Derby day

If I were a betting person, I'd put my money on Daddy Long Legs. Any horse that's named after a Fred Astaire movie must have something going for it.

Some things money can't buy

Some interesting news from Wisconsin -- apparently the gazillion dollars being poured into Scott Walker's attempt to hang on to the governorship aren't helping him all that much. According to a recent poll done by researchers at Marquette University, Walker's numbers are eroding, not improving, as the recall election draws closer.

This shouldn't be a surprise. The longer Walker is in office, the more obvious the effects of his policies become. There are a lot of unhappy people in Wisconsin who have been affected by various cuts instituted by the Republicans in Madison, and unhappy voters are going to want to vote out whoever happens to be in office at the time. I have friends and relatives who live in Wisconsin -- over the past few months I've noticed Scott Walker go from being referred to as "Governor Walker" to "Scott Walker" to "that fucking Walker," and, given the monetary advantage Walker has enjoyed, I don't think it's a case of the Democrats out-blitzing him with advertising.

I know that at the moment Scott Walker is one of the darlings of the far right. The Reptile People love him; he's viewed as a real star in the Republican party. It'll be interesting to see how fast he goes from dearly beloved to untouchable pariah if the recall effort succeeds -- no one has much use for a loser.

Life in general

I'm sitting here this morning wondering just how many close-to-blind drivers are cruising the highways in Michigan at the moment. I finally got around to getting a Michigan driver's license yesterday, and for the first time in about 20 years my license will not have the "must wear eyeglasses or contact lenses" restriction on it. Just how does a person pass the eye exam when she's been wearing glasses for two decades? I can't argue with the fact I did read the line on the eye chart as instructed, but how on earth did that happen? It shouldn't have. 

It does, however, provide a partial explanation for some of the weirdness I see on the road. Maybe a few of those people I notice at intersections who persist in pulling out in front of oncoming traffic aren't really clueless or stupid. They actually can't see that humongous log truck thundering down the highway -- it's all just a blur to them, so what the heck, drive by memory.

This afternoon the S.O. and I will be going down to the Eagles hall to pick up our Croatian chicken dinners. I have no idea what a Croatian chicken is -- I doubt the bird spoke Croatian before ending up on a platter -- but apparently it's now a popular dish for fund-raising dinners. The Croatian chicken dinner at the Eagles is a fund-raiser for the L'Anse High School Senior Class Lock-In (that annual fantasy that allows people to delude themselves that if the kids can celebrate graduation in a safe space they won't also go out and have one helluva kegger in an undisclosed location, e.g., the beach at the mouth of the Huron); a couple weeks from now there's going to be a Croatian chicken dinner over in Baraga to support something socially worthy happening on that side of the bay.   

Rolling rust heap of a Dodge tries to earn its keep by pulling stumps.

 Yesterday the S.O. finished pulling stumps out of a corner of the yard. There had been a couple apple trees there, but a few winters ago a heavy, wet snow did so much damage we cut them down. The S.O.'s been wanting to get rid of the stumps so they wouldn't get in the way when plowing snow. 

Yes, that white stuff is snow. On April 27.

The stumps make a pretty good base for a brush pile. Now we just need to get busy and build it up more. If the weather cooperates (things have been rather dry lately, so we need rain to green things up), we might be able to have a decent bonfire for Vappu. 

S.O.S.

Listening to NPR this morning and heard more of the same old shit about Social Security and fixing its problems. The so-called expert did the usual bloviating about the only solution being to make some cuts somewhere down the road because it would be so difficult to increase revenues. She did the usual tap dancing around, mentioning various solutions that all boil down to reducing benefits, but never mentioned the most obvious and easiest fix: eliminate the earnings cap. Right now, any earnings above $110,100 are exempt from the Social Security tax. Eliminate that exemption, and there's an instant infusion of cash. But do any of the "experts" ever toss that out as a possibility? Nope. It's always blathering on and on about the sacrifices we peasants, the poor saps who will never earn close to $110K, are going to have to make.

Efficiency

I'm home, albeit reluctantly

I knew when we started the trek north we'd probably be swapping this:

View from the Younger Daughter's deck, April 15, 2012. There are roses blooming in a neighbor's yard, although they're hard to see without enlarging the photo.

for this:

View from our back porch, April 19, 2012. Siberian squill is blooming under the apple trees, but it's a little hard to see when it's covered with  fresh snow. 

