Super Tuesday

© Zapiro 

Zapiro, South African's  cartoon treasure, captures my thoughs exactly: Donald Trump defeated at the polls. Here’s hopin’
I awoke to no electrical power – again!
No power = no internet. 

No internet = no blog post for the day.
Sigh.

News blues…

How South Africa is viewing Trump vs. Biden  

***

The Lincoln Project:
American the Beautiful  (0:55 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

After waking to find no electricity, my immediate thought was: Eskom’s at fault - again. I blamed the country’s national electricity supplier (power derived from coal), complaining that Eskom no even longer bothers to inform its customers via its EskomSe Push app that power is off, nor about the expected duration of the outage, nor the regions affected. Moreover, Eskom, subjected to corrosive corruption during the Zuma presidency, is billions of rands in debt  …which means, naturally, that tax payers will tapped to fill the gap.
An immediate effect of no electricity is no internet connection - therefore no updated blog posting.
The auto security gate is also affected when electricity is off. This morning, it took several tries for the security gate to close.
Already stressed (what if The Donald is re-elected? Surely it couldn’t happen? Surely the world’s people would rise up en masse and complain?), when I spotted two local residents talking on the street, I said, “One set of neighbors has electricity but our house does not. Do your houses have power?”
One man explained, “Someone stole electrical cable last night,” he gestured to an open box on a pole. “The houses on this section of the street, including ours are affected.”
Stolen cables? Who steals cables from live electrical connections?
South Africans do.
Alas.

***

Today, I take the day off. With daylight savings time started in California, South Africa is now 10 hours ahead of California, I cannot watch the nail-biting election news as US media ekes out hours and hours of election predictions and slow results.
Moreover, I’ve not taken a day off for 222 days – not since the beginning of the pandemic locked down South Africans in March.
I plan to visit the now-abandoned land upon which I grew up and to which I bonded and continue to love.
On the outer west region of The Valley of a Thousand Hills  nurtured me and gave me profound respect for the natural world. Alas, due to encroaching industry, my mother sold the land after living there more than 60 years.
Usually, I visit the area at least once during a stay in South Africa. I’ve not visited this year. 

Today is the day.

Reality impinges

© Zapiro

News blues…

A new study by Stanford University researchers concluded that Trump rallies likely caused 30,000 new coronavirus cases and 700 additional deaths. “The communities in which Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death,” they said.
[But] White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters … in September that Trump was always in a better mood after doing rallies in front of his fans. 
…Fifty-eight percent of likely voters nationally disapproved of Trump’s decision to hold large rallies, while only 34 percent approved, according to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll conducted last week.

***

More evidence that Trump rallies are super spreader events…  (10:44 mins)

***

Last week, Trump planned to pack his Washington hotel to the rafters with supporters hoping to celebrate his re-election. Alas, today’s plan: the president will be a no-show at his own event. Publicly, the reason given is that the “campaign was warned that it was about to break local COVID-19 restrictions about gatherings of more than 50 people.”
Isn’t it more likely, however, the Trump is forced to confront real reality (perhaps for the first time in his life?) and he’s realizing he’s lost the presidency? That does not mean, however, he accepts this reality.
Even 14,000 miles away, I tremble for my adopted country and country-people. The days from November 4 to January 20, 2021 could be a period during which The Donald wreaks his revenge on a nation whose majority voted him out of office.

***

The Kiffness: Do You Believe in Life After Lockdown?  (3:24 mins)
Tell you goodbye  (4:35 mins)
The Lincoln Project: Priceless  (0:25 mins)

Healthy futures, anyone?

Most/least sustainable countries?

The Nordics once again dominated the biannual survey, with Finland and Denmark in third and fourth place respectively, and Switzerland in fifth, falling from the second position in the July 2019 edition, primarily on pension funding fears.
The bottom five countries are all in Africa, due to civil wars or political unrest in Yemen, the Central African Republic, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.
… Notable absences from the top list among the major industrialized nations are the US and UK. “Both have seen their ESG performance gradually worsen since 2016, when the UK voted for Brexit and the US for Donald Trump, especially in terms of governance,” [as described] in the survey.
“This is a tendency that is strongly linked to the political situations in the two countries, which are characterized by increasing polarization, deeply divided populations, growing dissatisfaction with traditional parties, and increasing populism.”
…The BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – all appear in the bottom half of the rankings. “The ESG performance of the BRICS countries was particularly disappointing, all of which underperformed the universe mean.”
“Most of the worst-ranking ESG performers are located in Africa. This illustrates just how far behind the continent is in terms of sustainability issues. Even the continent’s two economic heavyweights, South Africa and Nigeria, performed poorly.” 

Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

My love affair with rain is put to the test: perhaps too much rain now? Rain has fallen consistently for the last three days… and is predicted to continue after this morning’s lull. Too much of a good thing?

***

Dizzying decisions. For now, my mother has agreed to delay her proposed move from the Care Center to my nephew’s multi-generational household.
I fully support this new decision – even while I wonder how long she will stick with it.
Things I’m learning? Not to opine. To present compelling evidence of other ways of thinking. To put big decision firmly on her shoulders. To be willing to bow out when I doubt the wisdom of her decisions.

Apocalyptic revelation

On the eve of the US election,

“It’s important to remember that apocalypse means revelation; it’s the moment that reveals something about one individual’s life or about society in general…I think this is really a moment of big revelations, not revelations in terms of visions or prophecies, but revelations in the sense of seeing the truth of things.”

This, from Giovanni Bazzana, a professor of New Testament at Harvard Divinity School. He goes on to explain: 

Many scholars believe the Bible’s Book of Revelation ― possibly the most culturally influential story of apocalypse for Americans ― was originally written as resistance literature.
Attributed to a man named John living at the end of the first century, the book contains vivid visions of a cosmic war between the forces of good and evil. It prophesies a future in which God will judge the nations, punish evildoers, avenge his people, and establish a just new world. The book was the coded yet defiant response of an exiled community to the Roman Empire’s oppression of Jewish people and destruction of Jerusalem, scholars say.
“Very often, these texts are written by people experiencing oppression from some power that is becoming too invasive or strongly persecuting them.”

Bazzana insists that the apocalypse is here, [and that] it’s “always with us.”
Bazzana isn’t talking about monstrous beasts emerging from the sea or horsemen descending from a cosmic stage to wreak havoc on the earth. The trials of 2020 are an apocalypse in the original sense of the Greek word, he claims: a revelation or uncovering.
This year has revealed truths about American society that can’t be ignored or swept under the rug ― whether it’s inequality in health care, racial injustice or the ineptitude of the government.

News blues…

US sets world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours. Daily caseload of 100,233 surpasses tally set in India last month. Study links Trump rallies to 30,000 cases and 700 deaths  

***

Continuing his well-honed tradition for bullying, lying, insulting, and covering-his-ass (“arse” if you will), Donald Trump and his minions, again, go after Dr Fauci:

… a leading member of the government's coronavirus response [who] said the United States needed to make an "abrupt change" in public health practices and behaviors…[that] the country could surpass 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day and predicted rising deaths in the coming weeks.

Nothing earth shattering in that comment, is there? Well, yes, if you’re Trump, in the Trump administration, or a Trumpie. That group (thankfully shrinking by the day) responded as usual.

The White House on Saturday unleashed on Dr. Anthony Fauci … following his comments … that criticized the Trump administration's response to the pandemic, including Dr. Scott Atlas, who the President has relied on for advice on handling the coronavirus.
"It's unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci, a senior member of the President's Coronavirus Taskforce and someone who has praised President (Donald) Trump's actions throughout this pandemic, to choose three days before an election to play politics," [said] White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere.
Deere took issue with Fauci's comments where the doctor seemingly praises Democratic nominee Joe Biden's campaign. Fauci [said the Biden] campaign "is taking it seriously from a public health perspective." While Trump, Fauci said, is "looking at it from a different perspective." He said that perspective was "the economy and reopening the country," according to the Post. 

The Swamp that ate the swamp? Remember “the swamp” that Trump promised to drain when trolling for votes last election? Don’t you kinda miss it? Back then, the swamp may have been a swamp, but it was the swamp we all knew. Nowadays, the swamp has morphed into something far bigger, far deeper, far swampier. Is Trump’s swamp even drainable?

***

If you’re American, understand you have the power to silence him

***

The Lincoln Project:
Seriously  (1:45 mins)
Cancer  (0:50 mins)

Healthy futures, anyone?

The great fox spider found the perfect spot to hide out and perpetuate it’s species: a military training ground.

