Late season gardening

       Gardening in April and May is easy.   The season stretches out before you and the possibilities are endless.   Weeds are a phantom and missing a planting is no problem.  The increase in daylight hours allows you to catch up.   Not so in August.   Miss a planting date by a day may increase the harvest time by a week.   The newly planted spinach is likely to be overwhelmed by a blitz of galinsoga seedlings.  An unexpected stretch of cool weather and loss of daylight hours can mess up the most careful plans.

       Welcome to fall gardening!   I have continued to transplant lettuce seedlings and quick growing brassicas, but the first of Sept. is coming and anything planted after that date is a crapshoot in the North Country.   The best case scenario is a light frost in mid October followed by a few weeks of Indian Summer.  The worst...a hard frost followed by snow.  Both have happened in recent years.  

     I spent most of Sunday keeping the fall weeds at bay and fertilizing newly planted beds.  I have high hopes for late planted beans and the second planting of summer squash is producing well.  The winter squash is disease free and looks to produce a bumper crop.  That partially balances some of the drought caused disappointments earlier in the season.   This may be my last hurrah at large scale gardening, so I intend to make the most of it.

As America burns and drowns, the grift goes on

       I did not listen to the finale of tRumpalooza last night.   I'm pretty sure the president* told his marks the world has gone to hell in a handbasket and he alone can clean up the mess he made.   180,000 Covid 19 victims and counting, protestors being gunned down in the streets by 17 year old fanboys and most importantly, wildfires in the west and hurricanes in the east caused by or at least amplified by the climate change Cheeto Jesus denounces as a hoax.  The implications of the last sentence should put a chill into any sentient being.

      However, among the media enabling this fiasco of an administration, everything is fine, unless Joe Biden is elected in November.   Then the hellscape I just described will be blamed on democratic policies.   Already, assholes such as Tucker Carlson are lauding the 17 year old shooter in Kenosha as a hero who was there to defend property using deadly force.  How many copycats will respond to this glorification of murder?

     I could go on, but virtually anyone reading this probably agrees with the gist.   It's time to defenestrate tRump and start moving this country in the direction of human values and sanity.   

There's something happening here

       As the RNC winds up tonight with yet another divisive speech from Cheetolini to his base, those of us on the outside looking in at the GOP's nominating convention have to wonder how did the nearly 40% of Americans who support this cult of personality get so far from the rest of us ideologically?   There are dozens of books on the subject, but I think Rick Perlstein's new book "Reaganland" comes closer than most.

      Perlstein, who has chronicled the rise of the conservative movement since Nixon says the republican party of the 60s and 70s realized that its mantra of small government and tax cuts for the rich was not echoing with enough people to deliver electoral results.   However, social issues that emerged in the 60s, like civil rights, gun control and gay rights, seemed to separate rural areas where progressive issues were unpopular from the big cities, which were seen as incubators of these policies.   Reagan, who worked for the AMA against medicare  when it was being debated in congress was the perfect candidate to exploit the growing divide on social issues.

      While the hagiography of St. Ronnie is such that most of us don't realize he was a liar almost on a par with tRump, the media allowed him to get away with much of it.   He was truly a great communicator who apparently could charm the birds out of the trees.  His message to disaffected working class democrats was the GOP was here for you and will allow you to express your revulsion of the hippie ethos supposedly being jammed down your throats.

     Republicans have been using that message to appeal to working class whites and rural voters ever since with varying degrees of success.   The message seems particularly clueless today when Cheeto Jesus tries to paint Joe Biden as some wide eyed radical, but as the polls have shown, these attacks resonate with the base.   That 40% of the electorate will never be OK with the push for rights for women, blacks, LGBTQ people or anyone else who is not a white man.   The rest of us have just got to put on our big boy/girl pants and vote.  

The tRump Voter

        The NYT probably thought it was doing a public service by interviewing tRump voters across the country and showing us the human beings behind the caricatures.   Look here, the reporter says, a 59 year old woman with a law degree who admires the president.   Here's another woman who has a black son-in-law and still intends to vote for a racist and misogynist.  It's almost like they have a list of stereotypes they must explode to somehow validate the president*.

        I get it.  In a country of 330,000,000 people, there are bound to be millions of voters who would vote for Attila the Hun or even Jeffrey Dahmer if he was the republican candidate.   If many of these tRump voters were magically transported to 1776 they would have declared the Founders of the republic were dangerous revolutionaries who should be executed.  Move forward 80 years and they would have lauded the "beneficial" aspects of slavery.   There are always people who move at slower pace than the arc of history.  I don't believe their views should be validated by media attention.   

