Sailors take warning...

 

What a beautiful sunrise this morning!

We may not get northern lights but the view to the southeast is pretty spectacular.

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I have mentioned repeatedly that I relinquished my Democratic membership over a year ago.

I'm pretty much a lost sailor, who dislikes both extreme left and right and tries to tack somewhere in the middle.

So it was difficult for me in choosing to vote for Proposition 50. 

But I did.

Why?

Honestly, I think that gerrymandering like this is awful. 

California Republicans and the communities they represent deserve to be heard.

But our hands were forced. Propositions like this don't happen in a vacuum. Extreme Republican redistricting efforts pushed by Trump in Texas, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere required an answer and Newsom fought fire with fire. Thankfully there is a time limit on the proposition and things revert to the old ways in 2030.

I also think that it was a bit disingenuous for California Republican Congressmen to feign indignation about the proposition while barely giving lip service to the fact that their party was doing the exact same thing nationally, in spades.

If they decried it, it was very quietly. Can't upset you know who, you know?

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In another story I think that the recent shutdown should be addressed. 

The group of eight moderates who agreed to move forward are being vilified by progressives, I think somewhat unfairly. 

There was never going to be an outright win with this Republican House and this Republican speaker.  They may not even take the bill up for a vote in the house.

The eight who crossed over were also sympathetic to their own constituents, many of whom were federal workers in places like Virginia, who could not feed their families and were being dismissed en masse. 

The eight made a pragmatic decision regarding what they thought was best for their voters. I can not fault them.

Somewhere between 75 and 80% of the American public think that Obamacare or the ACA is a good thing. 

The Republicans have had fifteen years to come up with another plan, they have not. I am not a betting man but would wager that they will not be able to cobble something together palatable to the American people in the next two months. Or convince the American public how bad the current status quo really is.

So they own this one now. It is front and center.

The issue has been perfectly framed. Americans are facing a doubling or tripling of their health care premiums if we do nothing or we continue to subsidize premiums, like most of the other developed countries of the world. Horrors, socialism! But it is okay to throw forty billion at Argentina or the orange one's favorite dictator of the week. And it is okay to cut the populace's food stamp budget in half, the lazy scofflaws. The great majority of whom happen to live in red states. 

Wonder which option the public will want? Should be a real interesting issue in the midterms.

On the other hand, I read a rural red stater bemoaning their loss of snap benefits and they were wondering how they would feed their five children.

If you have no or insufficient income, why have five children in the first place? Because the good lord directed you to?

Back to the shutdown. AOC and the progressives are sharpening their knives and the conflict is becoming generational. Take out Schumer, Durbin, kill the old guard. Silly me, I trust the old guard far more than the young lions, they have been in the fire before and they know that government needs to actually function to work. I trust old doctors and older politicians, people who have made their mistakes and been around a while.

And sometimes that means working with and striking a deal with the opposition.

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Isn't it an amazing coincidence that when Epstein says Trump was with a girl for three hours, he claims it was the one who committed suicide last year and can no longer speak?

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I got a call from a reader today, who left a voicemail. She can't figure out if Trump was working for Putin as an agent. Did I think he had anything on him? Well, sheesh, that one is way out of my pay grade. But let me take a swing at it. It would not surprise me if he was and if the pee tapes were real. Pure guess and conjecture, mind you, but totally plausible.

Now let me bitch.

I went over to the Sketcher store to try to buy a pair of shoes. I like their fit and memory foam. To my chagrin they were all slip on now. The laces were a mere surface adornment with no real function or utility. Something vestigial, like a prehensile tail or a necktie.

I tried a pair on and they didn't fit snug. 

I asked the guy working there if they now size differently and he says they do, that he has to buy a  whole size smaller so that they don't fall off.

And he confided that he hated them too but that they were forced to wear them by management.

Why do they force these sorts of things down our throat or on our feet? We have done perfectly well lacing up our shoes and boots for about three hundred years, I'm not quite ready to give it up, sorry.

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You might remember me telling you that I had found a substance that might keep the South American beetle from killing my Canary Island Palm?

Beetle is on an awful path through the region.

The stuff was called Bio Advanced Weed and Feed. Came in a blue container. 

I used it three times a year, diluting it in a trench at my palm's base.

I went to Grangetto to buy another gallon.

No go. 

No longer sold or permitted in California. A neonicotinoid. Anybody driving out from Arizona that might pick me up some, it would be greatly appreciated.

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Well, the rain starts tomorrow, batten up the hatches matees and skibber the jib. 

Catch you on the next one!