Continuing to battle

The bugs, the critters and the elements were front and center as we enter the homestretch of the gardening season.   After delivering the past week's consignment to the Plattsburgh Farmers' Market on Saturday, the Divine Mrs. M and I took the rest of the day off and went to Fort Ticonderoga to check out part of our American history.   It was and interesting self guided tour.  I find it amazing that each historical site seems to believe that somehow it represents some major turning point in history.  Ticonderoga bills itself as "the key to the continent".   Quite a claim for what is still a backwoods outpost which certainly rates a visit by history buffs, but a little outsize in relative importance.  After recharging the proverbial batteries, I resumed the battle against the various forms of entropy plaguing the garden.  After making the latest lettuce and brassica transplants, I erected posts and planted "scare owls" atop them.  We'll see how effective they will be.  The weeds were also assaulted with varying degrees of success.  We are getting a rare break from the excessive rain which has resulted in so many failures this gardening season.  The tomatoes and peppers will benefit, as will new plantings of basil and cilantro.  It is almost time to turn off the planters....

Hanging by a thread

It looks like at least a pale shadow of robust democracy will continue to manifest in the US Congress.  Last night, John McCain, against all odds, lived up to his fawning admirers expectations and joined two republican women senators to sink what looks like the GOP's last attempt to repeal Obamacare.   McCain flew cross country, evidently against his doctor's recommendations, to weigh in on the Senate's version of "repeal and replace".  He first voted to proceed with debate on a bill he inveighed against as undemocratic and unworthy of the Senate, but in the end voted to kill this zombie, perhaps for the last time.  As McCain battles an aggressive form of brain cancer he probably has a better insight into American health care than any of his colleagues.  Politically, he has nothing to lose as this is certainly his final term in the Senate.  Even with all that prologue he was still not a lock to join Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins who merely did what was best for the majority of their constituents.  Yet he will be hailed for his "maverick" streak and the women will be reviled by the right wing media.  Such is the power of a carefully cultivated image.  Meanwhile, democracy continues to be assaulted by Cheeto Jesus and his enablers in congress.

Massaging the crazy

Courtesy of Bryan Mann, a reporter at our local NPR station, a report on what the seemingly average Trump voter believes;  any criticism of cheeto Jesus is fake news and Faux News with the exception of Sean Hannity is too liberal.  Mann interviewed a husband and wife from Watkins Glen who were vacationing in Elizabethtown, NY (that is reason enough to question their sanity).  Both told Mann the harping of the mainstream media on the Russia probe is a distraction which is preventing the president from implementing all the programs which will benefit ordinary Americans.  I guess they were referring to taking health care away from millions of their fellow citizens in order to give tax cuts to the ultra wealthy.  Or perhaps the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants which will blow a hole in the economy.  They glowingly refer to Rush Limbaugh as a conduit for the real truth regarding the present administration and criticize the likes of the NYT and NPR as fake news outlets.  Somewhere, George Orwell is weeping.

Act 2

In an act of hypocrisy both stunning and not unexpected, St. John McCain dragged his sorry ass out of a federally subsidized bed after being diagnosed with brain cancer to vote to deny medical treatment millions of his fellow Americans.  He then took the floor of the Senate to scold fellow republicans for not being more bipartisan.  A truly bipartisan maneuver on his part would have been to join democrats and vote against debate on a bill with less than 20% public support.  But that is not the way McCain and the modern GOP rolls these days.  When democrats passed the ACA, they begged republicans for input by holding hearings and voting on amendments for over a year.  In total, over 180 republican sponsored amendments to Obamacare were passed.  Many of them, no doubt, hindered workings of the law.   After all that input, not a single republican voted for passage of the bill.  Now, working behind closed doors with no participation allowed for democrats, the GOP is poised to vote for a cruel parody of a health care bill  which will leave millions of citizens with no access to affordable health care.  All this so cheeto Jesus can sign something which cancels his predecessors signature legislative accomplishment.   One of the two major  political parties in the US has lost its collective mind.  Or worse, has become the antithesis of the party of Lincoln.  To paraphrase the 16th president; "With justice for the few, charity for none...., republicans have turned their backs on most of the population with unabashed cruelty.

