The Death of the United States of America

The supreme court of the USA (I refuse to capitalize the name) has just found that the president is immune from prosecution for official acts.  So, if the president proclaims that democrats are to be put in concentration camps, he/she can do so, right?

This cannot stand if our nation is to continue to be a representative democracy.  

 I will serve no king.

Contemporary Grump

The Surprising Philip S. Wenz

 I have been a regular reader of a column in our local newspaper by Philip S. Wenz.  It is titled "Your Ecological House" and has been my favorite byline in the Sunday edition for quite some time.  I was first attracted by outdoor stories that I arrogantly felt I could have written myself.  Although my stories would have come out of the December woods and limestone streams of Pennsylvania and Wenz's came from the western US, his perception of and reverence for the landscapes and creatures he describes feels familiar, thoughtful, and reassuring.  By familiar, I mean more in the circle of family than simply similar to my own experience. Yes, I hunted deer, birds, and small game well into middle age, not purely as sport, but as family pilgrimage and gathering that started with Thanksgiving and all its chaos of kids and dogs and ended with the traditional first week of deer season.  In Pennsylvania when I was in public school, the first day of deer season was a school holiday, ostensibly an extension of the larger holiday but, in fact, acceptance of the fact that many of the kids 12 and over would have been in the woods.

Recently, after reading his Sunday column, I went to Wenz's Blog, firebirdjournal.com, and found myself face to face with a much larger and more engrossing world of Wenz's writings that I could have imagined. 

If you've suffered through my other posts on this pitiful excuse for a Blog, you'll know my inclinations and opinions well enough, but you probably wouldn't know that I carried a Winchester model 94 (.32 Special) into the pre-dawn darkness of central Pennsylvania's hardwood ridges every Monday-after-Thanksgiving for 40 years. I confess that I have never been so cold as on a deer stand just as the increasing light of dawn instantly went from black and white to full color. I also found that my intense alertness of eye and ear combined with inevitable thoughts of being in a spot the deer have never been or would ever be. Sometimes, I was rewarded by a buck coming close and a pounding in my chest so loud I knew the animal must hear it.  Being there always became a therapy to mind and soul I will never be able to explain. Besides, after being that cold, the coming Pennsylvania winter never seemed anywhere near as bad as before deer season.

I digress. Wenz's Blog showed me that he too shared those experiences and came to a perception of the rest of the world that I recognize and respect.  He is both a pragmatist and an advocate for long-term enlightened self-interest. In a recent photo from some online source, I saw a young man proudly wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "I'm Selfish and I'm Proud." We are all selfish and we are all proud, but many of us hope not to be proud of being selfish.

I am proud of feeling a familial connection to this man and his writings.  I will read them selfishly with a hope of becoming a better human being and a better citizen.

Corvallis, Oregon

August, 2020

After a long respite, I'm compelled to post to this essentially invisible blog.

Today I read a comment to a political Facebook discussion in which someone stated that "liberals are not open to new ideas."  I think this was from a conservative perspective, but only because of the echoes of other conservative commentators who assert similar beliefs.

I've decided that the basic construction of similar statements, from ANY political point of view, is fundamentally a lie.

Whether it's from ditto heads or dismayed Bernie supporters, the real statement should be "I'm not going to change my mind no matter what you say or what facts you present."

It reminds me of a story my father used to tell about a mid-afternoon drunk at a tavern barn in the woods of Pennsylvania.  My dad went in to get a six-pack and the gentleman at the bar was holding forth on what would now be called "the disgusting media."  He was holding the local newspaper in this hand (a poor excuse for a newspaper for sure) and complaining about a story.

"These writers," he said, "if they don't want you to know something, they don't put it in there!"

"I'll show 'em," he muttered into his beer.  "I just won't read nothin'!"

Obviously a liberal, so he was.

Too poor to give anonymously?

I can't see how I am required to enter my personal information, including my employer, to make a $50 donation to Bernie Sanders while Rove and the Koch boys and their "donors" are protected from such an intrusion.

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/278031-house-panel-passes-bills-to-protect-taxpayers-and-children

Addison Steele

Retirement, vanity, and a warm up

Some of my colleagues, upon their retirement, have remarked that they were so busy that fitting work into their day would not be possible anymore.  Many of them have a stronger commitment to ongoing professional contributions, community service, active adventure, or any one of a number of avocations than I.  Some of these include smoking meat, photographing flowers, writing for Facebook, writing shockingly good poetry and prose, seeing high school friends, and many other passions.

The fact that I haven't posted to my blog in almost 18 months, in spite of having little trouble imagining finding time to go to work should say something about me.  Note that I said "imagining" time to work.  I imagine for 4 or 5 seconds and then lie down until it goes away. Until recently, I have been working on home improvement projects and very gradually getting them done.  That has been fun.

I suppose I should have expected my 66 year-old body to give me some trouble.  Hell, I have a titanium hip that has been a miracle, but having my right ankle get so sore that walking to the mailbox feels adventurous has been depressing.  I'm a full blown consumer of medical services, all of it excellent, touch wood.  I need to learn, yet again, that I heal more slowly and, ironically, more impatiently.  My glorious free time is slipping away.  Never mind that I haven't been making good use of it anyway.

Today, my sports medicine guy suggested a cortisone shot in my ankle.  I told him I was inclined to  jump at the idea. Blame me for the bad pun, but I don't think he got it.

I'm instructed to rest the ankle for 4 to 5 days.  It's a tough job, but my beloved spouse is up for it.

Anyway, I think that I should take the hint and pay attention to the lazy part of my narcissism and write some for this blog.  The only view I've had in the past 3 months was from the Ukraine and they may be ready for more.

More of what, you may ask?   Well, it won't be about politics.......for the moment.  If I succumb to that urge, crack cocaine could be next.

Addison Steele

The news this evening reported that 51% of Americans believe that the interrogation techniques described in the recent Senate special report were justified and 45% thought that torture should be used again.

Are  you troubled by those numbers? I am.

Profiting from misery

I've commented in this blog before about the non-economic consequences of the big lie of class warfare.  As we "recover" from the financial collapse generated by new speculative products that appear to me to be a wager on a wager on a wager, the fundamental disparity in the control of wealth in this country is accelerating.  In fact, some of the current congressional/shutdown/debt lunacy seems to be driven by a desire to precipitate a new collapse from which to profit.

A recent New York Times story about the housing market is a great example.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/boom-bust-flip.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&smid=tw-nytimes

What the article doesn't say is that "boom-bust-flip" can also be seen as a massive extraction of capital from the bottom third of households to benefit the top even more.  This is the real class warfare. 

Now we hear the assertion that the Affordable Care Act................okay, screw it!...........Obamacare, is the worst thing in the history of the country.  What can you say to that?   "What else are these voices telling you to do?" 

Also in the cross hairs is any constraint to the power of individual money in politics. 

What I hear is a threat of violence.... political, economic, and physical violence.   Historically, the consequences of equating wealth with merit, enabling economically purchased political power, have been bloody, destructive, and persistent.

Addison Steele