One of Britain’s largest spiders has been discovered on a Ministry of Defence training ground in Surrey having not been seen in the country for 27 years.
The great fox-spider is a night-time hunter, known for its speed and agility, as well as its eight black eyes which give it wraparound vision. The critically endangered spider was assumed extinct in Britain after last being spotted in 1993 on Hankley Common in Surrey. The two-inch-wide (5cm) arachnid had previously also been spotted at two sites in Morden Heath in Dorset. These are the only three areas in Britain, all in the comparatively warmer south, where it has been recorded. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I’ve lived away from South Africa for four decades. I escaped when I was 19 years old, to “travel the world,” and ended up living in Berkeley, California. In the US, I’ve always lived in and around the San Francisco Bay Area (this includes my current American life as a houseboat “liveaboard” in the Sacramento Delta).
A fact about California: the state, with a Mediterranean climate, California experiences rainfall in the winter. It’s a cold rain, usually falling from undramatic cold fronts that release undramatic rainfall. It rarely comes from thunderstorms. If dramatic, cold fronts bare so much rain and that land becomes saturated. Then, Californians experience dramatic mudslides.
Eastern and midland KZN South Africa, however, experiences spring and summer rainfall: a warm rain falling during hot and the wet seasons: spring, summer, and autumn/fall. KZN thunderstorms present rolling thunder, streaks of lightning, buckets of rain, and hail stones larger than marbles.
Now that I’m experiencing this sort of rainfall again, here in the land of my birth, I realize how much I’ve missed it.
I LOVE KZN RAIN!
So do frogs. Nighttime is a cacophony of frog calls, call it a lullaby.

Turbulence ahead

Halloween in the US.
Then election day in the US. 

Turbulence ahead....

News blues…

The United States does not have one coronavirus pandemic, it has 50.

Over the last three months, states have begun to display distinct local and regional outbreak patterns. New England, for example, has had relatively low caseloads, with Maine and Vermont recording zero deaths for days on end. The Northeast — New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts — took the bulk of the nation’s COVID-19 cases in April, then recovered and are now showing a steady rise in cases.
So far, the most distinct regional pattern as the virus enters its third wave is happening in the Midwest. [Last] Wednesday, hospitalizations reached the highest levels yet in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio.
Adjusted for population, the Midwest’s cases surpassed the peak New York and New Jersey saw in April. Of the 15 cities with the highest rate of new infections over the last two weeks, 11 are in North Dakota or Wisconsin. The most alarming thing about the Midwestern outbreak is not its severity, but its grim predictability. 

***

In South Africa, tables speak louder than words. 

Turbulence ahead….

***

The Lincoln Project: Marc Anthony  (1:15 mins)
Republican Voters against Trump:
Former Trump Campaign Leader for Biden (1:05 mins)
I've Got Some Questions for My Fellow Republicans  (4:25 mins)
Meidas Touch: Trump’s Deadly Sins  (1:55 mins)

Healthy futures, anyone?

Not too late for a comeback? Climate change is real. Species extinction is real. Act now to combat the line of opining that goes against that reality – and know that, given the right conditions, endangered critters do make comebacks. Take, for example, the elusive Voeltzkow chameleon, last spotted in Madagascar – its natural ecosystem – more than 100 years ago.

A research team led by scientists from the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (ZSM), discovered several living specimens of Voeltzkow’s chameleon during an expedition to the north-west of the African island nation.  [They] said genetic analysis determined that the species was closely related to Labord’s chameleon. …Both reptiles only live during the rainy season – hatching from eggs, growing rapidly, sparring with rivals, mating and then dying during a few short months.

“These animals are basically the mayflies among vertebrae,” said Frank Glaw, the curator of reptiles and amphibians at the ZSM.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

No good deed goes unpunished … or another round of “gotta get outta here….”
My 87-year-old mother, used to getting her own way in everything since she controlled the purse-strings and lifelines for many, is going through another round of loud complaint. She “cannot stand” her new home, not enough tea, not follow-through on others walking her dog, not enough obeisance from the rabble, not enough happiness emanating from her dog, etc., etc.
Her life, she’s decided, will be perfect if she lives with her grandson – scion of a multi-generational, chaotic 2 adult and 5-youngster household, who is also trying to build a business clientele for his one-man show as mechanical designer. (This, during the beginning of what could be an overwhelming economic downturn around the world, and particularly in South Africa.)
Having spent the last ten years going back-and-forth from US to SA to untangle my mother’s disastrous decisions, I’m not for this cockamamie fantasy. Moreover, my mother is burning bridges at her current residence where they gracefully (and unusually) allowed her to bring one dog.
What happens when this latest fantasy meets reality and comes crashing down around her? For, it is inevitable that my mother will squabble with her potential housemates. Then, what’s her plan?
Oh, wait, planning is not her forte. Besides, “nothing” can go wrong; “everything will be just fine.” 

I’ll try to talk her out of this. 

I’ll try to talk my nephew out of this. 

If they’re determined to go ahead with it, I’ll bow out.
Turbulence ahead….