Indra Anderson's Blog

Slushfunds are not to be confused with Slushies, which are great.

I heard a commentator say the current partial DHS shutdown wasn’t really helpful because the money being held up was for TSA, FEMA, the US Coast Guard, and other non-ICE/BP bodies. But I think that’s incorrect. The DHS was given an ENORMOUS budget most of which is discretionary. DHS can simply move its discretionary billions of dollars around and keep those important agencies of the US govt going and keep paying the people on those jobs. On the other hand, if the party or person running the DHS doesn’t want to do that, well, that’s on the GOP.

If I were the Dems, I’d just keep pointing out that it’s a choice the GOP is making not to pay people to do their jobs, and not to return ICE to a law-abiding dept it previously was under administrations that were even more deportation oriented – like Obama. ICE did a better job deporting people when it didn’t have the GOP in charge and when it didn’t operate as a lawless body. So, it’s clear that what ICE has become under its current leadership is a bloated (on taxpayer dollars) hot mess that can’t actually do its job professionally or legally.

To the “abolish ICE” conversation, I would say this. People have discussed ICE as if it were some hoary agency. ICE was created by the GOP only 23 years ago. The DHS, also GOP created, is a mere 22 yrs old. It’s ok to admit DHS and ICE were a mistake, deconstruct them and use that money to make an Immigration and Border that’s actually Constitutionally compliant, humane and works. If you have a problem with that, I would remind you that USAID – an important functional, efficient and economically run division – was 64 yrs old when the GOP destroyed that. The Dept of Education – an important functional, efficient and economically run division –  was 46 yrs old when the GOP destroyed that. 

American Customs ship with US Customs flag.

If your issue is you didn’t know ICE didn’t always exist, allow me to jog your memory. The US Customs agency existed since 1789. It was only folded into ICE, 23 years ago, when ICE was created.  The US Border Patrol has existed since 1924. But it’s only been killing US Citizens under the current administration. So eliminating ICE would just be returning to what we had before the GOP post 9/11 created DHS and ICE. And I would say the DHS actually needs to be deconstructed as well. It’s not been of service to the American people and it would be better to admit it was a mistake to create it and move on.

9/11 was a turn down a dark road for America. Americans were quite shocked to discover they were hated by some people, even though all the signs were there for decades and it’s hard not to see how American interference always leads to blow back. And the GOP took advantage of that shock to create the DHS as a way to protect Americans, from the blow back of American politicians and corporations bad behavior, to start to build a proto-military state within the US, to replace democracy. The fact that for decades the US has topped legally elected governments to replace them with more pro US or pro US business right wing dictators (or to keep such leaders in power) should have been a warning sign to voters in America, but apparently not.

I really struggle with public commentators like David Brooks, who constantly say “no, that will never happen” and then a few months later say “if you had told me a year ago that would happen I wouldn’t have believed you.” People did tell him. Lots of people. He just didn’t want to believe them. He still continues to believe that America will be ok, that “it’s been through worse and been okay.”  Dahlia Lithwick is another commentator in this vein.  She just kept pretending it will all be ok because of the law (the law the current administration doesn’t care about). Only recently has she seemed to have noticed her reality is not quite right. 

Hmm, she looks a little different than I remember her. No, she’s okay.

To be fair to both these people, whom I like and respect, are fairly representative of the general public in America. They choose to suffer from a failure of imagination. They don’t want to believe things have changed dramatically and will change more dramatically in the future. So they sit like frogs in pots of water trying to find reasons to keep singing “it will be okay” even as the heat is turned up and US citizens are shot in the street. This is a fairly typical problem among Americans, who tend toward cock-eyed optimism and, often, parochialism.

If your country has been carrying out extrajudicial murders of black and brown US citizens for decades, and you do nothing but continue to vote for those who militarize your law enforcement, eventually white US citizens will be the extrajudicial murder victims. It’s how these things work. Maybe not in your town, but in enough towns that you should know about it – if you chose to. It’s not surprising to me that when a white man peacefully carrying a gun while exercising his first amdt right at a protest is killed, that becomes a cause celeb that must not be ignored. The definition of “an American” invokes a white man with a gun. The murder of a white woman? Sorry, not enough to provoke that reaction.

There’s a tendency to see everything that is happening now as shocking and out of the blue (like 9/11), when it’s actually been a trend heading toward you all along (like all events clearly leading up 9/11). We just now notice the trend as a result of it showing up in our own little towns and our own little lives. If there’s one article I think Americans should read to help see the reality we live in now, it’s this one about the use of AI by ICE written by University of Cambridge anthropologist Sophie Goodfriend. I can’t say you’ll enjoy it. But you will at least better understand what’s happened in the past, what’s happening now, and where these trends are headed if Americans continue to sit in the pot and just sing happy thoughts.

Never to vote to fund a pot. Always vote to fund frog protections.

Enough with the fortresses. (Which way to the middle kingdoms?)

A year ago, ICE agents were professionals, between the ages of 21 and 37 or 40 (depending on their role because) as it’s can be a physically demanding job), who had at least 4 months training so they understood the law and its limits, the weapons they were entrusted with, and had some remedial level Spanish. There were 10K of them.

Today, there are 22K.  There is no age limit. So 18 to 80. They have 2 months training, apparently none of it about what the US laws actually are or that they need be obeyed. They are not required to know even basic Spanish. And finally, they are entrusted with deadly weapons. I would also add that they are given 50K signing bonuses and student loan repayment and forgiveness options. 

So the majority of ICE agents today have less than 10 months of experience with ICE. They are deeply unqualified, untrained, unaware of the laws, can’t communicate with the majority of potential immigrants they might encounter, physically unfit for the job and yet are given deadly weapons and thrown on the street to cosplay at being mercenaries. 

Not mercenaries. (But definitely all kinds of wrong on the street.)

I use the word mercenaries in its literal sense. Let me math this out for you.  12K x $50K = 60 million tax dollars. And, let’s throw in another, what $5M for school loan forgiveness? Sadly I also can’t rule out that there may be some “incentive payment” per immigrant arrested, or per postable (with use of Photoshop) photo captured, or even per murdered US blue state citizen who was just exercising his or her 1st Amdt rights.

The reason I’m saying this is because I want people to understand that the ICE agents that existed a year ago still exist, but they are not the majority. And though these agents should have seniority, I do not believe they are in any way in control of these “patriot recruits”  that have been brought into their ranks. Quite the opposite. A loose cannon takes many trained men to contain on a rolling deck. Many loose cannons? Sorry, ICE doesn’t have enough trained able bodies to restrain them. And that I think is as intended (if your wish is to provoke reaction, invoke the insurrection act, and put an end to pesky voting – do remember you were promised “you’ll never have to vote again” and the “coup will be bloodless if the liberals allow it.” this is just the tact to take. Though American blood has now been spilled – so….all bets are off.)

Essentially, the majority of ICE agents are now these unprofessional Sturmabteilung. They’re a handsomely paid, personally loyal, paramilitary organization of the GOP, being disguised within what was once a body of trained knowledgeable professionals working safely, without drama, on behalf of the American people. It pains me to say this is what’s happened to ICE, but it’s the way it is right now.

