It's the economy stupid

      Two columns in the NYT caught my eye this morning.  Paul Krugman's argues and provides statistics which show life expectancy in states which voted for tRump is diverging from states which voted for Hillary Clinton.   Inhabitants of the latter can expect to live up to 4 more years than red state citizens.   He opines that Medicaid expansion and better health care in general explains the difference.
     Russ Douthat, a self proclaimed "weird catholic columnist" tackles the decline of marriage and child raising in America and slams explanations from the left and right and finally comes to the conclusion that it really is the fault of those who would change the traditional, patriarchal foundation of American marriage.
     Both men point to Europe as evidence for their assertions.   However, both of these upper middle class products of the meritocracy seem to be missing an essential point.   The majority of those in their child bearing years do not have the money to raise children in the idealized 1950's model.  Child care is probably the number one cause of the one or two child family or increasingly the no child model.   The idealized single breadwinner family seems to me to be obsolete for much of the country.  it now takes two incomes in many cases to afford the child care Krugman and Douthat take for granted.   The American dream is receding for blue and red states alike and unless the economic realities are addressed, children will continue to be a scarce commodity.

Winter is here

     Meteorological winter started yesterday with a sneaky 2-3 inch snowfall which prompted a quick round of snowblowing this morning.  Ugh.  As I have told many people over the years, I hate winter!  So far, we have had a short though fairly mild fall which came to a crashing halt with a snowstorm during the first week of November.   We struggled to reach freezing in the run up to Thanksgiving and now we are again in Winter's icy grip.  I am hoping for a short, mild season, but at this point it doesn't look promising.

Post Turkey, pre Christmas

     We are now at that perfect moment sandwiched between a symbolic, inclusive holiday asking us to be thankful for the many things most of us take for granted, and the relentless commercialization of the looming Christmas holiday.

       So far, no one has really figured how to sell a significant amount of merchandise for Thanksgiving.   Somehow, the dour, genocidal Pilgrims and their story does not lend itself to a Madison Avenue treatment.   Even the traditional Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade barely mentions the holiday it commemorates and instead makes the celebration a kickoff of its Christmas sales.

      Meanwhile, we have taken a pagan holiday, the yuletide celebration of increasing daylight and turned it into a gigantic celebration of the birth of a child which must needs be celebrated by buying and distributing gifts to all and sundry.  

      I will probably be decried as a grinch by many friends and relatives, but I don't believe in a war on Christmas.  Rather we should strive for a little more thanksgiving in the upcoming holiday.  

Thanksgiving... or not

    While the vast majority of my fellow countrymen will sit down to a Thanksgiving Day feast tomorrow with their biggest concern being a political discussion started by a crazy uncle or grandfather, many native Americans will have a day filled with existential terror as they mark another celebration of their stolen birthright.
      Most of us grew up and marked the Pilgrim's first "Thanksgiving" with their native sponsors.   With nearly half the Massachusetts Bay colony having perished during their first winter in the New World, they came together, probably a lot earlier than the fourth Thursday in November to celebrate their continuing existence and supposedly thank "Squanto" for teaching them how to grow native American crops.
     That's the Thanksgiving most of us are familiar with.  However, thanks to modern day historians who documented the systemic violence against their native benefactors, the Wampanoags and the cheating of the tribe which resulted in the Pilgrim's expropriation of native land, we can now feel guilty even before that extra helping of turkey.  
     It turns out that many, if not all of the historical events we commemorate during the course of the year are built on a foundation of racism, misogyny and cultural appropriation.  We may not appreciate being reminded that these myths are finally being exposed for the horrors they visited on natives, blacks and women, but we need to acknowledge them and try to live up to the ideals we piously express, especially on Thanksgiving.

Enabling the president*

    Many of us gnash our teeth nearly every day as Cheetolini and his henchmen make a mockery of the rule of law in America.   Even when he loses a battle, as when a federal judge ordered his former White House counsel, Don McGahn to testify regarding his knowledge of tRump's obstruction of justice during the Mueller probe, his DOJ will appeal the ruling, effectively running out the clock.  This makes us frustrated with the system.   However, it is not the system which is failing us, but the men and sometimes the women who operate the levers of government.
    Hitler did not create Nazi Germany single handedly.  He was aided and abetted by a fairly large slice of the men who operated the Wiemar government.   Some of them agreed with his vision of a Germany of ubermenschen or at least a reinvigorated country and were willing to indulge some of his more outre policies.  Others supported even the "final solution" right up until the bunker doors were closed in 1945.    This is how democracies really die.
      The next time our president* says or does something which strips us of another right or pushes us a little further down the road which leads to authoritarianism, remember, he is not doing it alone.

Gardening strikes again

       I am still not sure what next spring holds for me as far as gardening, but I did receive 2 seed catalogs on Saturday.   For some people, gardening is a hobby, but in my case it is a lifestyle choice bordering on obsession.   I pore over catalogs, imagine planting layouts and fertilizing schedules.  As retirement and its supposed abundance of free time looms, ever more elaborate schemes are afoot.
      The fly in the proverbial ointment is lack of space.   The latest edition of Casa Monzeglio does not boast large sunny areas in which to pursue my passion.   I still look longingly at the wide open spaces at our previous abode.   18 years of steady soil improvement have made my old gardening space extremely productive.  Should we not sell the property by the time spring 2020 rolls around, the temptation to continue farming/gardening will become stronger.   I guess time will tell.   Excuse me while I fantasize.

This is who they have

     It looks like the House Intelligence Committee is about to wrap up its part in the impeachment inquiry.   After taking the testimony of a bunch of civil servants willing to put themselves through the ordeal and one political appointee who is wealthy enough not to care what republicans think about his perfidy, Adam Schiff and the democrats on the committee have elicited not a smoking gun, but an artillery battery of evidence the president* conducted a bribery scheme to force the government of Ukraine to announce an investigation of a political rival.
     Needless to say, bribery is front and center as a "high crime and misdemeanor" as written in the US Constitution.   Meanwhile republicans are doing everything in their power to throw distractions into the process.   Aside from a few fanatics and opportunists; Jim Jordan is poster boy for the former and Elise Stefanik for the latter, most republicans privately abhor the president's* behavior and would gladly oust him if the political and economic cost was not so high.   Even retiring GOPers are hesitant to criticize tRump for fear the wingnut welfare system will shun them in retirement.  Thanks to his iron grip on the mostly racist base of the modern republican party, tRump can thumb his nose at the rule of law and will be safe from prosecution if he can win the 2020 election.   This possibility is what animates the zombie GOP.