July
1 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I'll be painting the right side footboard later this morning. It was colder this morning than yesterday with the low at 45.2° but no wind. The next 10 days are forecast to be great with lows in the 50s and highs in the lower 80s.
With the painting project underway I will be putting off house cleaning for a few days. I do need to get another month of Will Rogers weekly articles prepared. Maybe do that today and/or tomorrow. However, tomorrow is another shopping day so I may not get much of anything else done.
I want to stop at Woodland Building Center tomorrow and get some supports made for my closet clothes bar. It collapsed months ago. I asked the Park host if he would help me replace it and he said that he would but nothing has happened. So, I'm going to see if I can get it done on my own with help from Woodland doing the necessary cutting and drilling.
A friend sent me this Obituary printed in the London Times.
Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, "Common Sense", who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
- Knowing when to come in out of the rain
- Why the early bird gets the worm
- Life isn't always fair
- Maybe it was my fault
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
"Common Sense" lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
"Common Sense" lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.
"Common Sense" took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.
"Common Sense" finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
"Common Sense" was preceded in death,
- by his parents, Truth and Trust
- by his wife, Discretion
- by his daughter, Responsibility
- by his son, Reason
- I Know My Rights
- I Want It Now
- Someone Else Is To Blame
- I'm A Victim
- Pay me for Doing Nothing
2 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
Shopping today with breakfast at Safire. Then to the laundromat where I had two loads to do. Since I had my bed is considerable disarray due to the painting project I thought it a good time to get the bedding washed.
A quick stop at Safeway now that I know where my most purchased items are located it does not take long. The more time consuming stop was then at Woodland Building Center. There I got the two 2x4 supports for my clothes hanger bar that is in Desperado's closet and they drilled holes in them for the bar. I also got some helpful advice about the crown molding that will go from the kitchen through the living room, around the bedroom, back through the livingroom to the kitchen.
One final stop on the way back to the Park was at a dog groomer. There I was able to make an appointment for Patches to get a bath just before we leave here.
The Saxon Stories continue to be very good reads. I am now half way through them with six more books remaining. Cornwell has a lot of other books so I'll have a lot more historical fiction to read when I finish this series.The Pagan Lord is the seventh historical novel in the Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell, first published in 2013. The story is set in the early 10th century in Anglo-Saxon Mercia and Northumbria.
Ten years of relative peace have passed since Alfred died. That is long enough for the Danes. Saxon warlord Uhtred of Bebbanburg tries again to gain his own inheritance and again fights for the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex, now with his grown son as part of his warrior band.—Wikipedia
In its ongoing slow-motion third world war against nations which refuse to be absorbed into the blob of the US power alliance, this tight empire-like cluster of allies stands everything to gain by doing whatever it takes to undermine and sabotage Russia in an attempt to shove it off the world stage and eliminate the role it plays in opposing that war. Advancing as many narratives as possible about Russia doing nefarious things on the world stage manufactures consent for international collaboration toward that end in the form of economic warfare, proxy conflicts, NATO expansionism and other measures, as well as facilitating a new arms race by killing the last of the US-Russia nuclear treaties and ensuring a continued imperial military presence in Afghanistan.
We haven't been shown any hard evidence for Russians paying bounties in Afghanistan, and we almost certainly never will be. This doesn't matter as far as the imperial propagandists are concerned; they know they don't need actual facts to get this story believed, they just need narrative control. All the propagandists need to do is say over and over again that Russia paid bounties to kill the troops in Afghanistan in an increasingly assertive and authoritative tone, and after awhile people will start assuming it's true, just because the propagandists have been doing this.—Why The US Empire Works So Hard To Control The International Narrative About Russia, Caitlin Johnstone
3 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
Read Will Rogers column 88 years ago: July 3, 1932
I got the Park host to drill pilot holes for the screws that will hold the 2x4 clothes bar supports to the wall. I'll get to that project soon but first I must finish painting the front wall in the bedroom. I think that will be done today. Then tomorrow and the next day I need to do the monthly house cleaning. Then I can start on the closet.
Other than painting I have the distiller back in operation for the next couple of days. I also have a pot of hulled barley and oat groats cooking. I go through more of them when I also have a bean dish for 'linner'.
My reading Oliver Wiswell caused me to think (a unique experience for the most part) about what is the difference between a revolution and a civil war. I am now reading a book that was written about the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. The revolution was more or less a bloodless coup of the provisional government that came to power after the February Revolution resulted in the Russian monarchy being overthrown. It is the aftermath that is commonly thought of as being the revolution whereas it was more a civil war. As Spillman says revolutions are really no different from civil war except for which side wins. The winner always writes the history.
Although violent revolution and civil war amount to essentially the same thing in practice—internal conflicts over control of the political community—they became distinguished in thought by the bald assertion that revolution was constructive, hopeful, and progressive while civil war was destructive and divisive. In this view, revolution involved conscious choice rather than passive suffering; it could be directed rather than endured. Revolutions fit into a story not of "strife but of modern emancipation." It has become far easier to excuse violence perpetrated in the name of self-consciously progressive revolutions, even though they are really no different from civil wars—except for which side wins.—War, Civil War, or Revolution?, Scott SpillmanSpillman's article was based on his reading/review of Civil Wars: A History in Ideas by David Armitage which has been downloaded and joins the queue of books to be read.
We think we know civil war when we see it. Yet ideas of what it is, and what it isn't, have a long and contested history, from its fraught origins in republican Rome to debates in early modern Europe to our present day. Defining the term is acutely political, for ideas about what makes a war "civil" often depend on whether one is a ruler or a rebel, victor or vanquished, sufferer or outsider.—From the book promoI think there will be some 'community responders' killed and then it is going to be extremely difficult to hire more 'community responders'.
Left-wing city governments around the country are talking about cutting police budgets and using "interventions" by non-police to deal with "lower-level" calls for help. The latest example is Los Angeles, yesterday:A meme.LA City Council approves first step in replacing LAPD with community responders for non-violent calls.Quite how they're going to determine or classify the nature of such calls before an officer arrives is not explained - particularly because, as any policeman will tell you, a situation can go from flat calm to a hurricane in a matter of seconds.—Yeah, RIGHT!!!, Peter Grant
With all this "gun control" talk I haven't heard one politician say how they plan to take guns from criminals, just law abiding citizens.
4 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I had good intentions yesterday but didn't get the front of the bedroom painted. By the time I got the area sanded down and masked it was hot. I also sanded and masked part of the kitchen cabinets where I plan on using however much paint I have remaining after finishing the bedroom. I'm going to give it another try and finish the bedroom today.
Somewhat the same thing happened on our afternoon walk. I intended to do our usual 2+miles but was getting wet so turned around and beat a hasty retreat to Desperado. That is going to become more of a regular occurance now that the monsoon is starting to build.
The distiller was adding heat yesterday and I'll have it running again this morning. No other cooking planned for today. Have started another non-fiction book on Kindle Fire and have a Jules Verne book on Paperwhite that I switch to from time to time and that is what I usually take with me on shopping days. There is also blog reading and general web browsing to be done.
A quote from A Writer's Diary, Dostoevsky in Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution by Ivan Bunin
Give to all teachers ample opportunity to destroy the old society and to build a new one, and the result will be such darkness, such chaos, such unheard-of coarseness, blindness, and inhumanity, that the entire structure will collapse under the curses of humankind even before it is completed ...Buchanan has posted a good article, this is his closing.
As the world observes how the world's greatest democracy handles disorders arising from left-wing radicals, and how China is handling an anti-Communist uprising in its city of Hong Kong, which appears to be more in command and control of its nation's destiny?—Are Uncivil Protests and Mob Violence Winning?, Patrick J. Buchanan
I can not recommend this book as an ePub download from archive.com, it is poorly done. The paper book has distractions as well due to the scholarly translation. Thomas Gaiton Marullo is Professor of Russian, University of Notre Dame and like all professors his style is academic writing which does not make for easy reading.In 1998 the first English translation of the book was published in the US by Ivan R. Dee Publishers under the title Cursed Days. A Diary of the Revolution. Reviewers praised the work of translator, Thomas Gaiton Marullo, a noted scholar on Russian literature, the author of two previous volumes on Bunin's life and works, "Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem, 1885-1920" and "Ivan Bunin: From the Other Shore, 1920-1933" who also provided preface, introduction, and footnotes* so as to guide the Western reader through the cascade of Russian names and historical references, giving the reader a sense of Bunin, the man, while also providing extensive information about contextual issues, carefully explain the writer's comments on colleagues, publishers, newspapers, journals, and politicians.—Wikipedia
*I have added the bold emphsis and direct you to a review at Amazon title "Footnotes out of Control". The copy that I downloaded from aechive.com made this profusion of footnotes even worse because the DRM ePub was poorly done.
5 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
Well, I got the bedroom painted. I also painted all of the kitchen cabinets that I had prepared for painting. That will need a second coat or at least some parts of it will need a second coat. I don't know if I'm going to like what I'm doing with the cabinets of not but will continue on and see what it looks like.
The painting will be on hold for a few days. I need to do the housecleaning that I put off to paint. I also want to get the clothes hanger bar back up and organize the closet. It is a mess with clothes piled up and 'stuff' piled on top.
There are also books to be read. The Robert Bork book is proving to be a good complement to Radical-In-Chief. What he has to say goes a long way in explaining why the Left was so intent on destroying him when he was nominated for a Supreme Court Justice. So intent that his name has become a verb - 'to bork'.
