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Thursday, March 21, 2024

Mercedes-Benz A220 Review

Mercedes-Benz A220 Review

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Cleaning Stainless Steel Pans

Click here for an article at the NYT's site "Wirecutter" for an article entitled "How to Clean Stainless Steel Pans," by Anna Perling.

Monday, March 18, 2024

Steven Beschloss Summarizes Trump's Rally In Dayton, Ohio, On March 16

Click here for an article at Substack, Steven Beschloss's latest entry in his diary, "America, America," entitled "The Numbing Effect." He says we are becoming numb to Trump's outrageous statements, but says Trump is getting worse, and summarizes his outlandish statements in a particularly offensive rally at Dayton, Ohio, over the weekend. He says:

But before I share what I’ve learned after watching and listening to the whole Ohio speech, I want to remind you (and me) not to let his horrible lies benumb you, even after all these years. Because the more we treat what he has to say as normal or tolerable in our public discourse, the more we adapt to and accept its existence, the more he succeeds in moving our society toward cruelty and violence. That would be an insufferable victory by the carnage-loving faction and its leader.

He concludes:

We should not underestimate Trump’s ability to convince voters to believe his delusions and lies. We can only hope there will be a rising chorus of high-profile Republicans still capable of rational thought to assert the depth of his unfitness, just as former Vice President Dick Cheney did this weekend in a short video and former Vice President Mike Pence did in refusing to endorse the man who used to attract his total adoring gaze.

But over and over, Trump proves his ability to destroy the reputation of any Republican who threatens his quest to untether voters from reality and serve himself. And he is clearly intensifying his hateful rhetoric in order to whip up the base as we head toward November.

Yet Trump cannot win in 2024 if he fails to attract a wider circle of voters and turnout is strong. That’s why I hope you will take the time to pay attention to what he says and remind any fence-sitters you know who may have forgotten or ignored who and what this dangerous man is.

 

Social Security Payments Facing A Crisis (nine years from now) - Robert Reich Explains

Click here for an article at Substack by Robert Reich -- former Secretary of Labor "(I was once a trustee of the Social Security Trust Fund, so I know about this issue.)" -- entitled "The biggest contrast in the upcoming election (other than democracy vs. "blood in the streets" fascism)."

Trump and the Republicans want another gigantic tax cut for corporations and the rich, but are afraid of the backlash if they explode the deficit, so they need to make up the balance by cuts to social spending, such as Social Security. Reich summarizes his article as follows:

So there you have it: Trump and his regressive mouthpieces want to cut Social Security so they can give another giant tax cut to the super-rich.

Biden wants to save Social Security by having the super-rich — who have become far richer over the past several decades — pay more Social Security taxes.

There's a lot in this article that makes it well worth reading. I found one anecdote particularly compelling: There is a ceiling, above which no Social Security income is taxed -- $168,000. Reich points out that Jeff Bezos reached that ceiling last year about 7 minutes into January 1st; he paid nothing into the Social Security benefit pool for ALL the money he made on the other 364 days, 23 hours, and 53 minutes of the year.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

VIA Rail, Vancouver to Toronto

Click here for an article at vancouverisawesome.com entitled "Tips for riding the VIA Rail train from Vancouver to Toronto."

The trip takes four days. Base price, one way, is $500 to $700. 

Economy seats have lots of legroom and "comfortable reclinable seats."  

Travellers hoping to catch a decent night's sleep may want to book Sleeper Plus tickets. These tickets are in upper or lower areas where travellers can fully stretch out in a "semi-private" bed. There is a curtain to close at night but the area is communal. During the day, they may be seated across from other people but also have access to other carts, including the Skyline car, the Park car, the Renaissance car and the Dining car, based on route and season. 

Sleeper Plus tickets include onboard accommodations for one or two people. Passengers have access to common showers. 

Folks who want to travel across the country in ultimate comfort should opt for Prestige Class cabins. These private accommodations feature "a modular leather sofa that can be transformed into a double bed" and a personal concierge. Guests can enjoy gourmet, three-course meals and watch movies from their cabin on a large flatscreen TV. Each cabin also has a private bathroom.  

The Prestige options offer an "unparalleled level of elegance, comfort and privileged service," with prices starting at $2,500. 

Passengers in Sleeper class or higher can relax in the Business lounge and enjoy free beverages, newspapers and Wi-Fi.

Trump's Stupidity

I've said repeatedly that the United States -- and the world -- are tremendously lucky that Donald Trump is as stupid as a box of rocks -- if he wasn't, we'd all be in serious trouble. Apparently Robert Reich agrees with me: click here for his Substack entry on March 14, entitled "Seriously, again, how dumb is Trump?"

Descent to Authoritarianism

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's entry in her blog, Letters from an American, for March 13, 2024, on Substack. A great outline of how Trump has cast off all pretenses of governing like a conventional Republican since 2020. Parallels to Germany in the 1930s are unmistakable.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Good one, Seth -- make that two.

And ...

Monday, March 11, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson, March 10, 2024

Click here for HCR's latest entry in her blog, Letters From an American. I particularly liked her mention of the fact that Trump recently hosted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán at Mar-a-Lago. "The darling of the radical right, Orbán has spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and hosted former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, and his policies inspired the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation Florida governor Ron DeSantis has championed."