Memory potions, they can work both ways. (Not approved for medical use.)

Still, I would encourage people to remember that up until Jan 2025, ICE agents were very different. Am I saying they were perfect? Not at all. No group is. But they were working within the structure of US laws, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Judicial Warrants from Courts, and they worked in coordination within their states, counties, and communities, and with compassion toward those people they had to deport. They weren’t kidnapping toddlers and shooting US citizens observing them. And these professional men and women are still among the ranks.

I would also encourage people to read the Biden-era 2023 Use of Force Manual (which I’m sure has been amended by now and does not include things like “de-escalation” or commands “not to shoot a fleeing suspect”). Just to understand what it was – by way of training – what ICE agents used to get before they were allowed onto the street. Not that they always remembered it, but they got it. As opposed to what 2025/6 ICE cohorts get today – if anything. We don’t know. It’s not made public. But I suspect they are just handed a gun, a can of mace, some zip ties, and told to make their quota.

US news organizations tend to focus on the trees, the potent, factual, “on the ground” stories that are happening. And those are worth reading. Foreign press are more often forest focused, asking “what is going here?” and able to see a wider picture because they aren’t checked into US frames of reference. Read a few articles about ICE by foreign press correspondents, like this one, from Matt Pearson of DW, a German news organization, or this one from Lila Hassan of Al-Jazeera, a Qatari news organization. I’m sure you have some time, and hopefully a generator for electricity. They are worthwhile reads. But if you just want to escape to another into a fairy tale right now, for a few hours, I understand.

Happy endings available should choose to enter the woods. (But only after many trials – not all of which occur in courts of law.) 

If a US president is calling Canada the 51st state, and his nominee Ambassador to Iceland is calling that nation the 52nd state, looking at the map above should help you understand why the US owning Greenland is important. The US could essentially aim missiles at Canada from 3 directions and have it surrounded. Iceland would also be easy to pick off, to stop any pesky NATO help.

If you’re asking why do this? It likely has to do with Russia. Russia has the largest land mass of any nation. Canada is a distant 2nd, and the US 3rd. But if the US owned Canada, it would be the largest nation on the globe and have all the more resources to exploit. It’s probably that simple. Insecure people need to control everything around them, need to feel they are the biggest, the best, the most powerful. So if you’re super insecure, and intent on taking Canada, you need to take Greenland first.

For anyone who thinks the Congress will stop this attack on Greenland, I give you Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) telling Wolf Blitzer of CNN  “And just on the weird chance he’s serious about invading Greenland, I want to let him know it will probably be the end of his presidency. Most Republicans know this is immoral and wrong, and we’re going to stand up against it…. I think it would lead to impeachment. Invading an ally…is a high crime and a misdemeanor.”

Note the language I bolded. There’s no guarantee there. If Rep. Bacon believed his own words, why on earth would would he wait till after an attack on Greenland to impeach? Why would the GOP-controlled House wait and allow a NATO ally to be attacked? Why would the GOP-controlled House wait and allow US soldiers to be slaughtered on foreign soil (again) in a war a GOP president started (again)? Yet this is the position of a Congressman who claims he sees this all as “immoral and wrong.”

The only real question here is will the US military follow a clearly illegal order that is – to quote Rep. Bacon – “a high crime and misdemeanor”? Will US servicemen and women attack our peaceful NATO allies? Because a single man “psychologically needs” to own an ally country? Because if he can’t buy it, he has right take it? So, Greenlanders should just sell themselves to the US president or be raped by the US military?

If given, this immoral, wrong, criminal order, I would expect the US military leaders to refuse to execute it. This would probably lead to a coup as this is exactly how military coups happen. The party giving the order would ousted by the military, and … there you are. But I’d honestly expect the same thing if the army was ordered to Minnesota. The GOP-controlled Congress and the leader they enable may be devoid of morality, honor, integrity, or a even a sense of duty, but US service members? Quite the opposite.

Things at work have been …. work related. We lost our CEO. Literally, he died unexpectedly. So, we’ve been in a mourning period, which has turned into a transitional period as well. Read – his 2 siblings, 4 children and 3rd wife are all in a fight over the company. Some of the heirs want to “restructure” (fire anyone as pro the other heirs – the barnburners). Some want to grow the company and keep it going (the sentimentalists). Some want to grow the company and sell it off (the profiteers). Needless to say, employees are left to get on with their jobs so our customers’ lives are not disrupted. We practice a lot of “not taking sides here” diplomacy when asked. Some are either casually looking for exits or hoping it all dies down and goes away. It’s very … Venezuela?

I’m in the extreme minority, the “let’s watch this play out” camp. I like the company. If it sells, maybe I’ll be fired or I may quit because I don’t like the new owners. But for now, I have a job. If it grows, I will benefit from seniority. If it restructures, I may or may not still have a job. But why jump if I’m not pushed? I see the C-Suite issues as just that. C-suite issues. The SO calls this blue sky thinking (meaning I’m making an overly optimistic and sunny forecast, despite the gathering clouds and drizzle). But I’m really just following the historical throughlines to their rational conclusions and I do have access to an umbrella (my rainy day fund) in case. 

C-suite folk come and go in most companies – with regularity. Managers come and go – with less regularity. But the regular hourly employees? Those are the ones who stay and actually run things. We keep the lights on and the cash coming in. The SO deeply knows this, but doesn’t want to hear it (because he’s a C-suite folk and a child in a family-run company). So, I often commend my C-suite thoughts to the ethers rather than his ears, and we are both the better for it.

I do still have people stop by my desk, frequently, and say “America. What’s up with that?” I usually tell them “the US is reliving the Civil War and WWII because it never finished them, because the ideas that started them, originated in America and we’ve never dealt with our issues.” That’s usually Too Much Information, because non-Americans don’t know much about our Civil War (“that was about slavery, right?”) and memories of WWII have faded (“the Nazis killed a lot of Jews, right?”)

Historians everywhere are openly weeping right now, but it’s what happens. Unfortunately forgetting or never knowing doesn’t make the underlying issues don’t go away. That’s why history repeats itself. Like the man who married 4 women, all identical, with the same first name. Psychologically, he was trying to resolve an issue with his first wife – without talking to his first wife – but never realized that. The last one, No. 4, outlived him. He died unresolved. America is a lot like that. Unresolved. I don’t say this to be provocative. It’s just accurate. And I don’t make this comparison lightly. 

You hear the Civil War redux plainly in the stream of anti-blue state commentary by the current administration. Just take a moment right now, and ask yourself (if you’re American), historically, what was a blue state in the US? It was a free Union state, where people were free. As opposed to a grey Confederate state, where most of the people who lived there were not, did not arrive there voluntarily, and were not even considered to be full humans based on the color of their skin. 

All this violence and bother in Minnesota allegedly about alleged fraud (nothing has been proven, a right-wing provocateur social media personality made a claim, that’s all) isn’t really about fraud. It can’t be. The administration has pardoned multiple white people for fraud, including one person multiple times. The person in the oval office has himself committed fraud (on taxes, on bank loans, and even through an eponymous university). Fraud is not a problem to this leader or administration. So if it isn’t about fraud, what’s it really about? In this blue state?

