A Long Way From Done

I started the current quilt project just about a year ago right after Christmas. It was originally a BOM but I bought it online as a complete pattern set. While I started right away, there were multiple detours along the way that included several smaller quilts and several long trips. So even though the top is supposedly only a 12 month project, I am far from done though the tunnel is becoming illuminated.

This is just the center section. I have one border done but three more to do and they are all at least six week projects. Then of course the whole quilt will need to be layered and quilted but this still looks like progress to me.

 I changed some of the blocks to ones I liked better and I changed the order in which the blocks and rows are arranged as well. That's what quilting is after all--each person's individual take on what is supposed to be creative anyway.

Now as long as nobody else has a baby for whom my husband thinks I must make a quilt I should be able to work without further interruptions except of course for looking for a new home, moving out, moving in, and moving on.

Very Funny

My state's senior senator was named Utahn of the Year by our local, non-church owned, newspaper. I describe it as non-church owned because the current owners of the Salt Lake Tribune are seriously Mormon businessmen, the Huntsman family. So even if it isn't a church vehicle, as the other local paper is, there is no doubt that since the Huntsman family took over, the editorial stance and the letters to the editor changed dramatically.

In any case, Orrin Hatch was named Utahn of the Year in a very odd encomium cum disparaging pair of pieces. Hatch was praised for his cheerleading for the new tax reform but castigated for not only his other votes but castigated in such a way that accused him of venality and sycophancy, a curious double smack after a French kiss that flummoxed many people.

This is why I and my husband are leaving Utah. There is a moral vacuum here. I ran into a fellow whom I had taught how to swim, he had been bishop of his local ward and he and his wife both voted for Trump. When my husband and I told him that we were planning to leave Utah, he asked why and I told him that with Trump as president I could no longer put up with the obeisance to authority, and the patriarchal structure, especially after most of my 26 years here I have been scorned as everything from a "liberal" to a socialist but especially targeted as a non-believer.  I cannot even count all the times I was told that I would be better off moving by those "so nice" people. Well, all those good Christian people, including the man I had taught to swim, don't like Trump but they would vote for him again.

I don't pretend to be Christian but I certainly understand Christianity and faith. Besides my own upbringing, I studied early Christianity in college. So I don't even begin to understand how these people, who profess to be good Christians, can support Trump and his brigade. Utah is a peculiar place and these are peculiar people. We have lived here for nearly 27 years and enough is enough.

Merry Christmas

Woke up to snowplows so we have a white Christmas this year. Good thing I don't have to go anywhere today given that the baking and other cooking begins now that I have had my coffee.

Merry Christmas everyone.

You Can Always Say You Heard It Here First

Congress says it has the votes to pass tax reform. Luckily none of those votes will come from Democrats because disaster will ensue. There are obvious financial problems with the current bill that are baked into the plan. When the bill comes due, no one can point at Democrats for the problem, but no one can look to Democrats for the solution if their hands are tied.

In the meantime, Trump's judicial nominees are having a tough week. Two have withdrawn their names from consideration, and one (Matthew Spencer Peterson) has a video circulating that should go viral as long as his name is still being considered. The fact that he is on the election review board already should point out the insanity and inanity of Trump's picks and his decisions.

As for quilts, I did finish one of the baby quilts and gave it to the happy grandfather who then gave it to his son and his young wife. They said they were thrilled and have it where their daughter can look at it (I did warn them that quilts are not suited to infants). The second one, the one for my husband's niece,  is layered and I started quilting but then essays began arriving and my son asked if I could make a yukata for a friend of his for Christmas. Why I said yes to that request is beyond me but it is only one day of work. 

What's The Hurry?

Congress announced today that the House and the Senate had reached key compromises on the tax reform bill. Don't expect the average citizen to benefit from the compromises though. One lowers the highest personal tax rate to 37% but all that means is that rich people will pay a little less if they ever really paid anything at all. That's what tax lawyers and tax accountants are for after all. The compromises also included abolition of the Alternate Minimum Tax for corporations, a tax that was instituted in a vain attempt to get at least some money from corporations who also use tax accountants and tax lawyers. Keep in mind that any time  high rollers and corporations avoid paying tax the slack has to be picked up by the middle class or by reducing or eliminating benefits that ordinary folks receive, like the Medicaid that your aging parents rely on for nursing home care.

So I am happy that Doug Jones won in Alabama but there isn't really very good news about the state of the country today. They hope to vote before the end of the year so they can start harming you and yours as soon as 1/1/18. Happy new year.

You Don't Have To Believe Me

While the talking still goes on in DC, many people are investigating the various proposals for tax reform. Even Republican tax analysts think it is a disaster. Here is a link to a long article from Wharton that describes in excruciating detail just what you can expect if anything even remotely resembling what is proposed is signed into law. And don't forget, Paul Ryan has made it very clear that the tax "reform" is only step one of his plan to dismantle Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The brains in DC have already killed CHIP; next they are coming after you but they insist it's for your own good. Sort of Nitzschean in that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-rising-deficits-huge-loopholes-and-paltry-family-gains-plague-tax-reform/

Foregone Conclusion

While the tax reform measures are still taking shape, there are some parts of them that are not only clear but predictable. Unless you legally designate yourself as a pass-through corporation, you probably won't see much benefit after the first two years. There will be a disparate impact on the 95% even down to the next few generations. But that is clearly part of the overall plan since Paul Ryan announced yesterday that major entitlement reform is coming in 2018. When he uses the word "entitlement" it is a slur, disparaging those who receive any benefits. So despite repeated promises not to change Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security that is precisely what Ryan intends.

Part of the overall plan is to increase the deficit to the point where real damage occurs to the economy so that entitlement reform starts to look like an act of grace rather than an act of vandalism. Then it won't matter one whit whether a Republican or a Democrat is president, whether Congress is largely Republican or Democrat, because there won't be any options or wiggle room. See--it's all you older folks and disabled folks and sick people who are such a drag on the economy.

Does Soylent Green come to mind?

Method In His Madness

Trump has been more disturbing than usual in the last couple of days claiming that the Access Hollywood tape was a conspiracy, deriding Elizabeth Warren as Pocahontas while supposedly honoring a few of the remaining Navajo codetalkers, and finally retweeting some very incendiary and inaccurate videos from a very far right British group that target refugee Muslims as marauding enemies. Despite the complete nuttiness of all of this, Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the parade of idiocy as true and a demonstration of Trump's love and respect for the country, saying that it was important that the nation see all the dangers.

Now, once again, many are claiming that Trump suffers from a debilitating mental condition or abnormal psychosis. That is immaterial at this point. Keep focused on the monstrosity of a tax bill, keep focused on the unqualified judicial nominees, don't let those shiny objects stop you from contacting your representatives to ask for more clarity and openness in the entire process.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

We Can All Be Like Kansas

Kansas governor Brownback instituted draconian tax cuts by promising voters that all the tax cuts would lead to unprecedented growth and companies would be swarming into the state to take advantage of the lower corporate tax rates. Of course the reality was practically the other side of the coin. But now we can all be like Kansas if the Republicans in Congress and Senate vote for any form of the proposed new rules for federal taxes.

CNN reports, "The rush to pass anything may cause Republicans to discount the long-term political implications of a bill that independent surveys show does far more to enrich the already wealthy than to lift the working and middle classes."  Of course the already wealthy probably pay your wages or your salary so you will tug your forelock like the good serf you are and say thank you, especially if you vote Republican. Thank you for saving us from that evil socialism, thank you for building better bombs so that Trump can blow up Kim Jong Un, thank you for allowing drilling in the pristine waters in Alaska and the grandeur of the Grand Canyon, thank you for making our rivers toxic again because I always wanted to see the Cuyahoga burn and I missed it the first time, please sir, can I have more?

Travesty

After the financial meltdown in 2007-2008, many people were rightly concerned that their money was not being managed appropriately. Long before the actual disaster, Congress was warned by Brooksley Born of the CFTC that risks of disaster were mounting. But Congress paid no attention because they were betting both sides of the debacle. So multiple disasters ensued (and despite what anyone told you, this was not because the federal government wanted banks to issue risky loans. the banks made their own decisions to do so and they continue to do so as some of you know). I hate to admit that I paid attention when so many people didn't, but that's just what happened and I sold my big money pit house and bought a smaller one and made a pile of money to boot.

But what about other people who either had no clue or trusted those creepy financial advisors? Congress and the federal system had no control over their behavior. There were no promises of good behavior or even honesty. We had regressed to the old traveling medicine man days where the advisor was here today with a handshake and gone tomorrow with your money. It wasn't just the common many who was afflicted--there were some long standing firms who went belly up because they chased that ephemeral gold too. All those smart young people with computers and greedy ideas transformed our financial world.