It’s July. The vast majority of Americans are nowhere near thinking about the election. But whatever media buzz there would be about the resiliency of the economy has been buried by talk of riots and mask mandates and assurances that riots have nothing to do with spreading the virus (though bellying up to a bar for a much-needed cocktail is a "super-spreader" event, dontchaknow). If you can't see that these things are connected, and if you can't see that the June jobs report is the precise thing the Democrats and their media allies have unleashed cultural mayhem on America to stifle in the public's mind, then you are not paying attention. —Dem's Banking on America's Soft Skulls, Diogenes Sarcastica™A very good article by The Saker. However, he provides no options to 'fix' the United States problems. Voting is certainly not going to do it.
The fact is that for the past four years the US liberals have waged a total informational war against Trump and it would be absolutely unthinkable for them to ever accept a Trump re-election, even if he wins by a landslide. For the US Dems and neo-liberals, Trump is the personification of evil, literally, and that means that "resistance" to him and everything he represents must be total. And if he is re-elected, then there is only one possible explanation: the Russians stole the election, or the Chinese did. But the notion that Trump has the support of a majority of people is literally unthinkable for these folks.…
This is why I submit that the next election will make absolutely no difference:—Does the next Presidential election even matter?, The Saker
- The US system is rigged to give all the power to minorities and to completely ignore the will of the people
- The choice between the Demolicans and the Republicrats is not a choice at all
- The systemic crisis of the USA is too deep to be affected by who is in power in the White House
- Voting for either one of the candidates this fall will only prolong the agony of the current political regime in the USA.
The New Left is important because it is still with us in the guise of modern liberalism. What was composed at Port Huron, therefore, is a guide to today’s cultural and political debacles.*The Port Huron Statement is a 1962 political manifesto of the American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It was written by SDS members, and completed on June 15, 1962, at a United Auto Workers (UAW) retreat in Port Huron, Michigan (now Lakeport State Park), for the group's first national convention.
The pronouncements of the Sixties radicals were intellectually negligible, often farcical. But many of us were naive enough at the time to assess them, and their capacity for destruction, in intellectual terms. Had we known more about past Utopian movements, we would have seen that the Port Huron Statement*, though nonsense, was also a document of ominous mood and aspiration.—Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork
6 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I got most of the house cleaning done yesterday. This morning there are holding tanks that need to be dumped and a water tank filled. Then I'll get Desperado's cab cleaned up. All before it gets too hot hopefully. The temperatures are climbing with it forecast to be in the 90s this next weekend. That should bring on the monsoon in the week following.
Maybe give the kitchen cabinet another coat of paint tomorrow. Then shopping to follow the day after when I might stop at Ace Hardware and get more of the paint I have been using plus a different color for the kitchen cabinet doors. I also want to see if I can get some self closing hinges to replace what are currently on the doors.
I sometimes refer to myself as being a 'ol geezer but just found that there are medical categories for those of us that have lived long. There are the youngest-old, ages 65 to 74 years; middle-old, 75 to 84 years; and oldest-old, ≥85 years. This reminded me of George Carlin's Views on Aging; highly recommended!
How long does Ghislaine Maxwell have to live? I'm not a soothsayer but I think I see a suicide in her future.
The real story is still the fact that opaque and unaccountable intelligence agencies use child sex slavery to blackmail powerful world leaders and manipulate our society. It's weird that people focus anywhere else. Anyway it's not like this is going to "bring down" anyone with real power. Even if Ghislaine survives, don't get your hopes up that her arrest will affect elite power structures in any meaningful way. The FBI is the swamp. The DOJ is the swamp. The swamp will never drain the swamp.
Maxwell, like Epstein, was never the lead player in the sexual blackmail op.There is at this time no reason to believe anyone's coming for the intelligence operatives or their oligarchic allies who were actually running the thing.—Ghislaine Maxwell, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, Caitlin Johnstone
The New Left did collapse as a political movement because of its internal incoherence and amorphous program, and because its revolutionary rhetoric and proclivity for violence repelled most Americans. There never was any chance that this collection of frantic youths could become or instigate a popular movement. What we see in modern liberalism, however, may be the ultimate triumph of the New Left.This quote is from a good article by Clint Fargeau. It also contains a link to his article on 'saftyism' that is a recommended read. As he says in the linked article "…the United States hasn’t a prayer of rewinding the tape to a classical definition of objective harm and narrow traditional liberties. That battle has been fought and lost".
Its adherents did not go away or change their minds; the New Left shattered into a multitude of single-issue groups.—Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork
The Wuhan virus presented a rare opportunity for progressives in America to accelerate a century-long project: turn Americans into rootless, autonomous, isolated units with the state as their only shared point of reference.
The virus was the perfect storm. It granted progressives a pretext to disperse local communities and institutions–such as churches and schools‐and force citizens to rely on state-sanctioned technocrats to tell them how and when to go about every aspect of their lives. The philosophical imperative of 'safetyism'–a growing force for years–served as the pretext to suspend traditional civil liberties and govern by centralized decree.—The Virus Restrictions Are Nothing New: Progressives Have Aimed at 'Social Distancing' for Decades, Clint Fargeau
7 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I'm going to try getting the closet fix done today although it is going to be just as hot in there as it was in the bedroom. Maybe even hotter.
The high yesterday was 88.7° with very little wind, I had the A/C running for part of the afternoon. The weather experts are forecasting that today will be MUCH COOLER but then say that the high will be 88°. HUH?
You will certainly not read this article by Paul Craig Roberts in any main stream media — anyplace in the world. I have not quoted any part of the article, you need to read it all.
A suggested read. I have quoted only one paragraph as a teaser from this good article.
The current unrest almost demands its Messiah, a "lightbringer" who will fulfil the desires of all the demonstrators, bring peace to riot-torn cities, and stop those nasty "deplorables", "bitter clingers" and "racists" from imposing their oppression on the rest of enlightened society. Who will that Messiah be? Watch closely, and wait. I don't think it'll be long before we find out.—Who will be the left's new Messiah, and when will they take charge?, Peter grantThe obvious solution to the problem identified in the quote from the article by Michael Snyder is to defund the police. New York City has done so to the tune of $1 billion but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says that is not enough.
According to figures released by the New York Police Department, for the first six months of this year, there were 176 murders, an increase of 23 percent on the 143 killed during the same period last year.
The number of shooting victims has gone up 51 percent to 616 this year. In June alone, there were 250 shootings compared to 97 in the same month last year. Month-on-month, burglaries are up 119 percent and car thefts up 48 percent.—Violent Crime Is Surging Dramatically In Major Cities All Over America, Michael Snyder
…is easy to smuggle guns in or to make them in basements and garages. A gun need not be state of the art to serve a criminals purpose. Criminals will never have difficulty getting guns. The citizen who wants a firearm for self-defense will not have access to illicit markets and will be deterred by the higher costs charged in legal transactions. The result is a steady supply of guns for criminal aggression and a diminished supply for self-defense…
People who are armed make comparatively unattractive victims. A criminal might not know if any one civilian is armed, but if it becomes known that a large number of civilians do carry weapons, criminals will become warier. Gun control shifts the equation in favor of the criminal. Gun control proposals are nothing more than a modern liberal suggestion that government, which is unable to protect its citizens, make sure those citizens cannot defend themselves.—Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork
8 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I got the closet fixed with only one slight problem. One of the pilot holes in the 2x4 was right on a metal stud in Desperado's wall and I could not get the screw to go in. The other screws are probably enough but when/if I get a drill again I'll put a pilot hole in the stud.
Shopping day with breakfast at Booga Red's. Then groceries at Safeway. That had me waiting again for Ace Hardware to open but when they did I took a kitchen door in to see what they could do for me. I got a quart of paint in the color that I'm going to use for the cabinet doors. No self closing hinges in the finish that I wanted in stock so they have been ordered. Will be in a week from tomorrow but that would require a seperate trip. I get them in about 12 days.
Last stop was at Round Valley Library where I had an hour and half wait for them to open. I'll tell you about the visit there tomorrow.
The more things change the more they remain the same. Bork published "Slouching" in 1996 and he says 'black anger seems at its zenith'. Here, hold my beer and watch this - 2020! I tend to agree with Shelby Steele's 'race holding' theory.
The opportunities for blacks to advance in the United States have never been greater. Despite the incessant talk about racism, by white liberals as well as by blacks, racism has never been at a lower ebb. Yet black anger seems at its zenith. Shelby Steele, a professor of English and black intellectual, offers a partial explanation that is remarkably similar to Midge Decter's explanation for the anger of the feminists. In both cases, the problem is the sudden and dramatic widening of choices about life, a new freedom and responsibility that frightens. For women the new choices are available largely because of technology, for blacks because of the success of the civil rights movement. Steele speaks of "race-holding" and defines a "holding" as any self-description that justifies to that person or camouflages his fears, weaknesses, and inadequacies. Race-holding allows a black to retreat into his racial identity as an excuse for not using his talents to the full out of fear that he really cannot compete. "With the decline in racism the margin of black choice has greatly expanded, which is probably why race-holding is so much more visible today than ever before. But anything that prevents us from exploiting our new freedom to the fullest is now as serious a barrier to us as racism once was.*"—Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork*Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (New York: St. Martins Press, 1990), p. 27.
The Robin Hood principle states that wherever groups of people feel themselves oppressed in some way they are highly likely to produce their own outlaw hero.
Research across 2,000 years of global history and myth identifies at least 200 individuals who have been celebrated as "noble robbers." From Robin Hood to Dick Turpin, from Jesus Christ to Jesse James, from Pancho Villa to Ned Kelly, these friends of the poor are said to rob the rich and powerful, to right wrongs, to treat the weak with respect, and to offer violence only in justified defense.
