Is this a #metapolitics or #politics post?
Elsenet a fellow I respect very much lamented that his political posts don't get near the traction of his others--strange and alarming in a country that may be drifting toward dictatorship.
I know political debates often get unpleasant. But not long ago, a top political question was, is it OK to keep people enslaved? And we didn't answer it with politics, so we ended up answering it with civil war.
I prefer political flamewars to actual wars.

My friends and I were people who knew AIDS could kill us all, and we were fighting against those who believed it would kill only gay people. To this day, I can't tell you if we were trying to remind them of our humanity or their own.

--Alexander Chee, "How to Write an Autobiographical Novel"

#WorldAIDSDay

I didn't watch the whole debate, but I loved the way Newsom grinned when DeSanctimonious brought up the French Laundry. The grin said, "I knew you were going to bring that up -- and there it is, right on schedule!"
It reminded me of the Nixon/Kennedy debates. In TV debates you win or lose on style, not talking points, and Ron seemed to have left his style in his other pants.

We put two, maybe three, Gen Z candidates on the county and Port boards, plus an enrolled member of the Makah tribe. As one organizer said to me, "Land acknowledgements are fine, but putting an indigenous person on a regional board means more."
Plus another candidate who I don't think wants much made of her ethnicity, but Anglos have trouble pronouncing her last name.
And four out of five are women.
Not bragging; describing what's possible.
Let's make 2024 a banner year!🤝
#politics

I've noticed that the character of a given congregation, regardless of the denomination, depends heavily on the pastor. This doesn't strike me as a good thing. If the faith and doctrine are sound, it shouldn't matter much who's in the pulpit. (Whether there should even be a pulpit is another question. The first Christian congregations seem to have been indistinguishable from supper clubs.)

Not to be an alarmist, and I know the election is almost a year off, but this scares me:

"...from 2015 to 2021, more than half of the country saw their disposable income increase relative to the prior year. But with inflation and the disappearance of covid aid, that number has flipped. In 2022, at the same time voters soured on the economy, close to 60 percent of people saw their income decline relative to last year..."

"It's the economy, stupid."

https://wapo.st/3GB5wEd

Shorty had a pack mule and ran supplies out to prospectors in the Utah canyonlands. The trail passed under a natural stone arch, and when the mule's ears brushed the underside of the arch, it would balk.
So one day Utah Phillips finds Shorty standing on a ladder chiseling away at the underside of the arch. "Shorty," he says, "don't you realize you could just take a shovel and lower the trail a little?" Shorty gives him a disgusted look and says, "Ya dern fool, that's not where the problem is!"

Only took me three years to think of it.... Previous owners refloored the house with thinner material, resulting in a lot of doors and door trim being further from the floor than one would want--in particular sliding doors, which are a full inch off the floor, too far for the guides that could keep them from banging.
Suddenly realized that by lowering the track the doors hang from, I could fix this today for less than $10.
It reminds me of Utah Phillips' story about the old mule wrangler ...
+

For Black Friday, a song my daughter wrote eleven years ago.

https://youtu.be/DzVcPsW6pqQ

This probably a good week to mention that there are elections every day. They happen at checkout counters, and the results are at least as consequential as those of regular elections. What you feed, grows.

For some reason woke up wondering if I could popularize a conspiracy theory that Joni Mitchell stole all her lyrics from Geoffrey Chaucer.

"...Go'th it not alway, iwis,
That what ye haue ye ne wist nat
Until ye haue it nat ne more, certés...."

#politics
GQP getting the job done:
%
Since Republicans took control of the House in January, a small group of far-right lawmakers forced the longest speaker nomination contest in U.S. history, paralyzed legislation on the House floor, threatened to breach the U.S. borrowing limit, then deposed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) ....
And yet for all that, the federal government is currently spending the same amount as it did before House Republicans took office.
%
https://wapo.st/49JbKix