the health care follies continue

As the Senate tries to decide whether to vote on an Obamacare repeal bill, the NYT profiled a new scam being perpetrated on health care consumers who have occasion to use the emergency room at a hospital.  Recently, many hospitals have signed up with a company called EM Care to staff their emergency rooms.  What neither EM Care or the hospitals have told consumers is they have not negotiated with the same insurers as the hospital uses, so they are not "in system" providers.  What this means is instead of billing the insurance companies the hospital and the unsuspecting patient deals with, the EM Care staffers bill the patient directly at whatever rate they want.  As Kevin Drum points out, this scam only works if everyone except the patient is in on it.  As a patient for an emergency appendectomy in 2001, I can tell you I wasn't thinking about who was part of my insurance network.  If EM Care was in charge of my case, I might have been on the hook for thousands of dollars of uninsured charges.  Would I have left the hospital and sought alternative care?  Not likely.    The hospitals who knowingly sign up EM Care are just as culpable as the company they are entrusting innocent lives to.

Timely harvest

Thanks to a run of beautiful weather this past weekend and a big assist from various and sundry offspring, friends and neighbors the garlic harvest was a big success on Sunday.  While it may have been a week earlier than ideal for maturity, the weather forecast for this week called for wet weather and the help may not have been available.   The bulb size is on average as good as I have ever seen from the main variety I plant.  I trialed several other varieties of hardnecks also, but they did not do nearly as well as the main crop, Music .  I did a lot of planting Saturday in a bid for late season harvest.  Broccoli, cauliflower, several varieties of kale and collards, beans, fennel, herbs and lettuces are presently being rained on.  Hopefully they will get enough water to become established and not enough to drown.  The roller coaster ride of weather on the NCR continues as we head into late July.

The new Bizzaro World of US politics

I grew up with Superman comics and looked forward to each new issue.  I do have to confess to not particularly enjoying the ones that dealt with "Bizarro World".   This was a construct of the writers designed to be the opposite of earth.  Even the world itself was known as Htrae or earth spelled backwards.  All the characters in Superman had their Bizzaro world dopplegangers who acted in exactly opposite ways from the normal Jimmy Olsens, Perry Whites, etc.  This is how it seems our political institutions and political actors have become in the past 6 months.   Instead of a young, intelligent black man as president, we have a demented old white man.  Instead of Congress passing laws to increase the number of people covered by health insurance, we have a collection of ideologues working to deny as many people insurance as possible.  Black is white, up is down, etc.  The crowning moment of Zen came as people on both sides of the aisle sympathized with John McCain in the wake of his cancer diagnosis.  Despite calls for an unlikely recovery by many, the far or "alt" right was calling for a speedy demise and McCain's entry into hell.  We are further down the rabbit hole to Wonderland than even I thought.

Privatizing America

From the continental congress of 1776 to the battles of WWII, Americans served their country, fought its battles, educated the next generation and were generally proud to do so.   That tradition started to fray with the Vietnam war and the rise of military contractors who were paid by the government, but did not serve in the same sense as enlisted or conscripted soldiers.  On a parallel track in civilian life, an alternative to the public school system started to grow.  The rise of charter schools, religious schools and home schooling led to calls for revenue to be diverted from public education.   In both the military and education spheres, private profit has played a large part in the call for more privatization.  The Trump administration is providing proponents private enrichment at public expense with even more opportunity.  With Betsy DeVos as secretary of education and her brother Eric Prince getting into Trump's inner circle we can expect many more military and education millionaires to be minted between now and 2020.  What this does to the social fabric will also become apparent.  Many people decried the discontinuance of the selective service draft because it divorced the population from the military.  The same could be said for the public school system if charter advocates get their way.  Both campaigns aim to alienate ordinary citizens from their government.  What happens when an entire generation matures with little or no connection to the principles of service to democracy?   We may be about to find out.

Liberal fascists

It seems everyone wants to take a shot at liberals these days.  Not only the Faux News viewers with their reflexive "libtard" comments.  Now, supposedly liberal commenters and intellectuals are jumping on the bandwagon to criticize middle class liberals because we are hurting the feelings of the average Trump voter by pointing out the racism, misogyny and general stupidity which permeates the whole phenomena of Trumpism.    Yes, we all know that not every single republican or independent who pulled the lever for the Donald last November is a "deplorable", but the evidence against Trump and the ideology he was promoting was there for all to see.  Not every German was a Nazi in 1940, but those who did not oppose the architect of the holocaust are rightly condemned by history.  Trump's enablers are helping tear the fabric of our democracy to shreds and should be held accountable.

Killing the Zombies, vampires, etc.

