I found this in a desktop file having failed to share it with my readers. Maybe on Face Book? But not here. It's filed now with the other videos and is worth a listen
The resident frog chorale kicking it into high gear.
From our walk this morning there is this - one of the first species to make an appearance in very large quantities.
I recently returned from a perfectly enjoyable family vacation in the United Kingdom
And I brought these curious polling statistics back with me to share:
This is real world stuff. And if this polling is believable who knew that this thinking is so pervasive and Americans so persuadable to believe otherwise.
When an individual is susceptible and acquiescent to embrace fallacious disinformation; 19th century American showman PT Barnum had a useful descriptor for the phenomena. Follow this link at The Guardian to learn more.
Another weekend of family eating, drinking and frivolity is in the record books. Three generations of our immediate tribe gathering outside of a holiday, wedding, funeral or other family event. And the monsoons paused just long enough to smoke chicken and ribs on Friday and make a batch of brick oven pizzas Saturday. Today dawned sunny and bright.
It can stop with the rain now.
Anyway, now that the dog hair has been swept, bedding laundered, garbage bagged; some evidence worth sharing....
In case you missed it, Warren Strobel and Mike Gordon over at the Wall Street Journal, authored a splendid piece of journalism highlighting how Vladimir Putin rebuilt Russia's unprovoked war against Ukraine with the assistance of our adversaries - Iran, North Korea and China.
Russia's military cooperation with Iran, North Korea and China has expanded into the sharing of sensitive technologies that could threaten the US and its allies long after the war in Ukraine ends...
The speed and depth of the expanding security ties involving US adversaries has at times surprised US intelligence analysts. Russia and the other nations have set aside historic frictions to collectively counter what they regard as a US-dominated global system, they said...
Russia's war in Ukraine is...propped up by China, North Korea and Iran, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday. They want to see the US fail. They want to see NATO fail. If they succeed in Ukraine, it will make us more vulnerable and the world more dangerous.
This expansion among the world's most authoritarian and brutal regimes echoes observations made by Anne Applebaum and Bill Kristol.
So communist China, nationalist Russia, theocratic Iran, Bolivarian socialist Venezuela, whatever North Korea is - these aren't countries that share an ideology....But they do share a common interest. And the common interest is undermining us. And by us, I mean America, Europe, the liberal world, the democratic world...
Their own oppositions, whether it's the Hong Kong democracy movement, or whether it's the Navalny movement in Russia, or whether it's the women's movement in Iran, are inspired by and use democratic language. And they use the language of freedom and liberty and rights and rule of Law. And the dictatorships need to undermine that language in order to keep in power domestically...
And they have an interest in shaping the debate inside the liberal democracies in ways that benefit them. And increasingly, they've concluded that what benefits them is the rise of illiberal, disruptive and radical parties, because when that happens, the Western world or the democratic world loses its sense of community and solidarity. It loses its ability to make group decisions. If we're divided by radical politics in different countries, then we're not very good at standing up to them. And they very much see this as a war, as a competition, as a conflict, even if we don't.
And so now, they are betting that Trump will be the person who destroys the United States, whether he makes it ungovernable, whether he assaults the institutions, so that they no longer function, whether he creates so much division and chaos that the US can't have a foreign policy anymore. That's what they want, and that's what they're hoping he will do. And again, I don't want to the conspiratorial about how much power they have. They don't run US elections, but they will try to influence the outcome however they can, because they think he will weaken the country ultimately. And, by the way, from what we know, the Chinese are only just beginning to experiment in this world. From what we know, the Chinese agree. So, he's the candidate of the authoritarian world, not because he'll make America stronger, but ultimately because they think he'll make America weaker.
May you live in interesting times - has long been claimed to be a Chinese curse. Who knows for sure? What we know for sure is the world is a dangerous place and Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are seriously bad actors. An unholy alliance.
*Content courtesy of The Bulwark
Sometimes when faced with a challenging project; there are challenges.
Be sure to follow this blog for more home repair advice.....
As the days have grown longer the hormonal levels
of whitetail deer began to change.
Fawns are born, antler growth commences for the boy deer and for all of the whitetails the gray winter coat with its
thick guard hairs is shed and the ruddy red heat-reflecting summer coat is revealed.
The process is complete and you cannot miss the deer highlighted in the lush greenery of the local farm fields.
These daylight-influenced hormone levels occur twice a year to trigger the spring molt and after only three months, is supplemented by the regrowth of the extra layer of longer, stiffer, hollow hair over the softer hair closer to the skin.
One month between these before and after images.
We returned from almost three weeks of family vacation in the UK last week.
While there, a visit to Stonehenge was in order.