Whether these characteristics are true or not is hotly disputed wherever outlaw heroes are found. Nevertheless, ambivalent figures like Billy the Kid, Salvatore Giuliano, Stenka Razin, and India's "bandit queen," Phoolan Devi, among many others, can be identified in history and in folklore. They continue to appear wherever political, cultural, and economic conflicts tear the fabric of society.
Popular culture also likes to play with the outlaw image. People like the ex-hacker Mark Abene (Phiber Optik), the Hungarian "whiskey robber," and the Australian ex-criminal Chopper Read are frequently romanticized into latter-day Robin Hoods by the media, and by themselves.
Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings have sung the outlaw's song. The Dukes of Hazzard flirted with outlawry on television screens at various times during the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's.
The narcocorridos of Hispanic popular music celebrate drug runners as heroes against the establishment, and have even portrayed terrorists as Robin Hood-like figures. An Osama bin Laden character appeared as a protector of his people in a Calcutta Hindu street-theater performance in 2003. Osama bin Hood.
Deserving of such treatment or not, outlaw heroes are the smoke of a fire burning deep in the resentful core of an ethnic, cultural, religious, or class group that perceives itself to be the victim of injustice.
Perception is the important concept here. Whether the group is actually being oppressed does not matter; it only needs to believe that it is.
The outlaw hero has troubled societies of all kinds for thousands of years. He ranges the unsettled borders of the old world and rides the frontiers of the new world. He hides out in mountains, marshes, forests, and other places where his pursuers cannot reach him.
He is the usually undeserving but chosen bearer of the ancient dream that refuses to die: there can be justice, all people can have fair access to the available resources, and wealth and power should not be the prerogative of a select few.
The current train wreck of consumer capitalism is likely to see the Robin Hood principle in action again.
From an interview: Graham Seal, professor of folklore at Curtin University of Technology in Australia; director of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Australia, Asia, and the Pacific; and author of The Outlaw Legend: A Cultural Tradition in Britain, America, and Australia.
9 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
A few days ago I 'registered' online with the Round Valley Library thinking I would be able to then get ebooks from them. I received an email that said I had an account set up and that I could stop at the Library and pick up my 'temporary resident' card. This card allows me to borrow dead tree books from the library but NOT ebooks online.
Yesterday after waiting an hour and half for them to open I went inside the Library and talked to one of the staff (wearing a mask of course). The first thing that I did was donate all my dead tree books that I have been carrying around for years and have not looked at much less read since getting Paperwhite and Kindle Fire.
The conversation about 'temporary card' borrowing privileges included a couple questions about where I was living, was I going to be there again next year and did I have a receipt showing that I was renting. I also had to fill out another form but got a 'permanent card' which should allow me to borrow ebooks online. Haven't tried to do that.
What I did last night was something I was going to do many months ago. That was to move all my Calibre Library to the 'cloud' in Google Drive. I had installed Calibre in Linux on my Chromebook but didn't understand what I needed to do to get the Library data from my Toshiba/Linux to the cloud so that I would have a working Calibre on Chromebook.
I don't think I did it right and it took a very long time with a lot of Verizon data usage. But I now have my Calibre Library on Chromebook just like it is on the Toshiba that is running on Linux. I think this is going to make downloading books easier, what I have been doing for a long time has worked but it has been convoluted to say the least.
Decalogues retain from the time they were written on stone or bronze their character of heaviness…. Lower ranks the world over are tired of being ordered and commanded, and with holiday air take advantage of a period freed from burdensome imperatives. But the holiday does not last long. Without commandments, obliging us to live after a certain fashion, our existence is that of the "unemployed." This is the terrible spiritual situation in which the best youth of the world finds itself today. By dint of feeling itself free, exempt from restrictions, it feels itself empty…. Before long there will be heard throughout the planet a formidable cry, rising like the howling of innumerable dogs to the stars, asking for someone or something to take command, to impose an occupation, a duty.*—Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork*Jose Ortega y Gassett, Revolt of the Masses (New York: W.W. Norton, 1957), pp. 135–6.
I was surprised that this book got 4.8 out of 5 stars from customer reviews at Amazon. There were far more reviews at goodread.com where it scored 3.9 out of 5 stars. I would give it 5 stars simply because Bork has told it like it is. The United States was going to hell in a handbasket when he wrote it in 1996 and republished in 2003. It has slouched a good deal since 2003 but will not collapse overnight although the coming depression may accelerate the slide.In this New York Times bestselling book, Robert H. Bork, our country's most distinguished conservative scholar, offers a prophetic and unprecedented view of a culture in decline, a nation in such serious moral trouble that its very foundation is crumbling: a nation that slouches not towards the Bethlehem envisioned by the poet Yeats in 1919, but towards Gomorrah.
Slouching Towards Gomorrah is a penetrating, devastatingly insightful exposé of a country in crisis at the end of the millennium, where the rise of modern liberalism, which stresses the dual forces of radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than opportunities) and radical individualism (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification), has undermined our culture, our intellect, and our morality.
In a new Afterword, the author highlights recent disturbing trends in our laws and society, with special attention to matters of sex and censorship, race relations, and the relentless erosion of American moral values. The alarm he sounds is more sobering than ever: we can accept our fate and try to insulate ourselves from the effects of a degenerating culture, or we can choose to halt the beast, to oppose modern liberalism in every arena. The will to resist, he warns, remains our only hope.
10 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
Read Will Rogers column 88 years ago: July 10, 1932
My Verizon MIFI is falling apart. I went to the local Verizon store yesterday and got thrown out for not being polite enough. I begged them to help be but they claimed that was sarcasm and rude.
So I have ordered a replacement online but found no way to change the shipping address so it will go to the UPS Store in Sierra Vista and then I need to have it forwarded. I hate trying to do business with Verizon but they have a virtual monopoly on WIFI service where I tend to live - a utility company that acts like all utility companies.
Thus a repressed truth was rediscovered: the heart of most great modern revolutions was civil war. It has been a bitter pill to swallow. Civil wars, by the conventional understanding, betoken the blighting and collapse of the human spirit, while revolutions affirm and actualize it. How disturbing, then, to realize that a force so definitively modern, novel, and forward-looking might owe so much to one so archaic, traditional, and backward facing.—Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, David ArmitageThis is the closing to an article about the fall of the USSR. Can it happen to the USA? Perhaps not exactly but there could be many rhymes to that history.
The result was massive poverty for many and incredible wealth for a few. The crippling economic depression was a breeding ground for crime and government corruption. After savings were wiped out, people became beggars. The Russian mafia, long held in check by the Communists, stepped in to fill a power void. Government infrastructure from basic public utilities to police forces almost evaporated overnight. When government payroll services disappeared, former members of the Soviet military, KGB, and police officers filled the ranks of the mafia in the hopes of a paycheck. Many mafia leaders seized state-owned assets and enterprises throughout Russia while extorting the public for providing services the government could or would not provide.—The Fall of the Soviet Union - Part 1: From Reagan to Yeltsin by davenj1
11 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
It is going to be hot today and tomorrow. The forecast is for 90° or upper 80s. I'm expecting to be over 90 both days. Then with any luck the forecast for mid 80s and thunderstorms during the remainder of the 10 day forecast will prove to be correct.
With the heat in mind I asked my eastside neighbor to come over early this morning and help me measure the bedroom windows so I can place the order for shutters. We also got some measurements for the crown molding and a couple corner strips that will give a molding appearance.
I got a second coat of paint on the first part of the kitchen cabinets. Maybe tomorrow I'll paint one of the doors and see how it is going to look. So far I like the look on the cabinet base where I have used the same paint that I used in the bedroom. The doors will be a different color and a semi gloss versus the satin that is the base.
Some many months ago I installed GIMP in Linux on my Chromebook. Never liked it and only tried to do a couple things with it. Yesterday I installed a different release/version of GIMP which looks more like what I have running in Linux on my Toshiba. It is going to take some re-education on how to use GIMP but I think this will be a better install.
Paul Craig Roberts asks a very good question in this article where I have quoted the closing.
I do not know whether four years of all-out-assault on President Trump by the presstitute media and his inability to deliver to those who elected him have deprived him of re-election. Whether he is re-elected or not, we will not see another president after Trump attempts to put the people before the establishment. Not only has Trump made clear to future candidates the high cost of displeasing the establishment, but also the population is too divided to provide a president with a political base. Not even the 60% white population, which has been turned into second class citizens and placed under racial threat, can unite. What is to stop the United States from crossing the line from democracy into tyranny?—Has the Durham Investigation of the Russiagate Hoax Been Deep-Sixed?, Paul Craig RobertsSo the American Revolution was a Civil War as I thought, and more historians are thinking the same way; but it was a 'revolutionary conception of civil war'.
…contemporary European thinkers could distinguish at least three forms of civil war: what might be called "successionist," "supersessionist," and "secession" civil wars…. The modern usage of "secession" referred more generally to the attempt by part of a political community to break away from the existing political authority and assert its own independence… it was only after the success of Britain's North American colonies in exiting from the empire in 1776 that this model began to proliferate and to gain legal recognition. Thus, the Americans provided a truly revolutionary conception of civil war that would be imitated across the world in the following two centuries.—Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, David ArmitageIndependent Online, popularly known as IOL, is one of South Africa’s leading news and information websites bringing millions of readers breaking news and updates on Politics, Current Affairs, Business, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Travel, Sport, Motoring and Technology.