Fear itself

      It is readily apparent to the fact based reality community that fear is the only thing our president* hopes for.   Turning FDR's phrasing on its head, Cheeto Jesus and his henchmen hope fear of crime and economic decline which he attributes to China and illegal immigrants will drive "low information" voters to the polls.   Based on facebook conversations with former classmates, there seem to be plenty of the later willing to look past tRump's many peccadillos and vote for him as their savior.

      Fortunately, the rising level of education in this country has produced a more educated electorate than 2016.   That and the coming of age of the latter part of the millenial generation and the first voters of Gen Z to be voter eligible provide a counterweight to the working class voters who put tRump over the top in 2016.    Many pundits are predicting and looking for a close election.  However, as the economic carnage and Covid 19 deaths continue to pile up, I think the chances of tRump stealing the election will grow more untenable.   Fear is a powerful weapon, but information is mightier.

The Coming Darkness

      For those who choose to watch the GOP convention this week, be prepared for American Carnage 2.  I have a feeling tRump is going to run as if he was a bystander for the last 3 1/2 years.   While tRump and republicans have been restoring American greatness, the democrats have been causing untold suffering.  Somehow, Covid 19, 176,000 deaths and the economic ruin that has followed are all democrat plots to thwart our glorious leader.   Blah, blah and blah.  

      Of course, the Q Anon set and even some rank and file republicans will buy what tRump is selling.   With the amplification provided by Rushbo, Breitbart, Faux News and OAN, the faithful will supposedly become terrified of the prospect of Joe Biden, the drooling socialist tool or Kamala, the not black enough, but too "other" to be considered a real Murcan.   Rioting in the streets and the eviceration of "our beautiful suburbia" will be his appeal to the female demographic.  

      I doubt much of this scaremongering is going to work on most of its target audience.   It took Russian interference in the election with a timely boost from James Comey to put Cheeto Jesus over the top last time.  This time it will take wholesale voter suppression and intimidation to produce an outcome favorable to republicans.  

Biden or Bannon

       Yesterday offered Americans a pretty stark reminder of what our political parties have become.  On the one hand, Steve Bannon was hauled off a Chinese billionaire's yacht and charged with bilking hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens by promising to help build tRump's wall across the southern border.   Pledging to put all the funds he collected toward the wall, he   instead is alleged to have  diverted close to a million dollars for his own use, laundering the money through shell companies.   Joe Biden, on the other hand, asked his fellow Americans to be allowed to lead them out of the wilderness of four years of the most corrupt administration in modern history with the kind of earnest, heart tugging speech many of us hoped he was capable of giving.  

     A friend of mine from high school must have seen one of my shared posts on facebook the other day and sent me a message saying she was voting for tRump in November.   I would like to say she is an aberration, an otherwise very nice person who fell for a line of BS.  Unfortunately, there are many more like her out there.   They are Faux News listeners who have been poisoned by right wing talking points.  After I told her it was her prerogative to vote for whomever she pleased, I pointed out tRump is a racist, sexist narcissist who is basically running a crime syndicate out of the White House.   She replied Obama did the same thing.   This is the game the GOP will play all of the election season.  Heaven help us all.

Close to home

       The headline in today's local paper brought home the coronavirus crisis in a way the national news has not.   After announcing the first Covid 19 related death in Essex County yesterday, the eponymous nursing home was reported to have 24 positive cases of the virus.   The story went on to report no staff members had tested positive and they were actively tracing to try and locate the person or persons who infected the residents.

     The Essex Center is owned and operated by a downstate company and I'm sure there have been in person interactions between headquarters and the 100 bed nursing home.   It will be interesting to see how the contact tracing establishes the locus of infection.

     Until now, the biggest outbreak of Covid 19 in the North Country was 19 people testing positive after several hundred young people gathered for an alcohol fueled party in Clinton County.  The cases in Essex are in a much more vulnerable population of mostly elderly patients.   I certainly won't be surprised to see additional fatalities in the days ahead.   To paraphrase the tagline from the movie, Jaws, "Just when you thought it was safe to go out in public again".

      

Wanting the feelgood

       Despite my assertion the Democratic Convention is a snoozefest and 4 day infomercial for the party, I did stay up late enough to see the roll call and the official tally which nominated Joe Biden.   All the states and territories of the American Empire participated and it seemed a good time was had by all.  Of course, only enthusiastic Biden supporters were picked to deliver each new tally and the diversity of the chosen was impressive.   I'm sure every constituency in the party was represented proportionately, which means old white dudes like yours truly and the party's nominee were vastly outnumbered.