Luckily there were some people who were still paying attention including Elizabeth Warren. She fought for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be established and she helped write the rules and regulations governing its maintenance, advising Barney Frank and Christoper Dodd prior to being elected to the Senate. One of the rules everyone wanted established was independence for the agency so no political or personal bias could sway its governance.

Guess what? Richard Cordray got fed up with the current administration and quit, but he knew that the rules of the bureau allowed him to elevate the deputy underneath him. Trump, in another of his grandiose gestures, said that Mick Mulvaney, the angry leprechaun who worships Ayn Rand, should lead the bureau.This is the same Mick Mulvaney who said multiple times that the bureau was one of the worst examples of federal overreach that he had ever witnessed.

So as the Marx brothers asked, "Who are you going to believe--me or you lying eyes?" Watch out folks--the dam is about to break.

Monstrosity

The House passed their tax reform bill and the Senate is still working but what we do know now is that not only will most  people's taxes go up (if not in the first year, certainly in the third year) but the deficit will balloon badly. An estimated $1.5 billion added to the deficit to benefit people who are already wealthy. And let's face it, the whole notion of trickle down benefits was a chimera dreamed up by David Stockman who knew it was nonsense and wouldn't work. If it worked we would all be seeing benefits already since the wealthy have done very, very well in the last few years but we know they haven't started new businesses, hired new workers, or given raises to their current workers. Even small businesses will see a dramatic increase in taxes because they aren't "C" businesses. So unless you are a large corporation or already in the top 5% of earners you not only won't get any relief from the bill, you will lose services and pay more. You will lose deductions and pay more. You will get hosed and still pay more.

Although it isn't a done deal, the Republicans are twisting all sorts of ways to make sure that they can vote on this monstrosity without needing any help from across the aisle, even changing the rules to enable that voting.

Correction: The CBO did its official rating of the tax bill and the addition to the deficit in ten years will be $1.47 trillion. I may not live another ten years but it's a decent bet that my children, your children, and their children will. All to give rich folks more in their banks and pocketbooks.

Outrage

Anyone who has been paying any attention to the news knows that Roy Moore has been accused of multiple counts of stalking and padiddling young women. Not one of the women has accused Moore of rape, but all accounts are creepy and disgusting. The local mall was apparently warned to watch Moore (this comes from multiple accounts) if he ever came in to the mall because he disturbed the young female sales people. Even his own account of noticing his wife when she was only 15 and remembering her name is creepy. It was not surprising that folks in Alabama said, "So what?" By all accounts this behavior was at least 40 years ago, perhaps longer and as I was a young woman in south Texas at the same time I can attest to the behavior being common.

My parents' friends would make passes, make comments, in some cases touch and fondle. I was a very sexy child. I don't mean that I enticed men, but that I had breasts and slim hips, muscular arms from swimming--all the youthful attributes that at 13--16 were clearly enticing to men. One man told me when I was thirteen that I was a classic femme fetale and I had no idea what he was talking about. No one told me what to do when this happened. Even my educated parents were hesitant to talk about sex and if I had told them that one of their friends had acted inappropriately I don't even know what would have transpired. I learned to hide in my room and lock the door.

So Roy Moore's behavior doesn't surprise me even if I still find it disgusting. What does surprise me, what does outrage me is that today Trump said that Alabama voters needed to vote for Moore because he didn't want a liberal in the Senate. Come on you Trumpettes, Trump wants you to excuse Roy Moore's disgusting behavior simply to put a Republican in the seat.

This time you don't get to say, "But Clinton". This is happening now. No Clintons are involved.

What Do You Know About Pittsburgh?

So my husband and I had decided to look at Scotland and Northern Ireland as retreat, retirement possibilities but then we found out that the UK had done away with its visa that would have allowed us to live there. Clearly we had to seek another option. We talked about what we wanted in a new place to live. Our lists included good medical care, good universities nearby, four seasons, mixed ethnicities,  and good libraries as well as a city big enough to have restaurants and museums. Pittsburgh fit all the bills so we are going to see what we can see to get the feel of the place. I lived  near Pittsburgh 60 years ago, applied and was accepted at what was Chatham College but is now Chatham University (though I attended a different college in Pennsylvania), and I still cheer for the Pirates and the Steelers, but that is our only experience in the western side of Pennsylvania.

Anyone out there who can give a positive or negative report is free to respond to this post. I have been tired of Utah practically from the moment I moved here 26 years ago but my husband has finally joined my side given the moral hypocrisy of those who profess goodness but still support Trump and his minions.

Turkey For Thanksgiving

The House passed its version of tax reform yesterday with numerous poison pills and hidden prizes. The Senate is still working but hopes to have their vote before next Thursday. No matter what political stance you hold, this should bother you. There won't be time for even the senators to read the whole bill before they vote let alone for the populace at large. And don't even start with the what about the ACA nonsense. That was discussed and amended for months before the vote even if Pelosi's remarks seemed to indicate the opposite. So this very large turkey will arrive in time for you to give thanks.

The current proposals on both sides of the Capitol make tax cuts for businesses permanent but tax cuts for individuals temporary. They also give with one hand while taking away with the other. You may get a higher deduction for children but you will lose a host of other deductions so in the end you will probably pay more money. If you live in one of the blue states with very high state and local taxes you will suffer because there is at least a chance that the deductibility of those taxes will disappear. And once again, don't give me the nonsense that the elected men have been spouting that states without high taxes have been subsidizing residents of those blue states. In every single case the states with lower taxes take more in benefits from the federal government than they pay in to the federal government so it's pretty obvious who is subsidizing whom.

Addendum: Someone I know just told me that the tax bill has a particularly nasty poison pill. If you are fortunate enough to receive a tuition waiver for post-grad education, that amount is considered taxable income.  So the poor student, literally a poor student, who has a $50K tuition waiver in exchange for working for his department for very little money, has to pay tax on that $50K even though his real income is probably under $30K. That increases the tax liability by about 400% while Trump will get millions of dollars under various changes in tax assessment from the changes to pass through companies to the changes in the Alternate Minimum Tax. Go ahead and listen to your moronic Republic leaders telling you that this tax bill is for the middle class. They already know they can sell you a mess of pottage. In fact they count on it.

Sidetracked By Babies

I am getting so old that I pretty much resent people having babies for whom I am expected to produce quilts. I know that sounds like I am a curmudgeon and that is true, but I am so focused on finishing the Baltimore Album quilt in my lifetime, that these two new quilts are unwelcome intrusions. But I have the first one pieced and layered so there is progress on that front. I have the second for the new baby in Hawaii designed in my head and the colors picked.

Progress on Trump's insistence on tax reform is more erratic than my poor attempts to satisfy my own plans. Paul Ryan's plans for tax reform have been lying dormant for years, waiting until Republicans had control of Congress and the White House. But make no mistake, those plans change the United States. You can decide for yourself whether those changes are good or bad, but Ryan, a recipient of the benefits of the Social Security system after his father's death, wants to remove those same benefits from you and your children. He is a diehard advocate of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, a Russian emigre who ended up living on the largesse of her adopted country.

The poison pill added to the Senate bill today added the insurance mandate of the ACA to the tax bill. They did this for many reasons including the pressure from the White House and the obligation to reduce the money added to the debt so that they could pass this excrescence without any votes from Democrats. I have written many times about how insurance and insurance markets work, but without the individual mandate, if that is the only deletion from the ACA, the cost to those who have pre-existing conditions and depend on the promises of the ACA for medical care will skyrocket.

That's entirely separate from all of the other ridiculous nonsense that is in the bill. Do taxes in the US need change--there is no question of that. Do we want politicians who have their own axes to grind to write this proposal--hell no.

What Surprises You?

All of the continuing revelations about sexual abuses by men, including the current Washington Post expose of Roy Moore's interest in very young women, should not surprise any woman. Moore now complains that he doesn't even remember the 14 year old but he definitely confirmed that he knew the other three women and had interactions with them that were outside of any business purview. I have one husband and three sons and five male pets but I do not yet understand men. I must admit that I don't necessarily understand women either but at this point I recommend that all mothers give their daughters instruction in martial arts.

I admit to surprise that Rand Paul suffered multiple rib fractures including a few displaced fractures after being tackled by his neighbor. The surprise is that both men are what could be described at best as slight and Paul, from all accounts, had his back to his neighbor and was simply tackled. I just suffered a rib fracture myself, my second broken bone in my life, but that was from a fall at speed against a rigid object. My husband had multiple rib fractures and a hemo-pneumo thorax but he hit a road going downhill on a bike.

