Our son and daughter are March babies. Gregory turned 59 last week. Polly, bless her, is 50 today. Happy birthday, kids!
You may wonder why this photo has such a skewed ceiling-to-children ratio. That’s because Gregory, with Polly’s help, had just moments before installed that fan for us.
Donna’s making corned beef & cabbage for us tomorrow. On Tuesday she’s off to Las Vegas with a friend. Her friend, who is elderly (more so than us, that is) was going to drive up and back solo until Donna offered to go along and share the burden of driving. Her friend, like us, has an adult child living in Las Vegas. While she’s visiting her daughter there, Donna will stay with Gregory and our daughter-in-law Beth at their home. Meanwhile I’ll be here in Tucson with Polly, who’s still under our roof and looking for work. Boys, have I mentioned she’s single?
Later today I’m driving downtown to check out the monthly meeting of a watch & clock collectors’ group, the only one I’m aware of in these parts. I’ve become a watch enthusiast in my dotage and who knows, maybe I’ll meet some like-minded folks and expand my social circle. I’m wearing an old watch of not much value, and plan to keep a tight grip on my wallet.
No news yet on the AFIB ablation my cardiologist wants me to undergo. I’ll see him Monday afternoon and will perhaps know more then.
People are talking about a “kill switch” on the F-35 fighter we’re selling, and trying to sell, to allied nations. As if we can turn them off remotely if the nations operating them decide to do something we don’t like. I suppose it’s possible, but I’m here to tell you people wondered the same thing about the F-15 Eagle in the 1970s when we decided to sell it to Israel, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, and it wasn’t true then.
What is true is that the F-35, (like the Eagle before it), requires constant logistic and avionics support and a pipeline for the specialized weapons it carries, and the minute that’s cut off, Fat Amy quickly becomes useless. That’s the real kill switch.
To me, one of the central characteristics of a first-world country is a government that works, and a big part of that is lack of corruption in the day-to-day lives of its citizens. I’m not naive … there’s always corruption at high levels, because we’re human. In our country, for example, the legislative branch, Congress, runs on bribery (you want a law passed, you buy a representative or a senator). But the system of bribery doesn’t trickle down into the lives of regular Americans. We don’t have to pay someone at the power plant to get connected to utilities, police and fire departments don’t demand money under the table for protection, we don’t have to kick back part of our salary in order to get a government job (never mind that government jobs suddenly no longer exist).
You know where I’m going with this, right? Trump and Musk are so intent on breaking government it very well might quit working, and the bribery necessary to get things done at high levels will become necessary at our level, and then we’ll be, what? Venezuela? Somalia? No longer a first-world nation, at any rate.
I can’t vouch for the science behind Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, but what I see on its chart looks about right to me: the USA already ranked as considerably more corrupt than western European and other first-world nations. We’re still in the blue (albeit a lighter shade than the least-corrupt nations on the list), but headed for yellow … or worse. And way too many Americans think that’s just fine.