The quote below is from the Opinion page of that news source, not an Opinion you will find in The New York Times, All the News That's Fit to Print, or The Washington Post, Democracy Dies in Darkness.
President Trump claims that he has not started any wars but he has declared war on the people of Venezuela. Killing them through sanctions and withholding IMF loans is as much an act of war as dropping bombs — killing is killing.
There are no ethics or conscience when it comes to US enemies, even in the middle of a deadly pandemic. If denying Venezuelans life-saving medicine and equipment might hasten the collapse of the Maduro regime, then the US is all for it.
US allies are too scared to fill the vacuum and deliver the desperately needed aid and assistance to Venezuela, even on a humanitarian basis, due to the threat of secondary sanctions on countries that buck the US economic blockade. It is only countries like China, Russia, and Cuba that have assisted the people of Venezuela in their fight against Covid-19.—No ethics when it comes to US enemies, even in the middle of a deadly pandemic, Shannon Ebrahim, Foreign editor of the Independent Media Group
12 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
We got the bedroom window measurements taken before it got too hot yesterday. It was 76° outside by 8:00am but hotter than that inside Desperado. The forecast high was 90 but it was already 92 by noon. The forecast was also for thunderstorms in the afternoon yesterday and today but with an expected high of only 88 today. I think it will be over 90 again and have my doubts about getting any rain. Maybe tomorrow, the monsoon is building but I don't think it is here yet.
I sent an email to the Shutter Store requesting help in getting the correct size L framing and shuller slate size. They were VERY quick to send me emails when I requested samples of the shutter colors but not so prompt to answer my questions now. They may not be in business anymore because of Coronavirus®?
Cooked a pot of yellow split pea porridge with garbanzo beans yesterday. Have only sampled it but I think it is a 'linner' keeper. Need to cook up something else today.
Given such a potent reputation, it might appear that looking for the civil war at the heart of any revolution is downright counterrevolutionary. Opponents of revolution have often attempted to deny its legitimacy by calling attention to the violence and destruction attending any effort to overturn the existing social and economic order, a cost that no such transformation could ever justify. And with civil war having now acquired such retrograde connotations, to tag a revolution as such could be seen as undermining its potential for liberation and opening up a new future. Yet there can be no innovation without tradition. As Marx pointed out, even the primal revolutionaries of 1789 cast their eyes back to the Romans, as their successors would in turn look back to 1789 for their inspiration.—Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, David Armitage
Revolutionaries rebottled what in other circumstances—or by other ideologues—had been labeled rebellions, insurrections, or civil wars. Indeed, one sure sign of a revolution's success is precisely that retrospective re-branding. It can happen relatively quickly; for example, the transatlantic conflict of the 1770s that many contemporaries saw as a British "civil war" or even "the American Civil War" was first called "the American Revolution" in a speech by the chief justice of South Carolina as early as October 1776, though the term did not appear officially until the Continental Congress issued its Observations on the American Revolution in 1779.—Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, David Armitage
This book brought to my mind the question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" In modern usage, the term has lost its theological context and is used as a metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no practical value, or questions whose answers hold no intellectual consequence, while more urgent concerns accumulate.The author has about 330 ebook pages of text with a 100 pages of Bibliography and about 70 pages of Notes. This is a typical academic publication. David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University, where he teaches intellectual history and international history, and former Chair of Harvard's History Department. When will I ever learn to avoid academicians? I did get some good quotes from it however.
A highly original history, tracing the least understood and most intractable form of organized human aggression from Ancient Rome through the centuries to the present day.
We think we know civil war when we see it. Yet ideas of what it is, and what it isn't, have a long and contested history, from its fraught origins in republican Rome to debates in early modern Europe to our present day. Defining the term is acutely political, for ideas about what makes a war "civil" often depend on whether one is a ruler or a rebel, victor or vanquished, sufferer or outsider. Calling a conflict a civil war can shape its outcome by determining whether outside powers choose to get involved or stand aside: from the American Revolution to the war in Iraq, pivotal decisions have depended on such shifts of perspective.
The age of civil war in the West may be over, but elsewhere in the last two decades it has exploded--from the Balkans to Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, and Sri Lanka, and most recently Syria. And the language of civil war has burgeoned as democratic politics has become more violently fought. This book's unique perspective on the roots and dynamics of civil war, and on its shaping force in our conflict-ridden world, will be essential to the ongoing effort to grapple with this seemingly interminable problem.—Book promo @ Amazon
13 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I did some touch up painting on the cabinet base that I had painted and it requires some more. Also painted almost all of one door but it is going to need a second coat plus a couple coats on the rest of the door. I think it will look good after the second coat but it does not look very good now.
I also took down most of the crown molding that was in place. Also the molding and trim that hid wires to electrical outlets in the headboard and footboard. That molding was plastic which I don't think I could paint to match the bedroom walls so I'll replace it with the same wood molding that I get for the crown.
Cooked another batch of succotash for future 'linners'. Cooked a lot of it. Used two big cans of red kidney beans, two big cans of hominy (not the giant cans) and a couple big yellow squash. This was all cooked in the juice that was in the cans with a couple veggie bouillon cubes thrown in for some seasoning. Sampled it and avouch that it is good.
The more sanctions that President Trump and Congress impose on Iran the tighter the relationship with China will become. China already has significant interests in Iran so any 'hot' war there by the USA will quickly bring China into the fray. I don't think the USA would come out of that confrontation a winner.
Two of the US’s top "strategic threats" are getting closer and closer within the scope of the New Silk Roads – the leading 21st century project of economic integration across Eurasia. The Deep State will not be amused.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi blasted as "lies" a series of rumors about the "transparent roadmap" inbuilt in the evolving Iran-China strategic partnership.…
Geopolitically and geoeconomically, the key take away is that the US relentless blockade of the Iranian economy, featuring hardcore weaponized sanctions, is impotent to do anything about the wide-ranging Iran-China deal.
The Iran-China strategic partnership is yet another graphic demonstration of what could be deconstructed as the Chinese brand of exceptionalism: a collective mentality and enough organized planning capable of establishing a wide-ranging, win-win, economic, political and military partnership.
14 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
The latest batch of succatach that I cooked is very good. That is also a good thing because I have a lot of it. That and the yellow split pea porridge that I have will keep me in 'linners' for well over a week.
I requested that mail be forwarded from my UPS Store in Sierra Vista and was given a tracking number. I used that number Sunday to track the forward and found that the number was no good. All is well however, I got the forward yesterday.
In it was a 'package' that had my reissued passport. I mailed the application on 4 March 2020. So a little over 4 months to get the renewal. I checked online and the State Department has about 1.3 million applications in hand that they are now trying to catch up on processing. Coronavirus® is the reason they are so far behind of course but I doubt that they will catch up by this time next year.
Today was shopping day again with breakfast at Safire. They now have every other booth marked as Reserved. This provides the necessary Social Distancing necessary to be politically correct and sends virtual signals to the Coronavirus® Cops. There has been a spike in cases in this Zip Code as there has been in all of Arizona. Arizona has become the 'bad boy' in the media for not obeying.
I did a quick grocery gathering at Safeway where more masks were being worn but not mandatory - yet. Then a stop at the Post Office to mail back a survey to the VA. They want to survey how well they are serving the veterans and what they need to do to improve. My suggestion would be to allow face-to-face meetings between caregivers and patients and use Secure Messaging to contact patients versus telephones. But they did not ask for those suggestions.
You must read the entire article but this paragraph answers the question 'which is the most totalitarian country'.
By contrast, the U.S. has high rates of violent crimes, and it also has the world’s very highest rates of imprisonments; and, so, even if the scientific studies had not shown it to be a dictatorship, a reasonable case does exist that the United States is totalitarian, even if it might not necessarily be the world’s most totalitarian (which could be any one of a number of others, such as UK, or Holland). And, yet, the United States, despite this reality, has the arrogance and audacity to pontificate to all the rest of the world about ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’, and refuses to allow the International Criminal Court to investigate its own possible war-crimes, and its blatant violations of basic human rights, as well as its many foreign invasions that were based only upon demonstrable lies, and which invasions were therefore themselves international-war crimes. But isn’t this lying and hypocrisy exactly what one would expect, if the United States is the world’s most totalitarian country? Is that not clearly so? The conclusion, therefore, seems virtually inescapable: the world’s most totalitarian country is the United States of America.—Which Is the Most Totalitarian Country?, Eric Zuesse (An American writer and investigative historian).
15 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I don't have much on the agenda for today. There will be more painting, a second coat on the cabinet base plus finish a first coat on part of the one door that I have started.
I have the distiller running again but that does not require much attention. Cleaning it is the biggest chore but that will not happen until tomorrow. There is a new book on Kindle Fire that I need to read. It is a borrowed book from the Cochise County Library which has a borrowed limit so I can not do a lot of the switching from one book to another with it.
I wonder when it will be that someone in Congress puts forth a bill to sanction China for bringing bubonic plague to this country.
Local health authorities in China's Inner Mongolia region announced a suspected positive case of bubonic plague Sunday.
Health officials in Bayannur said a farmer was sickened and hospitalized but is in stable condition, China's Global Times reported.—China reports bubonic plague case, raises local alert level in Inner Mongolia, Ryan W. Miller
Public health officials have announced that a squirrel in Colorado has tested positive for the bubonic plague.