The shambling mess which was Mitch McConnell's BCRA seems to have died because it is not conservative enough for the Senate pain caucus.  Utah's Mike Lee and Kansas' Jerry Moran teamed up to kill the bill.  Feckless moderates will now jump on the bandwagon to crow about their "opposition" to the bill's manifest cruelty.  What to do now?   Speculation is the Majority leader will push a straight repeal of the ACA without provision for replacement.  This would lead to a catastrophic breakdown in the insurance market and even worse electoral consequences for the GOP, so it is hard to see McConnell doing that.  More likely republicans will leave the ACA in place, but sabotage it at every turn and blame democrats.  That may actually be their best play from an electoral standpoint.  After all that has worked for 7 years already.

Weekend musings

About half the garden space remains too wet to plant, so seedlings are aging out in the cold frames waiting for drier conditions.  Ironically, some areas are actually getting too dry and would benefit from showers which would push back planting in other spots.  The forecast is for thundershowers off and on this week, so it will probably be the worst of both worlds, not enough to do good, but just wet enough to continue the dismal progress of this gardening season.   Meanwhile, John McCain's surgical procedure has put the GOP's health care Russian roulette on hold for the moment.  I wonder if McCain might have a "road to Damascus" moment if he wonders what an American without health care insurance might do if faced with a blood clot like the one surgeons dealt with in his case.   I doubt it, but a former POW and self professed "maverick" in his own party is probably serving his last term in the Senate and can do or say whatever he wants with no thought for political retribution of the sort Dean Heller of Nevada could potentially face if he casts a no vote on the gutting of Obamacare.  However, I don't think I would bet the farm on McCain's altruism.

Health Care Monte

Like a 3 card Monte scammer on the street, Mitch McConnell and his merry men have unveiled yet another version of GOP health care to replace the reviled Obamacare.  As with other iterations of republican bills, it accomplishes two things; a big tax cut for the rich and a big screwing for the poor and middle classes.   As has been evident since Harry Truman tried and failed to get universal health care passed in the late 1940s, republicans have no interest in government sponsored or supported health care for the masses.  They fought Medicare to the bitter end and still have fantasies of throwing granny off the cliff.  They deployed every stakeholder in the health care system to destroy Hillary Clinton's first attempt at reforms in the early 1990s and of course fought an epic rearguard action against Obama's reforms.  Now they are on the verge of repealing many, if not most of the ACA's protections of the common citizen.  In its place they propose to allow insurance companies to offer worthless insurance with high co-pays and deductibles and health savings accounts which will act as tax shelters for the rich.  As well, they do away with the individual mandate and abandon all pretense of forcing insurers to charge the same for pre-existing conditions as for healthy people.  Keep your eyes on the cards, but remember the dealer is and always has been a crook.

It's raining shoes

As John McCain pointed out earlier this year, the tRump Russiagate scandal is dropping shoes like a centipede.  Another couple dropped last night with stories in the Wall St. Journal and McClatchy News which chronicle multiple contacts between Russian agents and Trump associates in the year before the Donald announced his intention to run for the presidency.  It was also revealed the FBI is concentrating on a firm which ran the Trump campaign's digital efforts and was directed by son-in-law Jared Kushner.   Right now, the major beneficiaries of all these incipient scandals are the lawyers who handle this type of litigation.  As it becomes more likely special counsel Robert Mueller's investigations will lead to indictments, it will become harder to recruit people to work in this administration.  The negative feedback will make tRump's efforts to govern even more laughable.  At some point republicans in congress will have to decide if they want to go down with the ship or start swimming now.

The exhaustion of evil

I have made this point before, but it is worth repeating; continuous manifestation of evil intent are exhausting.   The litany of scandals surrounding the tRump administration after a mere 6 months is mind boggling.   From the refusal to divest his company holdings to the "Muslim ban", to  initial whispers of the Russiagate  affair to the bumbling efforts to lay the groundwork for further voter suppression this government has overwhelmed most people's ability to feel outrage at the degradation of our democracy.   Faux News has practically imploded from its continued efforts to defend things it would have surely condemned if they were proposed by the Kenyan usurper.   One Fox analyst finally had enough last night and compared Tucker Carlson to a Nazi sympathizer for his fulsome defense of Vladimir Putin.   As the republican congress struggles to eliminate insurance coverage for millions of Americans in the name of a gigantic tax cut for the .01%, many people, myself included wonder what needs to happen to awaken the 36% of my countrymen who feel Cheeto Jesus is the second coming of George Washington.  Surely the spectacle of tRump junior revealing he was thrilled to meet with Russians for the purpose of colluding with them to get the "dirt" on Hillary Clinton is a bridge too far for many of them.   However, I have a feeling that many of them have already invested in that particular bridge.