      Another thing about this year's virtual convention;  you get to hear a lot more ordinary people, however filtered they may be.  This is a sharp contrast from other years when more than 50% of the air time was seemingly shot after shot of a packed convention center and the stage set of whatever network you were watching.  The production is far tighter and more consumable.

    Taken altogether, this convention has so far outshined its previous iterations.   It will be interesting to see if future political conventions return to the older jam packed convention centers or continue with a more personal, virtual gathering.

Wake me up when it's over

      The virtual Democratic National Convention started last night and I actually watched a few minutes of the feel good proceedings.   The message, at least in the few minutes I saw seemed to be we may be facing a pandemic, global climate change and a cratering economy, but good folks around the country are working to make all these problems go away.  If only....

      Another thing the Biden team wants us to know is there are good republicans out there who have not drunk the tRump  Kool Aid and at least in the present moment want democrats to govern the country.  So, John Kasich, the balanced budget, abortion restricting former governor of Ohio gets a prime time slot to praise Joe Biden, while Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the dems rock star gets one minute to address us and Latinos like Julian Castro get no time.   In Castro's case, I can almost see why he is shunned after implying Joey the Shark was more than a step slow in one of the candidates' debates.  However, it doesn't explain why so many other democratic voices on the left of the party have either been muzzled or ignored.  

    If we were not facing an existential crisis in the era of tRump, I would be far more critical of my party and its presidential nominee.   Biden is a stopgap measure to hopefully transition us to a better place, but his wing of the party helped make The Donald and his version of republicanism possible.   As I said, wake me up when the convention is over.

Gardening in the year of the pandemic

        It was another hot, dry weekend in the garden.  August is a hinge month for gardeners in the North Country.   We have to plant, harvest and weed at the same time.   Satisfaction of harvesting the first tomatoes and peppers is balanced this year with the failure of the potato crop and the dry weather which affected germination of many crops.   A heavy 3 inch rain several weeks ago revived my flagging interest in the garden.  Now, amidst a new dry spell I am trying to keep later plantings of lettuce and broccoli moist enough to grow until Mother Nature provides another shot of relief.   This may be my last large scale garden, so I'll continue plugging away and looking for each small victory to balance the defeats as the season continues.

82 and counting

       The title of this post refers to how many days are left to Nov. 3.   Of course most hard core political junkies know that, but for some reason they think the vast majority of their fellow citizens are not cognizant of this fact, along with many others which they are intimately familiar.  My daughters joke that MSNBC is the soundtrack of the Divine Mrs. M's life.  Even if we are not listening directly, it is usually on one TV or another, quietly stoking outrage at the latest perfidies of the tRump administration.  

       Besides liberal media outlets, there is also Facebook, where both sides of the political equation go to stoke their own beliefs and marvel at the stupidity of those who don't share them.   While most of my facebook news feed feels like choir practice, there are enough tRump supporters among my friends that I can get a feeling for what a diminishing minority feels about our president* and his henchmen.

     So, yes, I think even the most apathetic of my fellow citizens have some idea of the stakes in the coming election.   Certainly the pandemic and its horrific toll on the elderly and physically vulnerable among us has penetrated most conscious people.   The latest scandal involving the Post Office will also resonate with ordinary people.  The idea of first class mail taking several weeks to deliver and possibly affecting the elecion  is an outrage most of us have a visceral reaction to.   Despite all the obstacles this administration is putting in the way of voting, I firmly believe in the legions of Americans who would crawl through broken glass to register their displeasure with The Donald.   Election Day cannot come soon enough.

Apocalypse When

      Reading the thread following a post about tRump's latest attack on Social Security raised the non existent hair on the top of my head.   As you may recall, one of the president's executive memoranda put out last weekend called for a moratorium on collecting the payroll taxes which fund Social Security and Medicare.  In true tRumpian fashion, the order was a mess.   Instead of forgiving the taxes, it proposed to collect them after the first of the year.  In other words it was a low interest loan which would have to be paid back by workers and employers.  My own feeling is most employers will put the taxes in escrow accounts because otherwise they would have to start collecting double taxes in 2021 and explaining it to their workers.

     Most people read this move as either more tRump stupidity or a continuation of GOP attacks on the most popular social program in US history.  Kevin Drum even said it was the germ of a good idea.  He advocates funding SS and medicare out of general revenues instead of a payroll tax.  I think that is a horrible idea which would enable further attacks on the system, but it is part of the debate.

     I really think republicans and their donors will not be happy until all seniors are eating cat food and praying for an early and painless death.   However, we do vote.   Biden and Harris have a ready made issue to pound in the next 80 days.

