Sunday, April 30, 2023
In bed at 10:30 after watching WH Correspondents' Dinner, awake at 4:30, up R 4:54, thoughts of pelvic floor therapy, having some pain, 38℉, high of 43, cloudy day ahead with rain in the afternoon,, wind W at 12 mph, 8 to 15 mph during the day, gusts up to 27 mph, wind chill is 31℉, expecting28 to 36℉ during this last day of April, sunrise at 5:46, sunset at 7:51, 14+5.
Fall of Saigon 1975. 48 years ago. I think I can remember the emotion I felt on that day, watching the helicopters on the rooftop, the videos of the ship with the helicopter pushed overboard. I can't describe it, but I remember it. The culmination of the Dirty Dozen years from the1963 Kennedy assassination, the years of urban riots, draft protests, Vietnam, culture shock returning to US in 1966, Kent State, Army Math Center bombing, Weathermen, Watergate, Nixon resignation, fall of Saigon. I'm stopped in my tracks just recalling those years,
LTMW at 8 a.m. at a flurry of birds at the feeders: goldfinches, sparrows, chickadees, red finches, downy woodpecker, and a solo Tom wild turkey in the side yard as I do my morning kitchen chores, probably having gleaned whatever he could from under the feeders. Male cardinal also gleaning. Snowbirds appear to have all flown north. Birds leave as a squirrel hangs upside down working diligently on the suet cake. Amazing agility.
Another bank bites the dust. From this morning's NYT: "Federal regulators were racing on Saturday to seize and sell the troubled First Republic Bank before financial markets open on Monday, according to several people with knowledge of the matter, in a bid to put an end to a banking crisis that began last month with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The effort, led by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, comes after First Republic’s shares tumbled 75 percent since Monday, when the bank disclosed that customers had withdrawn more than half of its deposits. It became clear this past week that nobody was willing to ride to First Republic’s rescue before a government seizure because larger banks were worried that buying the company would saddle them with billions of dollars in losses."
Is the whole system tottering, or just fragile? Where were the regulators? Asleep at the switch? or in the pockets of the bankers?
Biden's Bid for Reelection. I am not a fan of Joe Biden. Although he wears the persona of Uncle Joe, Joe Middle Class from Scranton, PA, just an ordinary guy like you and me who wants to do good for his fellow Just Plain Joes, and although I've been very pleased with the policies he has pursued since his election in 2020, I never lose sight of the facts that (1) he has an immense ego, (2) he has prodigious ambition, (3) he has seriously pursued the presidency since at least 1988, 35 years ago. (Actually, his pursuit of the most powerful job in the world surely started well before 1988.) And (4) he has quite a history of playing loose with the truth. Also, (5) while everybody appropriately sympathises with the deaths of his wife Neilia and one year old daughter Naomi in 1972, and with the death of his adult son Beau in 2015, I can't help thinking that he has milked those deaths endlessly for political purposes. I know I am probably too harsh in that judgment but I wonder if there has ever been occasion when Biden could bring up the tragic losses in his life when he has chosen NOT to do so. Finally, he has devoted his entire life to obtaining and holding on to political power, to getting elected and re-elected, with all that requires of a human being. On top of all that, I hold political grudges and I can't forget his handling of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings in 1991, nor his leading role in making student loan debts non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. In 2005, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, and its implications for student-loan borrowers were dire. As signed into law under former President George W. Bush, the bill expanded the undue hardship requirement to borrowers with private student loans, expanding the scope of borrowers who would have to prove their impossible predicament in court. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of Biden's 2020 rivals who pushed for expansive student debt cancellation, blasted the 2005 bankruptcy law, along with Biden's support of it. "That bankruptcy bill made it impossible or very difficult for people to escape from that student debt," Sanders said during the primary debate. "It was a very, very bad bill."
And now octogenarian Joe is running for reelection AND keeping Kamala Harris as his running mate. Quaere: what are the odds of his dying in office or becoming incapacitated during a second term? What are the chances of the nation ending up with a President or Acting President Kamal Harris even though she demonstrated in the 2020 election that she is not a popular candidate even among Democrats much less independents and Republicans? Why has Biden frozen the field of Democratic candidates by announcing his bid for re-election? Because ONLY he can beat the fascist Donald Trump, the likeliest Republican opponent? Does Biden have such a low opinion of the other elected leaders in his own party that he believes NONE could compete with Trump? NO ONE NOT ONE NOBODY? What does that say of the Democratic Party, or at least of Joe Biden's view of the quality of potential Democratic candidates? I believe Biden is running again for the same reason he ran in 1988 and in 2008: he wants the most prestigious and powerful job in the world. And now that he has the job, he just doesn't want to give it up. He wants to be King of the Hill and he is willing to risk losing his re-election bid (like Ford, Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Trump did) and ceding power to the many American fascisti rather than giving another Democrat a chance to succeed him. I'm sick just thinking of the next 6 years. As Biden so often (almost always inaptly) says "not a joke."
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