Tuesday, January 9, 2024
In bed at 10, awake at 5 and up at 5:20 with Lilly sleeping at the foot of my bed. I walked slowly and carefully to the bathroom to avoid waking her and got within 3 inches or so of her head before she awoke, more evidence of her sense of hearing and other senses dulling with old age. I let her out but she stood on the sidewalk for 5 minutes or so in the very light rain, turned around, and came in. 35°, high for the day, low of 31°. WINTER STORM WARNING: 3 to 8 inches of heavy, wet snow, winds gusting as high as 35 mph. Wind directly off the Lake. Sunrise at 7:23, sunset at 4:34, 9+11. I have a log burning in the fireplace and may stay in bedclothes all day.
Treadmill; pain. I've had some tightness and spasms all day, not terribly severe but bothersome. 30:34 & 0.70 while watching Charlie Sykes' Bulwark with Tim O'Brien and a documentary on Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg and Crown Heights in Brooklyn.
I'm grateful usually for snow days, but it usually doesn't last very long. Today's snow has been less than expected. Friday may bring a bigger storm.
LTMW at 2:30 and I haven't seen a single bird all day. It's been raining, with a little snow, since I got up this morning and the ground is covered with slush. I filled the bird feeder at about 2 but no comers. A village truck just went by spreading salt (or brine) on the road. The rain/snow mix is blowing almost horizontally. By sundown, I still haven't seen a single bird.
Lilly is having trouble with a lack of strength and control in her hind legs. Very worrisome.
WTF, Gen. Austin? WTF, President Biden? Defense Secretary Austin was released from ICU only yesterday, after a full week there, and he is still hospitalized "under doctors' supervision." Moreover, the Pentagon says "it's still unclear when he may be released." Still no semblance of any explanation about the elective surgery on December 22 with overnight hospitalization, the re-admission on January 1 with 'complications' and 'severe pain', the failure to notify the C-in-C in the White House, his deputy DefSec, and most of the Pentagon's senior leadership. An intolerable, unacceptable situation that can only hurt Biden's campaign for re-election. NSC spokesman John Kirby refuses to say whether Biden knows what Austin's medical condition is, saying “That would really be between the two men.” Hard to believe.
The afternoon Pentagon press conference disclosed that Austin's 12/22 surgery was a prostatectomy for cancer. This was so 'personal' that it couldn't be disclosed to the commander-in-chief? To his deputy SecDef? To his senior Pentagon leadership? To the public? WTF! Unbelievable.
We are being lied to every day, everywhere, all the time and it will only get worse. The headline in the NYT today: Elections and Disinformation Are Colliding Like Never Before in 2024. Excerpt:
Billions of people will vote in major elections this year — around half of the global population, by some estimates — in one of the largest and most consequential democratic exercises in living memory. The results will affect how the world is run for decades to come. At the same time, false narratives and conspiracy theories have evolved into an increasingly global menace.
Baseless claims of election fraud have battered trust in democracy. Foreign influence campaigns regularly target polarizing domestic challenges. Artificial intelligence has supercharged disinformation efforts and distorted perceptions of reality. All while major social media companies have scaled back their safeguards and downsized election teams.
“Almost every democracy is under stress, independent of technology,” said Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank. “When you add disinformation on top of that, it just creates many opportunities for mischief.”
It is, he said, a “perfect storm of disinformation."
Every day now, I receive text messages on my phone, with BS and requests for money from Republican sources. Every day on television and radio and in newspapers and magazines I see advertisements full of lies and half-truths. Politicians lie to us daily. Our governments lie to us regularly. Church leaders lie to us and probably to themselves. It's not hard to understand why so many of us are cynical and distrustful.
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