What astonishes me is that all of these are confirmed instances but they are doubted by most people. Alabama voters say they will still vote for Moore regardless of his past behavior. As a Southern Baptist, he is supposed to abstain from alcohol but he admits that he gave one of the young women alcohol.

You Are Not Famous

Today a man walked into a church near San Antonio and shot and killed at least 26 people. There have been a rash of shootings across the US, randomly, with no purpose. All have the one connection that they are reported across the country, as they should be. But the connection also points to people hoping to be famous, even posthumously, for havoc they cause. That's what we get for our addiction to selfies and Facebook and even this stupid blog.

Go out and meet people--talk to your neighbors--invite someone to your house.

Starting To Put Blocks Together

Since we came back from Scotland, I have finished the last of the sixteen blocks in the body of the quilt and decided with my husband's help and advice what order to place them in. The last couple of days I have been making and attaching sashing and today I began putting the blocks together.

Soon I will have all sixteen together but in the meantime it is sew and press, sew and press, sweep and vacuum, repeat. Looks pretty good so far though.

Moronic And Dangerous

After yesterday's tragic terror attack in NYC, Trump says that the American justice system makes us the laughingstock among nations. He reiterated a previous complaint about our compliance with the Geneva Conventions on incarceration and torture, saying that he wanted to send the truck driver to Guantanamo. He also incorrectly blamed Obama for the mere presence of this Uzbecki man in the United States because his entry happened in 2010, but the visa lottery system was set up under George H. W. Bush and had nothing to do with Obama.

After reading about Trump's appalling opinions about our justice system I can only suppose that Trump would like to have public hangings, torture, and guillotines be the new norm. Now all the people around here who say they own guns to protect them from the American government even make a little sense. With Trump, anything seems possible if not likely. 

The End Of The Beginning

The strangest part of Manafort and Gates being indicted is that the charges could have been filed at any time in the past three years from the little that has been reported so far. Manafort was already under investigation when he took on the job as Trump's campaign manager. The more interesting indictment is of Gates who worked for the administration even after the inauguration. My husband jokes that the "crimes against the United States" is obvious since both men worked for Trump.

Another Trump Debacle

Congress and Trump are preparing to change the tax structure of the United States. While no one disagrees with the idea of improving our system of taxation, there are serious disagreements with what the changes should entail. As currently proposed, people like Trump will benefit the most, not only saving serious money every year, but doing so by taking money from folks who earn less than they do. CNN reports that "the GOP Senate budget calls for "$473 billion in cuts from Medicare over 10 years." That would be a painful blow to over 55 million Americans."

There are many other cuts to other programs that the administration and Congress really don't want ordinary Americans to know about. The only good news about the proposals being looked at is that the Trump administration has not been effective in getting their wishes done yet in nearly a year of attempts. But that is a double edged sword as it makes it even more important that they do something, anything.

Once again I urge everyone to pay attention and complain vociferously if the tax proposals are a problem for you and yours. Since most of us don't have the kind of money that will get massive benefits, that probably means most of you.

Curious

The newest AQS magazine arrived while I was out of the country. I was quite surprised when I opened it up to see what looked to me like a cardinal pattern that Jodi Warner drew a couple of decades ago on page 68. The article isn't very clear on just who claims to have drawn this bird but the pattern on page 72 shows a copyright for Keri Duke,  "...only quilt and applique patternmaker for Charley Harper...designs." I got the original pattern as a freebie at a quilt contest back in the early 90's from Jodi Warner herself. It was part of a Christmas stocking pattern back then.

While the pattern is still very cute, as it was twenty years ago, I find it curious that AQS even has a note on the pattern to respect copyright laws though this pattern is practically a duplicate rather than  something new and different. All of us need to credit the original artist, and copyright protection lasts a very long time, even after the death of the artist.

Vacation Over

My husband and I just returned from a trip to the UK. We visited Burford, England in the Cotswolds and then drove north to Scotland. There is a very nice quilting store in Edinburgh called Edinburgh Patchwork. It has a good selection of fabric including fabric that isn't available in the United States. It also has very nice owners who welcome visitors as if they were neighbors. If you go on Wednesdays you can bring some work to sew on and chat with the ladies who also come on Wednesdays.

We got caught in the side swipe of Scotland by the hurricane, tropical storm that ran over Ireland on its way northeast. Very high winds made walking hazardous and on our drive back down to Heathrow we saw several large trucks overturn. Ironic that we had to go to Scotland to run into a hurricane. On a similar weather note, both of us were completely astonished at the skies of northern England and Scotland. Montana is called Big Sky country but I have never seen bigger skies than in the UK. They show that John Constable was not using artistic license when he painted his landscapes.

Other than the hurricane the weather was unusually dry so we got to spend some time hiking in the woods and climbing to the top of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. We also went to a beach in Scotland to see the Irish Sea. My husband never did get to try mushy peas but we both tried and liked haggis.

Me Too

I have written before about a couple of incidents that would qualify as sexual assault or sexual harassment in my life. One was by a well respected doctor who forced me to feel his genitalia by pressing his equipment against my hand on the plinth.

But the incidents in my life add up to way more than two. What that tells me is that it doesn't matter a damn if the woman is good looking or young or old or anything. All that matters is that we are female. I was nearly kidnapped at 9 by two men who tried to pull me in to their car. I pulled free and then ran like crazy to get home by the back ways that didn't include roads. I was young when I developed breasts, and I haven't grown any taller since I was 11 so I stood out from most girls my age even though I had not a clue what sex was or much about anything including men's proclivities. In junior high and high school I was subject to not only classmates making comments or playing stupid games like trying to throw wads of paper down my cleavage (and I guarantee I didn't dress like a slut), but teachers would deliberately brush against my breasts. Once I fell out of my chair because the teacher was so aggressively leaning over me. When women have larger breasts (even at 12 I wore a 34C though I was thin and muscular), men go crazy. I was raped at 17 but the guy told me it was my own fault and at that point I probably agreed with him since my self esteem was shattered.

Later on a trip across country when I was 20, I stopped at a motel in Tennessee. When I went into my room, I noticed a sign on the door saying, "Turn this lock if you want to lock out all keys including your own." I thought that was a little weird but since I was traveling alone and had already experienced a variety of bad behaviors, I turned the little knob. At 2 am, someone tried to open my door with a key. I never saw who was there but banging and yelling soon ensued. I thought at one point that the door itself would break but after one final slam and the loud imprecation, "F'N bitch!", my assault stopped. I waited a little while trembling and looking at the windows. Then I packed my suitcase and quickly went to my car and drove away. I didn't call the front desk because the only way the perpetrator could  have gotten my key was from the front desk.

I am by no means a movie star though when I was younger I was built like one. But sexual assault isn't about looks, it's about power. It's about the anger of the person who is assaulting you, not about you.

Big Brother

The DOJ is seeking information about Facebook users who "liked" or put up Disruptj20 pages on Facebook. Now I am not on Facebook having no interest at all in that kind of "social" interaction so please excuse me if some of my phrasing is incorrect for that medium. But the DOJ attorney, directed by the White House, is trying to find out who you are and where you are by ordering Facebook to divulge information. The attorney even argued that "liking" a certain page indicated that you are an enemy of the state, and therefore suspect.

Apparently even liking a page that advised people how to dress in Black Bloc could lead you into a confrontation with the DOJ:

Borchert insisted that liking a particular post — like one showing how to dress in so-called "Black Bloc" attire—could be important to one or more of the roughly 230 felony riot cases the government is pursuing.
"Depending on the post, it could be very probative of criminal intent," the prosecutor said.

The judge has yet to make a determination but even the effort to find you is disturbing. We do still have that pesky thing called a Constitution with its pesky Bill of Rights. Not that Trump understands anything about history or law. Every day he demonstrates his paucity of understanding, but that does not make him laughable, that makes him dangerous.

Spiteful

Piece by piece Trump is dismantling the achievements of the previous administration whether they are in environmental protections, non-discrimination achievements, or international agreements. Yesterday Trump announced that he was dissatisfied with the Iran accords, an international agreement, and directed that Congress see about reshaping the agreement to fit Trump's demands. One cannot say to fit Trump's vision because he doesn't have one. While this agreement may not please the very hard-liners like John Bolton who helped Trump draft the language of his announcement, it does go a long way toward slowing down or deterring the acquisition of nuclear weaponry.