To understand that, consider Venezuela. The US administration, apropos of nothing, began by illegally executing fishermen as “drug dealers.” Next, it illegally declared war on Venezuela by kidnapping its president. Now it is illegally taking their oil and selling it, and the money for the oil (that would normally go to paying the workers who produced the oil) is going into an offshore account in Qatar in the personal name of the president who committed all these illegal acts. Venezuela is now essentially a US plantation for and its people are that white man’s slaves. 

It’s not a colony. The people there aren’t considered US citizens by virtue of US conquest, and entitled to any sort of support or due process. They’re Venezuelan citizens being forced to extract wealth from their own land for the benefit of a single foreign white man in another land. They have a new president but she acts as overseer on behalf of the plantation owner. The overseer is happy to keep her cushy station and knows what will happen if she steps out of line. There is no desire to liberate anyone in Venezuela. Neither the overseer or the plantation owner cares about democracy or the Venezuelans.

Personally, I don’t think anyone willing to sacrifice their Nobel Peace Price medal (and probably all the prize money that goes with it, though that wasn’t stated) to such a man, in order to try to buy the Venezuelan presidency she never won, is worthy of being that nation’s president. Not that worthiness is something that seems to matter in presidents these days. But the upshot here is, she will not be picked to be president because she will not act as overseer. She wants there to be democracy (in some form) and democracy doesn’t fly on a plantation. So she’s out for good, and so is any thought of democracy in Venezuela. But 3 million Venezuelans who had TPS will be sent back to Venezuela because now it’s “safe for them” there, on the plantation.

I think it would be closer to the truth, regarding Minnesota, to say that free black people with political agency existing in America are considered a problem by this administration, and fraud is just their excuse to harm that group of Americans. That the people being targeted are Americans of Somali descent or American residents from Somalia via the refugee program or Muslims is all irrelevant. The administration is targeting black people in this specific case to make an example. But, it’s failing. And make no mistake, it wants to rid the US of all non-white people and put non-white people it can’t ever get rid of (as well as white people they don’t like) “in their place.” Which brings us to the current US administration’s anti-DEI root & branch approach. 

In essence, the anti-DEI policy is stated as there to combat a “woke ideology” (since the word woke comes from black American culture, of course that’s a problem). But this stance is really nothing to do with DEI (which was never legally defined by the administration) or ideology. It’s simply a means of engaging in collective punishment against non-white people, women, and other groups the current administration disfavors and wants to get rid of or “put in their place” (place to be decided by white christian heterosexual men of wealth and power only).  FYI, collective punishment is a Geneva Convention listed war crime. So, you should think of this policy as an act of war, not on wokeness or an idea, but on real groups of US citizens in order to inflict real and deadly harm.

For example, if black Americans have higher maternal mortality rates, it would be reasonable for the government to fund a study on that and try to fix that problem among their citizenry. But anti-DEI policy (illegally created by the president, not the Congress which legally funds the NHI to make such grants) means that this type of study will never happen. The result is black Americans will continue to have higher maternal mortality rates, maybe those rates even get worse. So anti-DEI, in this case, is really pro-murder of pregnant black American women. Which, one has to assume, the current administration is ok with because they’re trying to make the country white. 

No one talks much about eugenics these days, for good reason – it’s all hogwash. But eugenics in a nutshell, is the belief by some people that their race (self defined) is hampered by other races mere existence in the same country (continent or world). So, step one for them is always to demonize and get rid of anyone in the country that’s not their race. Because the nazis lost the war, people fail to understand that they wanted to conquer the world and everywhere they conquered, the politically deemed “non-whites” were to be enslaved and then eliminated. Why? Because they thought white people were superior and should be able to take whatever land or resources they felt they needed, or just wanted. (Sound familiar?)

Emma Darwin

Second, and this idea was central to nazi thought as well, was the strengthening of their white race (also eugenics). This is the notion that they have to remove not just non-white people, but all white people deemed “unfit” among their own citizens who might weaken the race. This would be the sick, handicapped, poor, criminal, non-heterosexuals, mentally ill, the Roma, political dissenters, or any disfavored groups they designated as such, such as Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. Think politically motivated stark raving mad Darwinism.  And at this point you may be asking “how is this a throughline to today?” Fair enough. 

Consider the current administration’s NIH. It cancels research into children’s cancer. Why? Because they consider those children to be genetically “defective.” If they can’t overcome their cancer, they should die out – to “improve the race.” Remember the grant money to help drug addicts that got cancelled? Addicts aren’t good for society. If addicts can’t get better on their own, they need to die out. Unless of course you suddenly remember that you promised to help rural communities – ravaged by fentanyl, ie, their kids are addicts – so then you change your mind and restore the grants to get back those votes you’d have lost.

Vaccines? Definitely against those. Children who can’t develop immunity on their own will make the race weaker. But if the NIH can convince parents not to vaccinate their kids, if it can get parents to let their less immunologically strong children die, that’s going to make the race stronger. Education for Special Needs Children? Never. FEMA? I don’t think so. Destroying all of USAID and its work? Of course. Removing aid allows any non-white populations that were being helped to experience a much higher rate of devastating and preventable diseases (like AIDs or polio) and mortality as a result, making them smaller and easier to conquer. Isn’t that the plan working as intended?  

Once you see this is the policy throughline, all the policy decisions become connected and make perfect (if horrible) logical sense. And no one should be surprised by the current administration’s stance. These are open admirers of the nazi beliefs and methods. Just look at what’s happening with Greenland. This is a classic scenario. A state run by a white demagogue demands appeasement, in this case Greenland, not the Sudetenland, but same picture, different frame. Threats of tariffs, economic warfare, and actual warfare are all laid on the table. This is the typical modus operandi. But you can’t appease a person like this. It is a lesson Europeans learned from WWII.

I’d expect once Greenland was acquired, all the Greenlanders would be removed. Allowed to leave for Denmark. Because, you know, they are 90% native indigenous people and not “white.” They’d need to be ethnically cleansed from their lands. Part of me thinks Greenland is desired simply as the fantasy island escape from the coming climate change the GOP knows they’ve created but won’t admit. Greenland as a temporary refuge where they can build a rocket ship to take them to Mars where they can continue to be what they are.  I guess launching themselves into space helps them gain some distance between themselves and the Epstein files?

I don’t think the current US administration knows how strong Greenlanders and the Danes are. Denmark may seem like a small nation, and Greenlanders might seem like easy pickings, but the Danes have a pride of lions on their coat arms for a reason and the Greenlanders’ flag displays the unchanging powers of the sun, sea, and glacial ice. You will not win a battle with the raw elements of the Earth. The Danes stood up to the nazis and said that Danish Jews were Danish citizens. No other nation did that. When things got really bad, the Danes evacuated their Jewish citizens to neutral Sweden, saving almost all Danish Jews and leaving the nazis with a bag of squat. You shouldn’t mess with these people.

Nice in pictures. Best left to the Greenlanders.

