7/7/24

 Sunday, July 7, 2024

In bed at 9, PS at 11, moved to LZB at 1:10, and out to TV room at 1:40, unable to sleep.  Cleaned up the kitchen, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher by 5 when I turned the light off and slept till 6:10. I nodded off at some point considerably later and woke at 9 and then later, waking at 12:55, sleeping in chunks.

Prednisone, day 56, 15 mg., day 20.   I took my pills at 6:20, followed by breakfast of cabbage borscht at 6:35.  CGM reading at 9:15 = 192.   BR 1 hour post meds =     135/78.

I'm grateful for having maintained this daily journal for almost two years.  On the other hand, . . .

A year ago today: "More curmudgeonry.  From yesterday's WaPo, an opinion piece by Charles Lane, "U.S. institutions are polling about as well as King George III did in 1776."  We are indeed coming apart at the seams, making one wonder if there are any 'seams.' 

Should I continue?  At the end of this month, I will have made entries in this journal every day for two years, except for the weeks I was laid low by polymyalgia rheumatica, a period from April 22nd until May 13th.  At the beginning of that span, I wrote "Is the journaling coming to an end?  Losing interest, losing energy, losing focus.  There is a broader significance to these losses."  The broader significance then was my nightly thoughts of suicide, a repeat of my experiences years ago with severe pain from Hunner's ulcers.  Now the ulcers are taken care of, at least for now, and the PMR is taken care of, at least for now, but I have that challenge of losing interest, losing energy, and losing focus, finding it hard to think of what to write about.  Or I think of topics, like the challenge of trying the Christian ethic and the impossibility of living it, or the moral challenge of living in the world we live in, with an economy based on the production and sale of billions of consumer goods filling merchants' shelves all over the 'developed' world, billions devoted to military budgets and the production and deployment of ever more lethal weapons with which to kill one another, the demands of climate change, etc.  How much do I sin taking a drive in the country?  using hot water rather than the cold water out of the tap for kitchen clean-up, keeping the thermostat up in the winter and down in the summer, maintaining a large lawn requiring mowing, fertilizing, and herbicides on .62 of an acre, and on and on.  Limousine Liberal, virtue signaling, phony baloney, hypocrite.

My writing has become like Joe Biden's and Donald Trump's speech: discursive, incoherent, meandering, and, as David Branch always reminded me, prolix.  Now I have Grammerly for Safari pointing out to me how wordy my writing is.  

Am I writing in this journal just to fill time, because I am otherwise so inactive?  Especially when I am up in the middle of every night?  Am I talking to myself?

7/6/24

 Saturday, July 6, 2024

1947 The AK-47 goes into production in the Soviet Union, the Kalashnikov

In bed, not on recliner, around 9:30, awake at 1:54, and up at 2:10 to let Lilly out.  Let her out again at 4:50 but she stood on the sidewalk, as she always does, looked around for about 3 or 4 minutes, turned around and came back in.  She irritates me with her nervous need to be let outside for no reason other than nervousness, a need to move, to change location, to do something.  I think it's part of her dementia and confusion.  Her heavy breathing or panting is continuing, too, making me wonder about her heart and lungs.  In the predawn first light, the only birds I hear are the cardinals and robins competing to mark their territories, or are they just happy to be alive in the summertime?

Prednisone, day 55, 15 mg., day 19.   I took the pills at 4:10, followed by cottage cheese and berries at 4:20.  I nodded off at some time after 5 and woke up at 7.  Then again, woke at 9.  Sleeping in chunks.  BP at 2 p.m., 122/72.

I'm grateful, like the singing cardinals and robins, to be alive in the summertime.

First drive in the country!  Up Highway 57 to Jay Road and the horse farm and stables where I did volunteer hippotherapy work with the occupational therapist and handicapped kids.], across Cedar Valley Road and down County I to County O and Deerfield Drive.  Picked up a couple 14 X 16 canvases at Walmart and then home after dropping off Geri's birthday card to Rita Burns.  The farm fields and roadsides are lush from all the rain this year,  All the crops look healthy, much corn, alfalfa, some oats, and lots of hay (?).  So many beautiful homes on the farms and country roads, reminding me why I loved living in the country, even though we were in a developed subdivision.  I loved driving those country roads.  Still do.  I get a bit ecstatic in the countryside even though driving through it makes me intuitively understand rural Republicanism and disdain for Democratic identity politics and pandering to interest blocs.

