WTF-Beta

There are two possible reasons, in my mind, why progressive politics haven't been more successful across mainstream America:

1. Americans, overall, are fairly conservative in their values.

2. So long as money rules our elections, the leaders the people actually want can't get elected.

A good friend of mine ran for Montana's lone House seat at least 20 years ago. He had been a very popular state Senator, and had become head of the EPA under Clinton. A highly respected guy, and well-known here. The opposition ripped him to shreds. He later told me that his experience taught him that it was impossible to successfully run for national office unless you become a whore. Our current Montana delegation certain proves that assessment.

The mainstream Democrats are also whores--just a more watered-down version of whoreishness than the Republicans. They also don't dare step out of line, for fear of losing their backers/funders.

Face it, late-stage capitalism is a failure and has destroyed our country. The corporations/oligarchs run it all. The people no longer have a meaningful voice in politics. If they did, we would have had Bernie Sanders as president in 2016. No wonder voters have become apathetic. They know their vote has become more and more meaningless.

People like AOC and Mamdami can only win in NYC. Do you see first water progressives winning anywhere else? I don't. Do you see the rest of the country becoming more like NYC? I don't.

What is fundamental to this problem is money in politics. We have needed deep election reform even long before the Citizens United decision--that decision just made it far worse.

Now the disenfranchisement of the electorate has gotten so severe, about all we can do is overthrow the government to get our voices back.

If someone has a better solution, I'm all ears.

I think Canada and the EU are going to have to take drastic action. If Putin is allowed to get away with this, Europe is next. The gasbag-in-chief is obviously completely useless. Quit including him in anything. Quit deferring to him. Pretend he doesn't exist and go save Ukraine. People have got to learn how to deal with narcissistic sociopaths. It's not by pandering to them.

@wtg for some reason that video won't play.

Mary Anna, any drug store or convenience store or bodega or gas station should sell them.

In Montana, it is considered rude to use your horn unless it's truly an emergency. I can tell how many tourists are in town when I hear car horns.

That is terrifying, Bernard! I'm sure glad your horn works! I think Jodi is right. The kid who rear-ended me last fall was on his phone.

OK I will go buy a powerball ticket.

TWO grand pianos! One in the guest house!

This is just down the road from the music camp I went to in the 1960s. Still a totally idyllic area today. Adjacent to the state forest where I often went xc skiing in the 1980s. I can't imagine anything better than this. Oh, I don't know what I would do with the tennis court. Anybody here play tennis? (Cindy?)

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/764-E-Hill-Rd-New-Marlboro-MA-01230/246990468_zpid/?utm_campaign=androidappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare

There is no point in having a sovereign nation state, as far as I'm concerned. People are people. The land doesn't belong to anyone, we're all guests on this planet. The "othering" that goes on in this country is utterly abhorrent.

I have run this gauntlet for years and years. I saw so many kinds of specialists, you name it, I saw it. Nobody could do a thing for me. An emergency room doctor, who was seeing me for a suspected blood clot (turned out to be a baker's cyst), heard me when I described my complaint, and raved about another doctor here in town. Insisted I must go see him. This was about ten years ago. I was skeptical, and had pretty much given up on ever getting help, but this one doctor turned out to be a total unicorn, one of a kind. A polymath who is fascinated by everything and who thinks outside the box. It took some time, but he was able to figure things out when no one else could, and I have gotten most of my health and capacities back, thanks to his embrace of the entire picture of the person, not just focusing on what he learned in a book or what the AMA says--or what insurance will pay for.

There are very few doctors who do what he does. There are people flying in to our town of 20,000 from NYC to see him. All word of mouth. And he teaches at conferences all over the world. He has doctors visiting here from all over the country to exchange ideas. He started a local community group to discuss the latest research with other medical professionals. All while coaching high school sports in his free time.

It's such an anomaly--and so refreshing--to see a medical doctor who is truly in love with science and learning, even as he nears retirement, and who spreads it like an evangelist. I have sent so many people to him.

I've also watched his practice shrink and the practices of so many others become stunted, due entirely to the medical insurance wolves. He was forced to stop accepting Medicare and many other insurances. "We're not a charity" he explained to me. So much of the care he gave was being denied--probably because what he does doesn't fit medical convention-- he said he either had to give up on accepting insurance or close his doors. (And of course he was eating the denied fees, rather than over-burden his patients.) I've also noticed my care with my PCP becoming truncated, constrained by what Medicare will cover, even though it isn't the care I need. The weird "annual wellness" exam being a prime example, instead of a true, hands-on annual physical.

The insurance system is destroying health care.

"Yogurt works, but plain yogurt tastes awful without a whole lot of sugar which seems to defeat the purpose. I’ve never tried kefir or kombucha -what do you do with it? What else is there?"

I only eat yogurt plain and unsweetened. Maybe try some different brands? They aren't all alike. Costco sells Bellewether plain yogurt and I think it is especially yummy.

Kefir is just liquid yogurt. I drink straight kombucha only rarely. I usually put the ginger-lemon kombucha from Costco in my pomegranate lemonade to zing it up a bit.

Costco also has dried apricots with probiotics in them now. Mr Pique bought it and they are good!

I loves me a good dill pickle, but other than that I don't go in much for fermented foods except in very small doses.

Hi Bootsy! So glad you are here!

Thank you so much for sharing your trip with us. I have long wished to visit both Budapest and Romania. Both my mother's parents were from Budapest --my great-great grandfather opened the very first photography studio there--and there are many fine and commercial photographers still on that side of the family.

My Hungarian grandmother was a fantastic cook, and judging from your report, many of her specialties were on your foodie tour.

I have been wondering about going on a Viking river tour. I was interested to learn that you stayed in hotels and not on the ship part of the time. Would you tell us more about your experience with Viking? Do you recommend them?

My main concern is having to stick to a strict itinerary.

I was amazed to hear about the pomegranate lemonade. I am drinking one right now. It's my favorite drink, and I make it myself. I thought I had invented it!

My father's mother was born in Romania and left for America when she was 12. One day, my father watched amazed as I mixed up my own lemonade. He wondered aloud if such things were genetic as his mother had drunk the same concoction every day when he was growing up.

Absolutely gorgeous, all of it. I especially like the interior doors with the glass, and the plum colored siding. Very chic.

Recently an article came out saying that Montana now has the most unaffordable homes in the entire country. That's been my impression for quite some time, as I have also been looking at markets that have been historically considered unaffordable, like MA and NY and CA. Apparently since Covid, Montana property values have gone up over 60 percent, and higher in some towns. We're all choking on the resulting property taxes.

This was I place I moved to (in part) because a freelance writer with inconsistent and sketchy income could afford to buy herself a house. No longer. It seems weird to be looking at houses close to the Pacific Ocean and near San Francisco that we can now afford if we sell what we have. Five years ago that was unthinkable. It was the reverse. The Californians were moving here because they could pay cash and have some left over after selling their homes in CA.

If only there were fewer people and less traffic in those places, moving would make total sense.

@Big_Al said in RIP Tom Lehrer:

it's disturbing how timeless some of the songs are

I know, right?

Just listen to the song "National Brotherhood Week":

"Step up and take the hand of someone you can't stand
You can tolerate 'em if you try."

Where at the Jersey shore? When I was a teen our family always rented a house on Long Beach Island.

I was was watching lighting exploding over the Divide tonight from my back yard. Huge black hammerhead clouds shooting out bolts in the distance. For once I just enjoyed watching without taking photos. Jodi there will definitely be fires from all these electrical storms we've been having. So much more rain than usual for this time of year! But not enough to prevent the fires.