 If the US attacks Denmark or Greenland, I’d expect the US to lose badly. One, the military command would be so ridiculously unlawful that any member of the US armed forces that followed it would be guilty of war crimes. Two, NATO nations will align against it because they know their lands will be next. Three, Canada is a NATO nation, and technically closer geographically to Greenland, so that’d be a war on two fronts. Four, Americans would not survive the Greenland winter if Greenlanders did not want them to. Think Napoleon’s army in Russia. Five, . . . there’s just a lot of reasons it’d all go terribly wrong.

Iran on the other hand has nothing to worry about. It’s in the interests of the current US administration for Iran to exist – exactly the way it is, as a Muslim theocracy. The eternal boogie monster for which any amount of defense spending domestically (or overseas to other nations in the neighborhood) is rubber stamped (and then spent as desired). How do we know this? Because the US is willing to bomb Iran only if they judicially execute protestors, but not if Iran just shoots protesting citizens in the streets. There’s no desire for Iranian democracy, or to support Iranian citizens asking for democracy, or even just freedom from a theocratic state. 

And why would the current US administration do otherwise? a) it too wants to establish a theocratic state itself and b) it too is shooting protesting citizens in the streets. Citizens who are just exercising their US democratic Constitutional rights. 

This is Fifth Avenue, in NYC  By A. Balet – Own work, CC BY 3.0,

There’s no legitimate reason for trained law enforcement to shoot anyone in the face.  When one reads about a civilian in a democracy that’s been shot in the head or the face by a government agent, one should be thinking “this is a criminal political act by an illegitimate government that doesn’t have the consent of the people.” You can see this is true. The DOJ, the FBI, the Dept of Homeland Security have decided it’s okay to shoot lawful, Liberal American White Female Urban Leader, citizens in the face. Unpack that acronym and you have that list of government disfavored citizen groups.

Like I said, it’s a Civil War – WWII redux, because the core ideas that were involved, the structures created by them, have never been completely dismantled and properly laid to rest in the US. This is largely due, frankly speaking, to people who choose to use their power and money to try and gain more power and money because there’s never enough of either for them. Other people don’t matter to them, democracy doesn’t matter to them, countries, morality, rule of law, ideals, Christ’s teachings, none of it matters to them. They’re like the Buddhist hungry ghosts. You may have seen a few rows of them sitting on a dais during last year’s inauguration or in the capital building giving interviews. 

But, remember that man who said “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK.” That man who has never held a gun, who shirked military service, and who called citizens who choose to serve their country and gave their lives for its protection and its democracy “losers” and “suckers”? Well, he might get away with that on 5th Ave NYC, but he can’t get away with that on Fifth Avenue, Minneapolis. And he is losing voters over it. He’ll lose more votes over Greenland because no US parents will encourage their child in uniform to lay down his/her life, attacking our ally Canada, so a president can claim ownership of another ally, Greenland.

As we celebrate that truly great man Martin Luther King, Jr on Monday, I think it’s important to remember that speaking up, showing up, standing up, and voting all work together. If all you can do is vote, please vote. But if you can speak up, speak up as well. Show up for your neighbors, so when you need them, they show up for you. Stand up, even if your congress person is too much of a coward to do it. The sad truth is, any member of the majority at any time could opt out. The 25th amendment is there for a reason. If you show resolve and lead, they might grow a backbone.

Yes, there’s still a chance they might not, that these enacted policies and garbage bin ideas from the past truly represent what they want America to become. But as we all know, C-suite folk are the most prone to being removed from office. And many I think will be removed this year, at the city, state, and national level. These “superior” people have trashed the nation. They literally tore down the white house, the house of the people. They’ve train wrecked the education system. The health care system. The economy. They’ve murdered people at home and abroad. They’ve lined their own pockets at every opportunity.

It’s not blue sky thinking on my part to suppose they will be removed. It’s just the way the weather patterns are unfolding. People can see what’s happening, despite efforts to control the narratives and the media itself. I could be wrong, so I carry my umbrella just in case. But conditions do seem cloudy with a chance of democracy.

It’s what my copy looks like.

At Thanksgiving,  I wandered into my childhood bedroom, which is largely a guest room now, and flipped the light switch on the wall. Then I paused and looked at something that hadn’t changed about the room, and that I hadn’t looked at or thought about in a while.  My replica of The Declaration of Independence. That I paused here and looked, was a habit of my childhood. This document kicked off a love of Democracy, Equality, Justice, American History, calligraphy, and old documents in general.

Now you may find this strange, but in my old bed room, just past the door frame about 2 feet, is a short wall with an unframed replica of the Declaration of Independence, thumbtacked to the right of the only light switch. On the left side of the light switch is (and has always been) a current calendar. Draw your own conclusions here. But I think this set up was probably pretty typical of how early Americans saw their world. I also think there’s some weird subtext about light and early American values, but let’s not go there right now.

When I got home, I started watching Ken Burn’s The American Revolution. Honestly, there’s not much I don’t know about the American Revolution because it was an area of study back in the day, so for me, the compressed story lines of various characters are fine. Sure I read a 400 pg biography of Arnold, and Arnold gets like 5 min air time across 3 episodes. But it’s really all they could do. I found the use of maps and drawing and portraits and headless/faceless people tramping through the countryside an interesting way to bring things alive. They did a good job in showing the actual diversity of the peoples and their motivations for engaging (or not) in revolution.

Start the Revolution without me. 

Did they miss a lot of interpersonal drama that had big impacts on the war? Yep. But If I had one issue I’d flag, it’d be the fact that all 6 episodes, 12 hrs, were narrated by the same person, Peter Coyote,  a white man. I like Peter Coyote. He’s a great narrator. He has that grandfather telling a story vibe. But, given the content of the series, it would have made more sense and have been more accurate and more reflective of the period to have a white woman, a black man, a black woman, a Native American man, and a Native American woman each narrate one episode. These were all people/groups involved.

 Isn’t part of the problem we have today, a lack of understanding of our own origin story? People walk around with weird versions of us based on a false narrative that the American Revolution was just about/for by/involving white english-speaking protestant men and their issue. Why use only one race or gender of narrator to tell the story of the great diversity of Americans? Maybe when they reboot it in 20 years they can dub over episodes 2 through 6.

That said, back to the Declaration of Independence.  Most people alive today, including most Americans, have never read it. And because of that, they don’t really understand what it is, other than an excuse to BBQ on July 4th. So, here’s the short answer. The Declaration of Independence was written to explain to the world (not other American colonists), why we (British subjects at the time) had a right (even a duty) to reject British rule (by force if need be) and set up our own form of government. 

Independence? Is this what’s in pamphlets young people are reading these days?

Hence the opening line: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, . . .” and the ending “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Needless to say, the Declaration gets pretty shirty from there. It goes on to list 27 points of grievance that form the colonists’ evidence as to why they are under a despotic govt – ie, one that does not recognize the equality of all people [colonists in this case] and operates in such a way that it intentionally deprives some people [colonists in this case] of  life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness, and does so without the consent of the governed [colonists in this case]. These grievances are also a list of means King George III (Britain) uses to establish its “tyranny” over the colonists.

I’m just going to share some here, with modern examples.

