Friday, April 30, 2021

Farewell April







 

22 comments:

  1. Biden 100 days: What we all got wrong about him. [Click] Biden is a little older than I am, so has a better recollection of the waning days of the New Deal consensus. And of course he has a far better understanding of how government works behind the scenes.

    I beg to differ with the columnist’s assertion that Reagan and his successors encouraged competition; they encouraged monopoly. The anti-monopolist principle of the New Deal enabled competition that resulted in innovation, efficiency, and progress.

    I find myself thinking of what a marvelous thing FDR’s Fireside Chats [Click] must have been. Everybody in the family—maybe even neighbors who didn’t have a radio—gathered together, listening to the President of the United States speaking directly to them. No distracting TV picture. No one listening to any other radio program or the phonograph. No smartphones. No one doing homework. Everyone paying attention to every word—it would have been rude to do otherwise. I will have to see if I can find a recording of a Fireside Chat on YouTube and listen to it. Of course I won’t be able to fully appreciate the impact; I won’t be listing with the ears of my parents or grandparents. But I expect to be impressed nonetheless. A good thing bears repeating.

    Gee—the Wikipedia article linked above has an embedded recording of Roosevelt's first fireside chat, on the Banking Crisis (March 12, 1933). Further down there is a Filmed excerpt of the fireside chat on the State of the Union (January 11, 1944),[14] in which Roosevelt discusses a Second Bill of Rights—rights that we still lack today, and which Mr. Biden plans to work on. Yep, darn good.

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    1. For some reason I remember the speeches from what must have been 1950 in boarding school. Perhaps they were being replayed, but I remember listening in a dorm (we got to stay up late?) in Glendora, California. The school is long gone.

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  2. Huey Long is a real good speaker too; here is his Share The Wealth speech. [Click] Which calls for a rendition of Every Man a King [Click] by The Louisiana Ramblers. It is said that if it weren’t for Huey Long, FDR’s New Deal would have been significantly less generous to ordinary folk.

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    1. The spouse is the second cousin, once removed, of the man who is reputed to have shot Huey Long, which his family have long denied. 'Tis a small world this U.S.

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    2. Huey's bodyguards let loose with quite a few shots too. I understand that the bullet marks were left. The same thing was done in the entry to the Japanese Prime Minister's residence, where a group of far right-wing Army mutineers attempted to assassinate him around 1935.

      Others are welcome to disagree, but the way I see it Huey Long had to destroy the existing political power structure, first in New Orleans, and then in Louisiana, in order to do anything for the people (and he did a lot for them). Then he got carried away with seeking political power, eventually seeking it for its own sake. But he sure was a colorful character.

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  3. We are leaving for Maine at 9:30am. I can't post from my phone but am taking along my computer. Will pop by when possible. I will also update the VT Covid stats when I am able. MUST SLEEP. I have been running on 5-6 hours sleep every night this week and that won't change until at least tomorrow night. But it's a good week all the same. Going to see the whole Family over these 2 weeks!!

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    1. We are thinking about a shopping trip to San Jose if the covid situation doesn't take a turn for the worse.

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    2. Ooops--meant to say we are thinking about a shopping trip to San Jose in mid-June.

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    3. We are thinking of a trip to NH now that we are both vaccinated. However, it turns out that my blueberries will want to be picked after May 5th. So, that's a consideration. I do not actually like blueberries, but the property we bought has about a quarter acre and I do like picking berries.

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  4. The sole objective is to get attention--like boys sticking a pigtail into the ink well. Attention seeking is very difficult to deal with because ignoring it does not work and neither does inflicting penalties. I'm reminded of my second child who made a lot of noise and proved obstreperous, inviting the use of the belt after proper warning. And I will never forget the day when a session of whacking and howling ended with him looking at me and saying, "Gee, mom, that really did hurt." Then I knew I'd been had and that never happened again. The only effective response to that kid was to send him to his room to be alone.
    How do we get the U.S. media to stop paying attention to Donald and his clan? Fat chance.

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    1. I have long thought that if he had any sense [HA!] Donald would have had a bolt hole, or maybe several bolt holes, ready to use at any time. But that doesn't seem to fit with his M.O.

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    2. He can't go to a bolt hole. His ravenous Ego needs to always and continually be fed with attention. He is ruled by the needs of his Ego and attention is his oxygen.

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  5. Traveling mercies, listener.

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  6. This is good. And long. And complicated. Read it anyway.

    https://digbysblog.net/2021/04/improvement-at-the-border/

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  7. Vote-by-mail favored by older, affluent voters, census finds. Both parties have been acting on the assumption that voting by mail favors Democrats, apparently because Trump said so. They should have considered his reputation for truth-telling.

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  8. I got my income tax refund Wednesday. More than $10,000. I can't believe how little tax I pay on a quite comfortable income, although that's partially because a little over half of it is Social Security.

    And on a totally different topic, I got my hair cut today for the first time since September.

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    1. The past couple of years we had big tax refunds; this year quite the opposite because of capital gains, which is OK.
      Glad to hear you are stimulating the economy!

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  9. VT 4/29: 22,824-22,723 = 101
    Active Cases:2565
    Deaths:246(x2)
    Recovered:20,013(87.7%)
    Hospital:19(+2);ICU:6(-1))
    Tests:379,673(+954)


    VT 4/30: 22,952-22,824 = 128
    Active:2520
    Deaths:246(x3)
    Recovered:20,186(87.9%)
    Hospital:17(-2);ICU:5(-1))
    Tests:380,659(+986)

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  10. The trip is going well. The little one (20 months) warmed up fast. She observed me a little, then came over to where I was, stood in front of me, and smiled. Melted my heart!

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