The town of Morrison, Colorado, in Jefferson County, which is just west of Denver, made the startling announcement saying that the squirrel is the first case of plague in the county.—Squirrel tests positive for the bubonic plague in Colorado, Jon Haworth
Not one of Verne's best in my opinion but a good adventure story with no sci fi.Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen (1878) is an epic of the slave trade. This picture of the wilds of Africa, its adventures and its dangers, the savage hunting both of beasts and men, has always been a favorite among Verne's readers.
It contains no marvels, no inventions, but merely, amid stirring scenes and actions seeks to convey two truthful impressions. One is the traveler's teaching the geographical information, the picture of Africa as explorers, botanists, and zoologists have found it. The other is the moral lesson of the awful curse of slavery, its brutalizing, horrible influence upon all who come in touch with it, and the absolutely devastating effect it has had upon Africa itself.—Edited book promo @ goodreads.com
16 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I have been fighting SPAM for about a month now. Tried to block them by adding the IP addresses to my email Spam filter but the spammers used a different address to each message. Then tried to block with a wildcard IP address filter which also failed. Yesterday I finally found some filter Rules that work. I had my usual 13-14 Spams come in, all but a couple were directed to my Junk folder. Added another Rule to the filter and maybe I'll catch them all today.
I sent an email to The Shutter Store last Saturday and had not received a reply as of Tuesday. Sent another one, using a different email address, and received a reply yesterday. They are still in business but the reply was not very helpful. Sent another email asking for clarification/more help. No reply.
I have had rain in the afternoon for the past three days. I think the monsoon has arrived. The first couple of days the rain was light, started around 1:00 and was finished by the time we went for our walk. Yesterday it was a steady rain from around noon through our usual walking hour. The weather station that I am following recorded 0.39". We went out a little after 4:00 and got only a little damp from sprinkles and road spray.
There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth in the media, prompted mostly by Democrats, about President Trump's commutation on 10 July 2020. The list is too long for me to show them but I have links to the pardons and commutations that former presidents Clinton and Obama granted. These did not perturb the media except to denounce the Republicans for complaining about them.
Source Clinton
Source Obama
It was while reading a series of articles by davenj1 at Red State that I began reminiscing and went to find the pardon/commutation records for the past three presidents. I will not quote them but offer the links to those articles.
The Democrats look back fondly on the Clinton years but these article paint a different picture - more like what I remembered.
The Clinton Administration- Part 1: Blown Foreign Policy
The Clinton Administration- Part 2: A Litany of Scandals
The Clinton Administration, Part 3: Hillary and the Right Wing Conspiracy
Racial discrimination is antiracist. Inequality is equality. When whites react angrily to their current treatment by claiming "it's unfair" or "it’s discriminatory," they're refusing to acknowledge (or maybe they just can't bring themselves to acknowledge) that the definitions have shifted to the extent that black radicals and their allies don't dispute that point. Yes, it's discriminatory. Yes, it's unfair. For only through unfairness and discrimination will we achieve fairness and nondiscrimination.
American whites are having a difficult time wrapping their brains around this reality. And indeed, the new apartheid is an odd beast because, unlike previous segregationist systems, unlike Jim Crow, unlike South Africa's apartheid or Nazi Germany's Nuremberg Laws, this new American apartheid is de facto. It’s off the books. It's built to breathe and function comfortably within the confines of our Constitution.—Our De Facto Antiwhite Apartheid, David Cole
17 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
Read Will Rogers column 88 years ago: July 17, 1932
A busy day yesterday after getting my posting uploaded to the web. There were holding tanks to be dumped, water added and the distiller to be cleaned. That should last for about 9 days and I get to do it again.
I also finished painting the first cabinet door and applied a first coat to the second door. Rehung that first door just to see what it was going to look like in place. I think I'm going to like it with the self closing hinges and with a second door painted and hung beside it. Right now I'm still undecided about how much I like it.
Received my order of walnut pieces and garbanzo beans from bulkfoods.com yesterday. I was very pleased with their delivery and will be ordering more from them. Fry's and Safeway are going to be getting less and less of my grocery buying business simply because their supply chain has been broken or badly damaged since the onset of Coronavirus®. I suspect it is going to get worse before it get better and it will not become 'normal'.
Received a reply from the Shutter Store. What they said was not as blunt as the store that I stopped at in Sierra Vista but they really don't want to put shutters in an RV. So, I am now looking for someone to sell and install some woven wood shades with a blackout liner. There are a lot of websites that offer that but do not offer Chat or email to ask questions. They are NOT going to get my business.
Dr. Heinz Dieterich, director of the Centre for Transition Sciences (CTS) at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) in Mexico City, and coordinator at the World Advanced Research Project (WARP) is a hard core Leftist that has nothing but praise for Obama and condemnation for Trump.
I have not quoted from the web page but the good Dr. has posted an article "Chinese Culture defeats Trump. Obama explains Why" that has received a lot of press coverage around the world - but not in the USA.
Heinz Dieterich or Heinz Dieterich Steffan (born 1943) is a German sociologist and a political analyst residing in Mexico. He is better known for his leftist ideals. He contributes to several journals and has published more than 30 books about conflict in Latin America, global society and the ideological controversies that characterised the 20th century, among other philosophical and social scientific topics.—WikipediaThis quote is from one one of many websites that are now saying the same thing. The Empire is dying and there are going to be a lot of people that suffer along with it.
The lower reaches of the financial food chain are already dying, and every entity that depended on that layer is doomed: the small business die-off will bring down distributors, banks, landlords, and employment, and as the this layer collapses then the top predators will starve to death as well: Big Tech, healthcare, higher education, tourism, local tax revenues, etc.
The clouds are spreading and thickening, and the dawn sky is tinted an ominous red. This is a financial extinction event, and the Fed's pathetic shamans can’t reverse history.—This Is a Financial Extinction Event, Charles Hugh Smith
18 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
The new MIFI that I ordered from Verizon that was sent to Sierra Vista was forwarded to Springerville and the Park host picked it up yesterday. The first problem that I had was getting it out of the box; I ended up tearing the box open.
There I found the MIFI with instructions that I needed to call an 800-# to activate it. Went to the Park host and asked for their help again with a telephone. Why do companies insist on doing business ONLY using telephones with no other options?
The new and improved MIFI is now up and working, although it looks very much like to old one just some different icons and moved the data around to make it look like there have been some improvements.
The rain came early yesterday but not much, the reporting station recorded none.
There is still at least one CEO that has a backbone. I can only wish that others will follow his example but it is doubtful.
In a mass repudiation of 'cancel culture,' Goya Food products are flying off store shelves after its CEO refused to apologize to the anti-Trump mob for complimenting the president.I quote the beginning of a very good article by James Howard Kunstler
The mob was trying to boycott Goya, a brand of Latin American & Tex Mex food products geared for recipes, but it backfired after Trump supporters – and anyone else who's tired of social media-fueled outrage – started buying up Goya products in support of the CEO who felt that he didn't have any reason to apologize for complimenting a US president.
The Covid-19 virus itself didn’t run the United States into a ditch but it exposed the weakness and rot in the nation’s drive-train, and now all of us passengers on that disabled bus must decide whether to stay helplessly inside the smoldering wreckage arguing over who’s to blame, or begin a long, uncertain march down the road on our own two feet to a place of new arrangements.GINI index (World Bank estimate):
In 1918, the country was lashed by a far deadlier pandemic disease at the same time it was fighting a world war, and daily life barely missed a step. The economy then was emphatically one of production, not the mere consumption of things made elsewhere in the world (exchanged for US IOUs), nor of tanning parlors, nail salons, streaming services, and Pilates studios. The economy was a mix of large, medium, and small enterprises, not just floundering giants, especially in the retail commerce of goods. We lived distributed in towns, cities not-yet-overgrown, and a distinctly rural landscape devoted to rural activities — not the vast demolition derby of entropic suburbia that has no future as a human habitat. Banking was only five percent of the economy, not the bloated matrix of rackets now swollen to more than forty percent of so-called GDP. Government at the federal and state levels was miniscule compared to the suffocating, parasitic leviathan it is now.—A Bigger Picture, James Howard Kunstler
Gini index measures the extent to which the distribution of income (or, in some cases, consumption expenditure) among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. A Lorenz curve plots the cumulative percentages of total income received against the cumulative number of recipients, starting with the poorest individual or household. The Gini index measures the area between the Lorenz curve and a hypothetical line of absolute equality, expressed as a percentage of the maximum area under the line. Thus a Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality.— Source
There has been a lot of 'talk' about inequality in the United States so I thought I would do some comparing. Ukraine has the best index number (most equitable) and has been close to that level since 2007. The trend for Russia is toward more equality, the same for Mexico whereas in the United States the trend is toward greater inequality. The links below show this.
Ukraine 26.1 (2018)
Russia 37.5 (2018)
United States 41.4 (2016)
Mexico 45.4 (2018)
19 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I temporarily hung the second cabinet door to see how the pair of them look. I'm pleased! I think the Kitchen make-over is going to be a sucess. The painted cabinets with a new stove and hood is going to make it look like a totally different place.
"I love it when a plan comes together" — Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith (George Peppard, October 1, 1928 – May 8, 1994)
I'll get started on door number three today. This one is a horizontal door that opens below the two drawers that will be painted next. I also want to paint the two upper cabinet sides that face the bedroom. This is where the crown molding will start and I think I'll put a corner crown block there on each side. Then a plinth block where vertical molding will separate the living room from the bedroom. This is all a maybe at this time.
It is not just President Trump that the media want out of office they want ALL non-Establishment politicians out of office. That does not mean ALL Republicans, Mitt Romney can stay.
