Guard This

 According to the weather app we are experiencing light rain.  Nope.  Not happening around my house.  The skies are for the most part clear and we have bountiful sun.  Yesterday, our temps did get up into the low 90s (F), though I'm sure the "real feel" was in the low 100s (F) because you wrap the humidity around you like a soggy duvet.  The threat of thunderstorms is high for both today and tomorrow.  We could use the rain; my lawn has gone brown.

Yesterday was a fairly decent day.  Several loads of laundry were done.  In the afternoon I completed an 11 mile ride in Bavaria.  Words were written and re-written.  I'd started a chapter called The Sounds of Silence (an old Simon and Garfunkel song but with a different relevancy here), however, looking at it again realized it was crap and rewrote it.

I also went to BJs and picked up my membership card.  Of course, they wanted me to not only upgrade but get a second card for a member of my family.  I amusingly told the kid that Howie was not going to be shopping at BJs.  He didn't find it amusing.  I also told him I didn't need to open a BJs credit card, remember, retail wants you to drown in credit.  Then, with my new card in my wallet, I wandered through the store.  Generally, prices were about the same as I paid at my local Giant supermarket.  Fresh produce was more expensive.  I bought 96 ounces of Pompeiian olive oil because it had a nice discount.  And then... I strolled through their wine and beer section.  Holy Crap!  One bottle of the Josh Cellars wine I prefer was a full $6.00 cheaper than what I normally pay.  Three bottles will pay cover the $15 I paid for the membership, and a measly 10 bottles will pay for the yearly subscription, and I do believe I drink more than 10 bottles of wine in a year.

And the National Guard arrived in Washington, DC.  Some of them stood around with tourists to get their pictures took.

While I'm sure Fox Entertainment will dredge up old videos of the Watts Riots to show Orangie's cultists how badly these troops are needed, everyone else in the world is seeing images like this.  Now I'm not saying there isn't crime in DC, it just isn't on the Mall, or around the national monuments.  All these imbecilic photo op moments do is prove how totally unnecessary this deployment is.  

And this E.J. Antoni who Orangie put in charge of Labor and Statistics is going to shut that bureau down, or at least stop releasing reports that show how badly the economy is failing.  He's a conservative, a Heritage Foundation guy, and we all know how much they lie through their teeth.  Having the largest economy in the world, everyone relies on the trustworthiness of our numbers.  When that fails, they will look elsewhere.  I find it interesting that in their own need for greed billionaires may actually be turning themselves into sacrificial lambs.  More power to them.

  

Presence

 Our Central PA temps are predicted to climb up into the mid to upper 40s (F) today.  The snow showers that were forecast for Friday are now rain showers.  Does this mean our warm-up has begun?  I don't see any reason why we shouldn't believe so.  I'm fine with that.

Since I do drink the occasional glass of wine, people have asked me if there was a specific wine I prefer and I always tell them red, though the occasional dry white is fine.  The vintner I prefer is Josh Cellars, so much so, I've set myself up as a member with a drop shipment happening every 2 months.  Yesterday I received my first shipment.  When I opened the door, the UPS driver looked down and, upon seeing Howie said, "Oh, you have a different dog."  The same driver had delivered a box of wine a year ago.  At that time he'd tried to give Lily a biscuit and she refused.  Isn't that an interesting point to remember?

I saw a really good movie last night.  "Presence," directed by Steven Soderbergh.  It's not really a ghost story, and yet it is.  A family moves into a house only to discover there is a presence already there.  Since this is a Soderbergh film, the family is dysfunctional, with the mother doting on her son, and the father doting on his daughter, and of course, there is the Presence... just who is that?

And, as we all should have been expecting, yesterday was another day of Chaos with the Orange Anus playing host.  Surprisingly, not everybody knows this, but around 3 PM every Medicaid portal in every state shut down.  This meant that no claims could be filed, and probably more important, no claims could be paid.  Health providers were angry as wasps who nest has been attacked.  Two hours later the portals were turned back on.  Orangey's administration says the outage was accidental.  Me?  I think they floated a trial balloon to get a reaction.  They learned that if they do something so stupid again, they're going to be faced with open hostility.  Curiously, at about the same time, Mike Johnson, the Idiotic Speaker of the House said Republicans would be willing to work with Democrats on the debt ceiling.  Coincidence?  Orangey is learning that if Congress won't put up guardrails, the American people will.

That brings me to Inflection Points.  When historians look at the world, they see certain points that change the direction of society.  Often they lead to wars.  One thing is always true, there is no going back to what was before.  The last major Inflection Point was the French Revolution in which the ruling class, the oligarchs, so to speak, were on the losing side.  In fact, authoritarianism has always lost.  I suspect that these Inflection Points happen mostly because Authoritarians never, ever learn from their past mistakes.