Seeing myself in Joe Biden, Joe Biden in myself.  All the attention to Joe Biden's age and accelerating decrepitude reminds us fellow octogenarians of our own ages and decrepitude.  Biden's stiff, awkward walk is very much like mine and has the same main cause, arthritis in his spine.  His weakened voice and frequent throat clearing are much like my own, caused I suspect by thickened mucous in his mouth and throat.   His hesitancy in descending the steps to the moderators' desk after the debate with Trump mimics my own very similar behavior.  If ever I were to forget our similar plights, numerous newspaper articles remind me of the inexorable effects of aging, the inevitable and irreversible toll of Time on our bodies and our minds.  If there is a difference between us, it is in his tenacious attempt to hold onto Power, which to him is his autonomy and agency, his identity, whereas I have largely accepted the inevitable.  Some scholars believe we have four fundamental human needs: belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence. When you step away from a high-prestige job, you risk losing these.  Joe Biden, for reasons I suspect even he doesn't understand, has lusted after presidency his entire political life.  Now that he has had it for almost 4 years, he can't or won't give it up, no matter the risk or cost to the nation.  Ultimately, he is much like Trump, emotionally needy, self-invested, self-centered, and delusional.

Many politicians and other supporters are expressing sympathy and love for Biden as he undergoes the humiliating inquiry into his mental competence to hold the job he now occupies.  I am not one of them, not having been a fan or an admirer of Biden's for years.  Furthermore, it's not as if the whole world couldn't see this nationally embarrassing and dangerous crisis coming.  Back in the February 11, 2024, issue of The New York Review of Books, Fintan O'Toole wrote an essay entitled "The Memory Hole" in which he wrote:

If Biden is being treated so badly [by the Special Counsel investigating his retention of classified documents], the decent thing is to defend him and to dismiss the whole story as a politically motivated farrago. This is a serious mistake. Hur’s commentary on Biden’s cognitive abilities may be irrelevant to the job he was supposed to be doing. But it is not, alas, irrelevant to a presidential election that could shape American history for decades to come. For even if Hur’s is a low blow, it is a punch that someone was always going to land. Biden’s age is a gaping vulnerability that the Democrats have pretended not to see.

The right seizes on and magnifies every gaffe that Biden makes, but the blunders are real and seem increasingly frequent. In the days before he mixed up Sisi and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, he also confused Helmut Kohl with Angela Merkel and François Mitterrand with Emmanuel Macron. Under the pressure of a vicious election campaign, these moments may well happen more often and attract more attention. Hur’s report feeds into a narrative that was already established—that Biden is losing it—and makes it unavoidable.

Four days before Biden’s disastrous press conference, Hage Geingob died in a hospital in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. Geingob, who was eighty-two and the serving president of Namibia, was the only other octogenarian running a democracy. His death leaves Biden in a club of one. Biden really is exceptionally old for a working head of government. And there has been consistent polling evidence that this is one kind of exceptionalism that Americans don’t want to claim. As the New York Times’s chief political analyst Nate Cohn puts it, Biden’s age is “arguably the single most straightforward explanation” for why he is trailing Donald Trump. “It’s what voters are telling pollsters, whether in open-ended questioning about Mr. Biden or when specifically asked about his age, and they say it in overwhelming numbers.” Those numbers include a majority of Democrats.

It’s no good pointing out that Trump is almost as old and equally prone to verbal slips. It’s no good highlighting the undoubted truth that, while Biden’s language may sometimes be uncomfortably sloppy, Trump’s loose lips utter toxic lies and dangerous slurs. These things don’t change the facts that no one has ever run for a presidential term at the end of which he would be eighty-six, that Trump gets a free pass on almost everything, and that Biden, fairly or otherwise, is the lightning rod for deep generational discontents and widespread unhappiness at the persistence of an American gerontocracy. His age gives Biden an apolitical way to retire gracefully, standing by his considerable achievements in office while passing the problem of being too old to be president onto Trump.

 Nikki Haley was probably not wrong when she suggested after Biden’s press conference that “the first party to retire its eighty-year-old candidate will win the White House.” But if Biden persists in running, there will in effect be only one candidate: Trump. He will be the Republican contender but he will also be, as the monster to be feared, the primary motivator for Democratic voters. The election will be a referendum not on the incumbent president but on his challenger. Since Biden is unable to shake off the perception that he is too old to be president, he cannot make his own case effectively. He will rely on the simple proposition that he is not Trump. In a deeply uncomfortable sense, Trump, having taken ownership of the Republicans, will own the Democrats too.

Anniversary thoughts.  The AK-47, or Kalashnikov, started the worldwide production of assault rifles, sturdy and economical submachine guns that are crowd-killers.  It was followed by Israel's Uzi.  Approximately 75 million Kalashnikovs were produced and sold and more than 10 million Uzis.  We have moved on up to the AR-15 which in our land of the free and home of the brave are readily available to anyone with the money to buy one.  Dubbed "America's Gun" by the NRA, it has been used, e.g., to kill 49 at the Pulse Night Club in Orlando on 6.12.2016; 17 at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on 2/14/2018; 58 at the country music festival in Las Vegas on 10/1/2017,;12 in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado on 2/20/2012; 27 in Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut on 12/14/2012; 14 at a holiday office party in San Bernadino, California on 12/2/2015; 26 at a rural church service in Sutherland Springs, Texas on 11/5/2017; and 11 at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on 11/4/2018.