Ready to run

       As expected, Joe Biden has chosen a black woman for the vice presidential slot on his ticket.   Kamala Harris is probably the safest pick among the finalists for the spot.   As she proved during her run for the democratic presidential nomination, she is a formidable fundraiser.   Also, the VP candidate usually functions as the attack dog during the campaign, going after the other party's nominees.  Harris will be especially good at getting under the president's* skin and will likely make mincemeat of Pence during the VP debate.

      In a perfect world, Biden would have chosen Elizabeth Warren.   Not only is she ready to be president on a moment's notice, but Warren would have energized the Bernie Sanders' wing of the party.  Harris won't perform that function.  However, she will excite the millions of black women who will drag their relations to the polls in November.   She will also persuade the tech community to open their wallets for democrats.   She knows the players in Silicon Valley and will reassure them Biden won't go too far to the left.   As one pundit observed, the VP has little input as far as policy is concerned, so while Warren's vision of the breakup of big tech might be off the table, Medicare for all and some of Bernie's other pet projects may still be viable.

    In the end, as long as Biden didn't pick someone who would alienate a significant part of the party's base, it doesn't really matter.  The fact he chose a black/asian woman has a pretty good upside for him and for the nation.

The Siren call of bigotry

       It is easy to live in a bubble in this country in this time.   The hard part is leaving your ideological cocoon and engaging with those who don't share your beliefs.   

       When I lived on Long Island nearly 20 years ago, I had an acquaintance.  We had daughters who were in the same grade and who became friends.  They played together and I met Tony many times when either dropping the daughter off or picking her up.  He and his wife are very good people and their evangelical fervor did not seem too radical at the time.  

      Fast forward to 2020.  Tony is still a facebook friend, but now he copies conspiracy sites vilifying democrats and is a member of LIFT (Long Islanders for Trump).   I'm sure Tony and his wife would never choose tRump as a friend.  He is pretty much the opposite of everything they believe in and stand for.  If  The Donald tried to join their church as a private citizen, I'm sure they would vote against it.   But, having lived in the Faux News bubble these many years, they only receive sanitized information about tRump and conspiracy theories about democrats.

      I have disagreed with several of his posts and was immediately flamed by many of his friends.  I am a moron with no morals, apparently.  Tony has not participated in this abuse, to his credit.  But, he lives in this bubble of hate for all things to do with the democratic party.   By the way, he is a retired union man whose standard of living can be traced back to democratic party policies.   Many, if not most of his friends are of a similar background.  Unless and until we pop these bubbles and get to know one another as people, the demonization of the other will continue.

Gardening in the Dog days of Summer

       I knew it was going to be that kind of weekend when I started sweating 10 minutes after I started harvesting for my CSA on Saturday morning.   Things didn't get better from that point.  The sun was relentless and Wednesday's 3 inches of rain already seemed like a distant memory as I slogged through a long day of harvesting, transplanting and weed control.   Sunday was a little better, but I had to neglect the garden in favor of mowing my newly revived lawns.  The crabgrass was especially lush.

     The garden has experienced more than its fair share of ups and downs this year.  The dry weather up until last week's deluge courtesy of tropical storm Isais set the tone and despite the heavy soil in most of my gardens germination was a continuing problem.  If I continue to do large scale gardening in the future, I will definitely invest in drip irrigation.  With climate change, the unpredictability of seasonal weather is going to be a major problem for gardeners and commercial growers.  

Not looking good

      For parents worried about their children attending school this fall and the hash non attendance will make of their child care arrangements, the situation looks bleak.   The experience of schools in the southern states, which traditionally open earlier than northern, is instructive.   A picture posted to social media by a student in a Georgia high school shows what in non pandemic times would be a perfectly normal between class scrum in the hallways.  The only hint things are not as they should be is the 10% or so of the students wearing masks.   Incidentally, the student who posted the pictures was suspended by the district.

     If these scenes are repeated in NY schools, the state is liable to see a surge in coronavirus cases unless something drastic is done to make sure that Georgia school's experience is not repeated here.   Meanwhile, many child care options for parents have been foreclosed by the economic chaos caused by the pandemic.  Many day care operations closed in the April have since gone out of business and those that remain have waiting lists.  Many who could not afford full time child care had ad hoc arrangements with parents and friends and are now loathe to put these people in danger, especially those with underlying conditions which would make a Covid 19 infection possibly life threatening.

   With less than a month to go before schools are scheduled to open, there has been little or no debate as to what the effects of child care arrangements will have on parents and the economy.   It is time to have those discussions, starting in Congress and extending to local districts.  Hiding our heads in the sand is not an option.

