Despite the crowing of its governor and state PR machinem the predictions and projectinos of anti-maskers and of lockdown devotees, Florida is neither the ideal covid-19 response model, nor the worst, at least based on two specific metrics. It is, as they say, smack dab in the middle.

Article by Derek Thompson in the Atlantic: The Curious Case of Florida’s Pandemic Response. A good, quick read.

(Full disclosure: I am a member of DSA.)

I guess there's a sort of to-do on Facebook, now, about Don McIntosh's interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Talking Socialism: Catching Up With AOC. I will go through a part of the interview point by point.

I've disliked the EU ever since they started putting austerity measures in place for small member countries like Greece. It showed more than anything to me that the EU was really Germany in charge of the rest of Europe from an economic standpoint, without other member countries having a way to control their finances like any other sovereign country (e.g., print more money, go into debt, etc.).

The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall

Seems to me the world would be better off if the US empire collapsed quickly and without a major war. Sadly I don't see it happening with just a whimper. The global banking and oil cartel will not go quietly into the night.

The empire expends so much of its wealth and energy on mass scale narrative control via propaganda not because it wants to, but because it needs to. This tells us that the best way to oppose the empire is to help debunk, discredit and break public trust in the narratives it works so hard to circulate.
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When a sociopath does something wrong, they rearrange narratives to try and make it look like they did something right. How our rulers handled Iraq says which one they are.
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It’s nuts how the US is circling the planet with military bases, waging nonstop wars, sanctioning children to death and flirting with nuclear war and people are still like “We really need to do something about Cuba”.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/03/24/debunk-and-discredit-the-empires...

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

Each year in the garden is different, experience helps but every year there are new lessons to learn. Participated in gardening in Central Oregon for over 50 years. Interesting climate, transitional area between temperate forests on the foothills of Cascade mountains and the sagebrush steppe extending to the Rockies. Highly variable growing conditions from year to year, similar to political; movements. The few years spent in Corvallis and Portland areas much more predictable patterns.