No Druids were involved as this is both a Neolithic religious and astronomical site.
Happy Solstice, people!
Because the Roman goddess of marriage is Juno – namesake of this frequent month of marriages - we have the honeymoon.
Fetched the memory cards from the trail camera trap line the other day and I'm happy to report a healthy collection of whitetails; and an impressive class of 2024 recruits...
Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice here in the northern
hemisphere - 3:51 PM to be precise. Which means that on Thursday we receive more sunlight than any other day
of the year. Naturally, you would
conclude that this date would have the earliest sunrise and latest sunset, no?
Don't jump to conclusions.
Even though the solstice has the greatest amount of daylight - the
earliest sunrise occurs before the solstice and the latest sunset falls
afterward. The occurrence of those
events is dependent upon how far you are from the equator – a function of the
tilt of the Earth on its axis.
Here is
an interesting factoid – I went to the US Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department and looked-up the Sunrise and Sunset times for The Platz before, during and after the solstice.
Meet - Penstemon digitalis - commonly known as Smooth Penstemon.
Obviously someone who visits a lot of yard sales has too much time on their hands...
This is from an article published in August of last year; so it's dated. Feel free to ignore any reference to the trials and tribulations of the Ron DeSantis campaign for the GOP nomination for president.
Nonetheless, on the heels of almost nine years of fealty and obeisance to Donald Trump, only a few would argue that the party is still defined by Ronald Reagan’s famous three-legged stool of the religious right, fiscal conservatives and neoconservative hawks.
But if the Republican Party is no longer in Reagan’s image, it’s not necessarily a populist-conservative MAGA monolith, either.
Last July's New York Times/Siena College poll found that only 37 percent of Republicans count as part of Mr. Trump’s loyal base.
And while majorities of Republicans side with Mr. Trump on almost every issue, those majorities are often quite slim: Around 40 percent of Republican-leaning voters support aid to Ukraine, support comprehensive immigration reform or say abortion should be mostly or always legal.
But if the Republican Party isn’t quite a MAGA monolith, what is it? To better understand the party today, the Times split Republican and Republican-leaning voters into groups, based on the results of the Times/Siena Poll. The groups were defined by how Republican-leaning voters felt on the issues — not how they felt about Mr. Trump.
The results depict a Republican coalition that consists of six groups:
The Moderate Establishment (14%). Highly educated, affluent, socially moderate or even liberal and often outright Never Trump.
The Traditional Conservatives (26%). Old-fashioned economic and social conservatives who oppose abortion and prefer corporate tax cuts to new tariffs. They don’t love Mr. Trump, but they do support him.
The Right Wing (26%). They watch Fox News and Newsmax. They’re “very conservative.” They’re disproportionately evangelical. They believe America is on the brink of catastrophe. And they love Mr. Trump more than any other group.
The Blue Collar Populists (12%). They’re mostly Northern, socially moderate, economic populists who hold deeply conservative views on race and immigration. Not only do they back Mr. Trump, but he himself probably counted as one a decade ago.
The Libertarian Conservatives (14%). These disproportionately Western and Midwestern conservatives value small government. They’re relatively socially moderate and isolationist, and they’re on the lower end of Trump support compared with other groups.
The Newcomers (8%). They don’t look like Republicans. They’re young, diverse and moderate. But these disaffected voters like Democrats and the “woke” left even less.
Mr. Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party is founded on an alliance between the Right Wing and Blue Collar Populists, two groups that combine to represent nearly 40 percent of Republicans — and about two-thirds of Mr. Trump’s MAGA base of seemingly unshakable support.
The bottom line is that (in case anyone cares any more) the growing numbers of center-right voters, Reagan Republicans and independents still retain some clout in a general election. The Big Fat Middle. I'll be watching to see if the same polling is published in a couple of months.
Complete article here. It's an academic read if you're not blocked by a pay wall. Stay-tuned.....
Elder statesmen are little regarded by their opposition party until they get over eighty years of age - and thus harmless.
- Herbert Hoover, in a 1961 letter to Richard Nixon
When you live half-way between the equator and the North Pole your growing season is short. Add to this a family vacation that takes you out of county for almost three weeks and whatever you have growing has to fend for itself.
Hence, the garden is a mess. The sweet potato planting has failed. The critters ate all the pea vines. Weeds are thriving. Only the leeks have thrived. I'll till the mess under and start over. There is time.
The flower gardens are overgrown with grasses; nevertheless, Jill's iris have burst thru the mayhem with all their glory.
Thank God; I thought they'd be done by the time we returned.
Peonies are doing nicely too.
Check these out....
Back from a family vacation to the UK so there is this.
Drums and pipes and tribalism.
Clanadonia performing Hamsterheid.....