“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.  [This would be refusing to fund all the govt bodies, FEMA, NOAA, USAID, all the things Congress – who represents the people – said should be funded]“He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. [This would be asking governors to create more favorable voter districts so he can control the Congress against the will of the people]“He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people. [This would be refusing to call the people’s House into session because one would have to swear in a representative of the people who’d sign a bill that would release files related to a pedophile, and identifying close associates of said pedophile, mentioned in said files. ] George III.  When your taxes go to mad leaders who like gold? Just walk away.“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither. …. [This would be trying to overturn birthright citizenship or failing to create paths to legal immigration or deal with illegal immigration in lawful ways.]“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. [Think court stacking, or using the DOJ/SCOTUS as your personal lawyer/stamp of approval]“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. [Frankly, threatening to primary elected representatives is the same thing] People in uniforms with military grade weapons, aren’t in your town to protect you.“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. [Think DOGE, and all the AI bros getting your “private” information from the govt, as well as free water and electricity that’s hiking your rates through the roof, even though you don’t want AI which is literally killing your children, but you know, is given 10 years of no regulation because AI bros are such good donors and American kids are “replaceable” NPCs to them.]“He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. [This would be ICE, or the now-armed National Guard]“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. [This would be what brought down Nixon in part. But that was when there was Congress that stood as a check and balance. Sinking boats of “suspected” foreign narcotics smugglers, and then going back and assassinating the shipwrecked so they can never testify at the trial they will never get for the crime they never did. All without any Congressional approval] Of course, I’ve read Thomas Payne. Have you?“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: [DOGE, Russia, Project 2025….]“For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: [Check]“For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: [Check]“For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: [Tariffs – Check]“For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: [Tariffs – Check]“For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury: [Check]“For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: [in this case prisons in El Salvador- Check]“For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:“For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: [Check]“For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. [See, Project 2025 checklist and the list of presidential executive orders]“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us [Check], . . .“. . . A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” [Check] Men who want to be king, are always the sort of men who never should be. On the other hand, men who want to be Queen? I like Freddie Mercury. I don’t have a problem with that.

Obviously, even with a cursory reading of the Declaration, there are parallels one could draw today.  If one happened to read the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States of America released a couple nights ago, it’s not a secret that the current US administration is not interested in furthering the America that the Founders aspired to design and endeavored to set on the road to creation. In fact, just the opposite. They seem to desire every point of tyranny the Founders rejected and long to be despots not just over the US but all countries in same hemisphere. They want to be George III + Empire. It’s a strange time to be American to be sure.

So, the Declaration of Independence. Still important. Still needed. Get yourself a copy. Pin it to your wall. Read it. It’s very clarifying. I used to laugh when I’d hear new reports talking about loyalists. I don’t anymore. It’s an accurate description. People who are Loyalists, capital L, are loyal to a king/person, not a country or its ideals. It’s interesting that Washington, who was never publicly “emotional,” thought Loyalists to be arch traitors (pro-tyrant) and got very whipped up about them.  Which is quite shocking, given Washington had ordered Americans to treat the Hessians (German soldiers) as victims of tyranny (their king rented them to the British for use) even though they had committed some of the worst crimes against the American people.

I don’t know what the Founders would make of the US today. I suspect they’d be pretty shocked by the basic illiteracy – the lack of reading. The disregard for education and science. The attacks on free speech and free assembly. The elevation into the public sphere of performative religion rather than leaving true faith free to elevate the private conscience as one saw fit. Yeah, there’s a lot I think they’d be upset about, tyranny wise.  But I think they’d be most concerned that no one bothered to read their country’s own Declaration of Independence or think about it. 

Americans often attempt serious discussion, but tend to fail in multiple ways on multiple levels. (Art Meme Central).

We spend a lot of time discussing the Constitution, and that is to be expected. It is the foundation of our laws. But I would argue it’s not the foundation of our nation or our ideals. The Declaration of Independence is our Country’s founding document. It’s us, declaring us a country. It’s us telling the world, what we won’t stand for from any government, including ones we form ourselves. It’s a line in the sand that says, cross this line, and human beings are justified in, have a right to, have a duty, to walk away and form another government. It’s a well-argued but “not for the feint of heart” sort of document. And that may be why not a lot of people read it. 

If people really sat down and read it (or had it read to you)  – the way all the early Colonists did. If people really thought about what it says they are entitled to expect from their government as an American, . . . And if you’re in the Government, reading this document you might have a rude awakening that people you think are “not your voters” or worse “your subjects,” whose opinions don’t matter to you, actually matter a lot more than you might think. US citizens should know what the Declaration of Independence says, if only to remind them of what a tyrant does to earn that title and know how to spot a tyrant in the wild. And, too, citizens should read it – all the way to the end – to discover the name of the woman who printed the first full Declaration with signatory names, including her own, and thereby made the Declaration that she too was an on-the-record independent American. 

First of all, the above  is now the Project Feedwatch 25-26 map, which is an improvement over last week. But again, this was 24-25. 

I’m hopeful for 25-26, that it will continue increasing participants as time progresses,  and I’m heartened that passion for science and particularly US citizen science is still alive, to the point people will spend money to do it and time to make it happen, even as the current US administration is hell for leather* in the process of flushing professional science (a major economic driver for over a century) – and the Americans’ economy, health, and safety – down the drain. 

And speaking of  US health, safety and the economy, I just want to point out that Republicans are committing a crime against humanity, against their own voters and the American people. As part of  their “war on government,” by not funding SNAP, they are intentionally starving their own citizens. Which is really bananas, especially as SNAP is funded by American citizens’ taxes, and American taxpayers overwhelmingly support the SNAP program. 

Starving the working poor Americans, the elderly, the disabled, women and children on its own would be bad enough. Especially while giving huge  tax breaks to the unworking wealthy, able, men. But the reason why the GOP is doing this specifically makes it sooo much worse. Republicans want to make ACA healthcare unaffordable for Americans by denying tax credits to again, the tax paying American middle class and poor, so they can’t get basic health coverage to stay alive. 

So, let’s review here. 

Republicans are willing to “crime against humanity” murder by starvation of American citizens in order to try and force Democrats to sign off on letting Republicans commit “crime against humanity” murder of American citizens by denial of basic health care. 

Hands up if you think any of this is what a normal human being would do, let alone Christ or a Christian who claims to be following Him would do.

“The King of Heaven appeared on earth and lived among men, in His benevolence towards humanity.” Is what the text in the book says.

Years ago, the state of California – the citizens, by ballot initiative – created a law saying “No balanced budget passed by July 1, no salary for you State Representatives.” Once that passed, we had a balanced budget passed on time, every year. Unless the representatives feel the pain, they just don’t care. That was my takeaway. And I think that law should be created for Washington too. But even more severely since stakes are higher.

Americans should deny all Congressional representatives and the president any pay or healthcare or security or gym freebies or fundraisers or free meals or benefits of any kind or the ability to receive donations from anyone for any reason until said individual delivered a signed balanced budget or just a budget act – on time. 

I’d even go a bit further and say, if they miss the target date, they don’t get paid for the window between the date they missed and the date the act passed, because they didn’t do their job. And any health problems they had during that window? They need to cover those as “out of pocket.”

