The National Humanitarian Award

 The new week has arrived!  For those impressed by such things, this will be our first full week of Autumn.  The temps are cool at night, but during the day they're forecasted to climb up into the upper 60s (F).  That's fine.  Soon the leaves will be changing colors as they prep to fall from the trees.  This means, at some point, I'll be posting a picture of my golden ginkgo.  

Lunch was fun with my friend Betsy.  We talked quite a bit about politics, and then more politics, and then a bit about The Body Under Ice, about how gossip, in itself, is almost a character in the new book.

My neighbor's lawn is looking more and more like a field.  They have a problem, I suspect, that being they've decided to sell the house 'as is.'  They have a contract a potential buyer would need to sign excluding them from anything and everything.  I haven't seen it, but my neighbor across the street has, (his mother's a real estate agent), and he pulled out of the deal.  I gather the contract implies there are major problems, meaning even a house flipper is going to wait until their asking price hits rock bottom.

President Biden honored Sir Elton John with an award this weekend.  The National Humanitarian Medal.  Good for Elton.  I will admit that watching this clip did bring a tear to my eye.

Not a lot happened this past weekend in the political arena.  On Friday, the House GOP revealed a veiled commitment to... well, nothing.  E. J. Dionne, as well as many others have called it horseshit (my word).  They listed a Republican laundry list of what they claimed were problems without providing a single clue as to how they were going to solve them.  This really was nothing more than empty bluster.  How do I know?  They did it on a Friday.  Politicians, in particular, prefer to have bad news released on Friday because they know the weekend tends to dilute the issues.  You don't release good news on Fridays, that happens on a Monday when the news cycle has 5 full days to glorify it.  These Republican dumb shits knew this was going to go over as well as a soggy pancake with everyone except their MAGA base.

Finally, because on 64% of all the Italians eligible to vote actually did vote, the country now has a female version of Donald Trump.  From what I know of Italian politics, that's not going to last too long.