Red hot salsa

I just canned ten half pints of salsa that will make your eyes water.  Tomorrow I plan to process another ten jars of salsa that after you eat it will make you cry like a little girl.  

No, I am not turning this into one of those Facebook-type things where I report on what I had for breakfast (Grapenuts and bananas) or what my cat did.  (I don’t have a cat, but I did rescue a toad tonight that was hopping around in our cellar.)  I just felt the need to ignore Trump, Boris Johnson, and all the rest of the clowns running various governments around the world.

Now I will go and drink a toast to the death of Robert Mugabe.  In about 30 years, maybe less, almost every one of those clowns will be following him.  

Can he do that?

I taught American Government for over 40 years, but I never realized that a president could move funds around on his own.  Tax bills must originate in the House.  Congress controls the “purse strings.”  The Executive branch does not have the power to allocate funds.  At least that is what I taught.

Now Trump has ordered the Pentagon to divert funds from military construction projects in almost half of the states, three territories, and 19 countries to build a wall on the border with Mexico.  I assume these projects were part of the effort to defend the U.S.  I also assume The Wall is a vanity scheme to satisfy all those people who chanted “Build the Wall” at Trump rallies, although they also chanted “Mexico” when Trump asked who would pay for it.

I don’t understand how these things can happen.  I don’t understand how Congress doesn’t rise up and impeach this clown.  I don’t understand how we can be called a democracy when things like this can happen.

Lightbulbs

Trumps’s hatred of Obama is bizarre, pathetic, and dangerous.  He realizes that he will never have the respect, and yes, the love, that people have for his predecessor.

This hatred leads him to the worst kind of irrationality.  Now the U.S. government is rolling back the rules that required Americans to use more energy efficient light bulbs.  This was not a hardship.  This did not cost jobs.  This was an easy transition.

Ending this rule will increase the need for more energy and increase global warming.

What Trump doesn’t realize is the rule dates back to the Bush administration.  

Alabama prepares

We called Cousin Terry in Tuscaloosa this evening.  We were worried about him and his family in the path of Dorian.  He’s ok, but he did say that all the stores have run out of bread and milk.  We told him our thoughts and prayers were with him during this difficult time.

Relaxing the methane rules

When the Trump administration announced that it was loosening regulations on the release of methane, one of the worst of the greenhouse gases, I expected the frackers and the pipeline people to be joyful.  After all, PennEast’s proposed compressor station in Kidder Township in Carbon County will release over a hundred tons of methane annually.

The American Petroleum Institute did celebrate.  It announced that companies were controlling leaks without government intervention.  (That statement, by the way, is a flat-out lie.)

On the other hand, BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell were not happy.  They are members of the international group called the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, pledged to reduce emissions.  They are also under pressure from stockholders, activists, and their own employees.  They know that if they don’t clean up their act, public pressure will mount against their industries no matter what the Trump Administration announces.

Trump as role model

The 1920s and 1930s were bad years for democracy.  Mussolini in Italy was a role model for Hitler.  Stalin killed millions in Russia and the Ukraine.  Franco took over Spain, Salazar came to power in Portugal.  Hungary went under.  Japan was ruled by a militaristic cabal, and Chaing Kai-shek in China was little better.  A good number of Latin American countries were ruled by caudillos.

It was a spreading sickness.  Nationalist doctrines infected one country after another. The future was bleak.  Then everything got better.  By 1990, democratic government was the norm.  With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the end of colonial rule in Africa and Asia, and increasing international cooperation, a new world order seemed about to be born.

In the last few years it has all fallen apart.  Putin put an end to democracy in Russia.  He is envied and copied by Trump.  Trump became a role model for rulers in the Philippines, Brazil, Israel, Italy, Hungary, Poland, India, and now Britain.  Nationalist and racist parties proliferate and grow stronger.

Americans must share in the blame.  Trump rallies are an exercise in crowd manipulation, and the crowd revels in its manipulation.  Republican senators and the Supreme Court bend to Trump’s will.  In the meantime, the opposition Democrats fracture and snipe at each other, seemingly unaware of the need for  a united front.  

My students often told me I was too pessimistic.  I’m not.  I am a realist.

Denying citizenship

Children born abroad to certain U.S. service members and other federal employees had been granted automatic citizenship, even if the parents were not citizens.

New Trump administration policy:  parents of those children, even those born on military bases, will now have to apply for citizenship on their children’s behalf before the kids turn 18. 

So here we have Trump, who got out of serving in Vietnam with fake bone spurs, now denying citizenship to the children of men and women who are serving our country in a way that he refused to.

I will never understand why so many vets think Trump is wonderful.  I don’t get that. 

See Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Citizenship No Longer Automatic for Some Born Abroad,”  New York Times, (Aug. 29, 2019), p. A17.