Crest
No to war with Iran
No to war with Iran…💥
Part of being an adult is tolerating and working with awful people that really don’t deserve anything positive for their bad behavior. But often it’s beneficial to work with evil as the costs of addressing evil is often higher than ignoring it.
Iran is an obnoxious bear out in the Middle East that occasionally does terrible things but mostly is content to avoid significant conflict with the United States. The same is true with the United States – the cost of destabilizing the Middle East would be significant to the United States. The most obvious impacts to every day Americans would be greatly escalated energy prices and increased police presence in public places but its unlikely to limited to that. There would be an enormous financial cost to the federal budget, leading to cuts to domestic programs and both American and Iranian lives destroyed along with damaged infrastructure.
With our own country facing significant domestic needs, I believe that should be our focus. Middle Eastern stability is less important now than in decades past with strong United States oil production and no threat of communism any more, but we shouldn’t poke the bear of Iran and unnecessarily upset the balance of power in Iran.
While I didn’t attend today’s protest downtown on the war, I will continue to speak out and will attend future protests. ✊
Scraggly
Swaying in the wind
Doing some cleaning downstairs, looking at my rusty fridge, I figured out I spend under 15% of my income a year on rent and utilities
Doing some cleaning downstairs, looking at my rusty fridge, I figured out I spend under 15% of my income a year on rent and utilities… 🏡
I can’t complain too much about that these days, but that’s because I still have the same run down apartment from when I first graduated 🎓 from college and I’ve made more money at work 💼 and rent increases have been fairly modest. Rent is about 14% of my income, utilities are low because I leave the heat low most of the year, don’t use air conditioning, don’t have a lot of electronics and all my light bulbs are energy efficient. 💡Granted maybe if you count my $500 a year smartphone bill that’s another half of percent 📱 but I refuse to have internet at home and take my bottles and cans to the recycling center ♻ myself rather than pay for trash pickup.
It’s by no means my dream home – I don’t have a big backyard ⛲ or a gun range 🔫 or livestock out back 🐐 – but it’s decent enough and it’s on two bus lines 🚍 for easy commutes to work. And it’s allowing me to save for my off grid property and a secure retirement 👴 so I can enjoy better things in the future.
How Did the Republican Party Get So Corrupt? – The Atlantic
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself with a base of ever older, whiter, more male, more rural, more conservative voters. Demography can take a long time to change—longer than in progressives’ dreams—but it isn’t on the Republicans’ side. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why, while voter fraud knows no party, only the Republican Party wildly overstates the risk so that it can pass laws (including right now in Wisconsin, with a bill that reduces early voting) to limit the franchise in ways that have a disparate partisan impact. This is why, when some Democrats in the New Jersey legislature proposed to enshrine gerrymandering in the state constitution, other Democrats, in New Jersey and around the country, objected.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy, and will be for years to come.
January 5, 2020 Morning
Good morning! Happy National Bird Day 🐧! Birds the word. It should be nice for observing 🔭 birds when I go for a walk this afternoon in the Albany Pine Bush this afternoon. Three weeks to 5:30 PM Dusk 🌆. Mostly cloudy and 35 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ There is a northwest breeze at 13 mph. 🍃. I’m hoping for sun later, despite the darkness cast over the land by the incumbent president. Let the record reflect Donald Trump is asshole who hell bent on ruining America.
As I mentioned earlier, I made up that queche earlier and it quite good 🍳, although my kitchen still stinks from turning on the broiler to melt the cheese. A decade ago I accidentally left a plastic spatula in the oven with the broiler on and after all these years it still stinks when I turn it on. The oven is fine, just just the broiler setting. But regardless, it cooked up nicely. The old crust tasted fine too. Topped everything off with bread crumbs from shredded old bread 🍞 I had in the fridge.
Today will be mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny 🌞, with a high of 34 degrees at 11am. Three degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around February 11th. Breezy, with a northwest wind 13 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 31 mph. With that wind 🍃, I’ll probably want to bundle up when I go out in the Pine Bush. A year ago, we had light rain in the morning with a few breaks of sun the afternoon. The high last year was 40 degrees. The record high of 64 was set in 1950. 8 inches of snow fell back in 1891.❄
Today’s plans include hiking in the Pine Bush🌲then going to the Save the Pine Bush meeting, then out to folks house for Sunday dinner. 🍲 Then it’s five day work week but hopefully it will be a busy one and go by quickly. But for now I’m riding the bike 🚲 for a while watching the videos of Madison County that I made last week.
Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:01 pm with sun having an altitude of 24.7° from the due south horizon (-46.1° vs. 6/21). The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:51 pm with the sun in the southwest (232°). 📸 Might actually be golden this afternoon. Heading towards thirty degrees sun elevation by the end of the month. The sunset is in the west-southwest (239°) starting at 4:33 pm and lasts for 3 minutes and 23 seconds with dusk around 5:07 pm, which is 57 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:43 pm. At sunset, look for mostly sunny skies 🌃 and temperatures around 30 degrees. The wind chill around sunset will be 18. ☃️ Breezy, 18 mph breeze ⛅ from the west-northwest with gusts up to 30mph. Today will have 9 hours and 10 minutes of daytime, an increase of 59 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will have a chance of snow, mainly after 1am. Increasing clouds 🌨, with a low of 24 degrees at 12am. Nine degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 11th. Not going to be until pretty late. Maximum wind chill around 20 at 9pm; Northwest wind 5 to 8 mph becoming calm in the evening. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2019, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 22 degrees. The record low of -19 occurred back in 1996.
🌹🌻🌼Only 74 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼
Everyday is one closer to spring. Or so I tell myself. The countdown makes it seem closer as do the memories of getting eaten alive by the black flies. 🐜 But all seasons do change.
As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until 5:30 PM Dusk 🌆 when the sun will be setting at 5:00 pm with dusk at 5:30 pm. On that day in 2019, we had partly cloudy and temperatures between 28 and 14 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 31 degrees. We hit a record high of 59 back in 1950.