…the media is still avoiding any comparison that shows the United States is a positive light compared to other countries during this pandemic. Back in March, I noted how the media was avoiding cases and deaths data per capita because that showed that the United States was doing better than other comparable countries. That data didn't show the United States as number one for deaths or cases. The media wants us to believe the United States is disproportionately losing the battle against COVID-19 compared to other nations because they want the public to blame Trump and vote him out of office.—What the Media Won't Tell You About the United States' Coronavirus Case Fatality Rate, Matt Margolis
Around two years ago, the following dialogue was a smash hit on Chinese Weibo. The Great Helmsman Mao Zedong – or his ghost – was back in town, and he wanted to know about everything that was going' on. Call it a – revisionist? – realpolitik version of the clash of civilizations.
Mao: "Can the people eat their fill?"
Answer: "There’s so much to eat they're dieting."
Mao: "Are there still any capitalists?"
Answer: "They're all doing business overseas now!"
Mao: "Do we produce more steel than England?"
Answer: "Tangshan alone produces more than America."
Mao: "Did we beat social imperialism (as in the former USSR)?"
Answer: "They dissolved it themselves!"
Mao: "Did we smash imperialism?"
Answer: "We're the imperialists now!"
Mao: "And what about my Cultural Revolution?"
Answer: "It's in America now!"—Clash of civilizations, revisited, Pepe Escobar
20 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
Shopping day with breakfast at Booga Red's. There I got what is now my usual; veggie omelet, no cheese, home fries, dry flour tortilla and coffee. An easy gathering of groceries at Safeway which now has a nationwide mandatory mask policy starting tomorrow but I wore my bandana today (virtue signaling).
The high temperature on Sunday was 90.2° with a forecast for today of 83° although it was already 80° per the time and temperature sign in Springerville at 9:00am. The good new is that starting tomorrow the forecast highs for the next 9 days in the forecast are to be in the 70s with thunderstorms everyday.
Picked up the hinges that I had ordered from Ace Hardware and got a roll of painters tape. Wanted some trim screws but they did not have the size I wanted up on the peg board. They had about a half dozen boxes of screws and nails sitting in the aisle awaiting stocking but no one to do it. People out of work, a help wanted sign on the door and the place short of workers. Maybe next month when the unemployment bonuses expire?
Then I went to Woodland with the plan of getting a length of 1x2 and have it routered for my corner trim in the bedroom. I could get the wood but they do not do any routering. It was suggested that I try Finch Cabinets & Countertops in Eagar. Went there, found them closed no hours of operation and looked like they might not be in business. Therefore, the molding and shade project is probably on hold for now until I get back closer to civilization.
This quote is from the Foreword. I have downloaded the book but have only read that. I have a borrowed book from the Cochise County Library that I need to finish before I can read this one or another one that I have downloaded and is in the queue.
In spite of outward semblances of prosperity and freedom, the America we have known and think we still possess lies gasping‐it's constitutional separation of powers blurred; its wealth expended in the vain hope of nourishing a largely hostile world; its military security endangered by invisible civilian planners and irresponsible brokers of disarmament; its union, which was its strength, crumbled into a powder of racial minorities and special interest groups.
Altogether this no longer spells creeping Socialism but onrushing Socialism, of which Communism is merely the final stage. Incredible? Not to those who have kept their eyes open and their senses alert, instead of being anesthetized by slogans or lulled by promises of perpetual affluence.
—Fabian Freeway High Road To Socialism In The U.S.A., by Rose L. Martin with foreword by Loyd Wright
21 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I did get a reply to my second email to a window shades place in Tucson. Their web page seemed to indicate that they had shades for RVs but they said they do not do mobile unit in their email.
I found RV shades online from another company that claims to offer them in Tucson and Sierra Vista but they do not have stores in those locations; they 'serve' those areas from the three stores in the Phoenix area. There is a RV repair/customizing shop in Tucson that I may contact and see if they will help me. There is also a woodworking shop in Tucson that I have hopes will be able to do the routering that I want done.
If I quit looking for help with window coverings and molding routering I might finish the book that I have checked out from the Cochise County Library. While web surfing I also found a book and article treasure house - all free. What is available just in the History category could last me a lifetime.
Congress is debating another 'stimulus'. This will include another Coronvirus® check plus more unemployment bonuses. The only debate is how big each of those will be. The quote is the closing to an article by Michael Snyder which supports the quote I posted yesterday from the Forward by Loyd Wright that was written in 1966. The Fabian Socialist are a patient group that is willing to slowly convert the USA to their belief - that time may have come.
There are a lot of good conservatives out there that felt guilty about taking the first round of stimulus checks because they recognized that the checks represented a giant step toward socialism.
I can definitely understand why people were feeling conflicted, but my advice is to accept whatever checks the government sends to you.
Because at this point what we are facing is a battle for survival. We are entering a truly nightmarish chapter in American history, and our entire system is going to fail. If a little bit of extra money can help you and your family get prepared for what is coming, that is a good thing.
However, it is also appropriate to mourn for what has been lost. At one time, America was a beacon of hope in a world where billions were living under socialist tyranny. But now we are racing toward full-blown socialism at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking, and nearly all of our politicians have completely abandoned our founding principles.—As America’s Economic Suffering Grows, The Calls For More Socialism Grow Louder, Michael Snyder
Having first experienced and then studied the phenomenon for fifteen years, I believe that secular people are attracted to apocalyptic environmentalism because it meets some of the same psychological and spiritual needs as Judeo-Christianity and other religions. Apocalyptic environmentalism gives people a purpose: to save the world from climate change, or some other environmental disaster. It provides people with a story that casts them as heroes, which … we need in order to find meaning in our lives. At the same time, apocalyptic environmentalism does all of this while retaining the illusion among its adherents that they are people of science and reason, not superstition and fantasy.—Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger @ Clarissa's Blog
22 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
We got a little wet yesterday afternoon and only did about half our usual walk. That is something that may happen again over the next six weeks. The forecast through the end of this month is for thunderstorms everyday with August being much the same if last year was the normal pattern.
We got more rain during the night. Probably more than we did yesterday but my local reporting station is not recording rain. Maybe none fell at that station but I think the station does not report rain.
Gold and silver prices have been on a tear this week. That has also given the Hecla stock I own a boost. It is back over $5/share for the first time since October 2017. It has also brought my total portfolio back into the black and the highest it has been since February 2017. A gold and silver lining around all the bad News.
I may get started with painting the cabinet drawer faces today. Or then again maybe not. I have the new self closing hinges to put on the three doors that are painted so maybe do that. Perhaps just start reading all the books that I have downloaded and have on my Kindle Fire.
American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold is the second book in the American Empire alternate history series by Harry Turtledove. It takes place during the period of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression (specifically from 1924 to March 4, 1934). During this era in Turtledove's Southern Victory world, the Confederate States of America, stretching from Sonora to Virginia, is led by Whigs (with the fascist Freedom Party gaining more and more power) while the United States of America (which has been occupying Canada, Newfoundland, the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the Sandwich Islands) is controlled by Socialists.The title is derived from the apocalyptic vision appearing in Yeats' poem The Second Coming: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."—Wikipedia
23 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
Yesterday I tried to hang the doors that I have painted using the new hinges from Ace Hardware and they are not the correct size. Can not use them. I needed to take them back on my usual shopping day, next Sunday, but they are not open then. So I made a special trip to town today.
I had not planned on going to the Post Office but the Park hosts stopped by a little after 7:00 to say goodby. They had to leave because of an emergency. It was after they were gone that I remembered that I had 3 packages coming to their PO box address. Went to the PO and was told that I could get the packages at the window with proper ID.
Then stopped at Ace to exchange the hinges and was told that I needed to come back in the afternoon when the clerk that knows about hinges would be in. I told them I could not do that and just give me a refund. Took a restocking hit for what I consider their error selling me something that would not fit.
But, I then went to Woodland and they wanted to sell me the same hinges. So it looks like I can not get self closing hinges that will replace what is currently on the doors. Will try cleaning the old ones up with some Brasso and see how they look. Then maybe replace the closing latches with magnetic ones.
This remodeling project is not moving along smoothly may be an understatement.
Australia is Washington's basement gimp. We're not a real country, and we don't have a real government. We are functionally nothing more than a US military/intelligence asset, a useful stretch of land in the Indo-Pacific for stationing war machinery and running NSA operations out of. …
And now Australians are being increasingly used as pawns in the US empire's slow-motion third world war against all nations like China which have refused to be absorbed into the imperial blob like we were. US State Department-funded think tanks and our own Murdoch-dominated news media have been used to manufacture consent for our role in these world-threatening escalations, and for the most part our propagandized populace has put up little resistance.—Australia Pours Money Into Insane US War Games Yet Won’t Support Its Own Citizens, Caitlin Johnstone
Internationally, the image of the omnipotent elite tends to prevail. All good events and pleasing happenings are quickly imputed by the opinion-makers to the leaders of their own nation; all bad events and unpleasant experiences are imputed to the enemy abroad. In both cases, the omnipotence of evil rulers or of virtuous leaders is assumed. Within the nation, the use of such rhetoric is rather more complicated: when men speak of the power of their own party or circle, they and their leaders are, of course, impotent; only 'the people' are omnipotent. But, when they speak of the power of their opponent's party or circle, they impute to them omnipotence; 'the people' are now powerlessly taken in.…
Far from being dependent upon the structure of institutions, modern elites may smash one structure and set up another in which they then enact quite different roles. In fact, such destruction and creation of institutional structures, with all their means of power, when events seem to turn out well, is just what is involved in 'great leadership,' or, when they seem to turn out badly, great tyranny.—Chapter 1, The Higher Circles, The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills (1956) with an Afterword by Alan Wolfe (2000)
24 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
Read Will Rogers column 88 years ago: July 24, 1932
One of the items that was ordered from Amazon was to be delivered today. They attempted to deliver it yesterday using SurePost, UPS handing off to USPS, and from the tracking it appears that USPS could not make the delivery to the PO box address that I gave Amazon.