It is what it is

   Among the many disgusting and horrifying things tRump has spewed from his word hole this week, his reply to a question about the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic stands out as a prime example of sociopathic behavior.   Instead of offering sympathy to the survivors of the nearly 160,000 Americans who have perished of the disease in the last 6 months, all the president* could say to the reporter, Jonathan Swan  was "it is what it is".   And that is all you need to know about the man and the party he represents.

    Following that disastrous interview, tRump fled back to the friendly confines of the Faux News bubble he normally inhabits.  There he is subjected to questions along the line of commenting on how un-American the "democrat" party is and how Joe Biden is suffering from a lack of enthusiasm among his partisans.  You could imagine him relaxing as the Fox and Friends hosts bombarded him with softball questions.  

    Meanwhile, the scandal of the Turnberry ask, wherein our president* pressured the US ambassador to the UK to request the Open championship be moved to a resort he owns has come roaring back with another Inspector General resigning without explanation.   Also, it was revealed Deutsche Bank has complied with a subpoena from the Manhattan D.A.'s office for tRump financial records.  It is beginning to look like the October Surprise could be the indictment of a sitting president by a district attorney who Bill Barr doesn't control!   Oh well, it is what it is.

Playing the system

     If there is one thing republicans know it's how to game the system.   Dating back to the election of 1968 when Nixon's "southern strategy" appealed to racist democrats who detested the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson, the GOP decided it would become the party of white grievance.  Working class whites then began to vote against their own economic interests because they didn't want "those people" to get the benefits of economic equality.
     The completion of this game came with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and specifically with the firing of air traffic controllers and the throttling of their union.  Reagan's terms ushered in an era of stagnating wages and interracial strife.   The crime and bankruptcy bills passed during Bill Clinton's presidency exacerbated the situation and the Great Recession under the Shrub completed the evisceration of the middle class.  Slow growth in the Obama years due in large part to republican obstruction has brought us the tRump presidency*.
     At this point, any pretext of racial sympathy is gone.  Republicans have now decided voter suppression, gerrymandering and the Senate's overwhelming tilt toward rural states with outsize representation are the only ways to keep themselves in power.  Racist dogwhistles are now foghorns and the wealth and power of the 1% are arrayed against any programs designed to help the majority of Americans.   This is the America we are bequeathing to our children.
     There is still hope, but the coming election will be more important than any in our history in determining if we are still a democracy or if we will slide into oligarchy and  a society of haves and have nots.   it is still our choice to make.

All the best people

      Using a loophole in the Vacancies Act, president* tRump appointed Anthony Tata to an unspecified job in the Pentagon which allows him to do the job for which the Senate denied his confirmation.   This has happened hundreds of times in the last 3 years.  While I might agree that 2600 jobs requiring Senate confirmation amounts to an enormous staffing problem for any administration, the appointment of an anti-Islamist and racist to the number 3 job in the DOD should require rigorous vetting.
      Tata's appointment is of a piece with this administration's lawless approach to governance.  The president* and his top advisors set the tone and it trickles all the way down to the approach of CBP and ICE officers in the performance of their various duties.   If you believe that racism and disregard for the law is smiled upon, then the rule of law is compromised.   When the next administration takes office it will have to deal with the fallout this behavior has caused and will continue to make us a less democratic nation.

Worst Nightmares

        Scanning the NYT and Washington Post for something to comment on, I read a couple of articles which seemed to encapsulate my worst fears about the coming election.
       In a long meandering story about a primary for county sheriff in a southern Georgia county centered around a town named Cairo, the reporter set out to try and get the meaning of the contest among three men.   The incumbent sheriff, a good ole boy named Harry expressed worry that he might not win the GOP primary which in that county is tantamount to election.  His competition in the majority white county were two deputies, one white and one black.   The reporter focused on the black man, who considered himself a democrat, but was running as a republican to reassure white voters.   This may have been a tactical error, since black turnout was about 15% of normal in heavily black areas and virtually all white voters endorsed his competitors.   Harry and the other deputy will participate in a runoff election.  The black deputy received too few votes to participate.
     A story in the NYT sets the stage for democratic nightmares in November.  It describes the plight of the local boards of elections in the face of tens of thousands of uncounted mail in ballots, many of which are being disqualified for minor issues or the failure of the post office to postmark the prepaid return envelopes containing many ballots.  You may consider this a dress rehearsal for the November elections, or the lead up to an epic fail.   In my present mood, I am inclined to the latter.