Merry Christmas everybody

 Or as we say at our house, Merry Skype Christmas. We started our day with coffee and fresh cinnamon rolls for breakfast at Becky and Brian’s house in Colorado.  (They didn’t actually eat hot cinnamon rolls, but we did.  I did hear something about fresh Monkey Bread on the agenda at their house a little later.)   Then we moved on to Matt and Lindsay’s house about fifty miles south of Becky’s.    Both houses had a cold snow-on-the-ground, crunchy-ice-on-the-streets Christmas Day. Arie colored really really close to the computer screen without actually coloring on it (we think). And we finished up the day with dinner at Tom and Kathy’s thirty-five miles south of us here in the Valley. Smoked ham.  Yum.  They got us fed and gone by five so we could make it home by dark.  Judy can’t see to drive after dark, and I’m not turning my head yet. A darn good day.  (And 80 degrees too.) Happy Holidays. 

Has anyone noticed?

 Has anyone noticed Donald Trump’s campaign claim that he’s the only candidate who is not beholden to special interests?  He’s self-financed so he’s not beholden to any billionaire.  That’s one of the knocks against one of his rivals, Marco Rubio; that he is backed by one billionaire so big, that if we elect Rubio we’ll just be electing the conservative billionaire Paul Singer’s proxy.  Do we think Singer would have direct access to a Rubio presidency?  Well, yeah! Trump’s claim that he is independent of any special interests has some appeal on the face of it, but if we think about it a little, we realize that he actually does represent the interests of a major donor.  He has his own billionaire; himself.  Does Trump strike us as an impartial man who will put the interests of every citizen ahead of his own?  His claim is disingenuous, but I haven’t heard anyone call him on that. Just saying…., not that it would make any difference.  It would be fruitless to campaign against him, at least in the primaries.  Donald Trump is the face of the Republican Party.  

Terrorism follow-up

 I wrote a little bit about ISIS terrorism; how confused I am by it and how I can’t get perspective, because there are so many other causes of death that dwarf terrorism as a real danger.  Well, it turns out the solution to that terrorism has been right there, right in the question, all along; all we needed was for our friend John Steinbaugh to point it out for us. I quote (roughly): 30 terrorist incidents, but 556,000 die from smoking, 29,000 from alcohol, 35,000 in motor vehicle accidents.  How about we give the terrorists fast cars, booze and smokes in a large flat area of northern Iraq.  Give or take one year they will all be dead.  Problem solved. Oh, forgot, 24 hr. access to Kardashians on HBO.