If I remember correctly I had a similar problem last year, that one was returned to Amazon. I had a very unsatisfactory Chat with Amazon. They say wait until 29 July, if I have not received the item by then they will give me a credit.
It rained hard for a short time yesterday around noon. Quit until 2:30 then started again, not very hard but steady. It was raining during our usual walking time but I thought it had stopped by 4:00. So we went out into an occasional sprinkle that turned to rain again within a quarter mile and we got wet before getting back to Desperado.
More rain through the night and raining when we got up this morning. It looked like it would rain all day so we went out in it for a short potty walk. Patches got wet, I stayed mostly dry by using my umbrella. The forecast: Scattered thunderstorms during the morning becoming more widespread this afternoon. High 66F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
I think today will be devoted to getting the old hinges cleaned up. The last time I used any Brasso was probably in the '70s while serving as the Finance Officer for a Civil Air Patrol Cadet Program at Thunderbird Field No. 1 at West Greenway Road & North 59th Avenue in Glendale, Arizona. As a member of the CAP I wore an airforce uniform with some brass and my Army service ribbons and decorations.
I cooked hulled barley and oat groats yesterday. Today I'll have a pot of pinto beans on the stove. That is the first step in making some more succotash.
In realizing the power of property and in acquiring instruments for its protection, the very rich have become involved, and now they are deeply entrenched, in the higher corporate world of the twentieth-century American economy. Not great fortunes, but great corporations are the important units of wealth, to which individuals of property are variously attached. The corporation is the source of wealth, and the basis of the continued power and privilege of wealth. All the men and the families of great wealth are now identified with large corporations in which their property is seated.—Chapter 5, The Very Rich, The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills (1956) with an Afterword by Alan Wolfe (2000)
25 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
There was another fellow here in the Park that the Park Host had added to the PO box and I think has the key. Key or not he is picking up the mail that comes into the PO box and delivering it. He brought me the package yesterday that could not be delivered on Thursday via SurePost. I have three other packages arriving next week which I think will all be to the PO box - will see how it goes.
I got the beans cooked yesterday and started distilling more water. Didn't look back to see but it seems I used the last 5 gallons faster than usual. Be that as it may, I'm distilling 5 more gallons today and tomorrow.
It rained off and on all day yesterday. Not the usual pattern for the monsoon season which is mostly quick thunderstorms and then clear sky once again. What we got was more like what most people understand to be rainy weather.
We also got wet in the afternoon when I tried to do a walk at our usual time. We went a little farther than the morning potty walk but I didn't have an umbrella so got soaked.
The first set of hinges that I subjected to a Brasso treatment look better but they are far from good. Considering the alternatives, new doors and hinges, the rest of them will be cleaned up as well as possible and I'll live with the result.
A couple paragraphs from an article by James Howard Kunstler on the Portland 'peaceful protest' attempt to burn down the Federal courthouse and the mayor's 'teachable moment'.
As for the Antifas, a tiny corner of one's moral sensibility must be reserved to pity their plight. Nobody can say for sure how many are drawn from the student body of nearby Portland State University, a few blocks from Riot Central — a hothouse of Wokesterism — but I bet a lot of them. There, they have been rigorously trained in critical race theory, intersectionality, gender studies, and all the other preparations for a fruitful adulthood in Wokesterdom, and now, alas, the diversity departments all over the land are not hiring! What to do?
The global economy is in a tailspin from corona virus, actually close to auguring clean into ground-zero and their services may not be required… for anything! I'd be demoralized, too, were I twenty years old. To make matters worse, the cafes, craft beer joints, and twee little vegan lunch bars are shut down, along with the music halls and every other arts venue, and who has any money? Their intersectional bodies are roiling with youthful hormones, with an assist from weed and other stimulants. What better way to work off all that energy on a warm summer night than to riot in the streets against a society that has actually prepared them for nothing except protesting the unfairness of life.—Acting Out, James Howard Kunstler
There is maintained in America, and there is being created and maintained every year, a stratum of the corporate rich, many of whose members possess far more money than they can personally spend with any convenience. For many of them, the prices of things are simply irrelevant. They never have to look at the right hand column of a menu; they never have to take orders from anybody, they never have to do really disagreeable things except as a self imposed task; they never have to face alternatives hedged in by considerations of cost. They never have to do anything. They are, according to all appearances, free.…
And what does freedom mean? Whatever else it may mean, freedom means that you have the power to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, and how you want to do it And in American society the power to do what you want, when you want, how you want, requires money. Money provides power and power provides freedom.—Chapter 7, The Corporate Rich, The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills (1956) with an Afterword by Alan Wolfe (2000)
26 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
Into town this morning with the first stop at Safire Restaurant for breakfast. They had a crowd this morning with only one waiter working, he was doing a good job of it. Then went to the laundromat to get clothes washed again. It seems like I just did this? However, last time I had a couple of loads this time only one but it took almost the same amount of time.
Last stop was at Safeway to get groceries. Safeway may have a nationwide mask requirement but it is not being enforced by any mask police here in Springerville. There were about as many unmasked people there this morning as there were last week.
We got more rain yesterday but were able to stay dry while doing our usual walks. The station that I have been using on wunderground.com has not been reporting rainfall. However, the National Weather Service shows that there has been 1-1.5" during this past week. More thunderstorms in the forecast for the next 3 days and then a week of sunny days which will be hotter (mid 80s).
Received my Cordless Drill yesterday when the PO box key holder picked up mail and brought it to me. As one of the customer reviews said "I have found this drill to work well for the low speed, small diameter drilling." That is what I was looking for, hope it works well to drill pilot holes in the crown molding and trim that I hope to install.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the goal of the United States is global domination. This goal is shared by the entire political elite and major portions of the population, though it is nearly never discussed openly or directly. Instead, it is framed in terms of "American Leadership", "New American Century", and of course "American Exceptionalism" which is used to justify any policy that violates international law, treaties, or agreements. Given that every country which has not recognized "American Leadership" is described as a "regime", there is no indication the US elite is interested in anything resembling peaceful coexistence with other sovereign states.
NATO plays a double role in achieving that goal. First, it is a military alliance that projects military power against anyone refusing to accept "American Leadership". Military contributions by European member states are certainly important, not least by giving America the veneer of international legitimacy, but the presence of US bases on the European continent is far more so. US forces stationed in or staged out of European naval, air, and land bases are indispensable to its efforts to control the MENA region and to promote the US policy of driving a wedge between Europe on the one hand and Russia and China on the other. Secondly, a European country's membership in NATO means a sacrifice of a considerable portion of its sovereignty and independence to the United States. This is a wholly asymmetrical relationship, since US bases its forces in European countries and sells its weapons to them, not the other way around. The penetration of a European country thus achieved allows US intelligence service to develop agent networks and to employ the full range of lobbying techniques which have been particularly visible in the US efforts to press F-35 aircraft into the hands of NATO member states.—NATO 2020: A Coalition of the Unwilling, South Front
27 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
We got slightly wet yesterday afternoon. The last 5 minutes of our walk was done in a light rain. It was good that we quit when we did for soon after it rained hard, maybe 0.35", and we would have been thoroughly soaked.
I have some garbanzo on the stove this morning. When they are done I'll put some yellow split peas in the pot to cook then add the garbonzos when the peas are done. This will give me potage for 'linner' during this next week.
We did our morning walk with new shoes. That is I was wearing new shoes. That is not quite right either, the new shoes were my 'vellies'. This was the first time that I wore them with socks, my orthotics and took them for a usual morning walk. Like any new shoes on a longer walk I could feel different muscles working and I'll be sore tomorrow. But the shoes felt good!
The only things planned for today is to finish the non-fiction book that I have been reading. That and Basso another set of hinges and get the second cabinet door hung. Try to stay dry while on our afternoon walk.
If you were to select this book to read and did not want to read it all then I recommend Chapter 13. What the author says in that chapter is even more true today than it was in 1956.
The public and the mass may be most readily distinguished by their dominant modes of communication: in a community of publics, discussion is the ascendant means of communication, and the mass media, if they exist, simply enlarge and animate discussion, linking one primary public with the discussions of another. In a mass society, the dominant type of communication is the formal media, and the publics become mere media markets: all those exposed to the contents of given mass media.
From almost any angle of vision that we might assume, when we look upon the public, we realize that we have moved a considerable distance along the road to the mass society. At the end of that road there is totalitarianism, as in Nazi Germany or in Communist Russia. We are not yet at that end. In the United States today, media markets are not entirely ascendant over primary publics. But surely we can see that many aspects of the publicfife[life] of our times are more the features of a mass society than of a community of publics.—Chapter 13, The Mass Society, The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills (1956) with an Afterword by Alan Wolfe (2000)
28 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
We got damp yesterday afternoon and cut the walk short before getting wet. The forecast is that it will be hotter ( 80°) than yesterday with only a 30% chance of thunderstorms. We might get to do an afternoon walk. This morning the walk was slightly shorter because I was sore, just as I thought I would be. Not the feet but the leg and lower back muscles.