Biden the Deceiver.  From Maureen Dowd's column in the NYT:

"But Biden’s contention that he alone can beat Trump was never true. And now he has lost some moral high ground because he hid the evidence of cognitive deterioration.

Trump is the master con man, but Biden is giving him a run for his money.

He, his wife, his vice president and his longtime aides worked hard to conjure a mirage where everything is fine in Bidenworld.

That mirage vanished with the debate.

We don’t know now who is running the country. We only know who shouldn’t be — the president and the former president."

The photo of Jill protecting Joe from an approaching demonstator on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020, seems symbolic.  She is Johnny on the spot while he is slow to react.  He was 78; she was about 70.  Age mattered, then and now.

7/5/24

 Friday, July 5, 2024

Outside Mequon Walgreen's, mindboggling!

1937, Spam is first introduced by the Hormel Foods Corporation

2017, 101 people were shot, 15 were killed in Chicago over the 4th of July weekend

Lights out around 10 p.m., and up at 3 a.m.  At 3:20, I let Lilly out into another rainy, warm morning, 0.15" in the last 24 hours with another 0.4" expected in the next 24.  I wonder how all the rain this Spring and Summer affects the local farm crops.  I need a ride in the country.  I let Lilly out again at 5:30, with more rain, and then again at 7:30, with no rain.  2nd rainiest & 2nd warmest start to a year on record!

One year ago today: Welcome Rain. " I woke up from a midday nap to the sound of thunder in the sky and rain on our roof.  A real downpour at last.  It is such good news for our distressed trees and other growing plants after such a long dry early summer.  I'm hoping this will save some crops in the thousands of acres of farm fields all around us.  It is also announcing the arrival of a cold front pushing out the very warm, humid days we have been having over the holiday weekend. "

Prednisone, day 54, 15 mg., day 18.  I took my pills at 4:30, and breakfast of CBH & eggs at 5. I nodded off at some point and woke up at 7:15.  Morning meds at 9 a.m.,  1 hour BP = 123/76.  Trulicity injection at 10:39, 1.5 mg.

The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air.   I don't like fireworks.  I don't like firecrackers.  They are intended to remind me of  'the rockets' red glare and bombs bursting in air' in the battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.  They remind me of Vietnam, Iwo Jima, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, 'shock and awe,' Ukraine, and Gaza.  Men slaughtering other men, in great numbers, industrial, semi-organized and semi-managed savagery.   Every 3rd and 4th of July, I listen to fireworks being ignited in area parks and by neighbors and I wonder why they do it.  I know children get a kick out of them and I can understand that, but I wonder about adults lighting off strings of firecrackers.  Of course, they tend to upset Lilly and the other dogs in the neighborhood.  I'm with the dogs, enough already.  Grow up.

There was only one night we came under hostile fire at the airbase in Danang when I was there and I don't remember whether I saw or even heard the incoming explosives.  I remember I had an early watch at the TACC which left me free to get polluted at the Officers Club that evening.  I remember the sirens screaming, running from my tent with my .45 caliber pistol and my steel helmet to the TACC which was our 'battle station,' being afraid that I would be shot by another nervous or drunk Marine, "friendly fire," not by a VC.  But I also remember hearing each night the self-propelled, 8-inch howitzers down the road from our tents, firing off "H & I rounds," harassment and interdiction fire intended to disturb the enemies but succeeding in disturbing us Marines.  We were told it was H&I fire, but the only munition fired by the 8-inch howitzers in Vietnam were cluster rounds, releasing 104 "bomblets," a weapon banned by more than 100 countries, but not the U.S.  These were the munitions sent by Joe Biden to Ukraine last year, despite objections from some NATO allies. In any case, I had enough fireworks in Vietnam and experience no pleasure in being reminded of them every 4th of July.  Bah, humbug. 

Anniversary thoughts.  First, more memories of Vietnam.  Every 3rd night, we drew the long mid-watch at the TACC, from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. the following morning.  At some time during those long nights, a  Marine would show up from the mess hall with a couple bags of Spam sandwiches with mustard.  The grease from the Spam would leach through the brown paper bags creating quite an unappetizing presentation.  It didn't take long to develop an aversion to Spam though I can't remember whether I stopped eating them in the middle of those long, long nights.

Second, the 2017 bloodletting in Chicago also reminds me of Vietnam and reading the hometown newspapers that were sent to various of us by family members, reading stories of so-called race riots, protests against what we were doing in Vietnam, and urban gun violence.  It produced some cognitive dissonance.  While we were 8,000 miles from home dropping cluster munitions, napalm, white phosphorous, and Agent Orange on the Vietnamese whose choice of government we disagreed with, America was A Clockwork Orange.