There are several problems associated with Trump's announcement. It will remain an international agreement even without any participation on the part of the United States so if we leave that won't change other than making us have to renegotiate with multiple parties rather than just one. It destroys any credibility that the US has in proposing other agreements. Why should North Korea even listen (if they decided to negotiate which is still not clear) if the US is an unreliable negotiating party? Up to now NK has been the unreliable partner in any agreements made but now we will be seen as such. And every single one of Trump's official diplomatic and military advisors told him not to take this route as chaos would ensue, except Nikki Haley whose only previous governing experience was as the governor of a southern state, not in any substantive investigative or international planning capacity.

So what we have is Trump showing once again that the only vision he has for the US and the world is to remove any hint of Obama's vision of the US and the world. In my home state this means far more pollution and degradation of the environment (we already have some of the worst air pollution in the country but Obama's EPA was trying to change that), far fewer people having access to medical care (Salt Lake City only has two medical insurance providers but now they have more freedom to gouge and deny), and far fewer  protections for my own gender (women are at a disadvantage in Utah anyway but now the GOMB lose any constraints). Those are only a few of the immediate impacts Utah is already experiencing. What the future holds is anyone's guess.

Trump's MAGA simply means that he never had a vision at all; he simply wanted to destroy Obama's. The very worst mistake Obama ever made was to make fun of Trump at the WH correspondents dinner.

Fasten Your Seatbelts, Turbulence Ahead

I want to start by writing that no one in my immediate family gets the federal subsidies to purchase health insurance. What we do get is access to insurance and access to care. I have asthma, I have a son who has asthma, I have a son who has familial hypertension who has been on blood pressure meds since he was very young, my husband had AF which was handled through both meds and then ablation, and all of us have had surgeries for one thing or another, usually something stupid caused by another person, like me getting t-boned by a teenaged driver.

So without the ACA only my husband and I would still have access to insurance because we are old farts with Medicare. When you turn 65 you have to sign up and indeed many of our primary care doctors who were our primary care doctors before we aged up would not see us without Medicare and for sure we would not be able to buy insurance at anything approaching a reasonable cost. Just before I aged up I was paying $600 a month for insurance but I was happy to have it since I have multiple pre-existing conditions.

My whole point is that Trump, the supposed good business man, doesn't seem to have a clue how insurance companies operate. Insurance companies crave stability, they loathe chaos. What Trump is introducing is chaos in spades. No more cost sharing reductions for insurance companies to mitigate the losses they incur, a free for all for coverage with some bald policies and some fully covered policies, no penalty to the insurance company for charging older people or sicker people more. My whole family counts as sicker people even though to look at us you would think we were super fit athletes. No one in America will be immune to the consequences of Trump's actions.

Trump believes that he can create this chaos and out of the ashes will rise a magical phoenix of health care. That simply by forcing people and insurance companies to collide, he will change the markets. He also thinks that everyone will blame Obama for the turmoil that will occur as early as November 1. The process was pretty dysfunctional already but soon it will be a real SNAFU and we will all be FUBAR.

Back To How Angry Are You?

Trump opines that taking licenses away from television networks with whom he disagrees would be a general benefit to the country. If you wanted a better example of how misguided and solipsistic he is, you would have to search pretty far. While every single American can be thankful that Trump does not have the power to shut down newspapers, television networks, television stations, or your local internet provider, which even he admits, he believes that it would be a good idea. That's how dictators think.

Granted that even George W. Bush said the job would be a lot easier if he could be a dictator, none of us either right or left of the aisle want a dictator. Now part of what Trump is doing is political strategy. If you can make your supporters distrust and dislike your opponents or even if you can just divide the citizenry on some sort of partisan lines, you have a political advantage. Then all those who call for comity and cooperation all sound like Kumbaya singers at a New Age retreat. No elected Republicans except Corker have the cojones to call the moron out because the disarray works to their advantage too.

Does NBC news lie about Trump? That is very unlikely since any real lie would have to be retracted and heads would roll. The network got rid of Brian Williams very quickly over his lies and the lead commentator now, Lester Holt, is a registered Republican. So NBC is not lying. Do they use anonymous sources? Yes, but given Trump's propensity for vengeance (he learned from Roy Cohn), and a plethora of court cases, NBC is on strong ground.

Small Hands, Small ...?

So now Trump wants to compare IQ test result with Tillerson. Besides the fact that any tests those older men took were far in the past with results that may not correlate to their current mental acumen, Trump thinks he is speaking truth and winning an argument that all happens in his own mind. Whether that is any sign of intelligence at all is debatable, but erecting semi-tall buildings and then lying about how tall they are is a clear sign of something more insidious than IQ. His prep school scores weren't good enough to get him in to Penn right away so he started at Fordham for two years, usually a sign of a poor student incapable of handling Ivy League work.

Small hands, small feet, small equipment for any task.

Government Oppression

While Trump and Pence cooked up their little jingo party at the football game at taxpayers' expense (>$240K), Trump was also brooding about his poor self and the lack of respect he gets from...just about everybody. So he tweets that no NFL tax credits or relief should be given to any team that disrespects the "flag, the nation, the military, and our first responders". Besides showing a willful ignorance about what the protests signify, this would also represent the clear and present danger of deliberately violating the Constitution. The first Amendment does not guarantee that you can call your boss a moron (even if he is one), it does not guarantee that you can defame your neighbor. But it does guarantee that the government cannot suppress your freedom of expression, particularly for speech it does not like. Since the mid-19th century, the notion of government has been extended to include not just the federal government but state and local governments as well. Any suppression has to have a public interest goal that is agreed upon in advance.

There is no more classic American example of government suppression than taxes. So if Trump is threatening to abrogate tax relief concessions, he is also threatening with the same language to increase the taxes of teams whose players are using their own First Amendment rights. That's pretty much a textbook example of government suppression of language or actions with which the government disagrees. There is no public interest such as safety at risk; there is only Trump's ego which though large is clearly fragile. Poor moron, sad moron.

A Nod To Tom Lehrer

Trump says, " Only one thing will work," when asked about North Korea. For the last couple of days he has been making cryptic comments like these and when asked to explain he says that we will see soon. I don't know about you but I am tired of his game show host mentality. This isn't tune in at ten to see if the world blows up.

From Tom Lehrer, "When the world becomes uranious, we will all go simultaneous, oh we will all go together when we go."

Such Strange Weather

Obviously the hurricanes so far this season have been way bigger than normal so Salt Lake City isn't the only place having weird weather. This summer was the hottest on record, temperatures consistently way over 90 as a high and 75 as a low. But all of a sudden, just as the calendar switched on September 21, our temperatures dropped dramatically. Our normal highs are supposed to be around 70-75 this time of year but so far this past seven days we have been about 45-50. Today it was under 40 degrees when my husband and I walked our dogs. Almost crisp.

A Near Miss

My father was a career Army officer, a paratrooper who fought through the Pacific during WWII and in Korea during that conflict. He hated guns though he grew up using them in east Texas. His family was poor so sometimes a gun was the way to eat. But we never had guns growing up, not even cap pistols. My brother joined the Navy and learned to shoot but does not own any guns. My husband joined the Navy and learned to shoot and as the paymaster on his MSO he carried a .45 or something similar when he picked up the money, but we never had guns in the house.

Here in Utah guns seem to be everywhere and that includes two of my sons' houses. My middle son and his wife go to a range occasionally and do some skeet shooting as well but the guns are usually locked up tight. My youngest son has a medium sized collection of weaponry for reasons that elude me but make sense to him, but his guns are locked in two different gun safes at his house.

Yesterday my youngest son drove to Las Vegas to spend the night on his way down to the Grand Canyon for a short vacation. We told him to be safe. When I woke up this morning at 4am, I turned on the coffee and fed the animals and then turned on my computer to read some news. Of course everyone knows what I read first and then I sat there trying to figure out if I could find out if my son was all right. My husband got up a few minutes later and I told him what happened in Las Vegas and he turned on his phone and his tablet. At 1:50am this morning our son texted his father to say that he was all right. He said he was about a block away when the shooting started and he could hear the gunfire and the people and all the emergency sirens but he quickly moved indoors. He knew we would freak out if we didn't hear from him so he sent the text as soon as he got to his hotel room.

I don't understand what that man did. I don't understand anything about that psychopathy. Kiss your kids and your partners and husbands.

Addendum to "Are You Angry Yet?"

I know that many of those who read my words agree with me. I know that in many circumstances I am preaching to the choir, but my question still stands; I want to know what it takes for you who still support Trump to change your minds.

It isn't only my opinion that Trump has appointed people who have lied, stolen, trashed American values, it is their own admissions including apologies and paying back money to taxpayers (Mnuchin and Price). The Republican government is in disarray, unable to write and pass substantive legislation and unclear about whether they should stick with Trump.