Triage Time

Parts of the garden are approaching the point of no return as the rains keep coming.  I worked some soil which was too wet in order to transplant lettuce which will probably keep the rabbit population exploding.  I then weeded a bed of carrots to make the tender tops more available to said rabbits.  It looks like I will spend more time weeding between rain showers as I have run out of dry space to plant.  After a poor start with a few weeks of optimism mixed in, the garden is settling into a gradual decline as the continued rains and rabbit damage sap any enthusiasm for palliative measures.  As my brother would say, "I'm disgusted" and unless late July and August reverse the present weather pattern, I'm likely to stay that way.

Apt Analogies

Unless you get all of your information on the tRump administration from Faux News or Breitbart, the news regarding said government has gotten even more disheartening with the revelation that despite protestations to the contrary, Don Jr. met with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton right after the GOP convention.    After steadfastly denying any Russian connections and the whispers of collusion that goes with them, junior had to admit the meeting when the NYT asked for confirmation before publishing the story.   He was quick to say the meeting was held to discuss a program which allowed Americans to adopt Russian orphans which Putin had shut down in response to American sanctions against Russia for its involvement in Ukraine.  The whole thing doesn't pass the smell test and makes comparisons of the extended Trump family to Jimmy Breslin's hapless crime family in "The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight" more apt than to Mario Puzo's The Godfather.  The scandals surrounding the Russian government's meddling in the 2016 elections will continue to fester unless or until the special counsel's investigation result in indictments or exonerations.

Declaration of Duhhhhhhhhhh

I didn't comment on this when it happened because it seemed so ludicrous it had to have been made up.  But it is a real thing.   The whole of wingnuttistan was outraged that NPR criticized our *president on the 4th.  As individual staffers at NPR took turns tweeting the text of the Declaration of Independence, at least someone on the right who was listening became convinced said text was some sort of anti Trump rant cooked up by libtards to impugn the Donald.  Despite several days and monosyllabic explanations that this is a 25 year old tradition on NPR there remains a core of tRump supporters who are convinced this is the latest indignity being foisted on real Americans by the vast left wing conspiracy to deny them legitimacy.  Who knows what the commies on NPR have planned for their "War on Christmas".

Only he can save us

Cheeto Jesus is out there in the world with a mission.  Tweeting mightily against the menace of North Korea,  calling out the NATO slackers and getting ready to polish Putin's footwear, it's shaping up to be a busy week for the Donald.  If it wasn't so scary, it would be hilarious.  Meanwhile, the republicans in the Senate are desperately seeking the 50 votes which will ensure misery for millions of their fellow Americans as  they attempt to blow up Obamacare.   It has been said you get the government you deserve and I'm sure that is true for approximately 44% of my fellow 'Murcans, but I know I didn't sign up for this travesty.

Gardening update

Along with the obligatory barbeque and driveway fireworks, I was able to survey the damage from recent heavy rains on the garden.  It's not pretty.  The heavier soils remain waterlogged and unworkable which will start backing up plantings.   Most of the brassicas planted before the rain in the  Ultra secret garden are suffocating in the mud and more rain is predicted Friday and Saturday.  I still have some well drained soils to plant in the meantime, but it looks like it will be August before some soils will be workable again, even if it doesn't rain at all for two weeks.  As the Divine Mrs. M said, it's a good thing I still have a day job!

Independence from Reality

Tomorrow, most Americans will celebrate "Independence Day" with the usual cookouts and fireworks viewing, then go back to work on Wednesday.  I freely admit to being one of those celebrants.  It is worth looking back and perhaps revising our opinions of the founding fathers and what they wrought back in 1776.  As with most movements, American Independence was not designed with the majority of citizens in mind.  The founders were mostly wealthy white men who stood to gain economically from the separation from England.  A subset of those, plantation owners in the south, wanted their right to own slaves affirmed by a legislature they could control.  Women were certainly not consulted as to their wishes.  It is also instructive to compare our situation in 2017 to another former British colony which chose not to rebel against the mother country.  Canada just celebrated its 150th year of freedom from the English yoke.  Let's recap their history.  No costly war of independence, no horrendous civil war over the institution of slavery, an unfortunate parity with the US in their treatment of native peoples, a much better health care system and by most measures a much happier population.  Think about that for a minute before enjoying that hamburger or hot dog tomorrow.  National mythologies are potent things, but a clear eyed view of history will serve us better in the long run.