Recently I scored a weekend alone with my dog.
Translation: a long walk every day followed by exciting chores like cleaning the septic tank filters, scrubbing bird feeders, spraying herbicide on invasive plants and hauling stuff to the town dump. We even completed the annual cleaning of the machine shed.
Meanwhile, the dog became noticeably 'clingy' without Jill being around.
DEFCON 3 to 4, depending.
Cottontails in the yard were a medium threat.
Then there was this.....
It's an onerous annual springtime task.
But the shed is tidy.
Reward is a frosty adult beverage on the porch....
Newton's First Law of Motion - also known as the Law of Inertia - states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same directions unless acted-upon by an unbalanced force.
More from our Red Rocket....
Are you better off today than you were four years ago? I suppose that it depends-upon your circumstances.
If you are retired and a member of the ownership class (real estate, stocks and bonds) you're likely doing better than OK. Historically this isn't always the case, yet for now the current economic cycle favors these sectors.
If you are a working couple with kids and a mortgage; perhaps not so much. Higher interest rates and inflation might be making it harder to make ends meet.
Nevertheless, there is no getting around the fact that the US economy is much stronger than that of similar countries in the post-COVID world. How come?
A recent report from The Fed offers some insights.
Labor productivity in the US is greater than that of peer nations. US industrial policy in response to military support for Ukraine plays a role. Monetary policy has insulated the public from large swings in borrowing costs. And while small business bankruptcies soared to historic levels in the last year of the Trump presidency; the recovery has been far more successful here than abroad. In the US, strong fiscal policy, lower pass-through from monetary policy, and a more flexible labor market may have all contributed to supporting a new wave of firm creation over the past three years, the Fed economists write.
The outlook remains robust with inflation-adjusted GDP growth forecast at 2.4% for 2024. Inflation will persist but slowly recede. Rate cuts may be fewer and smaller.
In the world of wagering you can place a bet on virtually anything. It doesn't have to be on the outcome of a ball game or a horse race. People place bets on all sorts of subject matter; both common and arcane.
Starting a small business is a bet. Investing in stocks may sound like a bet or walk like a bet; nevertheless, it requires an ownership interest.
In the financial markets, spread betting is a form or derivative trading on various types of securities. Traders (gamblers) speculate on how the price of a financial asset will move and make a profit or loss based-upon the outcome. Unlike investing in stocks, they do not own or take a position in the underlying asset.
Not all bookmakers take bets on anything and often you cannot find the bet you want to make available. Nevertheless, you can wager on the possible outcome of anything from an emerging COVID variant, the Academy Awards, gasoline prices, flight delays and natural disasters. Naturally distrustful of polling data, for a long time I have followed the Vegas line on election outcomes. More information builds a basis for rational predictions. Not that I am any better at it.
Speaking of which, PredictIt specializes in elections. A contract for President Biden winning in November recently cost 51 cents versus 47 cents for former President Trump. Both contracts pay $1 if you're correct.
Alas, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been grabbing the bull by the balls with prediction market operators over both the merits and legality of wagering on domestic elections.
In 2023 the CFTC rejected a bid by derivatives start-up Kalshi as a consequence of perceptions of violations of election law. The CFTC has taken both Kalshi and PredictIt to court.
Much of this is an academic pursuit. Common sense suggests to me that derivatives contracts are used all day long to help (and protect) businesses and individuals from the consequences of unexpected and disastrous outcomes. If I had significant exposure to electric vehicle stocks I might hold a contract protecting me from a Trump election win in November. Elections have consequences after-all. And depending upon where you stand both good and bad. But I digress.
The bottom line is the Vegas line on election outcomes, I happen to think the odds-makers play an important role with the use of an additional tool to measure where voters might stand on a particular candidate.
Does a financial services regulator have a role in elections? Is this the purview of Congress and lawmaking? I dunno.
Stay-tuned....
From the trail camera there is a strutting gobbler, a pheasant, sandhill crane and a cuddly fox squirrel...
Newton's First Law of Motion - also known as the Law of Inertia - states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same directions unless acted-upon by an unbalanced force.
Written by Chris Isaak this song was released on his third album, Heart Shaped World, in 1989.
It became a sleeper hit after being featured in the 1990 Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern movie Wild at Heart.
By January of 1991 the song was a Top-10 hit, reaching number six on the Billboard Hot 100.
Wicked Game...
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent . . .
But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.
Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for.
-President Ronald Reagan - D-Day 40th Anniversary
New Moon this evening.
Without the interference of moonlight even distant objects may be visible to the naked eye.
Breakout your binoculars or a telescope if you have them.
Fingers-crossed for clear night skies and good viewing conditions.
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