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.