More Biden mangled thoughts yesterday.  During a radio interview:

“By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first Black woman… to serve with a Black president . . . Proud to be involved of the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. There’s so much that we can do because, look... we’re the United States of America.”

On Wednesday, he had joked with visiting Democratic governors that his health was fine (as he made the motion of knocking on wood,) "it's just my brain."  But he is right about both (1) the need for good luck with the continuation of his good bodily health at age 81, and (2) about his brain which already has endured two surgeries for aneurysms years ago and which has caused his stutter and his frequent inability to speak clearly. 

The president of the Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." 

Vatican excommunicates Archbishop Viganò for refusing to recognize Pope Francis.  "The Vatican on Friday excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, exacting a severe punishment on the most vociferous internal critic of Pope Francis for refusing to recognize the authority of the pope and liberal reforms made by the Roman Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

Such drastic steps are exceedingly rare in the church and illustrated the extent to which Viganò — the Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States — is perceived to have crossed a line. He has called on the pope to resign and excoriated him in harsh terms, including calling him “a servant of Satan.”

Biden has his schismatics, Francis has his.

Stephanopoulos interview of Biden.  An exercise in denial, Biden's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid believing in a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.  What does he deny?  His persistent low approval and high disapproval ratings.  The polls showing him losing the popular vote to Trump.  The polls showing him behind in battleground states.  His decline over the last 3 and 1/2 years.  Blue states turning purple.  Likelihood of losing the House and the Senate.  

Did you watch a rerun of the debate?  Ans: "I don't think I did."

"I'm still in good shape."

How will you feel if you stay in the race and Trump wins?  OK if I did my best, gave it my all.

The Oven Bird

BY ROBERT FROST

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Spring and Fall 

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

7/4/24

 Thursday, July 4, 2024

1776 US Congress proclaims the Declaration of Independence and from Great Britain

1845 Henry David Thoreau moves into his shack on Walden Pond

1855 The first edition of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is published

I fell asleep on LZB while Geri watched season 3 of The Bear and woke up at 11:30 to move to the TV room where I slept until 3:30.  Watching The Bear is not a pleasant experience because the protagonist is so emotionally driven and damaged - too much tension, stress, anger, especially between Carmy and Richie caused mainly by Carmy's monomaniac OCD for a Michelin star and perfectionism, an illness.       

Prednisone, day 53, 15 mg., day 17.  I've been having intestinal problems lately probably from the diet I've been following in an attempt to lower my glucose readings, heavy on fish including herring and sardines, salads, and and now cabbage borscht.  I hope injecting 1.5 mg. of Trulicity tomorrow will help the glucose counts.  I took my 15 mg. of prednisone at 5:12 a.m. and breakfast of Grape Nuts and berries at 5:30 after which I fell asleep and woke up at about 8:30 with a high CGM reading of 329 from the Grape Nuts and berries 3 hours before.  It became an ALARM a few minutes later at 354.  Plus, intestinal problems even after the fibrous breakfast.   BP at 2 p.m. - 118/77.

Biden has been hiding and is being hidden.  There can't be much doubt that Joe Biden has been in hiding throughout most of his presidency but especially in the last year and most especially since last week's catastrophic debate performance.  From the WSJ:

Concerns about Biden’s age and efforts by the White House to limit his media appearances aren’t new. Biden has been media-shy over the course of his presidency, prompting criticism and frustration from some reporters and media outlets.  In February, Biden’s decision to forgo a high-profile interview ahead of the Super Bowl drew scrutiny because it came on the heels of two separate events during which he confused current and past world leaders, and a report from a special counsel that said Biden’s memory had been “significantly limited.” His team instead posted its first TikTok video during the Super Bowl.  As of the end of April, Biden has given fewer interviews and news conferences than any of his recent predecessors, according to data collected by Martha Joynt Kumar, an emeritus professor at Towson University. Biden’s last wide-ranging town hall-style meeting with an independent news outlet was in October 2021.

White House daily briefings by Karine Jean-Pierre have been brutal, not in tone or style, but substantively, with most reporters asking why the president has not been more visible since his epic fail last Thursday, why he has done no interviews, why he has not come down to the briefing room with Jean-Pierre to deal with the WH correspondents, why he is only seen reading from teleprompters.  Tomorrow's interview with George Stephanopolous has taken on huge significance,  Will he be energetic?  Will he stumble over words, as he almost always does?  Will he lose his train of thought, and do one of his frequent "well, anyway, . . ." moves away from a thought half-expressed?  Will he commit a gaffe, for which he is a past master?    Will there be a 'We finally beat Medicare" moment?  Will he fall prey to his tendency to just make things up when it suits his momentary purpose?  Any slip-up could be fatal to his viability  Will his phony-baloney, just plain Joe, style work for him in the setting, or against him?   In a sense, all of this should be too little, too late in the sense that the damage done at the debate is irremediable.  If Biden could be that out of touch at the debate, knowing what the stakes were, how can his competency be trusted on any day?  If suffering from a head cold can lead to that much dysfunction on so important an occasion, how can his competency be trusted on any day?  If he was still so affected by jet lag 11 or 12 days after his trips to Europe and after nearly a full week at Camp David resting and preparing for the debate, how can his compos mentis ever be trusted?  Finally, I first paid attention to Biden's faltering footsteps when the debate was completed and he approached the steps leading from his podium to the lower level where Jake Tapper and Dana Bash were seated.  Jill is holding his hand and he is unsteady and uncertain on his feet as I am on "a bad day."  It's an image not easily forgotten.

