterally declared we will do whatever we feel is best for us and to hell with everyone else, Obama's initial approach raised our reputation.  Between drone strikes and the Arab spring, we have lost some of that luster, but by thumbing our noses at the rest of the world on the climate change issue, we risk becoming a pariah, instead of a leader.   The ignorance on display in Congress on a daily basis is breathtaking as well as mendacious.  I have a feeling even a Republican president would have trouble wrangling this pack of know-nothing jackasses.   The fate of the human race may very well hang in the balance and we have to listen to the likes of Ted Cruz tell us the accumulating evidence of disaster ahead of us is a conspiracy of scientists!   To do what?  The mind reels at the stupidity of such statements.