Perhaps a good chunk of why Republicans don’t pass this resolution/budget act  is simply because they don’t want Congress to function. It’s nice if they want to pretend that this is about SNAP or the ACA, but at the end of the day if Congress functions, the House has to sit, and the new Democratic representative from AZ will be sworn in, and she will sign on to the resolution that opens up the Epstein files. 

Even though the vast majority of the American people care about SNAP and the ACA existing and being funded, Individual 1 only cares about Individual 1. So that always has to be considered the highest and most important motivating factor in anything the GOP or the GOP conservative-led SCOTUS does. Which is why today SCOTUS told Individual 1 that SNAP benefits didn’t have to be paid, and that Individual 1 and his cadre could go on starving Americans. And committing crimes against humanity.

So, yes, you should expect the SCOTUS to rule that tariffs are something the POTUS can do anything the POTUS wants. Because the SCOTUS only cares about turning the POTUS into a king, not about democracy, the law, precedent, reality, fairness, honesty, or the American people. And, no, you shouldn’t be surprised by this. When you build a government system that relies on congressional representatives’ individual “ethics, norms, honor, integrity” instead of law, this is where you end up. 

The “we rely on ethics, norms, honor systems, personal integrity” way of thinking is a result of a hoary belief that “White Christian men will do the right thing.” But we all know they, all people, don’t. History has proven they don’t, over and over again. This is why we have laws and law-based democracy. We know individual people can’t make good decisions for all people as they just don’t have that all of society scope of understanding they need. We know people can’t be relied upon to do the right thing because it’s always the “right thing” to/for them.

 But if the courts are filled with judges who choose to ignore the law, in favor of their person “ethics, norms, honor systems, personal integrity” you end up, well, where America is today.  Where our Founders (White demi-Christian men) tried so hard to prevent us from ending up. For all the shade you can throw the Founders way, they understood how governments went bad, and why. They thought about protecting all people.  And crucially, they understood themselves to be deeply flawed mortals, who needed laws.  I’m not sure GOP leaders see themselves as anything but perfectly flawless kings. And to that I say, 

As did a lot of people across the country on elections night. People are waking up. Yep, they a-woke.

*In case you wondered, “hell for leather” is a phrase that turns up first in 1889. Rudyard Kipling. The story of the Gadsbys: A tale without a plot. And if you asked, “Hmm, I wonder if this relates to the later novel, The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925)?” My answer is, yes.

Cedar Waxwing by Laura Frazier, BirdSpotter 2018-19, 2nd place overall. Project FeederWatch. Feederwatch.org

People in the US seem to be having a difficult time figuring out the economy these days. Many scholars and experts seem to be waiting for government data that may never be coming out, or may be less accurate due to changes in collection methods or analysis methods when / if it does come out. My answer to that is backyard data. Data collection that doesn’t rely on government or its peculiar whims. For instance, you could look at charitable giving (the American Cancer Society, or the local Pet Assistance League. ) If donations are down and need is up, that might tell you people 9and pets) are not doing do well.

Here is the best snapshot data on the economy I’ve found so far. This data set goes back to 1989. So, through a series of wars, recessions, crashes, White Houses lead by one party or another. The economic entry point of participation is low $18. Plus maybe $20 a month in bird seed for 6 months (Nov 1at through April 15th), so, maybe $120. Let’s call it $150 all in. The data is actually pretty consistent for participation. When the economy goes bad, participation is down. When it’s good, it’s pretty stable. Here are registered (paid participants) for Nov 2024 -April 2025 mapped out.

Here are the registered (paid up) participants so far for Nov 2025 – April 2026

Now of course, more people may sign up (and pay $18) , before Nov 1st. And maybe more will join through April. But I think these two maps tell you a lot about the state of average Americans’ finances. If you can’t afford $20 a month for birdseed this year, you are not going to register for $18. And if $20 is a deal breaker amount in an average household, that tells you a lot about average Americans’ households. And what it tells you isn’t good.

Project FeederWatch is 35 years old. At least a two or three generations have participated in it. Birding is an across the political, economic, racial, religious and regional spectrum sort of hobby. Lots of people do it. And this is the easiest kind – Armchair birding. You and your hot cocoa, inside by the fire with the carols playing, watching the birds eating, outside in the snow. This is low bar for entry. So as data goes, I think it is helpful.

I think there’s lot of data like this available for people who really want to know about the state of the economy. But it does require one to think out side the box, or the feeder, to know where to find it. I’m going to add here that not having $18 or birdseed money, shouldn’t stop you looking outside and enjoying the birds. Trust me, they don’t just want a free meal. Even a bowl of clean water, is appreciated if you live somewhere dry or frozen over.

For people with no opportunity get out and about, I recommend watching the Project FeederWatcher webcam set up in Sapsucker Woods in Ithaca, NY. Always on, always amazing. You never know who will show up or what bird calls you’ll get to hear. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/cornell-lab-feederwatch/ And it’s been proven that listening to birds releases all sorts of “Happy Brain” chemicals,” including oxytocin.

Birding is good for the brain, so even if you can’t do Project FeederWatch this year, there are lots of other ways to enjoy birding, and the benefits to brains, bodies and birds it creates! You can create a free ebird account, download the free app, and use Merlin (free app) to help you identify birds and add to all the citizen science going on around your country and the world. There are lots of citizen science projects going on you can get involved in. The Bird Academy has free courses. And Bird Wise has some free quizzes to help you sharpen your skills too. Local birding groups are everywhere. Libraries have birding guides, books and ebooks. There’s even birding on TikTok if that’s your thing.

One can join Project Feederwatch at any time, so until we reach April, we won’t have the full data set for what’s happening this season, but I suggest you get out there and start birding anyway. You don’t need to give up learning or contributing or enjoying the world around you just because you don’t have the dosh this year. You also don’t have to miss out on the many benefits of birding, for yourself or the birds. Let’s face it, the original G-rated, positive for humanity, twitter-ers are still out there tweeting every day (and at night too!). Take a beat this week and find out what these avian experts have to say about living La Bella Vita. You’ll be glad you did.

I’m not telling you what kind of bird this is, but, you know… Google Lens if you need to!

Where fires are currently burning. red= out of control, yellow = being held (at the line for now), green is under control (not out).

Life is full of little ironies. I thought leaving So. Cal. for a wetter climate would mean no more ghastly 100+ degree summers or dealing with wildfires. But, Life had other plans, and Climate Change knows does not recognize internationally boundaries. I thought the switch over to the new computer system would make life easier. But fixing what’s wrong with the new system has become a full-time job, in addition to my full-time job- wheee! Needless to say, I’m indoors a lot these days, and in my downtime, I turn to comfort TV (ie, professional cycling grand tours) and audiobooks (mostly about nature, science, or remarkable women – note, we are all remarkable!).

I like the grand tours because I can cycle along with them, which is good exercise. Or, I can just watch the scenery, as though I’m on a train, and make notes of place the SO and I should visit next time we head to Europe. The pets like the grand tours too. Bob Roll, aka Bobke, a former bike racer and one of the announcers, is everyone’s favorite. When they hear Bob’s voice, everyone chills out and flops in front of the tv. I can’t really say what about his voice makes them so chill, but the only other time I see this happen is when I zoom into a White Tara practice and join my fellow Bu’s across the globe for a hour of mediation.