There is also an op-ed by Philip Swaim in this morning's WSJ about what I have long wondered about: Biden's intelligence and judgment.  The writer mentions his choice of Kamala Harris, whose popularity was long below that of Biden himself, his decision to leave Afghanistan the way he did (over the advice of his generals and with disastrous consequences), the way he keeps supplying Netanyahu with weapons while wringing his hands over civilian casualties in Gaza, the way he keeps supplying Ukraine with some weapons, but not the needed ones, and restricts its ability to use them,  "Perhaps his greatest political blunder of a career replete with them: Mr. Biden didn’t have to challenge Mr. Trump to a debate. But he did. “Well, make my day, pal,” he said. “I’ll even do it twice.”"  How is it that after a long lifetime of public speaking, ,,,,, Biden hasn't learned to modulate his delivery, to slow down his enunciation to reduce his tumble-tonguedness?  How was it that he ended his law student career 76th out of his class of 85?  How was it that he was almost expelled for plagiarism?  How was it that he crashed his 1988 run for president because of easily discovered plagiarism of British Labor Leader Neil Kinnock's autobiography?  How is it that he has so little self-control about telling lies about himself and his achievements, lies easily uncovered yet frequently repeated by him?  How is it he can't even keep his excuses straight, with his aides all blaming "a cold" and him blaming "a sore throat," two different maladies, and him claiming that he 'almost fell asleep during the debate' because of foreign travel almost 2 weeks earlier?  How is it that after Karine Jean-Pierre denies that he has seen a doctor since his annual physical in February, Biden himself says he consulted a doctor a few days after the debate?  Are these the kinds of behaviors we ever saw in JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama, or are are they unique to Joe Biden?

Biden is 81; I am 82.  Since my 82nd birthday, I have experienced very serious health declines, most notably polymyalgia rheumatica and reliance on prednisone, but also debilitating spinal arthritis, difficulty walking, climbing stairs, loss of leg strength, difficulty with vision and reading from dry eyes, and difficulty swallowing solid food from dry mouth.  There are times when every step seems a prelude to a fall, when moving the recycling and the garbage to their carts in the garage is risky behavior, and now bowel and bladder challenges add to the indignities of old age.  What will Biden's health be like after his 82nd birthday?  his 83rd?  his 84th?  Who is he fooling?

Anniversary thoughts: First, "All men are created equal", except women, slaves, Indians, propertyless people, etc.

Second, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. 

Third,  "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."

7/3/24

 Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Lights out at 10:10 after watching Rachel Maddow's strange interview with Stormy Daniels, up at 12:30 to let Lilly out, tho she came right back in.  I went back to sleep until a 2:30 PS then half-asleep till 3:30 when I gave up and got up and cleaned the kitchen, put away yesterday's soup-making utensils, and let Lilly out again.  Unsteady on my feet again, clumping around half-like Frankenstein, half-like the Carol Burnett-Tim Conway character, Mrs. HWhipple.  I nodded off at some time and woke up at 7 a.m., nodded off again and up at 8:40. 

We had almost half an inch of rain again yesterday in this very rainy Spring/Summer season.

Prednisone, day 52, 15 mg., day 16  I took my 15 mg. at 4:35. followed by breakfast of sweet-sour borscht at 5:00 a.m..  At 7 a.m., my CGM reading was 200 and at 8:55  it was 214.  Morning med at 8:50, with 1 hour follow-up BP at 132/76.

I'm grateful to be alive and watching a female goldfinch gathering a big beakful of cotton for her nest from our shrinking cotton ball while a chickadee nabs a sunflower seed from the tube feeder.  Mindboggling miracles within feet from my recliner, hkollow-boned descendants of dinosaurs with the ability to fly through the air, do acrobatics, and stop on a dime.  Able to construct nests of twigs and grasses and cotton from cotton balls, or to nest in hollows of trees.

Day's project was a successful trip to Meijer's for CBH, 11 cans and to Grafton Target for dishwasher detergent and printer ink.

