Politics
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Meme Monday – Back to Lockdown
I posted this meme on Facebook last year after reading Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, which is a great novel that I really enjoyed, about an 85 year old woman meandering her way to a party in New York on New Year’s Eve, 1984. Ms. Boxfish was a very talented ad woman for Macy’s in the 1930s, and the character is based on the real-life ad woman, Margaret Fishback. Facebook likes to remind you of things you posted on this day in history, so this popped up, and I decided it’s a meme, and it sums up the whole feel of Shelter in Place (SIP) so perfectly. Speaking of Shelter…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Meme Monday – COVID Edition
“They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Frankly, I’m surprised that it took this long for Trump and his cronies to catch COVID. How did they prevent him from getting it for so long? I can only assume that there are some people in the White House that actually believe in science and have done their best to force him to be safe. Eventually his bravado and jack-assary got the better…
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Meme Monday
I’m so distraught about the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was an amazing woman, a gift to our country. But of course, the more difficult thing is how we go forward without her. Trump is going to appoint someone seriously right wing, I am sure, and McConnell is going to push them through the Senate. A few Republicans are promising to not vote on a Justice before the next Inauguration, should he lose, but I don’t believe them because they will be pressured and will cave, as they always do. So then what…then we go from a 5-4 Court to a 6-3 Court, and we are…
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Keeping Track of the Tax Plans
As you know, the House of Representatives passed a tax plan overhaul yesterday. I know that the Senate Plan will be different, and assuming they can get something passed, it will be some sort of reconciliation of the two. I thought it might be interesting (to me, if to no one else) to calculate how the tax plans would hypothetically affect our household. Since I don’t have numbers from 2017, what I did was to look at our 2016 taxes, and apply the numbers from the House plan, and see how we come out. We have a mortgage, we live in a high tax state, and our daughter is in…
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Women’s March
As the Women’s March came nearer, I felt more sure that I wanted to participate. But which one? We live in a small city (bigger than a town! Pop around 60k) in a very densely populated area, and there were two fairly large ones just a short BART (our local transit) ride away. So, Oakland or San Francisco? Both would be great. I still hadn’t decided, when Ted’s mom called and asked if we wanted to go to the one right here in our town. OK, I’m in. Easier than getting on BART even, and a shorter walk (Ted’s mom had hip surgery this summer, and I have arthritis that…
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Presidential Cereal
I had a dream last night (or was it a vision?) of a cereal box with Trump’s picture on it. I know, what a horrid idea. I told Ted, and he went and found this picture, likely in order to torture me. I mentioned it on Facebook, (which is where Ted put the picture), and my FB and prior bloggy friend V-Grrrl said that her nephew (founder of Air B&B) had presidential cereals back in 2008. So I did a search for Presidential Cereals, and found these. The Obama Os and Cap’n McCain’s are VGrrrl’s nephew’s. Good thing these aren’t around all the time. I for one do not want…
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Waffling
image found here…dream interpretation of waffles… Back in the 2008 primaries, the choice for Democrats was between Clinton and Obama. I looked at them as both too centrist for my taste, but if those were my choices, I wanted a woman President, so I voted for Clinton. I remember my liberal mother being displeased at this decision, as Clinton voted for the war in Iraq, and she was unwilling to let that go. I felt like the political climate at that time was such that it would be political suicide to vote against that war, especially if you were a Senator in New York, so I looked past it. Perhaps…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Still Alive
Yes, I’m still alive. I know, it’s been awhile. I hate writing that at the beginning of a blog post, but somehow, I find myself doing it more and more often. Today I took a few minutes and looked at blogs that I link to from my blogroll. So many of them are defunct, or might as well be. Last post in 2011, 2012, 2013. I should clean them up, move them out. But I don’t use an RSS reader or anything like that. My way of checking to see if you have a new blog post is to click my link, and go look. So I keep them. I…
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Jury Duty
Wednesday I was summoned to another part of my county to perform my civic duty and report for the dreaded Jury Duty. Jury Duty can be horribly boring, sitting in the Jury room for hours on end, and then perhaps dismissed. Bring a book. I once brought a notepad and wrote my friend a 6 page letter before being dismissed, then went to lunch and then some light shopping. It can be a nice diversion from your regular routine, provided that your company pays you for the time. I wonder if the reason so many people hate it is because they are losing pay or income by being there. I…
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Merry Christmas to All!
It’s morning on Christmas Eve. I was watching Tim Minchin sing “white wine in the sun”, my favorite secular Christmas song by far, so I thought I’d share it with you. Gifts have been purchased, delivered, and wrapped. Cards and packages were mailed early last week. Cookies have been baked. The house is decorated. Our traditional Christmas morning breakfast of Cinnamon rolls (from a tube) is in the fridge, as well as the ingredients for our contributions to Christmas dinner. Ted is at work, and Maya is still sleeping. I’m not sure I can face the grocery store today, and I didn’t plan a Christmas Eve dinner, so it’s…
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Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
After having seen the kerfuffle on YouTube where Reza Aslan took Fox News host Lauren Green to task for her attack of his scholarship, and his daring to write about Jesus while he, Mr. Aslan, is a Muslim, I was intrigued by the book. Most of the interview is Ms. Green looking like an idiot, stressing over and over again that, gasp, he’s a MUSLIM, so how could he possibly write about JESUS? He upbraids her, and explains a bit about how scholarship works, and how as a scholar of ancient religions, he studies Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The most interesting part of the interview, to me, was not the…
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Remembering Edelmiro Abad, again, still, always
Reposting this, again. I keep seeing notes to “Never Forget”. How could we. The horrors of September 11th, and the wars that came after, have forever changed our country, and the world, in so many ways. Back in 2006, I pledged to take part in the 2996 project, in honor of the 5th anniversary of that tragic day. Everyone who signed up was given a name of someone who died, and we promised to find something out about them, and write a bit about their lives, so that people will never forget them or what happened that day. As if any of us ever could. The name I was given…
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Giving Tuesday
The day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, the day when retailers hope to move from being in the red to being in the black. It has also become a day when shoppers go forth, hoping to find great deals, either for their Christmas and Hanukkah shopping, or perhaps for themselves. There is also Small Business Saturday, when shoppers are encouraged to frequent small, locally owned businesses, rather than the big box stores that are so popular on Black Friday. Yesterday was Cyber Monday, when shoppers go online and shop while they’re supposed to be working. A person can supposedly get really good deals on this particular Monday, though I find…