Although the Tour de France is my favorite race, I do watch the Vuelta Espana (Tour of Spain), pretty often. This year has been one of the years I’m watching. It’s mostly in the north of Spain, and Tadej Pogacar isn’t in this race, which, depending on how you view Tadej, can be a good or bad thing. Tadej would win, if he was in it. He’s the best. Jonas Vingegaard is always the bridesmaid, but since Tadej isn’t in the Vuelta no one has any expectation that anyone but Jonas will win. You might think that would make the race boring but, oh no, plenty of drama at the Vuelta. I think because it’s the last grand tour of the season, after which many riders change teams or end contracts, so all sorts of fireworks can happen.

The only thing missing is a bottle of Rioja and some glasses.

Honestly, I don’t watch for the drama, but this year there’s been a lot of drama. There have been dramatic stage wins by unexpected almost unknown riders (in this case a cancer survivor!) – who then suddenly become the race leaders (for a few days anyway). There have been wild 100k breakaways by riders who are looking to sign a better contract perhaps so must prove their worth to any new potential teams that are shopping. There have been dramatic wins by known riders (Juan Ayuso) – who are theoretically at the race to support the team leader, but are leaving their teams and decided to chuck over their current team basically to ride only for themselves. And all of that I don’t mind.

Unfortunately this year, there have also been political shenanigans. Political protests happen on grand tours now and then. Some years ago in France, when the govt there was imposing new laws on the agricultural sector, the farmers staged some protests. I want to be clear though, these protests didn’t stop the race or interfere with it or the riders. And I’m not against that type of protest. I also understand that political protest at sporting events is kind of a tradition in Europe. Emily Wilding Davison, a suffragette, died after jumping onto the track to protest and was struck by the king’s horse running in the Epsom Derby in 1913. Women got the vote 15 years and a world war later in 1928. Did Emily’s sacrifice help? I don’t know.

This year, the race is being shown on Peacock an NBC network. Admittedly it’s been next level bizarre watching the US version of the race. The commentators are apparently not allowed to say the words Palestine, Israel, or Gaza. They are not allowed to say anything about the conflict. And this attempt at de-pollicization of the race, I understand, but they are in Spain, which recognized Palestine as a country last year. Each stage of the race is littered with Palestinian national flags large and small. And, riders have been subjected to harassment, intimidation and even assault/attempted murder.

Flags are normally flow, if related to a rider’s home. This? Not so much.

Random riders have a) run into those enormous banners (race interference), b) been sabotaged (team Israel Premier Tech) by protesters stringing a rope across the raceway during a time trial to knock them off their bikes as they were going 50mph (which could have lead to death or permanent injury), c) had kilometers of a stage finish suddenly cut short (Bilbao) because protesters would not clear the streets, trashing what would have been a thrilling finish, and d) been subject to intimidation and antisemitism via the road signs on the pavement (which typically say things like “viva Almeida” to encourage riders but instead say “boikot Israel” “stop genocide” etc).

None of this gets talked about by the US race commentators, which I guess is a telling. It’s how the US media has decided to handle anything to do with the word “Israel.” Just don’t. I want to be clear hear, as far as I know, there are no Palestinian riders and no Israeli riders in the Vuelta – not even on the team called Israel Premier Tech, which is owned by an Israeli Canadian billionaire who is very vocal about his “pro Netanyahu and the policies thereof” views. The whole idea of using the Vuelta to either “stick-it” to the billionaire or draw attention to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas/Gaza, while understandable, is really quite naff. It’s just hurting cyclists and Spain’s image.

Which is not to say that pro-cyclists aren’t a bit of a issue as well. Apparently, some of the cyclists have said they want Israel Premier Tech’s entire team (8 men) to withdraw from the race (they cannot be dismissed from the race by the organizers), for the safety of all the other riders (about 150 men). I don’t think this is antisemitism, as some people do. I personally have a limit for the definition of antisemitism, unlike the US or Israel. I don’t have a problem with anyone who says @ America and burns my flag, so I don’t have a problem if anyone says @ “name a country” and burns their flag. I don’t think such behavior or messaging does anything helpful, it’s anti-American, or anti-whatever-land, but it’s 1st Amendment free speech.

I wouldn’t do it, but it’s your right if you want to do it.

However, asking the self-styled Israel Premier Tech team to withdraw, because Spain is unwilling to make it’s citizens & visitors obey the law and not assault, intimidate or harass professional athletes from 50 different nations, who are just doing their job (ie, pedaling a bike up a hill), is crazy wrong even if it’s not antisemitism. That the team is being treated this way because it has the word Israel in its name, and so has become a focus of a few malicious pro-Palestinian actors (I’m sure most protestors just want to make the world see and remember innocent Palestinians and their suffering), is the definition of anti-national (in this case the nation is Israel) behavior. But the answer is not for fellow professional cyclists to ask that team to withdraw, but to ask for Spain to enforce its own laws and protect them.

The other player here is the UCI. If you want to stick a nation’s name on a cycling team, save it for the Olympics. Otherwise, there’s lots of names out there. There should be rules about what teams can be named. Currently there 4 politically named teams in the Vuelta. Team Bahrain Victorious, UAE Team Emirates XRG, Team Astana (capital of Kazakhstan), and Israel Premier Tech. To be honest, I think the best solution here is to order all teams to strike any reference to any nation or capital of a nation. It’s just needlessly politicizing the sport. The commentators have been referring to Israel Premier Tech as just Premier Tech since the start of the Vuelta. They just dropped the word Israel all together. Banning the use of names of nations and their capitals ensures that cycling stays out of global political morasses.

Israel Premier Tech is not currently one of the UCI’s 18 world teams. It’s a UCI ProTeam, the second tier level. UCI ProTeams have to be invited to world tours as wildcards. If the team is not promoted, I suspect it won’t be invited as a wild card team next year. A lot of factors go into deciding who gets to be a World Team for the next 3 years. The UCI has to think about funding and the future of cycling. Too, the UCI wants professional cycling events to keep cycling centerstage. If a team is drawing a crowd that’s making it about something else, that’s disrupting cycling events, that causing risk to riders and disappointment to fans, it’s not worthwhile to have that team on their roster. And that’s sad, but that’s the economics of a professional sport in a capitalist world.

L’Angliru 12.5K all up hill. Good luck with that.

Well, the race stage of the Vuelta has ended for the day. I haven’t seen it yet. I’m going to watch the replay now, and pedal on my bike, while eating fresh baked brownies (so I’m net neutral on calories). In some respects, it’s definitely cycling while home burns. But life is meant to be lived, even in the times when things are burning down all around you. That too, is one of life’s little ironies. Eventually, the rains come, the fires go out, the smoke clears, and you rise from the ashes – which is much easier to do when you’re cycling fit, full of carbs, and have passed beyond L’Angliru.