Some things I'm thinking about today:

(1) Reagan's Farewell Address:  "“[I]n my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

(2) Pius X's Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), a broadside attack on Modernism, science, and critical theology, ecclesiology, and scriptural studies.  "We will and ordain that scholastic philosophy be made the basis of the sacred sciences. . . Further let Professors remember that they cannot set St. Thomas aside, especially in metaphysical questions, without grave detriment."  Why I spent almost all of my 15 credit hours of Philosopyhy and 12 credit hours of Theology focused on Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Maritain and none on Kant, Hegel, Kierkigaard, Nietsche, Niebuhr, Buber, et al.

(3) American "exceptionalism:"  Is America really essentially different from all other countries, subject to different rules?  Does America have 'absolute immunity' from the rules that apply to other nations because of our special status in the world?  Does our government through the CIA or our military get to choose the governments we want to rule other nations, nations like Chili, Vietnam, Guatamala, El Salvador, Cuba, Iraq or Iran?  Anne Appelbaum asks in today's The Atlantic: "What kind of  country elects a criminal and an insurrectionist as its president?"  How's that for our 'exceptionalism'?  What kind of country re-elects "W" after his false claims of WMD and invasion of Iraq?  What kind of country gives Trump millions of more votes after seeing his first term in office, increasing his share of the vote from 46% to 48%?  

(4) Gaslighting: Biden's White House, campaign staff, and supporters.   Charlie Sykes today on Nicolle Wallace show: "There has been a lot of denialism and I think there has been a lot of gaslighting.  The Biden White House has a credibility problem because I think a lot of Democrats turned on that debate and they had been prepped to think that he was going to show up, that he was going to be vigorous, that he was going to be tough and take on this guy, and when Joe Biden shuffled out there and turned in the performance that we all saw, people were shocked and we have to ask ourselves, why were people shocked?  Were we misled?  Was there a bubble aroung Joe Biden?  What do we not know?  What have we not been told?  In a democracy, we need to ask these questions, and we need to have answers to these questions."  Gaslighters-in-chief: Joe Biden, Jill, Hunter, Audrey, Ron Klain, Sen. Coons, Anita Dunn, and Bob Bauer.  It is not hyperbolic to say that the fate of the nation and of the world is in the hands of Biden and his sycophantic 'insiders.'  How long I have sounded the alarm about Joe Biden and his self-centered, self-satisfied, narcisistic character.  How right I have been.  

(5) Cat on a hot tin roof:  Karine Jean-Pierre at White House daily briefings.

(6) Strongest poem in Spoon River Anthology.  Editor Whedon:

To be able to see every side of every question;
To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;
To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,
To use great feelings and passions of the human family 
For base designs, for cunning ends,
To wear a mask like the Greek actors—
Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle,
Bawling through the megaphone of big type:
“This is I, the giant.” 
Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,
Poisoned with the anonymous words
Of your clandestine soul.
To scratch dirt over scandal for money,
And exhume it to the winds for revenge,
Or to sell papers,
Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,
To win at any cost, save your own life.
To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,
As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track
And derails the express train.
To be an editor, as I was.
Then to lie here close by the river over the place
Where the sewage flows from the village,
And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,
And abortions are hidden.

7/2/24

Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Lights out at 10:10, awake at 2:45, and let Lilly out at 3.   I wasup reading the papers till after breakfast and fell back to sleep sometime after 5 waking around 6:15.

Prednisone, day 51, 15 mg, day 15.  I took the 15 mg. pills at 4 a.m. and oatmeal at 4:25.    

I'm grateful that my mother and my sister are not seeing our long downhill ride to Trump, Biden, Congress, and the Court.  I would include my father, but after World War II and Iwo Jima, he had much less idealism left in him than they did, perhaps none.   

Borscht day but little else.  I made the beef stock yesterday and let it set overnight in the garage refrigerator.  Not much fat, lots of collagen.  I made the soup today, and  head a challenge cutting up the head of cabbage but finally managed it.  I added 2 cans of diced tomatoes instead of one because the soup looked way too thick and the extra tomatoes and liquid affected the taste of the soup in a not-helpful way, but the soup is still very edible, with no carbs to speak of.  I had 2 bowls for lunch.  The cabbage is a bit al dente which is how I like it, not mushy or soggy.  The beef shank is very good.  My CGM readings have been going down since I ate the 2 bowls of soup, just what I was hoping for.  I hope to eat the soup mostly for breakfast, to avoid the early morning spike in my readings that seems to affect all later readings during the day.  Making the soup wore me out.  I had a lot of back pain and often had to sit down to rest.  I took a nap mid-afternoon but didn't do much of anything today, but I did find myself thinking of the following unhappy reflection.

    The photo is the broth/stock simmering next to my breakfast eggs, basting and about to be put atop my corned beef hash.