So why are those on the other side, who are Americans too, not pissed off? I know there is still a strong vein of racism in this country, I live with that every day and this is in Utah not Alabama. But tell me please, what has Trump done for you that makes you happy he is the head of state. And I don't mean that otherwise it would be Clinton because I didn't like her either. What does Trump do for you that makes you cheer?

Essays

I just finished scoring three classes worth of essays--one class on Crime and Punishment and two classes on a lovely poem called "A Story." Two out of three of the groups performed reasonably and in a strange turn of events they were the first two I scored. So I was feeling pretty good about the students and started on the third and last set of essays.

There seems to be some unwritten rule that the worse a student writes, the longer the paper is. Turgid and stiff presentation over four pages of very small handwriting makes me want to weep. Not only is the grammar, syntax, and diction poor but the understanding of the poem is shallow if it exists at all. One kid starts his paper by declaiming that the only job a father has is to teach respectful demeanor to his sons. After that, what else is there to write? Apparently four pages of junk because that is what I read. At least I have the lovely ones to think about but some of these just left me shaking my head. On several I asked them what they would do if I forced them to cut these down to two pages, which is what they are supposed to be--what can be omitted? Sometimes I think they will be fine if they just cross out every third word.

Sold A Bill Of Goods

Most English speakers understand what being sold a bill of goods means but just in case, it describes what happened to you when you were given promises but none of the promises were kept. In other words it's an idiom for a fraudulent transaction in which one party swindles the other party.

Well, Trump made promises and so far he isn't doing very well at keeping them. Even before the election, he promised to provide his tax returns but so far only a partial one (and that arrived at the New York Times under dubious circumstances) is part of public knowledge. Now that his new tax proposal is described as a package of lies by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, pigs would have to fly before anyone other than his lawyers and his accountants see those returns. Trump promised to drain the swamp but at this point the various people around him, most chosen personally by Trump, have proven themselves to be the very essence of swamp monsters. Today, Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services, resigned. I don't know if he wrote his check yet, but the revealed cost of all his gallivanting has grown to $1M and I expect it will rise further after more investigation. Now as a licensed orthopedic surgeon he probably has that $1M but there is no chance in the world that he will repay the entire amount even though from what has been reported, most of his little excursions amounted to little more than boondoggles (another odd word that means: "work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value"), like the one where his friend arranged for him to speak to some other doctors so he could see his son at Vanderbilt. He offered to write a check for $50K but that is clearly inadequate. Jared Kushner, among other close WH advisors has been using private emails to conduct government business but Trump is silent on the flaws of this arrangement though we know he is aware of them because Trump made much of Mrs. Clinton's arrangement.

It would be charitable to think that these lapses in judgment, integrity, honor, etc. are simply because the man is new at the job, but we were also promised that he was the world's best dealmaker. It would also be charitable to think that Trump is just a cheese headed fopdoodle, as someone described Boris Johnson, but we were promised he was very smart, so smart. This would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

Are You Angry Yet?

HHS Secretary Tom Price promises to pay back one-tenth of the taxpayer money used to shuttle him and his cohort around the world on either private jets or military aircraft and apparently thinks that's enough.

Accountants estimate Trump will accrue a $1B benefit from the tax proposal he put forth this week.

Betsy DeVos abolishes the guidelines espoused by the Obama administration about campus rape because she believes that girls are liars, sluts, and complicit in their own rapes.

Roy Moore wins the Republican primary in Alabama by blaming godlessness for everything from homosexuality to the massacre at Sand Hook elementary school. Most Republicans in government swear they don't know who he is.

Trump dog whistles that NFL owners are afraid of their players.

That's only a partial list of the outrages the current administration committed this week. You can add your own if you want.

Like Peter Finch's character in "Network" I am mad as hell but I am also helpless to make any changes. I live in Utah, a one party theocracy.

I am glad that my husband and son are not climbing in Yosemite this week. The part of El Capitan that fell is the part that contains the routes they have climbed in the past, so I guess I have blessings galore to treasure.

No Big Deal

The biopsy of my latest suspicious spot turned out to be a squamous cell cancer. No big deal but I have to go back to the dermatologist to have some more skin removed. For me that makes three squamous and three basal cell. I not only go to the dermatologist once a year for my body mapping, but I know all the necessary signs and symptoms to go in between times if I think something is suspicious. I joke that I am the gift that keeps on giving for a dermatologist.

No Idle Hands

I have just finished block 15 of 16 in toto. Of course that still leaves three of the borders. The original design called for eight border pieces to be attached, in theory because the act of applying distorts the fabric so it is a safeguard against the designs not fitting together. But I don't work that way and my applique tends to be undistorted (perhaps my stitches aren't pulled as tight?). I did make the first border that way so I am wedded to adding blocks to the two lower corners, but I found the instructions and the process quite confusing and frustrating even though I am very experienced at elaborate applique.When I finish all 16 I will finish adding the dogtooth sashing and then move to my own method for making and applying the borders.

Disruptive

Poor Puerto Rico. Not only has the island been hit by two hurricanes in a month, now they will be hit by the arrival of Donald Trump. A presidential visit is completely disruptive, using people and resources that are better if targeted to those in need. Various presidents have come to Salt Lake City during my nearly three decades here and the havoc it wreaks is seen for days in advance and days afterward. Seems like the last thing Puerto Rico needs. If Trump's hot air could be harnessed....

The last thing Trump needs is a tax cut. Although we have only seen one partial tax return, we know from that little bit that in that one year he would have saved at least $26M in taxes if his proposal had been in place. Of course he is lying like the champion liar he is by saying he won't be helped. There are so many give-aways in the proposal it's like one of those old gift balls that you unwrap to reveal little treasures. The various ideas will be hashed out prior to voting but this is another very bad idea that needs careful observation.

The whole David Stockman idea of the rising tide lifting all boats is silly anyway. The tide lifts from below, not trickling down from above. Analysis of previous tax cuts for the wealthy reveal that the results are mixed at best and toxic at worst. Tyler Fisher has graphs and charts today that show the impact.

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/gop-tax-rate-cut-wealthy/ 

Victory Of Sorts

Mitch McConnell admitted defeat and pulled the latest Republican health care bill from a vote. That isn't necessarily a reason to celebrate because the Republican majority in government is still determined to see that you can't afford your health care and you can't access insurance coverage.

As much as single payer appeals to people, too much of the US economy is tied to health care. Most of our health care dollars go to insurance executives and drug company executives (not the scientists who do the work), rather than the providers of care. Republicans like to exclaim that it's because people sue doctors but that's so stupid it isn't even worth a response. We have nearly 20% of our economy tied up in making some people a whole bunch of money, but we are at the 37th worst results for health care in the world despite spending more per capita. How the hell can that be a good thing?

Blast From The Past

Steve Mnuchin, treasury secretary, was on a couple of talk shows yesterday where twice he said that football players should do whatever their team owners wanted; that if they wanted to protest they could do it on their own time. What a swell idea. Then it would be just like the old days, before the Civil War, "Yes, massa." Of course the NFL is tightly unionized so it would be difficult if not impossible for Mnuchin's suggestion to become reality. Players can be fired for embarrassing the league (rarely observed in real time), but the commissioner of the league had already tacitly approved the protests before any of Sunday's games.

Sure, there are plenty of jobs where the boss, or owner can "own" your time and fire you at will, but I don't think sports teams qualify. I would be willing to bet that Robert Kraft can't catch or throw a football. I am pretty sure that Shahid Khan can't punt or center a football. Hard to maintain a good squad if the owner acts like an owner of men rather than the owner of a franchise. Mnuchin, who asked for a government airplane for his honeymoon and did take a government flight to see the eclipse for which he was correctly shamed and accused, also said that Trump's comments were in no way racist. That's also very hard to defend as nearly 80% of the players in the NFL are black so any complaints about their behavior when they are protesting the treatment of their fellow blacks is on the very face of it racist. Besides that, Trump called them "sons of bitches" so he insulted their mothers as well. Many of the men and their mothers called Trump out on that one. Trump wraps himself in the flag while simultaneously disrespecting hundreds of mothers--following through on his previous statements about women.

Nascar owners vowed they would follow Trump and Mnuchin's guidance but Dale Earnhardt, Jr. has more integrity and a better grasp of freedom of speech, tweeting,

"All Americans R granted rights 2 peaceful protests
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable-JFK"


On a different note, I wrote previously about my Maine coon cat being very smart but not yet dangerous as he could not open doors. Last night he learned how to open doors. Not only did he learn how to open doors, but when I tried to prevent him opening the door that allowed him to freely roam by putting a 5 pound weight in front of it, he just moved the weight out of the way and then opened the door. Luckily this is still just an interior door that we close at night to try to keep the cats contained in one area of the house while we sleep. The other bit of luck is that the door locks with a key so we will be doing that very task tonight.