I would have been perfectly happy to stay in Texas until the summer heat and humidity drove us north in early May, but the US postal service has this ridiculous rule that they won't hold mail for more than 30 days -- and our 30 days were up yesterday.

Sorting through the accumulated mail had its amusing moments. The S.O. is going to hit 65 soon so is being inundated with advertising from various insurance companies all trying to sell him Medicare supplements. AARP must be mailing several a week. For a change, the junk mail from insurance companies is outpacing the junk mail from Capitol One and the junk mail from various political fundraising organizations. No new Obama bumper stickers -- maybe the campaign's computers have figured out that if I didn't send them money after the first dozen or so Obama 2012 stickers that they've given me, I'm not likely to send them money now. 

Time Out

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Specious arguments

I'm not particularly inclined to comment on the Trayvon Martin case -- it's been talked to death elsewhere -- but I have been noticing one particular piece of sophistry that keeps coming up over and over and over. It's a classic among the specious arguments that crawl out of the woodwork whenever racism is an issue: more blacks are killed by blacks than by whites.

So? And more whites are killed by whites than by blacks. Most homicides are committed by people who know the victim. You're a lot more likely to get shot by your brother-in-law or your next door neighbor than you are to get shot by a total stranger. If you're black, odds are most of your close acquaintances (friends and relatives) are also black so odds are anyone deciding to kill you will be black, too. If you're white, most of your close acquaintances are also going to be white so your murderer is likely to be white.

If, however, you have an incident such as the Trayvon Martin case -- someone shot by a total stranger -- it doesn't really matter that most murders involve acquaintances who share certain demographic characteristics. It's irrelevant. It's like looking at a case of arson and saying "But why aren't you talking about all the fires that get started by lightning strikes?" Tossing in black-on-black violence in an attempt to deflect attention from racism is specious, an attempt at sophistry to nullify concern about the real issues  raised in the Martin case: possible racial profiling by a wannabe vigilante and incompetent law enforcement by the local police department. It's not as despicable as trying to retrospectively make a murder justifiable by smearing the reputation of the victim, but it still isn't pretty. At the very least, it's intellectually lazy. It also signals an unwillingness to engage with the reality of racism by trying to conflate two different issues and pretending that the existence of one problem means we can ignore the seriousness of the other. 

Obsessions

Not mine. The news media. If a person watched only U.S. mainstream media, you'd think only two things were happening in the world today: the Supreme Court hearing the oral arguments about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Sanford Police Department bungling the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida. Both are interesting events, but surely something else is happening elsewhere in the world?

I will admit watching the Supreme Court coverage has been moderately amusing, especially when reporters have  interviewed the Tea Party types protesting in front of the court building. If those people ever had a clue as to how our government actually works, they lost it long ago.

Of course, the talking heads on MSNBC, CNN, et al. aren't much better. They all seem to think that the oral arguments are it -- that whatever drivel emerges from the attorneys arguing pro and con is the sole support for whatever conclusions the justices reach. Bizarre. Haven't they ever heard of a brief? Are they really all so ignorant that they truly believe that the way the system works is that the justices listen to the oral arguments and then disappear into the equivalent of a jury room to make a decision then and there? I can understand the tinfoil hat types with the funny costumes and misspelled signs not grasping how the process works, but shouldn't the so-called professionals know better? There is a reason there's usually a gap of several months between the time oral arguments are heard and when the court's decision is released: the justices are spending that time reviewing the mountain of documentation associated with each case (the merits briefs submitted by the plaintiff and defendant, the friends of the court briefs submitted by various interested parties, the summaries prepared by the justices' clerks, the preliminary drafts of each other's opinions, etc.).

In short, although it's quite possible that the final decision will indeed fall along the lines the pundits are currently predicting, we're not going to know that for awhile -- so why did everyone insist on talking like the court would announce its findings as soon as oral arguments ended?

As a side note, I keep having this feeling that this whole mess could turn into cause for major regret among the  conservative anti-federalism foamers who made the short-sighted decision to fight "Obamacare." If the Supreme Court tosses out the Affordable Care Act on the basis of it being unconstitutional to require people to buy private insurance, then the door is wide open for Medicare for All -- a single payer, national healthcare system administered by the government -- because it'll be the only legal option left. Despite all the babbling about how the U.S. has the best healthcare in the world, most people recognize that line as bullshit -- if we had the best healthcare in the world, there would be no need for fundraisers to help people pay their medical bills. Everyone knows reform is needed, and if a plan that was originally designed by the Heritage Foundation doesn't cut it with the court, what's the alternative?