Descensus Averno facilis est,  America's long downward spiral.  It seems to me American has been going downshill ever since my childhood and the euphoric years after WWII and the victories over Germany and Japan.  We were the only superpower after the war.  All the other formerly powerful nations were spent by the war,  the Axis powers, England, and France,   China was undergoing its communist revolution.  Russia was bled dry by the war, and millions of its citizens killed.  We were the king of the world in the late 40s.

Then in the 1950s, we moved into the Cold War and fear of the communists, mainly in Russia but also in China.  We got the John Birch Society, HUAC and Joe McCarthy, a communist under every rock, behind every tree, black lists.

In the 1960s, we had assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK, so-called race riots, and most significantly, our ill-advised invasion of Vietnam that would tear the country apart, and tear families apart, and rightly bring the U.S. down in the estimation of the world.  It was when, as LBJ predicted, the South abandoned the Democrats and became Deep Red Republican.

The 60s brought us Nixon and Kissinger and the 1970s with our invasion of Cambodia, Kent State, the coup against the democratically elected Salvador Allende in Chili, CIA interventions in Central America, Watergate and Nixon's resignation, Attorney General John Mitchell and other going to prison, the Iran Hostage Crisis, the rejection of Jimmy Carter and the election of Ronald Reagan.

The 80s started the electorate and the nation's turn to the Right under Reagan, a trend that would ultimately take us to where we are now with the Trump cult.  It was the era of the Iran-Contra scandal, Ollie North and Fawn Hall shredding so many documents that kept jamming the shredders so Fawn Hall secreted documents in her boots and clothing to keep them from investigators.  It was the era when the Right-Left divide became deeper and more bitter.

The 90s brought us Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinski, the blue dress, and impeachment, and, perhaps most destructively, Newt Gingrich, the great nastiness he introduced into domestic politics, and the further deepening of the Right-Left, Red-Blue polarization.  The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting brought us Rush Limbaugh and AM talk radio

The 00s brought us "W," Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, 9/11, the start of the 20 year war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses (WMD, yellow cake uranium), renditions, black prisons, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, waterboarding and "enhanced interrogation" and of course the Financial Collapse of 2008 and the Gread Recession bailouts for the Wall Street and foreclosures for the rest of us.

The teens brought us the backlash to the election of Obama, our first Black president, with the election of Donald Trump and all that has led to since his 2015 ride down the escalator behind Dragon Lady.  Two impeachments, Covid-19, the 2020 election of Biden, the "Big Lie, and January 6th and all that has ensued.

Meanwhile, as a seemingly constant background to all the above, we have had mass shootings in schools, churches, and other places, ever-growing income and wealth inequalities, police shootings of unarmed Black men, and persistent problems attributable to class, caste, and racism.  And we end up where we are today, faced with a choice between a corrupt and sociopathic Donald Trump and an aged and addled Joe Biden, the best our two major parties have to offer America as 'leader of the Free World.'

America is a Gun

by Brian Bilston

England is a cup of tea.

France, a wheel of ripened brie.

Greece, a short, squat olive tree.

America is a gun.

Brazil is a football on the sand.

Argentina, Maradona’s hand.

Germany, a oompah band.

America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.

Hungary, a goulash stew.

Australia, a kangaroo.

America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.

Scotland is a highland fling.

oh, better to be anything

than America as a gun.

7/1/24

 Monday, July 1, 2024

The 1863 Battle of Gettysburg began in Pennsylvania, a slaughterhouse

1910 Comisky Park opens in Chicago

1934 Brookfield Zoo opens in Chicago

I fell asleep again @ 8:30 as Geri watched COBRA on PBS, woke up at 9:30 to brush my teeth, put a load in the washing machine, and turn on the slow cooker for my oatmeal. Lights out at 10:40 and up at 1:50 to let Lilly out and do some middle-of-the-night reading and writing.

Prednisone, day 50, 15 mg. day 14.    I took my pills at 3:50. Oatmeal at 4:05. CGM reading at 7 a.m. = 255.  Took my morning meds at 7:05.  BP at 8:40 = 144/80.

Dr. Ryxka called in sick today.  My appointment is rescheduled to 7/8/24 at 2:30.  Geri changed her PT appointment to 7:45 this morning to accommodate my rheumatology appointment.  Rats.

French election's foreshadowing.  The French electorate is veering hard right in the snap election called by President Macron, whose centrist party came in 3rd in yesterday's election, well behind the leftist party and Marine LePin's party.  Similar results occurred in Germany's recent European parliament election in which Scholz's Social Democrat coalition came in 3rd, behind 2nd place neo-Nazi AfD, and the Christian Democrats.  Only in the UK where the Tories have had control of the government for so long and have overseen the long decline since Brexit will the leftist Labor Party prevail in the upcoming election.  And now the handwriting is appearing on America's wall with Joe Biden's stumbling, mumbling, bumbling performance in Thursday's debate with Trump.