When?

When is Trump going to start working for a living instead of campaigning for applause? Instead of complaining about hard working Americans using freedom of speech and freedom of expression to make a statement about conditions in their community and in the broader world, Trump needs to go back to Washington and really work. All he does is rant about men who all worked hard to earn their jobs and continue to work hard to earn their salaries. I know exactly which SOB I want to fire.

To mimic the little putz, "Lost by more than 3M votes. Terrible ratings, sad."

Pre-Existing Conditions

In an earlier post I wrote that I have asthma. That was a late addition to my life, only affecting me and diagnosed after I was 45 years old. The proximate cause of my asthma, according to my primary care doctor at the time, was that I had started competitive swimming again, in a county run pool that over-chlorinates (yes, it still does) to avoid lawsuits about bacterial infections. After only a few months at the pool, I went to the doctor because I was having breathing problems. The pool still over-chlorinates and youth swim teams, both age group and high school work out there. You figure out the damage.

My asthma was a factor before I qualified for Medicare by living to 65 , but my pre-existing condition was not from a bad choice on my part. At least not a bad choice by most people's judgment. The other factor in my medical health that stems from my swimming is that I have had several skin cancers that have been removed and have ongoing keratoses. Just yesterday I had one spot frozen and another biopsied and I am waiting for the results. I am comparatively lucky as I have a sister who had a melanoma removed when she was quite young, but once again my pre-existing condition is not from a bad lifestyle.

Pre-existing conditions can be a congenital problem as in Jimmy Kimmel's son or they can be from good choices or bad choices. Preventing anyone from getting medical care is a moral flaw regardless of the cause.

Glimmer of Hope

“I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried,” McCain said. “Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it.”

While this is not over yet since we haven't reached 10/1 yet, there is at least some hope that this very bad and dangerous bill will not make its way out of the Senate. Sure, there are problems with the ACA. Some of those problems were deliberately caused and continued by Republicans who didn't want Obama to have anything that looked like a victory. But millions of people got access to health care that they had not had prior to the ACA. Millions of people were helped. Yes, in many cases the young and healthy had to pay far more than they expected or wanted for the coverage but that's how insurance works, not just how the ACA works.

John McCain is right that finding out what will happen if the bill passes, but the problem with this bill is that there will be 51 different answers and 51 different solutions. That extra 1 is for Puerto Rico which as a dependent country has access to the benefits or faults of the bill. Since each state will have a different process and different benefits, the analysis will be incomplete and premature before September 30.

John McCain is also correct that working together, really working together, can only improve the outcome. Rather than having one side of the aisle taking pot shots (figuratively) at the other side simply because it is the other side makes any discussion, any government, difficult.

Sham and Shame

Bill Cassidy is a gastroenterologist by training and a freshman senator from Louisiana who, along with Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum (yes, that Rick Santorum), wrote the new Republican health care bill. As many of you know, Jimmy Kimmel has been pointing out Cassidy's shimmering stances on his own health care bill, the stances that shift depending on which way the light hits him. After initially promising that he wouldn't deny anyone in the US insurance and that he would absolutely guarantee that people with pre-existing conditions, like Kimmel's infant son, like me, like my adult son with asthma, like many if not most people, would have access to affordable health care.

The problem with that promise and the problem with the bill is the language of the bill also shape shifts. Yes, the bill does prohibit states from denying coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions but it does nothing, not one thing, to control the costs of that coverage. In fact, as written right now (and remember that they want to rush this monstrosity through by September 30), the bill incentivizes states to allow higher premiums and higher charges at hospitals and doctors' offices in order to reduce the cost of insurance and care for younger and healthier consumers. It still finds that simply being a woman is a pre-existing condition because women can get pregnant, a very expensive medical condition these days.

And if you think that because Cassidy is a physician that he cares about the poor or the sick, just remember how Louisiana treated the poor and the sick after Katrina. Or for that matter before Katrina.

If you find any of these facts reprehensible, you can contact your senators by email if you go to their websites, or you can reach the Senate switchboard at  (202) 224-3121 and ask to be directed to your state's senators' offices. It generally does not do good for someone from another state to contact any senators, so I cannot contact Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins or Jeff Flake (or even Bill Cassidy). But if you live in Alaska or Maine or Arizona or any state where your senators are still not committed to this debacle, you can put in your two cents. My state's senators are a hopeless cause--Orrin Hatch is a senile sneak and Mike Lee is just a sneak (or snake if you prefer that spelling).   

Greed and Stupidity

I have asthma which means I have to use medication daily. My primary care doctor decades ago prescribed Advair, a GlaxoSmithKline product. The chemical formula for Advair aged out of its patent protection several years ago but knowing that this was going to happen and not wishing to lose a cash cow, GSK changed the delivery system a few years back, a delivery system that lost its patent protection last year. Several European nations approved generic versions of Advair, an action that lowered the price in those countries.

So when will a generic version be available in the US? The latest version didn't pass FDA muster for reasons that I couldn't find online, but I can't say that I was disappointed since Mylan was the company applying. Remember that Mylan is the company that makes the generic Epipen that they charged thousands of dollars for once they got the rights. That seems to point to Mylan trying the same tactic with Advair so becoming generic doesn't mean it becomes cheaper. Martin Shkreli is not the only greedy slimeball in the racket.

The entire system is so crooked that everyone gets used to looking behind the curtain for Oz, the Great and Powerful.

Trump Still Doesn't Care

The newest push to do something, anything, about the United States' health care problem is being worked on in the Senate. Although the CBO has not scored the rererewrite, reliable sources report that the proposals being looked at push more people out of access on multiple levels. Since so many conservative politicians believe that those who need health care but cannot pay for insurance are blood-sucking wastrels, any money for Medicaid is on the chopping block. Some of this would happen upon passage of the bill, but the larger portion of the money would be eliminated in approximately ten years. Because of the way Medicaid rules are written, a huge percentage of those dollars are spent on the elderly, to keep them in long term care, or on the very young, to provide them with any care at all.

Many other vulnerable populations are at risk as well. Those with pre-existing conditions will have access to insurance but will not be protected from prohibitively expensive bills for that insurance. Having read the commentary from my own state's politicians, I know that they believe that if anyone has a pre-existing condition, it is because they deserve it due to some combination of God's wrath and poor choices. Of course the fact that this is specious reasoning eludes them entirely.

Then, in the traditional knee jerk blow we expect from the right wing, funding for Planned Parenthood would be completely eliminated. This despite several lawsuits that found that removing access to medical care from poor populations is illegal. Planned Parenthood is often the only provider for poor women in many places in the United States and is by no means only an abortion provider, but then the right wing apparently believes women should be punished for having sex at all.

Tasteless and Clueless

Donald Trump retweeted a video showing him hitting Hillary Clinton in the back with a golf ball and causing her to fall. Of course it's a mishmash of real time videos and gifs, but what Trump found humorous about the video highlights Trump's attitude toward women. Any man who finds videos that show anyone being harmed is a monster. What say you, Trumpettes? Is this acceptable from a President of the United States?

I don't like Hillary Clinton. I voted for her because the alternative was Trump. Men who find violence against anyone, let alone men who find violence against women amusing, are beyond despicable. I don't care what your politics are, this retweet is far beyond the pale for anyone, let alone POTUS.

Please tell POTUS what you think: 202-456-llll.  

Throwing Spaghetti At The Wall

After a calm in the tweet storm, Trump has thrown strands of spaghetti at the wall over the last couple of days. After some of the press, and the politicians involved, announced that an accommodation over DACA was in the works, the conservative political commentators went wild with Ann Coulter even saying that she supports impeachment now. So Trump pouted and lied even though he later took back his lie about his lie. I know, it gets confusing. Last week he called Harvey and Irma the biggest storms ever in language that called into question his sanity since he seemed to think that the storms were some sort of homage to him. Then, because many in his base thought that meant that he was accepting the fact of global warming, he took it all back and said storms in the '30's and '40's and even the teens were much bigger.

Today, a IED on the London tube brought out Trump's inner xenophobe. Now he tweets that his travel ban should be bigger and more onerous. I don't know if that means no Brits can come to the US but I am guessing the mayor of London won't be welcome.

At some point it would seem that reasonable people of all political persuasions would want to get rid of him, but the right and far right are sticking with the horse they rode in on.  Nice job, Trumpettes.

Hillary Clinton still can't just shut up. It's bad enough that the press are putting out excerpts of her execrable book, but she is on TV shows as well, demonstrating anew why she is so hard to sympathize with. Did anyone ever like a sore loser?

