“Private feelings are our form of truth today, a kind of ultimate self-absorption—understandable because there are no universal patterns. Yet, in expressing private feelings, people really think they’ve done something great.”
— The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Chaos, Reorder by Richard Rohr OFM
Corporations don’t want government to tell them what to do. They pay lots of money to politicians at all levels of government from POTUS to state representatives to make sure they can do whatever they want. These corporations don’t care about people who work them as they are expendable, thus there will be no rules placed on companies that are doing nothing more than keeping plants open to make money regardless of how many of their employees and the citizens in the surrounding community dies.
There was a day when there would have been strikes all over the place, but union busting has mitigated that risk to corporate America.
The flowering trees in my neighborhood are starting to bloom, including one of the largest flowering trees that I have ever seen.
I wonder if the families of the people who died in the swing states agree with President Trump? They will answer the question in November.
Today was the best weather day of the year so far, with sunshine and temps in the 70s. Fortunately my schedule enabled me to take several walks outdoors. We live in a condo, of which I often brag of not having to cut the grass. Today the lawn care company was cutting the grass for the first time of the year due to the governor lifting restrictions and allowing them to work. Just smelling the freshly cut grass lifted my spirits, a small bit has returned to normal.
Republicans ought to be nervous. A presidential re-election during a time of crisis ought to be a slam dunk, but Trump is not competent enough to know when to stay out of the way.
I hope this is a good sign. Today is the first day that my county reported single digit new cases and deaths since the COVID-19 crisis began.
I’ve been frustrated with the gray, cold, and windy weather we have had this spring, so I am grateful for the sunshine and warmth today
Just realized the iOS microblog app now provides a way to edit posts. Happy.
Nothing to see here, just moving through.
I think the real problem with transitioning to the current state of lockdowns to something that resembles normal is that doing so requires cooperation from everyone to a degree that doesn’t seem possible today. It requires people to wear masks in public, to get tested, to stay home if they get sick and it will require people to be willing to get vaccinated when a vaccine becomes available.
Unfortunately we live in a world where selfishness and greed is the default expectation. In that world in which you cannot count on people to do the right thing, someone has to be a parent and that means the government.
Me, on September 27, 2008:
I think what we are witnessing today is the result of the greed plus poor leadership equation. If this moment in history is to truly be a fork from the road we are heading down, we have got to start recognizing the greed within all of us and learn to understand what is enough, and we have got to start scrutinizing our leaders, particularly the leaders of our companies.
It is a strange time to celebrate a birthday, and yet, here I am celebrating in midst of a COVID-19 imposed lock down. Actually, this is not a new experience for me. Once before I celebrated a birthday while confined to the walls of my home and compared to that experience this one is much better. I find how people are reacting to a reality in which they do not have control to be very instructive. A self-centered view of the world is a creation of the ego projected inward and outward by the Powers That Be.
Remember, Republicans are the ones who enabled COVID19 to become so bad in the United States in the first place! Why should they be trusted, they demonstrate an inability to make good decisions and thus are bad leaders.
Some people still want to think that COVID19 is no worse than the flu. The facts just don’t support that thinking. The government tracks the flu and the from what I see the peak influenza-associated hospitalizations in the entire state was about 150 in 2017-18. over a 30 week period of time. Right now we have that many people in individual hospitals, so probably 10x that number across the entire state.
Dave Winer has been releasing updates to Little Outliner, which is a browser based implementation of his outlining tools.
Little Outliner creates and edits outlines written in OPML, which is an XML-based file format for outlines that Dave created. If you only need to view and edit files, Little Outliner is all you need. Dave recently released a web service that renders an OPML file as a web page, the net result is a simple way to create a nice looking web page. I’ve decided to use this to create my /now page, all I have to do is edit the file in Little Outliner. You will find the link to this page in the footer the pages on this site.
You may notice that the subheads in the page have a littlle upside down triangle, those are parent nodes of the source outline, the following indented text are children nodes. If you click the triangle the node will collapse, click it again and it expands. By default all of the nodes render as expanded but you can configure a node to collapse by default. Click node you want to configure as collapsed, then click the suitecase icon on the left toolbar, click the plus button on the Edit attributes window; in the left field enter collapse, in the right field enter true, and then click Save. Refresh the web page and you see node/head you configured will be collapsed.
Trump seems to think the most important measure of his success is the stock market. The reality is that the stock market is driven significantly by emotions, either confidence (bull) or fear (bear). The only tool a President really has in relation to the stock market is his or her ability to lead. People know leadership when they see it, and they look for leadership for confidence and void of seeing such leadership have fear. Consequently, the stock market is telling us much of what we need to know about President Trump and that is he is not a leader, but this was obvious in 2016 to anyone willing to see beyond the theater perpetrated by Trump and everyone around him. After we get through this crisis I wonder whether we will truly place blame where it belongs, which is how a person of Trump’s deep character flaws and probable mention disorder was elected. We need to truly look at how we elect Presidents and make changes…. that or Congress has to get a whole less political and much more representative of ALL Americas and execute it’s oversight obligations given it by the Constitution. (The Senate had it’s chance of saving tens of thousands of lives when it had the chance to remove Trump from office.)
Trump has been running for re-election from the first day after he was elected President. A politician constantly running for re-election cannot lead, and we need leadership. The leader we need now has only one objective, to save as many lives in the near term and long term as possible. I don’t know if such a leader exists, worse I am not sure the American people have the will to allow such a leader to exist.
The temperatures the last couple of days have had highs in the 40s and with it I’ve been feeling the affects that the COVID-19 lock down has put on all of us more than in the past. Really wanting the temps to warm up so that I can sit outside on the patio.