Peter Baker and Katie Rogers report in this morning's NYTimes that  Joe Biden is receiving strong encouragement from wife Jill and son Hunter to stay in the race despite the polls showing 72% of respondents saying Joe doesn't have the wherewithal to handle the job of president and 45% of Democrats wanting him to bow out.  It's hard to believe that the political future of the most powerful and most dangerous nation in the world may be determined by Joe's elderly wife and fucked-up son trying to salve the old guy's feelings and to retain their current relationships with the pomp and power of the White House.  Jill Biden's words after the debate - telling Joe he did a great job and that he 'answered all the questions' - sounded like a mother encouraging a child after a poor performance at school.  And Hunter Biden as a presidential advisor?!?!  Long-term drug abuser, crackhead, married his current wife one week after meeting her, recently convicted of one federal offense with a tax evasion trial coming up?!?!

Ron Klain is quoted as saying "{Biden's] the choice of the Democratic voters."  Right, like Putin was the choice of the Russian voters.  No realistic opposition candidates were available once Biden froze them out by announcing he was seeking re-election.  Plus, by keeping him largely hidden from the press for the last 3 and 1/2 years (few press conferences, no Super Bowl interview, etc.), the voters didn't get to see the extent of his diminishment over those years.  Even now, he uses a teleprompter at his rallies and even at a fundraiser.  Unscripted, he wanders and gets lost.  Newspaper reports that major donors have expressed alarm, saying they recognized in Biden’s performance some of the deterioration they have observed in smaller meetings and donor events.

Is this really happening in and to the United States?  Or am I living in a dream world from which I will eventually wake up?  Can things possibly be this bad, that the best our political system can come up with is a choice between the fascistic cult leader Donald Trump and the addled, superannuated Joe Biden?  Joe Biden is 15 months younger than I am.  I think of the changes that have occurred in my health just this past year - debilitating polymyalgia rheumatica, crippling arthritis, enervating insomnia, decreasing ability to see and read, difficulty getting out of bed, rising from a chair, and mounting stairs (sometimes even a single step), etc.  What may the next year hold in store for Joe Biden?  And the year after that?  And the year after that?  And the year after that?  And I'm ignoring the possibility of a cardiac event, a stroke, or another intracranial aneurysm like the two he had earlier in life.  Again I wonder - is this really happening?  

Lastly, my concern is not limited to the upcoming 4-year term of office.  What is Biden's competency today?  Does he have some dementia already?  Is he a 'sundowner' whose cognitive capacity and competency fade as each day progresses and he tires?  OK only episodically?  The Thursday debate occurred at 9 p.m. Eastern time and he looked at times like a slug.  The next day's campaign rally at which he was so "with it" occurred in the afternoon and even then he had to use his teleprompter.  He couldn't be counted on to deliver the speech unscripted, or even just relying on notes. 

Some thoughts on presidential immunity case.

 Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass:  “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all."

Article II, sec. 3  United States Constitution:   He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

Popular Myth: No one is above the law.

Trump v. United States, No. 23-939:  "The nature of Presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.  And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts."

Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, dissenting: "In its purest form, the concept of immunity boils down to a maxim—“‘[t]he King can do no wrong’”—a notion that was firmly “rejected at the birth of [our] Republic.”  To say  that someone is immune from criminal prosecution is to say that, like a King, he “is not under the coercive power of the law,” which “will not suppose him capable of committing a folly, much less a crime.” Thus, being immune is not like having a defense under the law. Rather, it means that the law does not apply to the immunized person in the first place. Conferring immunity therefore “create[s] a privileged class free from liability for wrongs inflicted or injuries threatened.” 

1977, David Frost interview of Richard Nixon:

Frost: So, what in a sense you’re saying is that there are certain situations and the Huston plan or that part of it was one of them where the president can decide that it’s in the best interest of the nation or something and do something illegal.

Nixon: Well, when the president does it … that means that it is not illegal.

Frost: By definition –

Nixon: Exactly … exactly… if the president … if, for example, the president approves something … approves an action, ah … because of the national security or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of, ah … ah … significant magnitude … then … the president’s decision in that instance is one, ah … that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they’re in an impossible position.

Anniversary thoughts.  I mention Gettysburg only because it reminds me of my first public speech.  My Bly, my freshman English teacher at Leo High School, appointed me to represent Class 1B in the Oratory Competition in the school auditoriu.  Why?  I have no idea whatsoever.  There were 30 or more of us in his class.  Why me?  In any case, I chose to deliver Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and when I stood in front of the entire student body to give it, my heart was thumping, my mouth went dry, and I gave the opening and closing paragraphs and completely forgot the middle of the speech.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

I mention the opening of Comisky Park and the Brookfield Zoo because they remind me of how often my Uncle Jim, may he rest in peace, took me, my sister Kitty, and my cousins to the zoo and the ballpark.