So the only thing, of the three that I had planned, that I did yesterday was to finish the book I had been reading and start another. Maybe get to the Brasso and more hinges today. But it's nearing month end so I have those chores to do. I also want to take my regular walking boots to the Post Office and mail them to be resoled; maybe tomorrow.
The Power Elite is a 1956 book by sociologist C. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggests that the ordinary citizen is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those entities.According to Mills, the eponymous "power elite" are those that occupy the dominant positions, in the dominant institutions (military, economic and political) of a dominant country, and their decisions (or lack of decisions) have enormous consequences, not only for the U.S. population but, "the underlying populations of the world." The institutions which they head, Mills posits, are a triumvirate of groups that have succeeded weaker predecessors: (1) "two or three hundred giant corporations" which have replaced the traditional agrarian and craft economy, (2) a strong federal political order that has inherited power from "a decentralized set of several dozen states" and "now enters into each and every cranny of the social structure," and (3) the military establishment, formerly an object of "distrust fed by state militia," but now an entity with "all the grim and clumsy efficiency of a sprawling bureaucratic domain."—Wikipedia
To call it a 'stimulus bill' is iniquitous. They should call it a 'kowtow bill' meant to please all those people and companies craving for more money assistance. The debate in Congress is about how much to give and who should receive it. The same people and companies will be back for more soon after the elections in November. If you think Zimbabwe and Venezuela had inflation watch this - hold my beer.
As people increasingly get behind on their bills, the cries for more direct government assistance will become deafening, and it appears that Republicans and Democrats in Congress both want to pass yet another stimulus bill.
Of course that will mean borrowing and spending more gigantic piles of money that we do not currently have, but at this point most Americans do not seem to care that we are literally completely destroying our financial future. …
So our currency will continue to be rapidly devalued, our debt levels will continue to explode, and we shall get to see where this relentless march toward socialism takes us.—When It Comes To Economic Suffering, Some Parts Of The U.S. Are Feeling It Far More Than Others, Michael Snyder
"Sen. Cruz believes that government officials' first responsibility is to protect the American people. We've seen violent rioters take to the streets in Minneapolis, New York City, and Seattle – where they've burned businesses and communities to the ground, toppled and defaced statues, and taken the lives of their fellow citizens," added the Cruz spokesperson.
"Officials in these Democrat-run states are not exempt from that important duty, and they need to be held accountable for the destruction that has been allowed to occur."—Ted Cruz To Introduce Legislation Holding City Officials Accountable For Injuries From Rioting, Phillip Nieto And Henry Rodgers
29 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
A few minutes before noon yesterday we got a rain that was like what a monsoon rain should be. It poured down by the bucket full. My reporting station claims that the precipitation rate was 3.37" for just a short time. It then rained off and on until about 2:00 and we were able to do our usual afternoon walk and stayed dry.
I was laying in bed during most of that rain activity. Didn't feel well. Was afraid that I was having another psoriasis flare from the way I felt but have seen no evidence of a flare. By the time for our afternoon walk I felt much better and did the walk at almost the same pace as usual. I did take a couple of ibuprofen which may, or may not, have helped.
There was a large boulder on the edge of a cut on US 60 in the hill on the east side of Round Valley. I would walk past it frequently last year and this year and speculate on how long it was going to stay up there. The speculation is over, the recent rains have finally dislodged it and it now rests on the side of US 60. It was on the road for a short time but ADOT has been quick to get it moved.
What goes around comes around, the closing to this article; "And to Gallant, we only have one thing to say: chill dawg".
Seattle radio host and self proclaimed "Cat Dad" Paul Gallant had taken to Twitter back in June to respond to President Trump's handling of the protesters in Seattle. Responding to a Tweet where the President was critical of the Seattle mayor, Gallant responded "Chill dawg" before saying he saw "no burning, pillaging or deaths" in his city.
Today, Paul has taken to Twitter to sing another tune: "I feel like I need to buy a firearm".
Why the change in attitude? Perhaps it was because rioters in his city trashed and looted the downstairs to his apartment complex. Gallant arrived back at his apartment this weekend to find it vandalized and looted.—"I Need To Buy A Firearm": Radio Host Who Defended "Peaceful" Protesters Has Apartment Destroyed By Rioters
30 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
I did take my boots to the Post Office yesterday to be mailed to Nushoe for new soles. The Post Office refused the package. I didn't pay any attention to the shipping label because I had received the shipping bag with prepaid 'postage' and just assumed it was USPS. The shipping label was for UPS.
Took it to Ace Hardware, which is the UPS drop box, and left it with them. No tracking number. It may have been on the shipping label but I did not have the presence of mind to look. Maybe it arrives at Nushoe and maybe not, if not I guess I'm out the cost of new boots.
Started my month end chores by getting the Will Rogers weekly articles copied and formatted. That is about all I did during the day other than read my latest book on Kindle Fire. I have a lot of other books now on the Fire waiting to be read plus a lot more on various lists of books that I want to read. I'm adding to lists faster than I can read. HA
The Woke people in the United States have gone completely insane. They are so quick to judgement that they can't recognize what it is that offends them. It is a sad day in more places than St Johns, Michigan.
20 July 2020
It is a sad day at The Nordic Pineapple. We have decided to no longer fly The Norwegian flag on the front of the inn. This flag is so often mistaken for the Confederate flag and people are often offended by it before they realize that they are mistaken. I am very proud of my Norwegian heritage and will fly it on special occasions like Norwegian Independence Day and maybe I will find a less conspicuous place to fly it but, for now we feel that it is the best decision to take it down.
I urge people to slow down and see the world through less jaded glasses. When we think of the worst before we have all the facts, we lose sight of all of the good that is out there that we should find. If you got to know us you would see that we are very proud Americans and very patriotic. Greg served this country in the Navy during Desert Storm and was a proud employee for the Department of Homeland Security. We have 2 adopted children who are both black and we have tried to teach them not to judge on first glance or outward appearances. We love being members of the St Johns community and are heartbroken to have had to make this decision. Given the current cultural climate and the idea that people are judging us based on the misconception of the national Norwegian flag vs. the Confederate flag, this is what is best for our family and our Inn.-Kjersten @ Facebook
Now there's not much use writing about politics, for it's just in about the same shape it's been in. If things get better Mr Hoover [Mr Trump] will be elected, and if it don't, why he won't. So that's all there is to politics.
One side is in and wants to stay in, the other side is out and wants in, and there is no difference between 'em, they are both good if things are going good, and both terrible if things are bad, so just throw up a coin and go to the poles.—Will Rogers, 2 Oct 1932
31 July
Springerville RV
Springerville, AZ
Read Will Rogers column 88 years ago: July 31, 1932
Household chores were the thing to do yesterday. Got everything done in the living quarters. Now today I'll clean up the cab area and wash the windows so Patches can have a clean slate to slobber on.
The high temperature was 93.1° yesterday and we were doing our afternoon walk when it happened. The forecasters think today will be cooler with a high of only 88. Then each day for the next week to get slightly cooler until we have highs in the 70s again with more rain.
This is from a good article by The Saker, especially what he has to say about 'what changed'.
The real cause of the West's hatred for Russia is as simple as it is old: Russia cannot be conquered, subdued, subverted or destroyed. They've been at it for close to 1,000 years and they still are at it. In fact, each time they fail to crush Russia, their russophobia increases to even higher levels (phobia both in the sense of "fear" and in the sense of "hatred").This quote is the closing paragraph of an article that is worth reading if you think there is going to be any difference in US/China or US/Russia relations after the election.
Simply put – there is nothing which Russia can expect from the upcoming election. Nothing at all. Still, that does not mean that things are not better than 4 or 8 years ago. Let's look at what changed.—Russia and the next Presidential election in the USA, The Saker
For Trump and Biden to trade barbs about which one is "softer" on China or Russia is irrelevant in the bigger picture of U.S. imperialist ambitions for global dominance. The logic of a waning American empire and the concomitant inherent belligerence to compensate for the perceived loss of U.S. global power are the issues to follow, not whether Trump or Biden clinch the dog-and-pony race to the White House.—Neither Trump Nor Biden Really Matter to China or Russia, Finian CunninghamThis quote was taken from Fabian Freeway-High Road to Socialism in the USA, Rose L. Martin. It is interesting that "Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs" received its name honoring President Wilson in 1948. However, on 27 June 2020 the Princeton Board of Trustees concluded that Wilson's racist views and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for the School. The first Socialist President is dishonored by a second generation of Socialist; I find it ironic but not surprising. Look what happened to Leon Trotsky and many of the other early 'leaders' in the Communist Revolution.
From first to last, The New Freedom* denounced capitalism as being contrary to the interests of the common man. Justice, not charity, was its theme. Somewhat quaintly, it identified the captains of industry of the day with the trustees of Princeton University who seemed to have given Dr. Wilson a hard time during his presidency of that institution. Opening with the bleak assertion (reiterated by Wilson's political successors during half a century of unparalleled industrial growth) that the American economy was stagnant and individual opportunity was dead, it stated:*Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People **ibid, p.30 ***ibid, p. 217We stand in the presence of a revolution—not a bloody revolution, America is not given to spilling of blood—but a silent revolution, whereby America will insist upon recovering in practice those ideals which she has always professed, upon securing a government devoted to the general and not to special interests.**And it concluded with the premature but eerie prediction:…
We are just upon the threshold of a time when the systematic life of this country will be sustained, or at least supplemented, at every point by government activity. And we have now to determine what kind of governmental activity it shall be; whether, in the first place, it shall be direct from the government itself, or whether it shall be indirect, through instrumentalities which have already constituted themselves and which stand ready to supersede the government.***