Gift Quilt

As I wrote previously, my husband and I will be visiting some friends of his and rather than bring a bottle of wine, I thought I would bring a small quilt. This is 40 inches by 40 inches with only one block, The Glorious Harp, in the center. The block is intended to be set on the diagonal with other blocks but for a one block quilt, I just centered it in the middle of a 40 inch square of off white fabric.

It ends up looking a great deal like a family crest and makes a simple yet elegant quilt that I finished in two weeks.

School Begins

This is the week when the teachers at the school for which I am a reader start bringing their student essays. A set of essays arrived yesterday and I spoke to two classes over the last two days. Today's class was slightly more engaged but most of these students (juniors) have experienced my presentation and my grading in the past so there weren't any enormous surprises.

I looked at a few of the essays and took one of them in as an example of what not to do when writing these essays. I read the thesis paragraph and asked the class, "What is this student's thesis?" They recognized immediately that he did not have one. I read the second paragraph and one young woman said, "That reads as if he didn't even read the book and is just making stuff up."

Maybe there is hope.

Link To Paintings

I wrote earlier that I had hung a painting that a young woman here in Utah painted of me almost twenty years ago now in our new bathroom. Since she is still painting and still trying to establish herself as an artist, I thought I would provide a link. Her name is Jamie Wayman and she does have her own blog but the link I am providing is an old one to the gallery that represents her here in town.
The link still works even though it is dated.

http://www.hornefineart.com/artists/jamie-wayman/

The painting of me swimming is included in the group shown at that link. It is from her senior fine arts requirement class and is far less colorful than her current work but we still like it. I have another one that she painted in the same series for that class and I am happy to say that I was her first sale ever.

My Crazy Coon Cat

I have posted many pictures of my Maine coon cat,  Max, whose picture leads off this blog. He is nearly six years old now and still a big mess. He is my first Maine coon cat so I cannot swear to anything but this guy loves water. He likes to wash himself thoroughly in water, he likes to clean his feet in the dogs' water bowl, he likes to hang outside the people shower so that when they exit, they drip on him. His favorite sleeping spot is the dogs' water bowl where he curls himself around and waits for their arrival.

 

Perspective

When I am working on my quilts, I usually have either music or television in the background. Today I was watching American Experience while quilting the small gift quilt. This episode was about Walt Disney. Of course being nearly 67 years old I grew up with Walt Disney from seeing Disney films to watching the Sunday television show. My mother wouldn't let us watch Mickey Mouse Club but we were very familiar with most of the other products of the vast Disney empire. We even visited Disneyland in 1957.

Still I was surprised to find out that Walt Disney was younger than I am now when he died. I do remember when he died and I remember thinking that he was old anyway. Then watching the television show he even looked old, at least older than I think I look. Part of the reaction is simply perspective. When I was 15 he did look old. But part of that is a different sort of perspective. I think people even thought they were very old at 65 back then whereas now most of us have pushed the "old" label far in to the eighth or ninth decade of life.

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

When I went to the doctor's office I took a bag of tomatoes from our garden. I already knew that the doctor and his nurse like home grown tomatoes but didn't grow their own. When I gave the bag to my doctor's nurse assistant, a woman waiting in a different area asked how I had grown so many that I could give bags of tomatoes away. She didn't even know that I had given a huge bag away yesterday.

All I could say was, "Clover." I finally convinced my husband, after decades of yelling at him to stop using the popular fertilizer and start using dirt friendly methods. We had three years of very poor harvests and my husband kept using commercial fertilizer and I told him that his methods had depleted the soil and we needed to begin fixing that. He is notoriously stubborn--once he forms an idea he has trouble letting go of the idea despite evidence. Well planting clover has increased our yield, made the fruit ripen earlier, you get the picture.

The other good news is that we have more or less finished the Jack and Jill bathroom. The bathroom is fully functional, decorated, even has a painting of me when I was a Masters swimmer on the wall. The young woman who painted the two pictures I have of me is pretty well known now but these paintings were done to complete her BFA. Swimming and bathrooms are sort of a natural combination. The room looks nice even though it is tiny--squeezing in a full two sink bathroom with a tub, shower, two sinks, and a toilet. We had a steel fabricator here in town make a stainless sink counter with random etching that turned out very nicely.

The room combination still needs work since the attached bedroom had to lose some wall. Besides that, the family who lived her before us had done some odd repairs. So there is some drywall work, some mudding, some floor moldings, and then painting before I can move the bed back in and the quilts back on the bed.

I told our youngest son last night that if his boss, the well-known TV star who owns the bar/restaurant where my son works, still wanted quilts for either his house or his daughters, then he needed to move before we do. I am giving the quilts away but I already made the stipulation that the TV star has to donate to the local humane society.

Flu Shot

"Tis the season to be fully immunized against the flu. I walked to the library today and on the way back home I stopped at my primary care physician's office to ask about getting a flu shot. The receptionist said, "Oh we can do that now," so I signed the form and sat down.

I don't know if the difference is in the hands of the injecter or in the strain of flu but last year the needle seemed extra big and this year I didn't even realize she had jabbed me. When she said she was done I was flabbergasted. I know that seniors don't retain their immunity as long but I am set for a while anyway.

Especially Good

A long time ago I wrote about using vodka rather than water in pastry. That was for pie crust and I guarantee if you use vodka rather than water, the pastry will be more crisp. But recently,  the abundance of good stone fruit here meant that I needed to figure out the best way to present this fruit.

Years and years ago (1989), Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins wrote a few best selling cookbooks that had a big impact. One of the recipes in The New Basics Cookbook was for a mock puff pastry. I made that a few times, back in the day, but I wasn't impressed by either the texture or the flavor. So now, nearly thirty years later, I revisited that recipe and substituted vodka for the 6 tablespoons of  ice water.

Okay, this is good--I definitely credit the cookbook, but you need to try it this way:

2 cups flour (not cake flour or self-rising)
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks)  butter
(6 tablespoons ice cold vodka
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice)
Mix those last two ingredients together

In your food processor or in a bowl mix the dry ingredients. Add the three sticks of butter cut into tablespoons all at once and process briefly until the butter is mixed in but stop before it clumps up. Then with the food processor working, pour in the ice cold vodka and lemon juice. Stop the processor as soon as you have finished pouring in the liquid.

Dump the mess out on a floured surface and work it briefly in to a solid mass. Wrap it in plastic and put in the refrigerator. After 20 minutes, on a floured surface, roll it out into a 14 x 7 inch rectangle, then fold up the bottom to the middle and the top over that. While everything is still cold, do that again. Then put it back in the refrigerator for twenty minutes.

Do that two more times and then decide if you are going to have an extravaganza of pastry or if you will just use some.

I used half of the recipe for the topping for a cobbler rather than biscuit dough. I also baked up some mock palmieres with some melted butter and sugar and they were fantastic. Everything, including the cobbler, was baked at 425F. The palmieres cooked for 25 minutes and the cobbler for 45.

It isn't the same as puff pastry, but it is close.   
 

Another Good Read

Though I haven't finished it yet, I can recommend The Coward's Tale, by Vanessa Gebbie. As is obvious from the title, it is rather like separate stories with a common thread. That's not surprising since the book jacket describes her as an award winning author of two short story collections. While she is Welsh and this novel is set in Wales, she currently lives in Sussex, or at least she did when the book was released in the US. It has been several years and many other books since then.

The one theme that seems to run through the current administration is to destroy any and every idea or treaty that Obama supported or guided or suggested. From the national monument designations, to the Iran nuclear treaty, to DACA Trump is dismantling it all. Spite and ego are not good traits in anyone and they are very flawed starting points for governing. 

Would Not Have Happened

I am sure most of you have seen the video of Nurse Wubbels (http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/04/health/utah-nurse-police-encounter/index.html) being arrested at the University of Utah burn unit.  I wrote previously that at some point all people have had or will have bad encounters with the police. All of mine have happened in Utah but that doesn't surprise or shock me even though I am nearly 70 years old with no traffic violations or any other legal violations.

Utah is seriously ManWorld. The dominant religion favors men. Most religions do because all humans evolve from similar origins, but the LDS have more modern origins, despite what they will tell you if you answer that knock on the door. But because the local culture is completely dominated by the local dominant religion, even going to the hardware store or the grocery store becomes a cultural confrontation if one is female.  When I first moved here, alone, to supervise the remodeling of the kitchen in our house before the family moved, I recognized the stance.

If the burn unit had had a different, male, nurse on duty, the police actions would have been different. I guarantee it.  If you are female, don't move to Utah, or if you do, expect subtle and not so subtle discrimination.