The right wing’s fondness for Orbán springs from his having rejected democracy and replaced it in Hungary with what he calls an “illiberal state.” Orbán and other far-right leaders working against democracy maintain that the central principle of democracy, equality before the law, undermines society. It permits immigration, which, in their minds, dilutes the “purity” of a people, and it requires that LGBTQ+ individuals and women have the same rights as heterosexual men. Such a world challenges the heteronormative patriarchal world traditionalists crave.

Orbán’s takeover of the press, elimination of rival political parties, partisan gerrymandering, capture of the courts, and control of Hungary’s government are not just ideological, though, but also economic. Corruption and the capture of valuable factories and properties for cronies have allowed Orbán and his allies to amass fortunes. 

“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” Trump said on Friday. Trump said that Orbán simply says, “‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and…he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”

Plant Identification App!

Click here to open an article at NYT's Wirecutter titled "The Best Plant Identification App."

To identify a plant, you first take a picture of it by tapping the camera symbol in the app’s bottom navigation bar, which calls up a big circle with a camera on it labeled “Touch to identify,” with a smaller gallery circle right beside it. Touch the camera and up pops potential identifications, with comparable pictures from other users and a percentage that represents the probability that the app got the right species.

You can press the “i” at the corner to get the plant’s family, its genus, its common name(s), its International Union for Conservation of Nature status (that is, how at risk of extinction it may be), and links to any additional information the app can find. At the top of the app, you can navigate to the plant’s Wikipedia page and other users’ observations. You can log in to record your findings or add them to “groups,” if you wish to share them or make them public. But the app is also easy to use without logging in.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Business According To Trump

This is an answer on Quora by Ron Ellis to the question: What is something about Trump that is not talked about much?

In the '70s and '80s Trump was buying up rent-controlled apartments in NYC. They were rent-controlled because old folks had been living in them since the '40s and '50s and were now on Social Security, and rent prices were rising faster than Social Security, so they were getting priced out of housing they had lived in their entire lives. NYC established a housing authority to oversee the apartments so landlords couldn’t raise rents higher than cost of living increases in Social Security and these old folks wouldn’t end up on the street. The City also made sure the landlords maintained the apartments in livable conditions, and there was a grievance committee to settle disputes.

If you know anything about NYC, you know the City supplies water and heat underground through stream tunnels and City boilers. Residents pay the City for this. Electricity comes from the utility company. You may have seen steam coming up through the subway vents in movies about NYC. The apartments were set up so if they were vacated for a certain amount of time the landlord could take control of the apartment again. The assumption would be the tenant had died. These were all people in their 70s or older.

Trump bought several of these buildings cheap because they were in prime locations, but you couldn’t do anything with them until all the residents were gone. In the winter he arranged for the heat and water to be turned off through shady connections. The residents complained to the housing authority, but through more shady connections the complaints were delayed being processed. These old folks couldn’t stay in a high-rise apartment in a NY winter with no heat or water, so they had to move. After the required period had passed, Trump was able to take control of the now vacant apartment. When the building was empty, he could tear it down to build a new building.

These buildings were built back in the '20s and '30s, which means they were insulated with asbestos and painted with lead paint. Trump used illegal immigrants to tear down these buildings. He didn’t provide them with the safety gear that is required to be provided by law, and to dispose of most of the hazardous waste he used more of his shady Italian connections from NJ to illegally dump the lead and asbestos waste. The buildings that were rebuilt were usually built with substandard materials. All the while he would skip out on paying whoever he could. If they sued, he would delay them in court until they ran out of money trying to fight the case or eventually settle for pennies on the dollar. That’s why he has hundreds of NDAs. He put 80-year-old grandmothers out on the street, used illegal labor, put multiple contractors out of business by not paying them, improperly and illegally disposed of hazardous waste, and failed to hire union labor as required in NYC. BTW, he did all this with other people's money, and when he sold the new building kept the profits and paid back the investors.

Are you surprised that he is one of the few presidential candidates to lose his own home state? That’s your hero, MAGA people. All New Yorkers know what Trump is!

 

 

 

 

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Evolution of Women's Rights, through State of the Union, 2024

Click here for the March 8, 2024, entry on Substack of Helen Cox Richardson's diary, "Letters from an American."

Written just after Biden faced down Justices Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch:

Biden quoted back to the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court, sitting in front of him in the chamber, their words when in June 2022 they overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion.

The justices wrote: “Women are not without electoral or political power.” 

Biden responded: “You’re about to realize just how much you were right about that.” “Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women. But they found out. When reproductive freedom was on the ballot, we won in 2022 and 2023. And we’ll win again in 2024.” Biden promised to restore Roe v. Wade if Americans elect a Congress that supports the right to choose.

Friday, March 8, 2024

Salmon! (And Chicken!)

Click here for salmon recipes that make my mouth water: I especially like the idea of roasting the day before and serving the next day cold on a hot summer day.

Click here for recipes for chicken breast: again, cook today and serve cold tomorrow on a hot summer day.

Thursday, March 7, 2024

It Can Be Deceptive ...

Seth Says It All (in 1 minute, 39 seconds)