One long hot summer weekend, when I was teenager, before I could drive, a friend, Lihn, who was a bit older offered to take a group of us to the beach. This was time before teens driving other teens was considered problematic. I was staying with my grandparents, and while my Gran was okay this, my Grandfather was was not. At least, he said “Ok” only on condition the driver pick me up at my house. I assumed he wanted to know the car was in good condition and see if there were any boys in the car. It was and there were not – they had gone in a separate car and planned to meet us. The car arrived, boy-free, my grandfather nodded, and off I went.

The beach was glorious. Cool blue water, soft sands, laughter, fun, games, a sunset of vivid reds, golds, pink and peach. It would have been nice to be able to stay till dark, but we were to be home before sunset (around 8:30ish). So we dutifully packed up our borrowed cars at 7:30ish to start the trek back. Sadly, Lihn’s car battery decided to die. It may have had something to do with the heat, or leaving the radio on and the trunk with the coolers open so the little light was on. I’m not a car person, so I really don’t know.

What I do know is that it took a while to find someone give the battery a jump start. In those days, cell phones were not ubiquitous accoutrements of young teens. The beach was a long walk to the nearest phone on a dark deserted road. So talking to strangers, which I still posit is less bad than talking to ChatGPT, was the only way to find help. In a way it was nice, to get some extra time to see the stars come out. But I dreaded going home to explain what had happened. It would sound cliché. The car battery died. Fortunately, when we pulled into my drive, and stopped the car to unpack it, the batter again failed. My grandfather tested the battery and it was well and truly very dead.

Batteries love a dramatic pause.

My grandfather gave Lihn’s car yet another jumpstart and sent my friends on their way, with a warning to her never to stop it anywhere till she got home. And so, no fuss was made of my late arrival. The next day, Gran took me to Mass and the Catholic shop afterwards to get me a St Christopher medal (Patron St of Travellers). The following day, my grandfather took me to the tiny AAA building in the center of town and bought me a family membership. Every year, as long as he lived, my grandfather would send me a birthday card and write “AAA membership included.” It became a sort of running family joke but also a bond of affection between my grandfather and I. To this day, I still have both the AAA membership and the St Christopher medal hanging from my rearview mirror.

I lost Gran’s medal last week. The cord broke and it fell on the car floor. I searched for a few days to no avail. Finally I thought, “Well, it’s still with me, Gran. I just can’t see it. As long as I have the car, I’ll have it.” The SO searched my care as well, because you know, as a woman I might have been “searching it wrongly.” (Can you hear my eyes rolling?) He too was defeated by St Christopher. I gave up the search for a few days, then on Wednesday I prayed really hard, and gave it another go and bingo! There it was, easily found in a place we’d search multiple times. St Christopher, such a scamp! He’s back on my mirror now.

I renewed my AAA last month, so both my grandfather is also still with me. And the friend who drove me to the beach that day? Lihn, she became an auto adjuster with AAA right out of college. It’s funny life is. Early in her career, she volunteered to be part of the Hurricane Katrina Disaster Recovery claims team. She lived in hotel for 3 months, doing nothing but claims. She said she often felt guilty, that she had a place to return, with light and food and clean water, and most of the people she dealt with had nothing. She never did another trip like that. I think emotionally it took a toll on her. It’s difficult to be yelled at day after day by stressed out people, who have every right to be stressed out. It’s hard to see people that have suffered so much, and are still suffering, and to feel like whatever you do will never be enough.

You can help everyone, but you can help someone.

All that aside, Lihn has always liked AAA. Her plan was always to make her whole life’s career there. They don’t pay as well as other similar insurance companies, but they have things that make up for it like a pension plan and a desire to see everyone move forward in career development. They care about their customers and about their employees. During the Pandemic, AAA didn’t let anyone go. They paid every employee their full salary – even if they couldn’t do their job because the job could not be done while maintaining proper social distancing (like driving instructors) They pivoted to WFH. They did everything they could to keep everyone work. And despite the challenges, they came out of the pandemic in pretty good shape.

Under the previous administration, AAA was rebounding. AAA has really good financial wizards who keep the company on a stable footing. People like Lihn continued to get annual raises. Every AAA newsletter that went out painted a rosy picture of a bright future and fiscal soundness. Yet, despite all that, I wasn’t really surprised when, as I was re-hanging St Christopher, Lihn she called me to tell me that her manager had announced to everyone that next month there would be a AAA meeting and they would be giving people new job titles (nothing was said about new duties) and at the same time, there would be pay reductions.

To me, it was inevitable given the destruction of the economy and the tarriffs that make any sort of car part replacement 1000% more expensive now than 6 months go. To Lihn it was surprising. Some of her coworkers already decided to quit or retire or early retire as a result. She’s not sure what she’d do. Maybe wait and see what actually happens at the meeting before doing anything rash. But, she was upset. AAA was a big part of her life. Honestly it’s a big part of America’s life. This great American company, a part of so many American lives, so many generations. To see this fiscally responsible company that cares about it’s employees, now, after 123 years – through a Great Depression, two world wars, a Great Recession, a Global Pandemic and 21 presidents – consider it’s only means of cost savings and survival cutting its employee’s pay? At a time when prices are going up for those employees? Wow.

“Heavens, where is my automobile? Jeeves, call AAA.” Ila Parkhurst, 1902

Knowing my friend voted for the current administration, I asked her why she thought AAA was taking this extraordinary measure. I was interested to hear what she would say. She said “corporate greed.” It was really the only frame she could put around the picture, and keep her worldview going. But it was unsettling to her say that, given the company’s storied history and her long association with it. In her mind, I guess, it couldn’t be that the person she voted for caused this. She couldn’t accept that she had basically done this, to herself. So what else could she think.

Up until a month or two ago, Lihn told they had many job openings, that they were trying to hire more people because they had so much work. Now AAA can’t even afford to pay their devoted but overworked people the do have. That’s a big shift. For me, AAA’s decision reflects a typical American company’s genuine struggle to come to grips with what I can only describe as an intentionally train-wrecked US and global economy and no foreseeable light on the horizon. I think AAA is doing the best it can with what it’s got given the situation.

As for myself, I wonder if I’ll have to make a big shift. Will I be able to afford another year of my grandfather’s AAA? Price hikes on customers can’t be far behind. I don’t need AAA for the amount of time I’m on the road. But I’d miss them. I’d miss my AAA family, those who have been there for me many a time. That flat battery in my drive, but you still got me to work on time. That flat tire in the snowy mountains, and you not only changed my tire, but guided me to a cafe and left me with a hot chocolate to warm up. The year I volunteered to work for the US Census, and ended up locking my keys in my car multiple times (3x in one very bad week)!

As, it turned out, I learned many years later, that my grandfather wanted Lihn to pick me up at the house so he could see the car. So he could write down the license plate, the color, make and model of the car. Just in case he needed the police to go out and search for me/us. When I call AAA, they always say “Are you somewhere safe?” And I think of my grandfather, and that day, and his great care for me. It’d be hard to let go of that, of that last piece of him. But I guess, I can keep my last AAA card with me. The way I keep his last AAA card with his name embossed on it in raised blue letters in my glove box. You know, because when you reach in there, you’re usually in trouble. His card reminds me, there’s still someone watching out for me, and not just on the long weekends.

Thanks for the memories, AAA!