97F In September

It's a little more than two hours later and the temperature outside is 97 F. It is too hot now and it isn't going to be cooler any time soon. The difference besides temperature between now and when I moved here in 1991 is the humidity. It is still more dry here than in most places in the United States, but the change in climate has meant that our average humidity is higher than it used to be.

Yesterday the North Korea regime made a nuclear test of what they claimed was a large hydrogen bomb. As far as I can tell as a simple American reader, no one can verify this underground test. What can be verified is that North Korea is starving. Malnutrition has been a feature of the North Korean communist regime since the beginning. But the difference is that now the communist regime spends all its time and money and brain power on building weaponry to threaten everyone.  This isn't communism, this is narcissism running a country.

Unfortunately North Korea isn't the only country.

Way Above Average

Here we are into September and our weather forecast for the next 14 days is for each day to be in the mid- to high 90's. It's 96F right now and only 3:30 so it will probably go higher. The whole summer has been hotter than normal so we officially have the hottest summer ever.

Once again I ask, what is normal? My husband and I have been looking at the temperatures in other places because neither of us likes hot weather, except for the tomatoes, but we don't mind the cold. We will be visiting a friend so I have taken a break from the Album quilt to make a small quilt as a gift. It's still sort of the same theme as it is also a Baltimore block but writ large with some nice quilting around the border. It's only 40 inches square so quick to make and finish. I will post pix soon.

What Is My Responsibility?

When I took on my job of reading student essays (and it was just reading them in the beginning), my participation came from my neighbor who had been doing it for a few years after she had taught at the high school and while she was starting her family. I didn't get picked because I had sat through interviews or applied for the job; it sort of fell in my lap. No one even told me what the limits or obligations of the job were--I took instruction from the individual teachers who all had different standards and requirements.

According to the school district, I am only supposed to read the essays, note misspellings and grammar errors, and then return the papers for the teacher to read and score. Back when I took on the job, the AP classes were limited to 22 students but now there are far more students, up to 42 for all AP classes. Keep in mind that Utah has the lowest per pupil expenditure of all states. So over the years as the classes grew in size and the teachers were dealing with students in an English literature class who couldn't speak English (most of those were Chinese students), my involvement grew. The teachers were overwhelmed so I began to add comments and suggestions. I began to offer free tutoring. What good does it do to tell a Chinese language speaker that her words were misspelled, or that his verbs didn't agree with his nouns if you don't point out the purpose of an essay or the point of the prompt?

But now I am ready to stop, ready to leave this job. There is no one I know who can or will do this job, nor do I think it is my responsibility to do what the school district doesn't even care about. All the teachers with whom I work have declared that they will box things up to send to me and pay me out of their own pockets. Will students suffer? They will but most of them in these odd days won't understand that they will suffer nor do they care. "Why don't I get a 9?" Will me leaving change the class sizes? Not a chance.

Questionable Politicians

For anyone who thinks I only pick on Republicans, I point out Robert Menendez. While his trial and questioning is still going on which makes any comment about his guilt or innocence difficult to defend, I want to clearly affirm that people who find public service serviceable to their bank accounts should all be locked up, and not in Club Fed.

When you vote, and I hope all my American readers are registered regardless of which party they favor, pay attention to where the money supporting your candidate comes from. Here in Utah we have a de facto one party system because of the dominant religion. They don't have to raise money for elections because they are guaranteed a win but nevertheless they take thousands of dollars from the Koch brothers and their various political PACs. Since Citizens United (thank you Justice Roberts), unlimited money flows to politicians without any names attached. But in Utah, Mormon Republicans win regardless of who they are or what they say. So why are they asking for money?
 
Crooked people are crooked people regardless of what party they represent.

What Qualifies As Normal?

It is Tuesday, August 29th. This past four days (and the entire summer) we have set records for high temperatures. Yesterday was 98F and today it's 97F. That's part of the problem with Hurricane Harvey. We have a high pressure zone far above us that is preventing what used to be considered the normal weather patterns preventing the wind from moving through and pushing Harvey further.

The further used to be out to sea to become a tropical storm, but now the tropical storm is just slugging its way to Louisiana. Unfortunately, Louisiana is already under sea level and sinking. That's partly because of the geography and partly because oil companies moved in.

Every day that Salt Lake City has temperatures far above normal, 10 degrees today, means another day that the Gulf Coast suffers.

Trump's EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, is still playing the ostrich game. 

Oh Hell No!

Arpaio finally realized that by accepting the pardon he was admitting guilt. So now his lawyers are asking that his conviction be expunged, claiming that the pardon shows that he wasn't guilty in the first place.

Ironically Funny

Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio on Friday, after his conviction for disobeying a court order. This was cause for finger pointing and scathing remarks from both sides of the aisle, not only that it happened, but that Trump waited until Hurricane Harvey was slamming into Texas to do so.

The more interesting question for me is whether Arpaio has accepted the pardon. It is a fairly long-standing and well-understood principle that if someone accepts a pardon, that person tacitly admits guilt. Since Arpaio always claimed that the law was wrong and the court rulings were wrong he also claimed that he couldn't possibly be guilty. By accepting Trump's pardon, that goes out the window.

"There is solid legal precedent that acceptance of a pardon is equivalent to confession of guilt. A U.S. Supreme Court case from 1915 called Burdick v. U.S. establishes that principle; it has never been overturned."

Everyone who listened to the news or read a newspaper since Friday night knows Trump pardoned Arpaio, but I haven't seen any reporting that Arpaio accepted yet.

Tomatoes and Stone Fruit

This time of year where I live we have abundant home-grown, heirloom tomatoes, and local stone fruit. A few years ago, I clipped a recipe from the Wall Street Journal for a panzanella with both tomatoes and stone fruit. While it sounds sort of odd, the results are delicious. The original recipe calls for burrata, which is good and traditional, but we like it with soft goat cheese for the extra tangy flavor. The other adaptation we made was to brown the bread in a pan on the stove rather than in the oven which heats up the house more.

2 cups cubed sourdough bread or ciabatta
6 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 large or 2 medium tomatoes cut into 1/2 inch wedges
1 large peach or nectarine cut into 1/2 wedges
1/4 cup thinly sliced basil
1 small shallot, very thinly sliced
1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar or similar vinegar
2 balls burrata (or fresh goat cheese)

Toss the bread cubes with 4 tablespoons of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Brown them in the oven at 375F or in a shallow pan on the stove then set aside.

In a large bowl toss the tomato, peach, and basil. Season with salt and pepper and let sit for 10 minutes (can be longer as well). Place the sliced shallot in some ice water for 8 minutes then drain and dry and add to the bowl.

When you are almost ready to serve, add the croutons to the bowl  with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the vinegar, and let sit for a few minutes while all the flavors blend and the bread absorbs some of the juice from the tomato and the peach or nectarine.

Serve on a plate with some burrata or goat cheese on the side.


The other peach recipe I have made recently is the peach and lime galette from Yotam Ottolenghi. You can find that recipe online or in The Guardian.

Experiment

I finished the newest block today and posted a photo. The experiment is to see if anyone comes to see it, including my new best friend, Anne Kirby. Chances are the non-political posts won't get much in the way of views. Chances are Anne Kirby won't look even though she questions whether I quilt at all.

Anyway, I hope you like the block. In the meantime, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, has recommended that Trump reduce the size of several national monuments, including Sequoia National Monument, Bears Ears, and The Grand Staircase. I name those three because they are emblematic of the politicization of the process and the product. Zinke was inundated by lumber companies that want to log the Sequoia monument, so he made a plan that literally protected individual trees rather than a space. That makes sense, right? Although I do not play the game it sounds rather like playing Pokemon, moving from place to place trying to find a sequoia. Good job, Zinke. Typical of this stupid administration.

The other two monuments I named are largely or entirely in Utah. They contain a variety of places, including ancient dwelling places and rock art, that are important to various native American tribes. These sites have been attacked by looters for decades, despite the complaints of the tribes. So the tribes requested that something be done to protect what remains. Five different tribes with ties to the Bears Ears asked for relief from the depredations of white men. On the other side was the entire Utah congressional delegation, Mormon Republicans, who want to open the land to extractive industries. These are federal lands, owned by all Americans. One would hope that the Native American tribes would at least have a voice in how they are treated.

Zinke was incredibly dismissive and incredibly rude when he was here in Utah. He shook his finger in a young Native American's face, chastising her for being rude. Really.

Rose Bouquet Completed

I finished the Rose Bouquet block today including the embroidery touches. There aren't many of those besides what are called rose hairs. Below is the photo.

I still haven't trimmed this block but I think it looks nice, with the contrast of light and dark greens and the two colors of roses.